Crisis!

Crisis

Going in and out of seriousness, the words to follow are about crisis and what to do or not to do while it lasts. I am aiming to turn your emotional and perhaps non-lucid focus away from the crisis, only to re-focus it back virulently against her.

I have freely elaborated on some thoughts belonging to Mr. Albert Einstein and on the thoughts of other brilliant thinkers in regards to the distressful phenomenon known as crisis. We all know that these thoughts have being around long before Einstein’s compilation of them and are not completely original. My thoughts are not original either, but I like to put them in a slant perspective for your personal (I hope), benefit. Crisis has no epoch, or era, and the anguish and thoughts inherent to it don’t have it either. This is a demurred satire of our current global crisis. Focus is everything you will ever need to confront any crisis.


Crisis
Crisis is a grief-stricken consequential stage rendered by a sequence of sorrowful and ill-fatedly succession of events at which the destiny of all future events and conditions in our lives is at a breathtaking terrifying stake. The final outcome route of the crisis that govern our lives today can be for better or for worse, and it will be foreordained by our actions and decisions during this, seemingly eternal, defining interlude.

Pragmatically, a crisis occurs on a personal or societal level. Its nature ranges from the inconvenient, to the stressful, to the traumatic, and finally to the emotional Rigor Mortis. It might be inconvenient because it comes to disturb the balance and peacefulness of our lives to a certain unwelcomed degree. It can be traumatic because its final results might bring psychological damage that can seriously disable our capacity to deal with pressure, strain, and anxiety. It will be stressful because it is ongoing and its final impact will brutally decrease our human capacity to respond suitably to emotional hazards, or to physical perils. It also can result in an emotional rigor mortis because it can handicap us terminally by gifting us with its gruesome souvenir of clinical depression.

A crisis can easily and swiftly translate into highly flammable, unhinged, and precarious social circumstances, which in turn, will inflame with its malevolent and immoral karma the political establishment, the social structures, the economic balances, and even can violently shake the most deep-rooted spiritual foundations. So, crisis at any of its possible levels, it is never to be taken lightly.


Our relationship to crisis
The thing is that when “crisis” touches us directly, it is really when it becomes a “crisis”. Other current crises that do not touch us in a straight line are the crisis behind the door, out of our sight, out of mind. Mom used to tell me to eat all my food on my plate because I had to think “of all the poor children in Africa that have nothing to eat”. I never saw the relationship between eating all my food and the solution of hunger in Africa. I wondered how a hungry child would benefit from me overeating… So if I overeat and sicken myself for doing so, a hungry African child would not be hungry tonight? I still do not see the value of this below par relationship. The thing is that the hunger crisis of Africa is behind doors. We hear its noise and the conversations about it. We use it as example and we weep and sight theatrically about it, but it does not touch us directly, and since it never becomes a direct crisis for us, it is not a crisis for us. Of course there are exceptions, and there are many people that take the African crisis as a personal journey, but still it is not “their” full blown crisis.

Well, now the phantom of crisis is spreading tons of crap with a very powerful high-speed fan, and is touching (and staining) a lot of us in many ways and from many angles, and certainly this stinks! Now, scores of us are struggling with our personal, imminent, and urgent crises, so who has time, feelings, energy, or and resources for the African (or any other) crisis? I do not know one. When crisis strikes home it becomes personal, you become first, second, and third priority; and that is the very end of the “to do” list.


Our national economic crisis
How this happen? It is not a surprise though; it is just the logical culmination of a succession of senseless and unnecessary events that affect our industry. This idiotic events where implemented by our brilliant CEOs, CFO’s, and other mammals alike that went unchecked, and therefore, to hell. It is well known that if you want to be an honest and a contributing citizen, you can not possibly become a lawyer or a politician, but now we have to add a few minions to the crony list of monocellular thinkers such as bankers and insurers who have been long enjoying their reputation of dishonest and inept thieves, but now ladies and gentleman, their inclusion in the list is official. Congratulations! Please put as much distance as you can between you and these pile of moral vomit and emotional hemorrhoids.

Here is a fable that illustrates very realistically the evolution of our financial giants (giant in size, not mentally), and that proves that many times the company’s size is inversely proportionate to the brain size of their leaders. This procession of events is responsible for how the organizational structure of our financial giants worked up to be what is today from the very beginning.

