January 20, 2010
Gordon is Right
Gordon McLean has written an excellent post on his blog, entitled Why blogging is good, pointing to some of the conversation around the recent blog post from Clay Shirky claiming arrogance and lying can be useful traits. There are links to the discussion over on Gordon's post, so you should go and read them first because (1) they're good, and (2) I'm going to assume that you have for the rest of this post :-)
I was just going to comment on Gordon's post, but decided I should celebrate the fact that I've got a blog (even if I don't post to it as often as I'd like) and write my comment here.
Gordon says: "As for the issue being discussed in these posts I have to agree with Tom, particularly when he talks about how arrogance and confidence have a place in your “personality toolbox�, but the person who only has those tools is all the poorer for it. Unfortunately society, and certainly the workplace, still seem to favour people with confidence when what we should be doing is cutting through the noise to see what substance lies underneath."
I agree, but I also think that we should all strive to reach into our "personality toolboxes" for our arrogance and confidence in order to call "Bullshit" to dampen the "noise" when we can.
Posted by Adrian at January 20, 2010 01:41 PM | TrackBackThis blog post is on the personal blog of Adrian McEwen. If you want to explore the site a bit further, it might be worth having a look at the most recent entries or look through the archives or categories over on the left.
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I think this is the best blog post in the world, evah!
Cheers though, and I agree with your sentiment. Recognising the bullshit is one thing, acting to stamp it out requires the same type of thing which is never easy.
Posted by: Gordon at January 20, 2010 06:26 PMHehe. I think it's more of a comment than a blog post really, but I felt your original deserved a wider (if only very slightly given my readership :-) audience.
You're right, it is far easier said than done. I'm slowly getting better at it as I get older. Arguably it's even harder than confident bullshit spouting because by its nature it's confrontational as well, but as with many things, the more we practice it, the better we'll get.
Posted by: Adrian at January 21, 2010 11:07 AM