How to be an insider. /derogatory
Back when I was an elder in the St. Louis pagan community, we compared notes about long-term successful vs unsuccessful covens and nobody could cite a counter-example to one of my observations: if a group of intense people didn't have a Designated Asshole, they were doomed, and if the Asshole left (grew out of it, or worse, felt mistreated) then somebody else had to step up and become the Asshole or else things went south in a hurry.
My definition of the Designated Asshole came from a story I learned when working at MasterCard International's worldwide datacenter. My boss's boss had been with the company for decades. He had been demoted multiple times, sat out his punishment, got promoted to real work again, and inevitably demoted yet again. I asked why?
"Okay, let's imagine that we're in a committee that has to make a decision today, there's no more time to investigate or debate. And we know there's an important question we don't have the answer to, and if we admit this, we'll have to tell senior management that we don't know enough to decide. What he's done, every time this comes up, is wait until right before the final vote is about to be taken and then say, 'well, this is all well and good, but we still don't know the answer to that question' and there goes the deadline."
Nobody could cite an example of him ever having been wrong to ask. But it still got him punished repeatedly for being unpopular. No decision made in ignorance of an important unanswered question ever went well for the company. He was right to say they weren't ready to decide. He still had to spend 2-3 years doing makework as the latest "Director of Special Projects" every time.
Nobody needs a reality check more badly than a group of insiders. But we're a species, a culture, a country, an economy that harshly punishes reality checkers. And if you don't keep at least one person in your life who you like, and respect, and will listen to even though they will sometimes call you on it when you're wrong then, as surely as the night follows the dawn, you will eventually descend into moral imbecility.
May god have mercy on our souls, though mercy merit we none.
