Spencer Johnson (1) (1938–2017)

Business is specificity, and story is specificity; they’re not speculation—so I find it bizarre that this business fable (business story) should be so extreme in its abstraction, to the point where the text is literally like, Say you have a problem. So you try A, B, and C, and they don’t work. So combine A, B, and C; it’ll work. (That’s really where he lost me, lol.) And the (mysterious?) Manager and the (mysterious?) young man don’t have names…. I guess the theory is ‘sell to everyone’ and that’s a good seed of an idea, but I think people can tell the difference between selling to them too and being shy that they’re not too important to you, you know. But I would like to read more business fables—just not by this author. I just have trouble deleting things when I value the larger category it feeds, you know.

…. So, if something’s widely successful and it’s mediocre, does that mean it bears some responsibility for a crazy world? The average manager doesn’t need to be told to live more grey, you know—to be more emotionally vague, more unattractive…. He can figure out how to do that. Now, the market in a non-crazy world, well that would be a little different…. I know people think they’ve heard all that before: have more fun, etc. etc., but the reason why it’s not an “in” talking point now to some extent, besides the inevitable seasons of thought, you know, the cyclic-ness of everything, is that everything always fell on the women, you know. Possibly a singer making a lot of money, right. The manager’s job was just to wear a grey tie, smile a grey smile, and to feel vague, you know. I guess the rot at the root is that people think that if you weren’t unattractive you’d be more of singer or a drunk than a manager. It’s just folk delusion and has nothing to do with the potential of the market, though.

…. “Do not blame, or cause harm to sentient beings.” Of course; I agree. (beat) I blame the education system. (studio audience laughter). People who become managers aren’t any more likely than anybody else to know algebra, probably less, but the education system has trained the masses, not indeed in algebra, but to believe that to be successful you have to act like you knew algebra, you know—as though algebra were psychology and motivation and all the rest of it….

Sometimes the person who really believes in our education system is the MOST ignorant, as I indeed have been, at times—although the person who gets an ‘F’ in algebra usually absorbs at LEAST half of it, half of the emotional strategy, you know: at least the part that goes, “I’m a schmuck unless I feel grey inside; store managers shouldn’t be schmucks like me.” Of course, it’s not easy because the masses are very much divided; however, it seems like a bad sort of compromise to offer them as the system an elite designed to be equally reprehensible for everyone, you know. Which isn’t to say that sometimes the masses aren’t unreasonable. “For the high crime and misdemeanor of not being Trump, I, Clown Man, hereby impeach you, Biden, by a vote of 67-7.” ‘How did you get those numbers?’ “Oh, those are the voices inside my head.”…. But just to offer the people DMV Corp. (G-Man Corp., I mean), because the grey road is the road of least resistance…. I don’t know; is that really playing the long game?

…. He sorta gets some of the common problems in business organizations, but that is so not the same as inspiring people to do better or having what it takes to do a better job; ie, being brief is so not the same as being alive and something beyond just a rational computer in a business suit. And he so just doesn’t write stories well!

—Everything is rationality, young man—even the decision you have to make, whether or not to give a damn! 😀
—Wow, Manager! Since I’m just the author’s sock puppet just like you, I guess I’ll go ahead and agree with you! 😀

I hate to be negative, but the idea that normies might label this book as ‘positive thinking’ fills me with dread! 😹… (mere)

Well, first off, I won’t go quite so far (not that it makes a difference) as to say that it’s mythology or folklore, but it clearly is a story and not a non-fiction category—specifically it’s general fiction, ie not ‘good’ lit, you know. (Oh, help me mommy, help me—the purpose of life isn’t happiness, as Aristotle himself told me in his book on ethics; it’s to brag about the books we read 😭)

It’s also not quite children’s lit, as it’s not really intended for children, being about financial success and its grown-up equivalents, you know, things that you don’t really have when you’re seven. But it obviously borrows a few leaves from the children’s book style, you know. It reminds me of something Louise Hay said: that life is basically a collaboration between the adult and the inner child. This was a revelation even to me. It’s true that so far I’ve both done some grown-up stuff, as well as let my inner child have some time to himself (I guess I often think of my inner child as Little Hermes, although I guess I sometimes think of them as being a bit of a Little Persephone, too), but alternation isn’t //quite// the same thing as collaboration, you know. You can actually be in the middle of doing something with the adult, and then let the inner child add something, you know, like, ‘Just let me have a cup of water now’, or just let up on me; don’t put me through my paces, you know. And despite the way I write (sorta the adult sometimes imitating the child, I guess), I do tend to put the child through his paces, and to assume he can make it through to his next scheduled break without any help, you know.

But anyway, life is a collaboration. That’s why I think it’s cool that the compliment came from a sportscaster—kinda a grown-up playing at a game, in a sense, if a verbal one, you know. (shrugs) So yeah.

Anyway, it’s a business fable, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

…. It’s too bad there aren’t quite enough sayings for a Who Moved My Cheese Oracle Cards, you know, only 15-21—depending on how you count that one page, but really that’s like about a third maybe of your average oracle card deck, you know…. Too bad.

Anyway, I guess the most important thing is that, it doesn’t really matter who moved your cheese! What matters is, change with the maze, and find what you need, right!

…. I know that the center isn’t the most popular place necessarily, but I feel like both the left and the right don’t necessarily get “cheese”, you know. The left, well, they go on and on, “Who moved my cheese” and with the intellectualism and the things that don’t matter, and the right, it’s like, “Who told Them, they could move my cheese”—it’s very often even worse, because it can be like, demanding, life shouldn’t change: when life is always always changing. (And then again, the left, claiming you want change while just noodling, not changing anything, right.)

…. Good thoughts, good visualization—but also action.

…. “Perhaps most important of all, he realized that there is always New Cheese out there whether you recognize it at the time or not. And that you are rewarded with it when you go past your fear and enjoy the adventure.”

…. But, just like it says, it doesn’t mean you have to change for change for change’s sake or even be necessarily changing in a visible/external way. But if your life is vital and has a quality of aliveness, there will always be subtle change on some level.

…. I’m not sure I identify as a Christian anymore, but:

“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” (Luke 2:52, NIV)

It’s also funny, given how often biological psychologists do work with mice and so on—sometimes one even hears about it!—how strange I guess it is, to actually imagine those little omnivores to be like us.… (mere)