I ran across a factoid in The New York Times last week that got me thinking.
The information was in an article by Steven Rattner. Not only was Rattner the head of Lazard Freres, Lehmann Brothers and Morgan Stanley, he was also a principal of the Quadrangle Group and he managed Michael Bloomberg's billions.
Rattner was also Obama's "Car Czar." And accused of securities fraud--robbing pension funds--and fined $10 million, though he admitted no wrong-doing. That's the beauty of being a billionaire. You pay $10 million fines though you did nothing wrong.
Nonetheless, and though I hate to admit it, Rattner is brilliant. He writes periodically for the Times--and though I don't like him (my elder daughter and his went to prep school together and I've interacted with him socially--he acted as if I didn't exist) I admire his writing, and yes, his wisdom.
In the article I linked to above, Rattner cited a study by M.I.T economist David Autor that claims "60 percent of jobs in 2018 were in occupations that didn't exist in 1940."
That got me thinking there's a heuristic present that most of us don't realize is working on us.
I think most people believe that they're living in the most tumultuous of times, times in which the cosmic carpet has been pulled out from underneath us.
There are agencies I've worked at where the agency seeks to capitalize on the supposed craziness of the world. Every presentation this agency makes and about 97-percent of employees are running around touting the advent of some technology or another, or some human behavior of another that is evidence that the world is tilted on its axis in a way it's never been tilted before.
Therefore, because everything is crazy now more than ever, we as ad people working in ad agencies have to throw out everything basic and find some new way to create or use some new technology to deliver creative or to reach a new customer-mind-set. There is never a shortage of good reasons to throw away the basics and principles behind 200,000 years of established human behaviors.
Lately, I've been quoting Comrade Vladimir Ilyich Lenin quite a bit. Specifically this: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Lenin's statement is evidence, I think of my heuristic. A heuristic based on the idea that we believe all the past--whether it was the past of our childhood or years, decades or centuries ago--was at all times other than our own, to have been peaceful, stable and calm. Conversely, our presents are all tumult--times of massive upheaval, upset and change.
But if 60-percent of today's jobs are in occupations that didn't exist when our parents or grandparents were young--that means we live--always and forever--in the craziest of times.
As Dickens wrote 164 years ago in "A Tale of Two Cities,"
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only...
Undoubtedly, tumult sells.
We have to 'adjust to a new world' sells.
Generation blank is like no generation that's ever come before it sells.
Everything is different sells.
And only the brilliant people who work at our agency understand all this. That's why you need us, sells.
There's no money, really, saying that the fundamental things apply.
Digging for simple, basic human truths is hard work. It's much easier to proclaim that in these tumultuous times--times that are unlike anything anyone has ever experienced--we alone have the answers.
What better counterpoint than this: Dooley, noted.
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