The National Post carried this headline today, “Canadian man found with 51 live turtles stuffed in his pants.” Nuff said.
Domini Clark’s (@tgamtravel) piece in the G+M today feels a little like mom or a schoolmarm’s finger wagging. Don’t whine about the new checked bag fee with Air Canada, Westjet, and Porter; there are plenty of other places where you spend much more than that and could save is the advice. Spot on. As a regular business traveller though, the advice is going to generate more irritation for me.
At the end of the column, the suggestion is to NOT check bags, after all business people can go a full week without checking a bag. Well thank you very much! It’s damn near impossible to find overhead space on a long-haul flight, like Vancouver to Toronto, because of all the casual flyers who check a bag and then bring two giant dufflebags on board. Seriously. More than once I’ve had to check my bag either at the gate (looking for volunteers) or after boarding and establishing that there is no place for my stuff.
This is not a solution. Maybe the rest of the article should have been augmented by saying, “Hey! The baggage fee is being levied on the bare-bones lowest frills fare. Buy one grade up or pay to put your clothes on the plane.” Which, by the way, does not change my mind about the fact that this levy is just another usurous bite into my wallet.
So much ink; so much paper! So many pixels! So many task forces! Thank God for the bottomless pit to mine for answers to Canadian innovation challenges. The proposals are as many as there are lobbies and hobbies. And every one of them has merit. But every one of them is doomed by narrowness and inadequacy. That’s because, as the girl said to the boy: “It’s complicated.”
The focus of well-meant public musings and counsel tends toward specific, actionable, and obvious drivers of the problem. The result? There ought to be more public and private investment at every stage; better training and skills; government intervention; coordinated geographic clusters; stronger commercialization; more creativity and risk taking; a focus on entrepeneurs; or a focus on enterprises. And on and on.
Less considered, probably because they make crystal clear causal arguments cloudy at best, are the softer facets of the ecosystem. There are one or more steps removed from the direct “this-then-that” connection between action and outcome. Also, innovation tends to be diagnosed discretely from other economic and social challenges, such as productivity decay. This is the result of a schooled reductionism that segregates systemic problems into constituent parts as if complex problems can always be solved in pieces and work when reassembled. But that’s not how complex systems work.
Setting aside my cynicism about the motives of those voicing positions, each contribution adds valuably to the discussion. But that discussion remains isolated, technocratic, and mired in detail. Consider only the example of innovation and productivity as a holistic pair.
Everyone who has sat through an executive discussion of new revenue contrasted with reduced cost knows that the latter goes straight to the bottom line. CFOs fall all over the second option. And yet, productivity is in decline in Canada. Why? Among the reasons is a “waste not, want not” ethic that would make a Puritan blush. There is also the discount sticker given to Canadian businesses by our chronically weak dollar. Let’s not forget government subsidization/protection. All of this cuffs the market’s invisible hand that might otherwise force competitive price drops, in turn demanding greater productivity—perhaps through innovation?
Weak demand for productivity innovation weakens the drive toward technologies, processes, and business models that address these challenges. Only among a few exceptions, such as mining, are businesses innovating—or investing in innovation—for productivity gain. In other cases, such as oil & gas, their cups have spilleth over so much that being unproductive is inconsequential.
That leaves the glory of consumer-directed innovations. Consumers want cool technological toys that may (the jury is still out) make them more productive. It’s true—or at least it’s said, which is the same thing apparently—that mobile devices make business people more productive. It’s also true that many consumers are also business people. But is WhatsApp or FaceBook or the iPod creating productive commercial capacity? The argument for “yes” is dubious at best.
Consumers reward these innovations though, or the successful ones anyway, explicitly with revenue or use; less explicitly through the idolatry of consumer products and the business people associated with them. Investors reward such innovations with easier and more valuable rounds of financing, and grand payoffs at Initial Public Offering. This all despite many of the longest-lived and profitable technology businesses, such as Microsoft and Oracle and Salesforce and SAP, innovating around commercial/management productivity. But they’re not Facebook or LinkedIn are they?
