Figs.

I was a kid at a time before there were a lot of "organized sports" for kids.

Sure there was Little League in the Spring, and Pop Warner football in the Fall. If you were so inclined, there were probably swim teams at the Y and even hockey leagues here and there.

But for the most part, sports just happened organically, like a stray gust of wind picking up a pile of leaves or an apple falling on a physicist's noggin.

A group of boys would somehow gather together on a patch of grass or blacktop and a game would grow up around us. We'd find our own "out of bounds," our own manholes for bases and our own rules and we'd make our own judgments. If you didn't like the kids, or you thought they were cheats, you walked home. You had special power if the ball or bat belonged to you.

Today, a couple of towns over from my Gingham Coast cabin, there's a fenced-in dog-run adjacent to a broad expanse of playing fields. Depending on the day, the parking lot is filled with giant SUVs, and each sideline of the lime-stone marked field is ringed by heavy-set parents with folding chairs watching their nine-year-old girls or nine-year-old boys play soccer, or lacrosse, or something. They're presided over by a set of be-whistled referees ruled by a time clock with snarling coaches, a pecking order and a set of strictures that could choke a goat.

It's all so fukking orderly, it could make a right-thinking person sick.

There was something we learned on those ersatz playfields unsullied by adult authority. This ain't the Duke of Wellington saying, "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." But the catalog of things we learned was long, deep and meaningful.

We learned to fight. 
To stand up for our beliefs.
We learned to argue.
To form an argument.
To bring evidence to bear.
We learned to form sides.
We learned to walk away if we felt the other side was cheating.
We learned to stick to our guns.
We learned to raise our voices when they needed raising.
We learned to speak up.

Even when I was older, in my early twenties and I would play basketball with the neighborhood ruffians down at St. Catherine's park on East 68th Street, we "policed" ourselves. "No blood, no foul" was harsh. But we made it work.

Those incidentals were the currency of getting along. They were the currency of establishing "self" amid bigger, stronger, older kids. They were means of developing your stature and person.

Once many years ago, I wrote a note to the head of HR at Ogilvy. It was "360-evaluation" time and I had just read an article in The Wall Street Journal about how organizations need trouble-makers and untethered cannons. That seemed a very "David Ogilvy" way of thinking.

I remember exactly what the former head of HR wrote in reply:

"We're looking for collaborative bridge-builders."

Build a bridge up my ass.

The demise of this industry, the dearth of good work comes from collaboration, bridge-building and worst of all, politesse. 

Politesse: a courteous formality. A stilted tarnished dishonest cohesive togetherness. 

Serendipitously, this video came across my desktop the other day. You can, as I did, learn from it. More important, our almost dead industry could learn from it. 

Yeah, I know, it's easy for Larry David to be an asshole. He's earned $1,000,000,000. But maybe he earned that much because he had the strength to be an asshole.

At some point we might have to start being mean. Start walking away. Start sticking to our guns.

Being feckless and accommodating, being a collaborative bridge-builder.

It hasn't just not worked.

It's been a disaster.

And, no figs.