Posted on by Matt Thomas

Investigating Action Part I: On Unconferencing

Note: This short reflection began as an observation at professional conferences, where some of the most generative conversations seemed to occur just outside the official program — in hallways, cafés, and improvised gatherings that quietly relocated the center of action. Over time, the idea of the “unconference” grew into something more suggestive: a small window onto how human beings negotiate where meaning, authority, and agency actually reside.

Though the piece does not engage explicitly with Julian Jaynes, readers familiar with his work may detect an affinity. The “unconference” can be read as a micro-site of consciousness in action — a space where participants shift from receiving prescribed structures of engagement to collaboratively generating their own. In that sense, “unconferencing” is less about conferences than about a recurring human impulse: the desire to manufacture intellectual oxygen when the authorized environment feels thin.

This essay remains intentionally provisional. Its aim is not to settle the concept but to open it, inviting readers to notice where unofficial zones of action emerge in their own institutional, professional, and personal lives.

I. Introducing “Unconferencing”

When attending a professional conference these days one may encounter small groups of conference goers congregating in a lobby or coffee shop during the “official” speeches or workshops. When queried, such people may advise you that they are engaged in the “un-conference” (n.) or that they are “un-conferencing” (v.). For the purposes of this piece we shall refer these folks as “un- conferencers” (n.).

Un-conferencing is qualitatively different from when a conferencer slips up to her room for a quick nap or to the pool for a swim. In these cases, the attendee is simply checking out of the conference entirely. They are abdicating any claim to conference action. Un-conferencers, on the other hand, are attempting to establishing a rival zone of conference-related activity. They are, to borrow from Goffman, attempting to shift the locus of the action.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who worked at Cambridge, once advised a colleague to leave the university as there was “no oxygen” to be had there. Upon being asked why then he, Wittgenstein, stayed, the philosopher is said to have replied: “It doesn’t matter…I manufacture my own oxygen.” Inspired by Wittgenstein, we could say that those who involve themselves in unconferences are “manufacturing their own action.”

I suspect that were we to analyze the types of persons who would drop in on an unconference, partake of a loosely specified conference-related activity which exists at a tangent to, or even off the grid of, the main conference, we would find certain similarities in outlook and disposition. I believe we would find people who are, both individually and collectively, attracted to action.

It has been my observation that the large majority of attendees at a conference simply take the conference program at face value. That is, they expect the action to be that which is listed, prescribed, and pre-defined as such. “What’s happening this morning?” “So and so is speaking.” “Great, I’ve been looking forward to this part of the conference since I saw the schedule!” The planned and authorized conference activities are “on stage,” and the audience is invited to partake of the action either passively or through relatively minimal contribution in the form of question and answer or discussion. The locus of action, however, is usually taken as unproblematic, given.

The unconferencer, on the other hand, takes upon him or herself the responsibility, the grave responsibility, of creating and sustaining an alternative set of activities that they purport, though their ironic self-definition, to be action. By issuing an invitation to the unconference, they are in effect saying to the invitee that shifting loyalty from the authorized main activity to the rogue fringe will result in a better, hipper, more effective, enlightening, and action-packed experience.

For the action junkie, the draw of the unconference is unmistakable; the eternal suspicion that the grass is always greener wherever we are not is married to the thrill of involving oneself with an alternate action locus which is cheekily, even brazenly, set up as an overt challenge to the “mass” action that the majority of the junkie’s peers regard as “given.” The very fact that the majority of conference goers are unaware of the existence of the unconference, much less the existential challenge it suggests, makes engagement with this floating, edge-bound, impermanent, and unrecorded body deeply appealing to a certain segment of folks.

While the unconference may appear at first blush to be a relatively minor aspect of an essentially modern and class-specific activity, I would put forth that it actually sheds light on the very essence of how we understand action. The existence of the unconference suggests that action, far from occurring in a single, easily identified, and authorized location, is in fact a floating term subject not only to instantaneous and frequent relocation within a given activity frame but also to subjective definitions particular to individuals with varying temperaments and appetites for both the creation and consumption of action. I believe, in short, that the unconference, modest as it may seem, in fact opens doors to much wider theoretical considerations that may take us back to the very origin of human consciousness.

II. The Unconference and the Inner Voice

If the unconference shifts the locus of action outwardly — from stage to hallway, from keynote to coffee shop — it also performs a quieter relocation within the individual. What changes is not merely where activity occurs, but how participants come to understand their role in producing it. The official conference asks attendees to receive action: to listen, absorb, and occasionally respond within predetermined boundaries. The unconference, by contrast, invites a subtler responsibility — the task of deciding where the action is and, more provocatively, whether it exists at all until one participates in creating it.