Story’s characters:

Honest Earnest – Worker
Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm - CEO
Mr. Don Knowhatahell – Area Supervisor
Mrs. Whatyawant Comebacklater - Secretary
Mr. Justin Barewires – Computer Specialist
Mrs. Fulochit Noisicicada - Manager of Outsourcing
Mr. Forlorny Yuronyurown - Systems Engineer
Mr. Shrink Snoterwits - Organizational Climate Expert.
Mr. Bampot Badhandjob – Financial Consultant

Note: The real names of the personages were changed to protect the identity of the real perpetrators, and the name of one innocent person, however, you can find out about the other people’s real names in any newspaper or in any TV channel today, at any time. Any similarity of this story to reality is a mere, unintended coincidence.

Once upon the time, when our country had more honest citizens that drudgylifters (1) in charge of the industry and people actually held real jobs and gave an honest day of work to make a living, it was one of those common, honest-to-the-bone citizen (a regular red blooded American citizen of the time) that happily every single day went to work very early. His name was Honest Earnest. And just like that, happily, he worked humming an old song of love that talks about responsibility and honesty. Honest Earnest was productive, hard worker, and honest. However, his boss Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm had a problem with that: Honest Earnest was not being supervised! The problem that Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm saw with this is that he had no control of the tremendous productivity generated by the efficient Honest Earnest.

(1) Drudgylifter: pilfer, lawyer, pinch, politician, filch, CEO, burgle, CFO, emotional degenerate, lawyer, intellectual rapist, ethical pervert, politician, lead astray, and principled castrate to forename a few close definitions. I was forced to make up this word (drudgylifter) because I was not able to find any suitable word or expression in any known language to depict properly this revolting garbage. There are no lawyers or politicians named in the story because they were too busy trying to steal some of the money of the bailouts.

Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm came to the conclusion that it was not possible and very dangerous to work without supervision, besides that, he felt that if he had to supervise Honest Earnest, he would not be able to scratch his balls all day long doing nothing else, so he brilliantly created the position of Supervisor. To fill this important position, Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm hired the highly qualified Mr. Don Knowhatahell. Mr. Don Knowhatahell was versed in many important theories such as JAT, KAIZEN, KANBAN, and other very sophisticated theories that teaches about how to make others works for you.

The very first order of business Mr. Don Knowhatahell was to organize the work schedule of Honest Earnest. Although Honest Earnest arrived daily very early to work and never went home until way pass the end of his work day. This was necessary so Honest Earnest did not make the rest look bad for showing up late and leaving too early. The other great part of his time Mr. Don Knowhatahell dedicate it to prepare beautiful and voluminous information reports filled with unnecessary and hollow information. The reports contained multi-colored graphics, fancy fonts, and whole lot of nothing (just like the good old politician talk).

The reports become so voluminous that demanded to spent more time than Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm was willing to spend to pack the hot air into them, and soon it was necessary to create the Secretary position so that it helped to prepare the information. So they hired Mrs. Whatyawant Comebacklater, a lady with a very long nose to manage subjects such as software, the call center, to organize archives and to pick up the phone, and from time to time, stick her hairy nose which had an ugly wart on the side on anyone else’s business. While all this was occurring the prolific Honest Earnest kept working and working without stopping, humming his beloved old song of love.

Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm, the CEO of the company was enchanted with the heavy volumes of information of his Supervisor, Mr. Don Knowhatahell, nevertheless, he requested a quantitative dynamic relationship with graphical cute pictures and indicators of management propensities, and an analysis of tendencies. Then, it was necessary to contract a specialistic weevil in ISO 9000, ISO 14000, ISO 27000, and ISO 22000, OHSAS 18001 and 1800, so that it helped the Supervisor. They hurriedly hired Mr. Justin Barewires to manage the workload. So numerous were the reports and the information that flooded the corporate sewer that became indispensable to acquire new, expensive modern computers. So Mr. Justin Barewires pulled-up his wire covers, and began to work in an electrifying manner.

Soon, the productive and happy Honest Earnest stopped humming his beloved melody of love, and he had the bad idea to complain for all the red tape and for all the unnecessary paperwork he now had to fill every single day. Now Honest Earnest was spending more time pushing pencils instead of bringing efforts into being. Reacting to Honest Earnest’s unusual complaint, Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm (the CEO) considered that it was the appropriated moment to execute a FODA, in part because his scrotum was getting a little irritated (I always wondered if corporate Masters have a receptacle to collect the shedding of their scrotums…), nevertheless a FODA will lend the opportunity to adopt measures.