Defocus consumer innovation! Blackberry (RIM) lost its edge and lead not primarily because of threats in the consumer space but because it chased that space and forgot that its lead and advantage was due to its impact on industrial productivity. Also consider that while it’s true Henry Ford made the automobile a mass consumption product, his enduring legacy is the conveyor belt: the productivity innovation that allowed for the consumer delight.
So what’s the point? Simply this: all of those many answers to the innovation problem could be instrumental elements of a successful change to Canada’s innovation trajectory. Maybe… in some combination… or in some sequence…. But merely refocusing toward innovations that genuinely address how to make Canada’s businesses more productive, first at the edges then at the core, would set the stage for solving multiple economic challenges, including productivity and innovation, and fabricating a virtuous cycle updraft to raise all parts of the economy.
I use “f-words” in mixed company. Well-bred professional, management, and executive types recoil in disgust. One might think that they would be inured to f-words. But they seem to hold themselves above all that.
Of course, the most troubling f-word is not the one on the tip of your tongue now. This one sounds “eff” but starts “ph.” Try saying philosophy in the company of busy career people; just be prepared for rolled eyes and that piteous expression that says you just don’t get it.
Those blank faces better “get it” soon themselves. Our privacy and maybe even democracy could depend on it. After all, not every tectonic shift is as blatant as the revelations of Edward Snowdon or as arrogantly, publicly contemptuous as the Fair Elections Act. Pay attention to the every day stuff!
Today’s transactional immediacy of business and government work is not an historical novelty. There was no time when these practical people were more inclined to think deeply about what they were doing. What may be different now is the measure of disdain for anyone who challenges business or government plans and actions more deeply than what the pervasive “value proposition” pap answers.
If we refrain from contemplations of epistemology and such, and stick to ethics and the sunnier(!) side of existential questions, philosophy is about purpose. That has to be clarifying for professionals, and is about as close as most organizations get to schwerpunkt (a typically consonant-ridden German word that means concentration point or main effort).
When I say philosophy in this company, I often mean, “What do you believe?” Not as in, “We believe the world wants a device that will allow them to…” That’s actually, “We think…” Rather, as in, “We believe that people need to remain connected to other people; we believe our purpose is to provide devices that…” Despite reading and abiding by directives such as Start With Why (Sinek, 2011), this kind of descent to expose the core assumptions of “Why” is one nobody really wants to take.
So why is that kind of philosophical pondering held in such disregard?
First, it’s hard. It requires rigorous thought, due consideration, and alternative points of view. None of which is acceptable in an environment of HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) rules or unconsidered braying of partisan vitriol.
Second, it’s still hard. It demands a sense of right and wrong. That then presumes you might stand for something, ideally something that can be argued rationally from some principles. Rampant specialization and narrow awareness does not lend itself to this capacity.
Third, it’s unnecessary. After all, whether its Mill, Burke, Rousseau, or Jefferson, there are philosophies a plenty to choose from and no need to waste time on such things now.
Fourth, well… it’s hard. Given the preference for action—any action!—to indicate ability, quality, and value, taking time to muse over that action gets indicted as regressive to say the least.
It’s true that some fundamental underpinnings of philosophy are timeless—give or take a millennium, otherwise we wouldn’t still look to Plato. But other philosophy is more set in a time and place—give or take a millennium or continent, so it needs to be refreshed from time to time.
Given the rate society is evolving in technology’s wake, we need to take a little time to continually consider whether our core values remain operative in practice. At the very least, we should give a modicum of respect and an ear to those who do it professionally, casually, or within the confines of their daily toil.
The problem with not thinking about these things and, worse, discouraging those who will, is that these things are affected by rapid innovation and change anyway.
The seemingly outrageous privacy invasions by governments is not the product of a sea change in method. It was a steady dripping of unconsidered change that allowed the method to metastasize into what it’s become: something odious. And, it all took root in so many innocuous “consumer benefits.”
The outrageous bill that is to be the Unfair Elections Act (2014) is only possible because over time we have largely become so blasé about hyper-partisan drivel and the corruption of governance by politics that many people see nothing especially egregious about the bill’s content. And so it now threatens a foundation of our society. That represents six years’ effort on the part of Canada’s New Government.
So let’s all throw around the f-word until it’s so common that everyone does it. We’ll all be better for it.
