Alan Weiss's The Uncomfortable Truth®

I find the use of profanity is the last resort for the inarticulate. It’s supposed to be “daring” and “shocking” but it’s actually just lazy. I sometimes surf through the comedy channels and hear standup comedians simply repeating m…..f….. over and over. There is no intellect there, and intellect and pain are actually the basis for almost all real comedy. Putting profanity on a book cover is boring, but it beats trying to come up with an appealing title.

But most alarmingly, it’s simply entered the vernacular as adjectival alternatives. I hear parents in restaurants and at home over meals say s..t at in front of their kids. WTF is used by the more delicate, but it’s profanity nonetheless. Teachers and the “elite” often use it to show they’re “hip” and “down to earth,” which is the absolutely last thing they are. At my gym, where we have personal trainers, the music is very often rap with profound profanities, n….. for blacks, and “bitch” or far worse for women, yet there are black people there as well as women.

This is simply the communication evidence of an uncivil age, a greedy and self-centered age, where people want shortcuts to success with no restrictions placed upon them and no concern for a contribution to the society and well-being around them. Everyone is entitled, and if their entitlement doesn’t work out, then they’re oppressed, and then they protest for more entitlements.

This way lies madness.

As an optimist I believe we’ll recover. But I’m the eldest of the Baby Boomers, my father fought in WW II. We can send carrier groups to the Middle East and apply economic sanctions globally. We can use drones, missiles, and remote weaponry.

But we could never win the equivalent of WW II with our contemporary society because no one would want to make the sacrifices at home that were required.

They would simply say, “Fuck that.”

Have you ever wondered about how other people might see this society? The proliferation of “tip jars” when virtually no service is performed; the intense scrutiny of head injuries in football, while players who make great plays deliberately bang their heads together; cars that can go almost four times the speed limit, manufactured and sold despite it.

Why do we smuggle dogs into restaurants, refuse to merge in traffic, and think AI will become sentient and rule us when we still have to unplug and replug electronics as the primary repair principle? Laugh tracks, scripted reality shows, “influencers”: Why do we kid ourselves with this stuff?

I wouldn't mind Wolfgang Puck giving me advice on menu selections, but I resent my life trickling away while a waiter tells me his or her favorite dishes. Why do tennis and golf professionals require total silence, but quarterbacks, basketball players, and boxers do not? Why do we talk too much and too loudly in public areas, but we’re mute in elevators?

My guess is that people who borrow $300,000 to pay tuition to major in philosophy or history, which pay on average about $60,000 a year IF they can find a job, should really take more math courses. Why does an auto DUI not trigger a search for a boating or plane license? Can I lose my driving privileges at noon and take off in my Cessna for dinner?

Does the advice “don’t take this medicine if you’re allergic to it” really help if you’ve never taken it? Do we have a right to complain about uncomfortable seats on an airplane taking us cross country in six hours for $100?

What the hell is an “influencer”?

And then there’s kale….

The opposite of evolution is devolution. Merely moving forward in time chronologically doesn’t guarantee higher standards, better performance, or improvement.

Our speech has declined. People support this, claiming that speech must “evolve.” But does evolution include mindless, ubiquitous profanity, unintelligible statements, and confusing grammar?

The arts haven’t made great strides, and on television and in the theater we see a procession of diluted revivals and low quality spinoffs. Athletes showboat over a tackle when their team is down three touchdowns.

Service levels in most hotels are down, as they are on most airlines, and the latter fly smaller and smaller jets on longer and longer flights to make money despite passenger discomfort. Traffic is terrible in most large cities—incomprehensibly bad in LA— and if you replace every single internal combustion car with an electric car tomorrow, you’d still have the same number of cars on the roads with the same traffic jams!

Civility is lower than ever, with polarization creating terrible name-calling and an overall casualness, where clerks call customers by their first names and people wear ripped jeans and hoodies to upscale restaurants. There is an entrenched belief that a privileged few in government and in the media somehow have the right to dictate to the rest of us how to live our lives.

And we’re trapped in identity trumping talent, where merit and ability take a back seat to making sure gender, race, and ethnicity are “fairly” represented. (Yet this doesn’t occur in sports, where owners, players, and fans simply want the best talent available to win, no matter who that talent may be.)

Why do people immediately leaving a church service proceed to cut you off in the parking lot or, immediately before it, park in “no parking” fire zones?

Don’t you think Bernie Madoff’s entire family figured out he was crooked and simply ignored what they knew? Politicians curry favor with popular positions but then feel free to change positions once elected and safe. The pandemic was, I believe, dishonestly manipulated by politicians and the medical community which led to more illness than necessary, harsher restriction than required, and more public acrimony than would otherwise have been the case.

Learn here examples of why both John Denver and Nancy Pelosi have been inauthentic.

False praise is far more harmful than honest, negative feedback. If you lie enough on your resume, you eventually begin to really believe the lie, which is why business executives, military leaders, and academicians often face humiliating ousters late in their glorious careers. President Biden has been caught in lies about awards he claims to have received and his class ranking in law school

People blame third parties rather than being true to themselves. “It was the officiating.” “It was the weather.” “It was cheating.”

Being true to yourself requires that you know who you are, and not pretending to be someone else, better, different. Are you attentive to others or self-centered, true to yourself or painting a false picture, creating fiction?

Finally, learn about the institution that I think is the most hypocritical university in the country.

According to Google, the average college/university tuition in the US is $26,000 a year, but they range up to nearly $90,000 per year.

We know this, these are statistics.

Philosophy majors in the US make an average of $62,000 per year. The same for history majors. English majors average $56,000. All teachers in public schools average $65,000 (private schools $50,000). We know this, these are statistics.