This shift is not trivial. For many conference-goers, the program functions as a kind of external voice, an authoritative script that dictates where meaning will unfold and how attention should be allocated. To follow the schedule is to outsource judgment about significance. The unconferencer, however, suspends this outsourcing. In stepping away from the authorized frame, they implicitly claim a right that is both liberating and burdensome: the right to narrate the action for themselves.

What emerges in such spaces is less a rival conference than a laboratory of agency. Conversations drift, topics mutate, and legitimacy is negotiated moment by moment. No one can point to a stage and say, with certainty, this is where it happens.Instead, action becomes a floating construct sustained through collective attention and mutual recognition. The unconference does not replace the official program so much as reveal that the program’s authority was always contingent — dependent on shared belief rather than intrinsic necessity.

This relocation of authority mirrors a broader human pattern. In many domains of life, individuals operate within inherited structures that quietly define where significance resides: classrooms, offices, institutions, rituals. Yet moments arise when these structures feel oxygen-poor, prompting participants to improvise alternative spaces where engagement feels more immediate, more alive. The unconference is one such improvisation, a small but telling instance of how people generate meaning when prescribed channels no longer suffice.

To participate in an unconference, then, is to practice a form of narrative self-authorship. Attendees do not merely attend; they interpret, select, and frame the experience as action. The hallway conversation becomes the keynote because someone decides it is. The coffee shop gathering acquires legitimacy because participants treat it as consequential. Action, in this sense, is less discovered than constructed — an emergent property of attention rather than a fixed feature of the environment.

This does not render official structures irrelevant. Conferences still provide scaffolding, shared reference points, and opportunities for encounter that make unconferencing possible in the first place. But the existence of the unconference suggests that action is never fully captured by authorized spaces. It leaks, migrates, and reconstitutes itself wherever individuals perceive the possibility of meaningful exchange. The unconferencer’s quiet rebellion, therefore, is not against the conference itself but against the assumption that significance must be centrally located and formally sanctioned.

Seen in this light, unconferencing becomes less a quirky professional habit than a microcosm of consciousness in action — a demonstration of how individuals negotiate the tension between external scripts and internal narratives. By manufacturing their own zones of engagement, unconferencers reveal that the question “Where is the action?” is inseparable from the deeper question “Who gets to decide?”

III. Third Places and the Geography of Action

If unconferencing represents a temporary relocation of action within professional space, third places extend this phenomenon into everyday life. Bars, cafés, karaoke rooms, shisha lounges, and hotel lobbies function as informal arenas where meaning and agency are negotiated outside the structures that ostensibly organize our days. These environments rarely announce themselves as sites of significance. They lack stages, programs, and formal hierarchies. Yet participants often experience them as unusually alive — spaces where conversation deepens, identities loosen, and unexpected narratives emerge.

What distinguishes these third places is not their recreational character but their ambiguity. Unlike workplaces or classrooms, they carry no fixed expectations about performance or outcome. This ambiguity produces a subtle psychological freedom: participants are not merely enacting roles but improvising them. In such environments, the question of where the action resides becomes open-ended, contingent upon attention, mood, and relational chemistry rather than institutional design.

The figure of the Thin Man — drifting through cities, bars, and late-night conversations — embodies this geography of floating action. His world is structured less by formal events than by encounters whose significance becomes clear only in retrospect. A casual exchange at a bar may eclipse a planned meeting; a karaoke duet may reveal more about a relationship than hours of scheduled conversation. In these moments, action is not given but discovered through participation, mirroring the unconference’s quiet redefinition of legitimacy.

Third places also highlight the internal dimension of this shift. Just as unconferencers manufacture intellectual oxygen when official conference spaces feel thin, individuals in third places practice a form of narrative authorship. Freed from explicit scripts, they must decide what matters, which conversations to pursue, and how to interpret the unfolding interaction. The authority to define significance moves inward, transforming everyday environments into laboratories of consciousness where meaning is collaboratively constructed rather than externally prescribed.

This dynamic helps explain why third places often feel disproportionately memorable. Their significance is not preauthorized but emergent, generated through a confluence of attention, vulnerability, and improvisation. Participants sense that something unscheduled is occurring, even if its contours remain indistinct at the time. The experience resembles unconferencing at a social scale: an unofficial gathering that quietly competes with, and sometimes surpasses, the legitimacy of structured events.

Yet the relationship between formal and informal spaces remains symbiotic rather than oppositional. Conferences create the conditions for unconferencing; workplaces generate the need for after-work conversations; institutions provide the scaffolding against which third places acquire their freedom. Action migrates across these environments, revealing itself as less a fixed destination than a shifting field sustained through perception and engagement.

In this sense, third places extend the unconference’s insight into a broader philosophy of everyday life. They suggest that action is rarely where it is supposed to be and frequently where no one thought to look. The bar conversation, the karaoke room, the quiet shisha lounge — these spaces operate as unofficial stages where individuals renegotiate identity, intimacy, and understanding. What appears peripheral may, in fact, be central, not because of intrinsic qualities but because participants collectively decide to treat it as such.