Thus, following divine guidance they created the position of Manager of Outsourcing right in the work area where the industrious and happy Honest Earnest worked. For the important position was hired Mrs. Fulochit Noisicicada, who did not wasted any time remodeling her office, changing the carpet, buying new curtains, installing air conditioning, and ordering expensive and luxurious new furniture; and of course, the new manager of area needed a new-generation computer unit with color printer and its corresponding high-tech paraphernalia, and more important yet, access to Internet so she could check Face Book and MySpace, and gossip using Messenger with her fat friends.

Following an emergency and serious session of brainstorming and shitchat, a brutal meeting where a lot of coffee, many doughnuts, and countless Trader Joe’s fancy multi-vegetable crackers become casualties of the gluttonous impeded mind-set of the administration assemblage (all this while Honest Earnest kept on working), they arrived to a brilliant conclusion: it was decided that the implementation of a Local Network was strictly necessary, and by all means to engage a Systems Engineer. The new position was held by a seasoned Systems Engineer withdrawn of a prestigious university, very skillful in Windows XP and Vista, LINUX, ORACLE, databases, and IT. Mr. Forlorny Yuronyurown was in control of the new position.

With so much information and databases boiling with hot-air reports, the new manager of area located where the fruitful and happy Honest Earnest worked, Mr. Don Knowhatahell, soon needed an assistant. A polyglot individual with many years of experience in phony balanced score cards, who had worked previously for the Congress in the Public Mendacity Office of Deception Affairs as its Public Deceitful Liaison, was conveniently contracted to lobby for them. This phony had to help to prepare the strategic plan and the budget for the area where the prolific Honest Earnest worked.

All this was crawling into Honest Earnest. He was no longer humming his beloved song of love, and Mrs. Fulochit Noisicicada, the Manager of Outsourcing noticed Honest Earnest sadder every time she run into him. “We will have to perform an Organizational Climate Study one of these days”, said Mrs. Fulochit Noisicicada prompted by the visible stress of the silent Honest Earnest.

In order to make a diagnosis of Organizational Climate it was compulsory to appoint an expert. For this complicated, crucial, and difficult task Mr. Shrink Snoterwits was sought to lead the position as Organizational Climate Expert. Mr. Shrink Snoterwits was specialist in coaching, client-mania, empowerment, emotional intelligence, and CRM. Snoterwits prove to be the man for the job. He was at his element whirling in the corporate shithouse. His final report confirmed what everyone (with the exception of Honest Earnest) was afraid off. The final report of Mr. Shrink Snoterwits, who never talked to Honest Earnest at all, concluded that a complete re-engineering of the corporation was de rigueur and unavoidable.

But one late morning after the ceremonial scrotum scratching in front of the window of his office, Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm the CEO, began to review the numbers, and realized that the business unit where the dynamic and joyful Honest Earnest was no longer as profitable as it was before. So, out of his infinite echoing acumen, he decided to hire a world class prestigious consulting group. This magnificent organization specializes in the approach methods of intelligent organizations. The objective of hiring such firm obeyed to the new need to make another diagnostic of the company, but this time in an “integral” way. The selected company was the American Imbeciles Group (AIG), organization supported by the well-known Chode Indecent Thundercunt Idiot Group (CITI Group), both companies headquartered in the District of Corruption (DC), and the feeble-minded (moron) professional in charge was Mr. Bampot Badhandjob. Mr. Bampot Badhandjob and his companies have hard-earned a reputation in the industry, and were better known in the financial community as “Freeloaders”.

Mr. Bampot Badhandjob was three months in the company ambushing everyone, with the inexplicable exception of Honest Earnest that by now did not look so happy, and it has been awhile since anyone heard him humming an old song of love. After gathering all kinds of data, at long last Mr. Bampot Badhandjob issued a shrewd report (according to himself) that concluded in the following diagnosis: “There are too many individuals working in the company”.

After the brilliant exhibition of these results, Mr. Robyursweat Tapeworm, the CEO of the company followed the advice of the consultants, advisors, and counselors that charged immoral amounts of money to analyze the company, and without any delay or hindrance he fired Honest Earnest and immediately requested a succulent bailout from our clever Government so he was able to pay for bonuses…

And this is about where we stand in Corporate America right now. If you are an “Honest Earnest”, productive and happy, even if you do not hum anything, built your own company and come into being like a real and genuine American by succeeding on your own. Stop maintaining a pile of useless and unproductive turds that do not contribute with anything positive to society besides the fact of being “chupacabras” and stealing right and left, and being rather a load too heavy for any company. If you are one of these other characters in the tale, congratulations parasites! (Or is it pendejos?) I have no idea from what kind of biological or organic conspiracy that went boink these mentally circumcised brutes are product of, and I can not explain how they inherited all the genetic glitches they posses. These pestilent maggots are everywhere as we come to find out now through the papers and TV.


