“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My dad is a small business owner and I remember when I was growing up and just starting to work for money I can recall the first experience I had when going to work for him at his service station.
Both my parents are great and I’m blessed to still have them in my life as they’re both still very active and still work to operate each of their own businesses. With that being said it was a completely different experience when I was a kid seeing my dad in his day to day work environment compared to how I was used to seeing him at home.
I mean both my parents were always big on teaching hard work and personal responsibility to both my brother and myself, but this was a completely different scene for the first time when witnessing my dad operate the business as the owner and me working for him as one of his employees. To be straightforward it wasn’t easy.
At that time in my youth I realized real quick that I had a lot to learn about business and life and I was pretty much clueless on how things worked, but in time I would learn the most valuable lessons of life that I would never learn anywhere else when working for him.
I remember when it was like my first week working for my dad and he had given me a long list of things to do around the service station to work in between times when I wasn’t waiting on and helping a customer.
I looked at the list thinking: How am I going to get all of this done? I mean this wasn’t a short list and I knew it was going to require a good bit of time to complete it especially since I had to satisfy my obligations to paying customers that were coming in and out of the front lobby area.
So I decided that I was going to attack the list and work hard on getting it completed with every free moment I got when I got a window of opportunity between customers. I knew I could do this between times that customers were coming in and out to pay for their cars and to settle up with any bills that were due for repairs that they had gotten done on their vehicles.
In time a customer would enter the front, I’d take care of them, the customer would leave, and then I’d immediately start attacking that to-do list to try to finish the required tasks.
Finally, there was a moment where like three customers came in all at once and I knew once they were taken care of that I might have a bit of extra time between when they would leave and before anyone else might enter the lobby because the shop was getting caught up with the jobs that were there to do at the time.
Sure enough that is exactly what happened and I ended up getting about a half hour or so of uninterrupted time so that I could get the checklist of tasks completed and that’s exactly what I did.
Just like that I remember that I completed the checklist and I was relieved that I could now chill out in the front lobby waiting on customers for the rest of the day, but what I was thinking at the time versus what would actually happen next were two very different things.
That’s right, I finished up the last task on the to-do list from my dad and I found a nice comfortable stool in the front lobby and sat down to monitor the front area for customers. After only a couple of minutes of sitting there the door to the shop opened up that led into the lobby where I was enjoying my break leaning on that comfortable stool as my dad stepped into the front lobby area.
It was at this point he made eye contact with me and saw me sitting on that stool. I’ll never forget the moment as he just looked at me and without saying a word walked over and kicked the stool leg right out from under me.
Now to be clear it wasn’t a vicious kick for the purpose of hurting me because that’s not my dad and that wasn’t the point. However, he just wanted to get my attention and it was enough that he had to catch me from falling at which point I asked him why he did it. He said, I’m not paying you to sit around on your rear to do nothing. I remember replying by pointing out that I had finished the list and that there was, in my estimation, nothing left to do.
It was at this moment that he said that I needed to learn to find something to do in order to keep busy. Then he said something that would change my life forever.
He said to take the time to slow down and learn how to think ahead. He said learn how to think past the next second. In other words, he was teaching me about what it meant to take initiative.
The Lost Art of Initiative
I remember years ago hearing an interesting story about these three interviewees who were fresh out of college and in direct competition with one another with each of them competing to get a relatively high paying entry level position at a certain big company.
I don’t remember all of the specifics of this story, but I do remember the overall main point of it. I believe I might have heard it from my dad as well, or possibly one of his friends. The point of me telling you this is because I may be inadvertently altering some of the specifics of this story simply because it’s been a very long time since I’ve heard it, but the point is that I remember the point so I am going to keep the main thing the main thing.
As the story goes this particular company had narrowed down its search for this high paying entry level position to three young college kids who were fresh out of the classroom and ready to step into the real world for their interviews.
Now keep in mind that the time period of when I heard this story goes back to the mid to late 90’s. I realize that a lot of the kids coming out of college nowadays are by far nowhere near prepared for the real world, but the signs of this were also obvious even in the 90’s as I’m about to point out here in this story.
So the three interviewees showed up to the office of this company and they were each in the lobby awaiting the secretary to come and get them for their meeting with a high level executive that would be conducting their interviews.
As the secretary came and got the first college graduate she sent him to the office door of the executive and told him to open the door and walk in. As the first graduate opened the door the first thing he saw was a long walk from the door to the desk of the executive who was sitting at his desk chair with his back to the graduate looking out the window from his high rise office.
However, the interviewee noticed something else as he started his walk from the front door to the office desk of the executive that still had his back turned to him. In the path directly between the office door and the desk sat a book on the floor right in the middle of the path of where the interviewee would walk to get to the desk.
The interviewee noticed the book, but simply ignored it stepping over the book to approach the desk of the executive.
As he got to the desk the executive spun his chair around to greet the young interviewee. He took one look at the interviewee and he also took a quick glance at the floor, noticing that the book was still sitting there in the middle of the floor.
Once the executive saw this he simply looked at the fresh college graduate and basically said this concludes your interview.
Obviously the college aged male was bewildered and was reluctant to leave, but he did.
Once he exited the second interviewee came into the executive’s office and just like the first he noticed the book sitting right in the middle of the floor and simply walked around the book on his way to the executive’s desk. Aside from ignoring the book he never even mentioned that it was sitting in the middle of the floor and that it was a huge eyesore that was clearly out of place.
Once again, the executive spun around in his chair to greet the young interviewee and noticed the book was also still on the floor. Once the executive noticed this he simply looked at the interviewee and said: Ok, we’re all finished here. Have a nice day.