I read this op-ed piece in the Globe & Mail this past weekend by retired CEO Gwyn Morgan. Before I could respond in the G&M comments section, there were approximately 400 comments which, using the first 50 or so as a sample set, were about 90% on the side of pillorying the man. To their credit, the G&M readers did not object merely on loose philosophical grounds–the kind that Morgan raised in his 700 words; they responded on mass to the unadulterated hypocrisy. When you can tell the shill is the shill, the ruse no longer works.
That pisses me off because I really wanted to take a shot at the plutocrat who felt compelled to make a plea that readers of the Globe & Mail stand up and defend corporations! Seriously! They are under attack and need defending by corporate CEOs, executives, and other cheerleaders. Those damned, Communist, lefty haters of all things capitalist were ganging up on business. And, damn it, it’s just not right.
Again, to their infinite credit, the commenters in the Globe’s comments section for the article were substantially NOT wing-nuts. Their points were… well… pointed, well thought out, cogent, articulate, caustic in many cases and decidedly NOT about business or corporations. One could even, as an apologist for the masses, say say that they were remarkably likely to say, about corporations and business exactly what the scorpion said to the frog in the old saw joke: “it’s in their nature.” And that’s OK.
Nobody is suggesting business or corporations are bad (or good). I think what I understood from the comments is that there are others like me. We appreciate what capitalism and laissez-faire not only has to offer but what it’s generated economically and socially for all of us. We laud “business” as a noble pursuit. But, let’s not by any stretch of the imagination let anyone believe that we’re caught up in the nonsensical argument that a CEO “deserves” 50x, 100x, 500x the compensation of the average employee. Perhaps the entrepreneur or owner who has been “at risk” deserves that kind of reward. But an overpaid employee with nothing “at risk” does not–no matter what Gwyn Morgan might have to say.
And even at that, let’s be honest, the largest of corporations–where highly overpaid capitalist employee-CEOs hide out–are not a place where you would find anybody with real capital “at risk.” The risk such as it were disappeared a long time ago. These are for the most part money-printing machines (i.e., banks) wherein the only real risk is the utter incompetence of its human brain (read: CEO and executive). So… if there’s no risk involved, then the (one could easily argue, “absurd”) profit extracted out of the economy that moves to shareholders or to non-taxable off-shore domicile is nothing more than a clever wealth transference mechanism that takes from the 79% and moves to to 1%. Note that I left the bottom 20% out because, in Canada, they are either net benefactors of social assistance or meaningless contributors (i.e., collateral damage) anyway. And that just doesn’t sit well.
So, take it from me, a genuine laissez-faire capitalist and free market democrat. What the rest of society doesn’t like is corporate welfare assholes pretending they are hard done by, offloading the downside risk and the cost to everyone else while they take in the risk-free upside benefits… and then whine about it in a national newspaper. Gwyn, turn in your capitalist membership card.
The days of perimeter protection for online security and privacy are dwindling. Those tried-and-true approaches for safeguarding data and ensuring organizational and individual data security are destined to the quaintness of punch cards. Relying on them as the paradigm of security for extensive or elaborate IT implementations that have a future is not wise. There is a better way.
The concept of perimeter security is inspired by the notion that if you put all your eggs in one basket then you have but one basket to guard and protect. It is a castle, high on a hill with thick stone walls and drawbridges over impassable moats. The stuff inside is safe because the bad guys are kept at bay. Until it’s not.
One problem with perimeter security is that it depends on meeting force with force. So attempts to breach firewalls and ports are met with clever shields and redundant blocks. That is not a bad thing; it’s just a recursive cycle that probabilities suggest will always end in breaches. Moreover, it hardly matters how strong the perimeter is: once there is a crack, everything is in jeopardy. Since things have to move across the perimeter to function properly, the perimeter is porous by design, raising the odds of compromise.
To deal with the hole-y perimeter and make it reasonable for individuals to pass we take cues from the Old Testament. The Gileadites augmented their perimeter, keeping out the Ephraimites by demanding everyone crossing the border say the word “Shibboleth.” To make an old story short, those that could not were obviously trespassers and were dealt with in a decidedly Old Testamentary way. The concept introduces the demand for secret password identification.