What not to do during a crisis period
As I have mentioned in a public verbatim in the vast immensity of the internet sometime before, these are pieces of an untaught trend of my own philosophy about life that comes out agitatedly from an obscure corner under my desk. I am a simple part-time Renaissance Philosopher and a Thoughts Trader, who contrabands judgments and smuggle beliefs unhurriedly into the mighty Internet, products engendered between the sphenoids of my azimuthally measured skull. So what is next it is not by any means advice or remedy, is not a solution or a recipe for success, and certainly it is not the solution to your own personal crisis, but the trading thoughts scribed below have helped me greatly (and still do!) in managing, weathering out, and resolving mi crises in a positive, emotionally and mentally healthy way.

One very important thing you should never do is to hide behind the crisis by blaming it for your current circumstances. This is, unconscious or not, herd’s mentality. Certainly the crisis has droved you into the corner you are now trying to get out of, but what mainly is keeping you there, it is yourself. Not because everything is going down the toilet, you have to go along with it, not because everyone else is waiting for a miracle, you have to wait as well. The crisis is just the cause; you are the situation.

Do not have the nerve to expect things to change in your favor if you do not make any changes towards an improvement of your current state of affairs. As long as you keep on doing what you are doing, you will keep on getting what you are getting. If you want to get there tomorrow, you need to start walking today. No distance is infinite; no problem is eternal, and no red blood American is willing to put up with this crap forever. Change does not just happen; it is caused.

Perhaps a crisis is the most advantageous event that could happen in our lives. Think about it. Crisis will push you to react and it will bring progress about because of your defensive and shielding actions. Crisis forces progress out of necessity and crisis is perhaps a true necessity sometimes in our life that comes to help us to move our ass (the human gene that is) out of the current layer of human conformity into the next (hopefully better) level. I believe that crisis generates progress, and crisis is an integral and necessary part of progress.

Another phenomenon is given birth during a crisis. Crisis creates anguish, and anguish generates creativity. So, crisis and anguish foster creativity. This is a beautiful child out of a very ugly marriage, and this is good and shows that in a crisis not all is bad. Creativity then, awakes inventive and stirred up imagination, creativity also set the basis for new and original strategies, the unearthing of great discoveries, and set innovation free. Perhaps my agathist optimism rests a bit too much in the Panglossian paradigm but for me; crisis does not look so bad after all.

To conquer, subjugate, and defeat a crisis is to enhance your own being and the untamed inner power of your very existence. Overpowering a crisis is to surpass oneself without being “surpassed”, so there is no dust to eat. Trouncing a crisis enhances the limits of your capacity to fight back and to overcome adversity. Crisis is a damn dragon of a thousand fire-spitting heads; however, each head can be decapitated and quartered. Crisis gives you the opportunity to become the avant-garde Genghis Khan of your personal times.

Sometimes we are subject and inclined to attribute to the crisis our failures and shortages, but the only thing this attitude does for you is to bestow sadist violence and belittlement to your own talent, and imparts more respect to the problems instead to the solutions. Although the crisis is the main reason for our temporary failures, unlike the crisis, we are alive and can think and act. The crisis is not totally responsible for bad outcomes, and we are not totally responsible either. It takes two to Tango.

It might sound unfair or crazy to you, but I say that without crisis there are no challenges. Challenges call you to engage into the contests arena, to forcefully dance in the defiance theatre, and to grab all you intellectual and emotional weapons to howl your sentry's call to the incoming unknown and violating peril. Challenges keep your mind on a shielding watch over, your fighting spirit guarding arms, and your sweat glands working. Without challenges, life would be an unbearable routine, and routine is nothing but a slow and dense agony.

If there is a true crisis, it is the crisis of incompetence. This dysfunctional conduct hinders the attainment of any organizational and executive goals you might ever want to achieve. The victims of intellectual death by incompetence are numerous. There are many incompetent people in the world and you must always fear that you might be one of them. Your capacity and willingness to fight crisis will give you the answer. This is difficult to discover because most incompetent people do not know, or do not want to acknowledge that they are incompetent because their incompetence deprives them of the ability to realize it. This is supported by the fact that incompetence surrounds itself with incompetence just like mediocrity perpetuates mediocrity within itself. Incompetence blights ethics and buries your will power under a huge pile of unscholarly fecal matter. Be very afraid of this kind of crisis!