Just like the first young man, the second young man was confused and was also shocked at the executive’s response as he hadn’t even gotten an opportunity to sit down to talk to him.
Finally, it was time for the third interviewee to come in for his interview. As he opened the door to the executive's office he noticed the long walk from the door to the desk along with the executive having his back turned to him. He also noticed the book sitting on the floor and as he started to approach the desk he simply bent down to pick up the book as he approached the executive’s desk.
As soon as he got to the desk the executive spun around in his chair to greet the young man. It was at this point the young man extended his arm with the book in hand and said:
I think somebody dropped this on your floor. The executive replied: Thank you. Please have a seat and tell me a bit more about yourself.
You see the point here is that the executive was looking for each of the job prospects to demonstrate some basic level of personal initiative by acknowledging the book that was sitting in the middle of the floor and to address an obvious obstacle that was clearly out of place.
In this particular example involving this story with the first two candidates failing to acknowledge the obvious they wouldn’t even be afforded the opportunity for the interview. This is because their lack of initiative had identified them lacking the ability of taking personal initiative which was something the executive was clearly looking for in the job position he was offering.
Also if you notice I never said that the last interviewee necessarily got the job. I merely pointed out that he was afforded the opportunity to get the interview. The other two candidates simply didn’t make it that far into the process.
Now you may or may not like the executive’s approach in this example, but this is one of those situations you have to stop and ask yourself if the fact that you agree with it or not really matters? I mean is the search for a worker that is willing to take initiative and ownership in a given situation a negative characteristic to want for a potential employee?
Heck, I would argue that in today’s culture that the sentiment of demanding that people take more initiative to get a job done has been something we haven’t called out strongly enough over the last 20 years.
I mean in this current technological society most people lack the initiative for most daily tasks and have forgotten to think for themselves. In fact, most of us these days rely too much on our smartphones to do everything for us. After all, we use our smartphones to get quick stupid news clips to satisfy our completely misunderstood view of world events. We use GPS so the phone tells us where to go, the digital calendar to tell us when to go, and the calculator feature to do all of our math. It’s been said in some publications that human beings now possess less of an attention span than that of a gold fish which is one second less than 8 seconds.
Now I don’t know if that last statement is true or not, but I do know that people tend to quickly jump from one quick video to another online when playing on their phones. However, it’s also been said that people have the capacity for a great attention span and that storytelling and intelligent content is the thing that unlocks that which is what I try to work hard at doing right here on this show.
So you’re probably wondering Brandon, what is the point you want to make with all of this?
Well the point is that our society has been lulled to sleep now for several years and it seems these days that people have to literally have their hand held when trying to understand the current events of the world, the political landscape, and simply having an understanding of what it means to possess the individual responsibility of civic duty.
I mean these days the majority of young adults are coming out of college not prepared for doing much of anything else other than being a lifelong debt slave.
It seems all I hear about these days with young people are two issues on opposite ends of the spectrum.
On one hand many young adults constantly complain about having racked up huge student loan debt that needs to be forgiven while also not being able to find employment in a field that they desire. On the other end of this spectrum there are other young people right now out in the world working two and three jobs burning the candle at both ends while struggling to keep up with paying their rent and living expenses.
Neither one of these scenarios are good, but I would contend that the cause of the first scenario is fueled by a lack of initiative in understanding the consequences of debt and contributes directly to the cause of its opposite. In other words, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the young adult that’s working two and three jobs to pay for the student debt relief of the young adult that’s racked up tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a useless degree.
Embracing the mindset that the government should be responsible for eliminating a personal debt that you chose to accumulate is not demonstrating taking the initiative for triumph in life. Instead this demonstrates a mindset that is more directly related to a victimist mindset.
The Wrap Up
The other day I heard the author Jason Jones of The Great Campaign Against The Great Reset make an excellent point during an interview that I happened to catch with him on TV.
He was talking about the confusion and problem with much of the young public when college age students (and even adults) protest and advocate for horrible causes, and even manufactured ones, that are surrounded by lies instead of protesting against those very causes. On a side note this problem of lies that end up driving destructive societal causes are exactly what Solzhenitsyn was referencing in that quote that I led off with at the beginning of this episode.
As an example Jason Jones was making the point that if you’re wearing a t-shirt that’s manufactured by enslaved Uyhgurs in China while taking a knee against slavery you’re not at all in solidarity with the victims of slavery, but instead you’re taking on the role as a victimist.
However, he also pointed out that if you see your economic situation negatively impacted while protesting with others in a lower income bracket against the big federal reserve banking system for destroying the dollar then you’re actually in solidarity and therefore you are just in your protest.
The point he was making here is that you too have to be directly impacted negatively in order to claim solidarity with a victim…otherwise you’re just a virtue signaling victimist.
The reason people are confused about the difference between being a victim and victimist is because society has been lacking in taking the initiative to achieve triumph in life through our cultural and educational systems.
The lack of understanding along with the lack of initiative from those who do understand to intervene on behalf of the ignorant people within our society is the reason that our society is currently falling apart.
Even though I don’t agree with the college age student that’s asking for the rest of us to provide them with debt relief I also don’t blame them for having that mindset. I don’t blame them because the majority of us who do know better, as a society at large, have allowed them to adopt that mindset because we’ve allowed them to believe the lie as Solzhenitsyn so colorfully explained in his famous quote.
In other words, those of us who know better know that the younger generations have been lied to, but in knowing that they are being lied to the younger generations didn’t know that the lie that we knew of the government taking on more responsibility is destructive and has been ongoing for quite some time.
However, I do blame the rest of us for not teaching them how to think past the next second the way my dad taught me that day in the lobby of his service station.
The art of taking initiative and ownership has been lost and now is the time we all rediscover that for the sake of our societal existence.
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