In prevailing IT security, a previously established password presented at the perimeter gets compared to the one held behind the perimeter walls. This system can be compromised on the outside by capturing the password or matchable token from the individual to whom it belongs. Alternatively, the store of passwords/comparables inside the perimeter is, in fact, a geometrically more valuable treasure.
This approach is ever-less effective. In fact, it is practically a law that the value of perimeter protection is inversely proportional to participant sophistication.
So, what is the viable alternative? In Introductory Financial Management many years ago, I was introduced to the concept of diversification. It refers to investing in assets of varying risk profiles so that the aggregate risk would be more readily predictable. There is a lot of calculus and probabilities math behind this, so it must be scientific. Those who avoid scientific language might be inclined to describe diversification as spreading the risk or not putting all your eggs in one basket.
Critically, the risk is inherent in the value of the asset itself. If data is the valuable asset and the risk is that its acquisition by unauthorized parties can result in privacy or confidentiality breach which could have significant financial impact, that sounds a bit more like securities. In which case, managing risk more like a financial wizard becomes sound policy.
This challenges a core assumption of today’s IT security, being that one can prevent breach from happening. In other words, we presume and measure from zero, trying to keep the needle there (like airline safety). After all, if there is a lot of valuable data in one spot AND breach will affect lots of data and people, ANY breach is catastrophic and must be prevented. This base notion results in a course of action that takes us along the path that IT security has followed thus far.
What if that presumption were inverted? Instead, accept that there will always be (many) breaches. Then the goal cannot reasonably be to prevent them all, but rather to make them small, unprofitable, and essentially meaningless. In other words, diversify the risk away. This different starting point will result in a different approach. (That is the intent of encryption, but it should be quite evident that encryption alone is necessary but not sufficient in the cyber-security arms race.)
Take this idea further. What if there were no stores of meaningful aggregated data? It would not be worthwhile to penetrate the challenging security of an online service if there were nothing useful to acquire. Nobody would bother to break into a bank vault for one bar of gold. The crime doesn’t pay. Such a circumstance would require CIOs and security specialists to become “data chemists.” It is nothing less than alchemy—in reverse. Take gold and turn it into lead (or its elemental components). The real magic is in the owner being the only one able to reconstitute it into gold—when needed.
So, where does this leave us? Unfortunately, without specific answers; but with an idea for alternatives in the post-perimeter IT security world. The next wizards of security and privacy will succeed when they courageously change the metaphor and the starting point for their practice.
Start soon though: Our privacy and confidentiality depends on it.
God damn Steve Jobs! It’s hard to dredge from memory or history another huckster who left behind such a legacy of dreck. Jobs was a tireless promoter who innovated relentlessly and—as legend would have it—single-handedly changed the face of the consumer world from personal computing to animated movies to music consumption and mobile telephony/computing. Love it or hate it; he did it.
But that’s not what I mean. The detritus in his formidable wake is all of the half-baked nonsense that others less capable have picked up. Where for Jobs the result if it would be a gastronomic delight, in other hands it becomes fast food. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Web world.
You see, Jobs was a man with vision, drive, and—to switch metaphors—the skills of a utility fielder. He was a showman and marketer with a sense for the appealing. He was an evangelist and salesman with a feel for the con. He was an industrialist with a grasp of production. And, allegedly, in his later tenure, became something of a strategist and commanding agent of change. What this adds up to is a well-rounded entrepreneur who knew inherently that even though he was reducing a complex mix of ingredients to a single catchy phrase, there was a lot of magic going on.
Those who worship at the alters of his several business religions are not so well versed. They do not appreciate that, just to hold the mystique for single-minded people like them, Jobs oversimplified and reduced to an aphoristic sound-bite, very complex conditions. They don’t get that Steve Jobs was a sophisticated carney and they are his marks.
Why do I rant? Because I am now fed up by the noxious and excessive blather from all levels of so many organizations about consumer experience or customer experience. Don’t get me wrong: such concern is paramount, or at least it will be until it proves unprofitable and therefore unacceptable to the stock market. To satisfy the customer—to make him or her or it categorically happy with your wares is fundamental to loyalty, repeat business, referrals, buzz, and ultimately revenue if not profit. And there is truth to the causal connection between the visceral experience with a product/service and the good outcomes noted above.