Laziness would be the mayor hassle and disadvantage for an individual to find the egress and elucidations to his or her crises. Laziness does not require a level of intellect, or imagination, or any physical fitness; it is just you. If you are lazy, you have a direct spinal nerve connection between your cerebral mass and the most acute border of the opposite end of your digestive track.

Crisis gives us a unique prospect to accumulate merits. Crisis is a difficult problem, complex, entangling, time consuming, despairing, relentless, long-suffering, pessimistic, inconsolable, cheerless, somber, and a sleepless foe. Defeating it is a great, noble merit. It takes a real man (or woman) to take head-on on crisis and defeat it. The greater is your merit, the greater is the humiliation for the crisis. Do you see? Crisis gives us even opportunities to shine. This is because crises brings out the best of us, or exposes our worse traits: laziness and incompetence.

Now, the empty taking and social elaborating on any current topic of a crisis is to uphold the crisis as important and give it a higher pecking order, however, to be silent about the crisis is to raise and settle conformism towards it. So, what are you going to do? Are you prepared to do anything?


What to do during a crisis?
It is of vital importance to you to tame the crisis and you have to force yourself to manage your actions in suitable way, so the very first thing you must do in front of a crisis is to set your mind to kill (to kill crisis that is…), to re-calibrate your spirit to never surrender, you must indoctrinate your entire being to become one with your thoughts and actions, to use the time you have wisely without wasting it and without spinning your wheels in insignificant matters that distract you from your ultimate goal; and to suit your soul and heart into an intellectual armor weaved with your will power, and entwined with your hopes and dreams. Then, get into the fight like a bee. A bee will surrender its whole existence in a single terminal sting in a defensive or attacking maneuver. You have that much of a fiduciary responsibility to yourself and your family.

This is very romantic and renaissantistic, and perhaps a bit cliché and even eristic, but isn’t it crisis just that? Do not let crisis fool you and become complacent in your attitude towards it. Crisis if out to get you. You need to show her otherwise. You need to work hard and take breaks to rest, not to give up, and do like the Marines do: they do not die; they go to hell just to regroup. It is of the essence for you to develop a discipline that prevents you from giving up or getting demoralized.

The first enemy of the crisis’ army you have to defeat might be your own tragedy of not wanting to fight back. You also must keep in mind that a crisis is a contingency and you are not. Problems are dead situations, we are live entities that can think, lucubrate, and act. Remember that the dog wags the tail because the tail can not wag the dog. The crisis is just a tail; you are the watch dog, the top dog. Defeating a crisis is the opportunity to become a legend, even if it is only in our mind. Crisis indeed has its advantages. We are a lot more powerful than a crisis and we have a superior fire power than any crisis can have against us. Use it! Once you are engaged in battle with the crisis, DO NOT STOP fighting even if you are winning until you victory is complete, until the fat lady sings, whether she shows up or not!

If you have joined the long list of us involved in crises, this is the perfect time to exercise the “Carpe Diem!” principle; and this is the perfect opportunity for us to seize this terminal moment to construct this crucial turning point in our lives, and to engineer our future once again. If you are waiting for someone else to come and fix your problems and rescue your life, it is not going to happen! Grow up!

The best posture to take towards crisis is a sense of logical superiority with respect to your problems, a contemptuous but rational attitude, and a due or die stance against crisis. When dealing with crisis, you have to be like that bee, and surrender your whole energy and all your emotional stamina in a single combat with this bitch that is stirring up your life. If you want to cry about and cowardly crawl into a dark hole, blaming crisis for your incompetence and laziness, please do it somewhere else, far away from us, where we can not hear your spineless whines and your pusillanimous droning. If you are not one of “those”, come and join the rest of us, and let us finish here and now, and go to take care of business with this so called “crisis”. It is not going to be easy, fun, or entertaining, it is going to be hard, but very rewarding. If you fall during the battle, go where our glorious and brave Marines go, and return quickly to the fight!

Make now the firm determination that you will get through this crisis, whatever “crisis” it is for you now. Your life it is not what it was before and you do not like it a bit, so start making changes and some of those changes might have to be permanent. Carve into your mind and spirit with the most resolute determination that you will emerge from these disturbing and taxing circumstances, and you will emerge stronger than ever before, because if you are not a fighting survivor, you are already dead meat. Remember that what is certain are only moments and to live on dreams it is not the true thing.

So, practice “Cogito Ergo Sum” and please read once again the poem “Don’t Quit” before you start doing anything at all. Focus like a laser beam in the struggle, stick to the fight like crazy glue, and a deserved victory will come to you by itself. See you at the Victory Lane.

Sincerely,
Honest Earnest