Apart from a very wealthy family supporting you, how much debt can you incur and pay off (while paying for housing, insurance, raising a family, etc.) in what amount of time given your loans and your intended occupation?

If you can’t make those numbers work without defaulting on loans or begging the government for help that others didn’t receive, maybe you need to rethink college. Or, at least, private schools.

And, of course, maybe the government needs to rethink a ridiculous system in the public sector, at least, before it implodes.

What are the major concerns of leadership in the near future?

• Managing the transient worker

• Metrics for true performance and not “presence”

• The 40 hour week myth

• The environment for intrinsic motivation

• Voids of personal fulfillment

• The loss of travel

• Volunteerism

• Abandoning guilt for not adhering to archaic work standards

• Pushing accountability down and over to the individual

• Triaging customers

• Finding honest and authentic communications

• Embracing true diversity not virtue signaling diversity

• Coming to grips with the false promise of retirement

• Physical, psychological, and emotional health

• Embracing technology with proper proportion

• The speed necessity

• Thriving in ambiguity, disruption, volatility

• Alleviation of excess stress

• Being an effective avatar

• Knowing how to create personal meaning

• Gratification is pleasure

• Immediate means done at once

• Why do we seek this:

° To avoid delay in important matters personally/professionally. Evolutionary need for food, protection

° A fear of opportunity lost

° Impulsivity. Especially as we age. If not now, when?

° Intellectual curiosity.

° Poverty, desperation

° Boredom. Here’s a new shiny object.

° The alternative of long hard work (I can make money selling cars now, being an engineer would take six years.)

• The trouble is that it is often temporary. (The dog toy breaks.) Other people have the same thing. The novelty wears off.

• Often generates anti-social behavior—breaking into a line, theft.

• In the longer term is unfulfilling, creating more disappointment.

• Undermines all patience even when required: recovering from an illness, waiting for a delayed plane, even waiting at the deli counter.

• Impulse purchase items are placed near the cashier in stores or at the end of aisles.

• Can cause health problems (stress, ulcers) waiting for an acceptance to college, a job offer, a club membership.

• Isn’t a realistic view of life, even when successful. Often depends on factors out of one’s control.

• The key, perhaps: Fine on the minor stuff, a gamble on middle stuff, can be fatal on the major stuff.

• Don’t forget, this is an age when kennels and shelters force potential animal adopters to qualify!

Here’s how I saved the entire $450,000 tuition bill for my kids by not having an office.

I’ve never needed nor desired employees for my strong, seven-figure business. I want help that’s “in and out” very quickly, no long-term obligations. I use very good outside firms because I believe in investing money to save money. My worth isn’t based on “virtual assistants” whom I find virtually worthless.

Observe the “total days to cash” dynamic, and improve your cash flow by collecting early, not late, on your terms, not the client’s terms. Remember, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep.

You can do this without sacrificing well-being: first class air, hotel suites, and limos. That’s because you charge clients basic and reasonable expense rates but can afford to upgrade yourself.

But you have to eschew fanaticism. You don’t need version 4.1ab.7-a of anything. I learned the nonsense of ridiculous backups in pre-computer Prudential Insurance. Never “automatically upgrade.”

Do I drive the last of the blazing fast, manual shift Corvettes, or do I drive a seven-year-old Chevy? It depends upon how you perceive it.

Make your corporate bylaws as favorable as possible in order to use pre-tax and not post-tax money. Maximize every retirement plan available to you, and “catch-up” if you miss a year.

Minimize meetings to increase your margins, and learn how I saved a month a year by simply refusing “small talk.” Oh, yeah: Web sites are not sales tools, so stop investing anything beyond basic credibility needs in them.

Success, not perfection, my friends.

Bonanza: A situation or event that creates a sudden increase in wealth, good fortune, or profits.

It was also a TV show in the heyday of westerns, and ran from 1959 to 1973, second only to Gunsmoke in longevity. It’s still shown in reruns on a variety of cable channels.

By accident, I happened to see one the other day with a disclaimer on the screen, citing racial stereotyping on the show and to be aware of it. My first reaction was that this racial and gender stereotyping was all-too-common in the past. My second, however, is that wouldn’t a viewer know that and understand how far we’ve come and how far we still may need to go? (I don’t readily recall stereotyping on Bonanza, although maybe their Asian cook was the problem somehow.)

I believe we’re all adults above a certain age, imbued with intelligence and judgment, which allows us to hold jobs, drive cars, and feed ourselves. (If a child were watching that rerun, somehow, would the kid understand the “trigger warning”?)

Is this a legitimate warning or is it just more virtue signaling, like signs and flags on lawns? Those represent to me people trying to convince you of their virtue without necessarily behaving with virtue. (I’m all for stopping at a “stop” sign for everyone, but for me a “rolling stop” is okay.) After all, the station doesn’t have to run Bonanza at all. (CVS has taken tobacco out of its stores but not sugary candies and processed foods.)

My feeling is that we learn from the past, both in our victories and our defeats, in our honorable behavior and in our sins. That’s the only way to improve the future, not by eradicating the past, or shouting opposing views down on campuses, or demanding we all take loyalty oaths to whatever cause. (Don’t laugh, they’re required in some universities for newly hired professors. You have to sign a diversity or inclusion oath, or the offer is rescinded. Remember when we were proud of having Communist professors speak their peace?)

The media today are full of derivatives (a new “Frasier” with some new characters, appropriately diverse, which is not going to equal the original); new takes on “reality” shows (a 72-year-old “golden bachelor”); celebrity game shows (Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy) where the questions are either easier or the answers are hinted at.

Let’s be honest about the past and optimistic about the future. Revising or eradicating the past doesn’t improve the present and pretty much undermines the future.

The Second Smartest Guy in the Room by Alan Weiss