That said, the ham-handed Webheads roll this all up under the aegis of user experience. And then they reduce all of that holistic business complexity to what would properly be limited to user interface. When gullible and complicit executives support the cause user interface gets conflated with customer experience and the absurdities begin.
“So what’s the problem with that Mr. Pedant?” You ask. Not much except for how the UI (user interface) people—interaction designers really—get up on their hind legs and throw their weight around with the support of improbable, linguistic overreach. All of a sudden the interface carries dominion over all other possible aspects of customer experience. For instance:
Let’s agree that customer experience is valuable, but that it is the complex output of many inputs. Even if you make the dubious causal leap that customer experience equals success, it may or may not recognize that ultimately success is profit. And on this it merely muddies the simplicity to note that while touting the experience, Steve Jobs could shave Lincoln’s beard off of a penny. (Maybe that has had a little to do with Apple’s commercial success…)
To blithely dictate that user experience equals customer experience is wrong to begin with. To push that further and allow customer experience, which is actually now equal to user interface, to be the start and end or at least the dominant element of commercial input is simplistic, naïve, and unduly credits user interface (i.e., design) with too much.
Besides, isn’t this kind of hyperbolic overextension what “Marketing” is all about? Does nobody care that now Marketers have no real purpose let alone dominance?
Found this article in the Globe and Mail (Say goodbye to hierarchy, hello to holacracy) about the disappearance of hierarchy at some “cool” businesses (such as Zappos). It’s essence is per the following definition:
Holacracy is a social technology or system of organizational governance in which authority and decision-making are distributed throughout a fractal holarchy of self-organizing teams rather than being vested at the top of a hierarchy
Since it’s only been in existence since 2007 and seems to be favoured by new economy, technology-based businesses and not-for-profits, it might be a little early to tell whether there is broad merit in the approach. Having self-contained, self-directed units makes complete sense and aligns with many features of nature and certainly of “Complexity” and “Emergence” theories. I’d say generally I’m in favour with the caveat that there are limits to its relevance.
Take the military, for instance and as a deep-relief example of where hierarchy is necessary. While it makes sense that battalions or platoons or fleets or squadrons, in combat, be enabled with self-direction over their own activities to achieve clear goals (this is fundamental), you can’t run an army that way. That kind of organization needs, at its broadest levels, timely and ongoing coherence in purpose and action fast. Holacracy would tend toward incoherence in the short run, though it might be more valuable and effective in the long run. So, organisations that need to be coherently directed toward a possibly fluid goal with a minimum of evolutionary trial and error as the holocratic parts bump into one another might not be right for this structure.
That generally describes large enterprises of the money making or other variety. But even as I type this I wonder if the issue is not black and white but many shades of grey. That is holocracy at one level does not mean hierarchy at another. Perhaps there is harmonious combination of these two structures that would be generally applicable. Maybe that’s been considered by the creator of the idea and/or its various evangelists, including Ken Wilbur.
The article I’ve tagged makes the point but, truth be told, I didn’t read it that closely to know whether it only mentions government or dwells on it. There is a statement to the effect of this being how government works and isn’t it ironic that after so long being told government should be more like business, it’s business that is now being told to be more like government… is? I don’t know about that, but again it could be the degree of magnification. Yes, government departments and agencies do operate as holon. So in that respect, I get it. But, within those departments and agencies I’ve yet to see anything but wicked, rank-respecting, bloated and unwieldy hierarchy.
There is, however, one area of government that is definitely holacracy. That is the confederation as Canada is structured with its provinces being largely independent parts loosely held together by the national centre (federal government), and as Switzerland is with its cantons being practically distinct and unrelated units. These work to greater and lesser degrees. One can find wonder or horror in the structure depending on what you choose as a focus.
In any case, it smells a bit like old wine in new bottles. Nostalgia being dusted off and sold for more than its worth. Harumpf.
Telos is a Greek word that means “end,” as in the goal or finish. Telos is a fundamental element of practically everything. Think about what you do. There is a good chance that everything you put your energy toward: your art, your business, your studies, your… has a goal toward which you direct intent. Organizations exist with a typically explicit though sometime implicit Telos as well. Religion is the very best example of organizations that have multiple Telos–at different levels.
This little essay is an exposition of how Telos drives religions. It may also be seen as a vehicle for me to call out and question the abundant craziness existing under the flag of Islam. It would be a shame for anyone to view it and me this way because, to be perfectly clear, all Religions tend toward sociopathic war footing from time to time–except maybe Buddism. It’s just the nature of the beast. Still, one has to wonder what combination of theology, Religious life-cycle state, sociology, and economic realities lends itself to the sinister genocidal themes and thrusts of so many jihadis at this time.
Here I insert the obligatory acknowledgement that I do not for a minute believe that all Muslims–or even the generality of Muslims–are disturbed or homocidal. But I have to wonder why Islam seems to claim so many of that type of demagogue? Does it provide convenient cover? Does it provide succor? Is it accidental? Is it, in fact, only a statistical anomaly (i.e., it’s not happening any more within that cluster than any other; we’re just noticing it for some reason)?In any case, back to Telos.
Religions have Telos in their stories. The stories that form the theology of any given religion are imbued with direction and objective that the religion stands behind. As a (wayward) Christian, I can assure you that the Telos of the Old and New Testaments is Divine Providence. The whole point of the books is to arrive at God’s will. But that is merely the theological Telos; the current and end beneath the theology. It binds the religion as a belief system.
But religion is also Religion: the very human organization that delivers the theos to the masses. Religion has a Telos as well, and it is not always the same–nay it is almost never the same–as the Telos of the religion. The organization has different intents than its stories purport.
Let’s get something out of the way here: Religions go through a life-cycle and they are all acquisitive. A religion/Religion always starts out as an idea of some individual who is at the time outcast, unusual, definitely profane, and probably nuts. This has to be so by virtue of the fact that unless the indivdual was breaking from the prevailing religion, a new religion is not going to be created. Thus profane in term of the status quo. Unusual because (s)he is not doing what everyone else is doing viz. religion and that often happens because (s)he has been outcast (ostracised) from the group in some way or another. People who are nuts regularly end up in this situation.
This individual’s idea takes hold with some acolytes that take the idea and run with it. At this stage the nascent religion is a cult. Cults that do not die in their youth, become mainstream religions to greater or lesser degree. Consider Christianity. It was a Nazerine cult that blossomed following several events not the least of which was a crucifixion, ascention, and the deathbed conversion of the Emperor Constantine about 240 years later. The last event was the prime trigger to turn Christianity into the mainstream religion. Sects branched off the main trunk of this idea over time including Orthodoxy v. Catholicism, Protestantism, and a host of various fundamentalist formulations.
Religions can effectively die too, as have so many in the past. You don’t find many that follow the polytheims of Ancient Greek or Rome. I have met a Zoroastrian recently, but it’s hard to find Toltecs practicing their religions and so forth. But Religions moreso than religions want to live. And to live, their lifeblood is followers. So Religions are acquisitive.
Ideally people are won over by the inherent perfection of the theology. More typically they are swayed by an evangelist of some sort and peer pressure to join. Then, of course, every religion has at one time or another used more than moral suasion to recruit: forced conversion under pain of death, extorted conversion under pain of death, elimination of the heathen… under pain of death. All of these tactics are used under the auspices and in concert with some, occasionally perverse reading of the religion’s stories.
The read of the stories has to be perverted because rare is the religion that is not both aggressive and gentle. These religions are guides to social structure and how to live; often, as I’ve heard, expansions and elaborations on the Golden Rule. So turn any religion into a basis of war or pretext for mass murder is obviously perverse. By no stretch of the imagination can I come up with a scenario that squares, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” with “Kill the infidel.”
This brings me around to Islam and, more especially, its various perversions most recently in the form of Islamic State. But this co-opting of the religion for the purpose of demagoguery is neither new nor, it’s safe to say, unusual. So it begs the question: why? Christianity, another of the three major world religions, is not that much older, by which I mean to say, it’s not as though Islam is going to a phase or growing pains.
Yet there is something in Islam that seems to lend itself to being perverted in a particular fashion. A warlike, world-dominating fashion. Although I’ve read an English translation of Al Qu’aran (because you can’t really read It except in Arabic), I don’t really recall the prophetic calls to action that spur on the 20th and 21st-century Saladins.
So I get quickly led to the perversion of the religion in the service of… power. This is not a big leap because the perversion of religion for power is as common as ants. The Borgias made a family dynasty of it. Or, consider The Church of England.
Is that really all there is to it? The PLO, Taliban, Hamas, Islamic State, you name it: it’s all about power. But that power aspiration doesn’t end like the Ayatollahs’ conquest of Iran, within national borders. These others are far more ambitious. (I didn’t invoke the Caliph Saladin’s name for no reason, you know.) And they have the tools to make good on their desires. Or, if not then at the very least to cause plenty of disruption and grief for everyone else.
The sooner we ALL realize that these nutbars are not religious; they don’t care a whit about their religion except to the extent that it can advance their aims by rallying the dull-witted to their cause, the sooner we’ll change our tack on dealing with the problem. They are not legitimate, their aims are illegitimate, their Telos is death; and this must be shone upon by the cold light of day.
I fly fairly consistently though by no means am I row 13 troll racking up 100,000 miles a year or more. That said, I’m on enough to know that airlines squeeze people into too small a space for actual comfort.
More than that, people flying on business tend toward pulling out laptops to make productive use of the time in the air. That laptop has to sit in the already unsuitable space on the meal tray. So when the person immediately in front of the worker exercises his/her right to recline the seat back for greater comfort, it not only invades the already cramped space but makes using the computer all but impossible. I, personally, have had the clamshell lid cracked because it got sandwiched when the seat in front of me was thrust back.
So when two 48-year olds come just short of blows because one guy, sitting in the worst seat (middle) uses a little piece of plastic that costs 14-cents to make but is $22 at retail called the Knee Defender to prevent the seat from coming back, forcing the plane to be diverted from destination, you can do nothing but say, “Yeah, so what?” (See BBC story here)
Have to say that because it’s inevitable and has probably happened without such media fanfare many times. You also have to say it because both of these people were being douche bags (though I sympathize more with the guy using the device than with the gal who wanted to recline). Douche bags they might be, likely very self-righteously protecting their position and logic.
The airline, on the other hand, never mind the regulators, are culpable and should be punished. Here’s why. They create and foster the situation.
They create seat pitch (the gap for knees and breathing space) and squeeze it as tight as they can get away with. They do this because over 30 rows, 1-inch adds up to another row of seats which adds up to more revenue at a solid marginal profit. Notably, this fight broke out in a part of the plane that already had a larger pitch than cattle class.
They install seats that recline. Frankly, I think this whole notion is ridiculous and warrants physiological testing. The amount of recline the seat affords is not enough to be really any more comfortable; only enough to be irritating, imposing, and beyond annoying to the person behind you.
They make (and sell) the space and time on the plane to business travellers as a time to get things done. For crying out loud, they’re installing wifi on-board. Wifi is useless without a device to connect and trying to do real work on a tablet or smart phone is preposterous.
So, it’s the airline that creates the conditions that create the possibility for nobody’s wrong, self-righteousness.
Reclining passenger says, “Hey, the seat reclines and it’s my right to get more comfortable (or at least have the feeling that I’m getting more comfortable) by reclining completely. As far as I’m concerned, given the structure of the seating, that space MUST be mine to recline into.
The passenger being reclined into says, “Whoa, hold on, this space between my nose and your upright seat is inadequate to begin with. As soon as you recline, especially if the person in front of YOU isn’t reclining, you’re getting more space–MY space, which I need to work in. Back off. Reclining is a privilege, not a right.”
At the end of the day, the douche bag who pushes her seat back is probably more in “the right,” but in any case, the airline is in the wrong. And who suffers? The recliner, he being reclined upon, and EVERY OTHER PASSENGER who didn’t get to Denver as promised or has to listen to the kerfuffle.
Nonsense.
Take the train. It’s civilized.