The unconferencer and the Thin Man, though inhabiting different settings, share a common impulse: a refusal to accept prescribed boundaries around significance. Both figures navigate environments with an attunement to emergent action, trusting that meaning can be generated wherever attention and curiosity converge. Their movements illustrate a subtle but pervasive truth — that consciousness itself is partly defined by this capacity to relocate action, to manufacture oxygen in spaces where none was promised.

IV. Returning to the Conference

Seen through this wider lens, the unconference no longer appears as a quirky professional habit but as a small instance of a broader human pattern. Conferences, with their schedules and stages, represent one attempt to stabilize action — to locate significance in designated rooms, at designated times, under designated authorities. Such structures are not arbitrary; they provide coherence, shared reference points, and opportunities for encounter that might not otherwise occur. Without them, the unconference itself would lack the context that renders it meaningful.

Yet the existence of the unconference reveals the limits of this stabilization. Action resists containment. It drifts into hallways, cafés, late-night gatherings, and impromptu conversations where participants sense that something more immediate is unfolding. The official program may announce where action is supposed to be, but participants continuously renegotiate this claim through their attention, curiosity, and relational impulses. The conference, in this sense, becomes less a fixed locus of action than a field across which action migrates.

This migration does not invalidate the conference’s authority so much as complicate it. The keynote may still matter; the workshop may still illuminate. But their significance is mediated by a parallel network of informal interactions that shape interpretation, deepen understanding, and generate new connections. The unconference operates within this network as both supplement and critique, reminding participants that legitimacy is not solely conferred by formal designation but also by lived experience.

To notice the unconference is therefore to recognize that action is never singularly located. It is distributed across spaces, moments, and narratives that participants collectively construct. The attendee who slips into a hallway conversation is not abandoning the conference but participating in its expansion, contributing to a decentralized ecology of engagement that cannot be fully captured by the official program. In this ecology, meaning emerges through movement rather than adherence, through improvisation rather than prescription.

What remains, then, is a modest but suggestive insight: the question “Where is the action?” is less empirical than interpretive. Conferences provide one answer, but participants continuously generate others, manufacturing intellectual oxygen wherever they perceive the possibility of meaningful exchange. The unconference embodies this generative impulse, illustrating how individuals negotiate the tension between structured environments and emergent agency without fully resolving it.

In the end, the unconference may be best understood not as a rival conference but as a reminder — a quiet demonstration that action is partly a matter of attention and belief. The stage, the hallway, the coffee shop, and the late-night conversation each become potential centers of significance depending on how participants inhabit them. Conferences, like the broader environments of everyday life, offer frameworks within which action might occur. But the decision to treat any moment as consequential remains, ultimately, a shared and ongoing act of interpretation.

And so the unconference persists, floating at the edges of formal gatherings, manufacturing oxygen where it is needed and relocating action where it feels most alive. Its lesson is neither rebellious nor dismissive but gently subversive: that meaning cannot be fully scheduled, legitimacy cannot be entirely centralized, and the most vital conversations often unfold just beyond the reach of the program.

Provisional Conclusion:

The Unconference endures as a quiet proof that action is never simply where it is announced, but wherever consciousness decides to breathe.

to be continued…

Note: If you like this piece, you may also like this one here on the nature of events.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Phrase “I Got a Guy For That”

Note: Few phrases carry as much quiet social power as “I got a guy for that.” At first glance, it sounds casual, almost throwaway — a shorthand for convenience. Yet beneath the surface, the phrase reveals an entire architecture of trust, reputation, and informal networks that operate parallel to official systems. To have “a guy” is to possess access: access to knowledge, skill, discretion, or opportunity that cannot be easily found through public channels.

The phrase also reflects a deeper human instinct toward relational problem-solving. Rather than relying solely on institutions, we rely on people — plumbers, lawyers, bartenders, mechanics, editors, fixers — individuals whose reliability has been tested through experience and passed along through recommendation. In this sense, “I got a guy” is less about exclusivity than about social capital built over time, a small badge of belonging within overlapping communities.

At its most benign, the phrase signals efficiency and mutual support; at its most ambiguous, it hints at shadow networks, informal economies, and the gray zones where trust replaces regulation. Either way, it captures something fundamental about modern life: solutions are rarely abstract, and almost always relational. The phrase persists because it compresses an entire worldview into five words — a worldview in which problems are solved not by systems alone, but by people who know people.

If you enjoy this piece you might enjoy “The Hired Hand, Part I: Azerbaijan, 1990,” one chapter from my upcoming book The Adventures of the Thin Man and Andrea.

The broker said that he should sell the wine/ they got this guy that can arrange a buy.

Craig Finn

There are different types of marketplaces in the world. First there are legitimate, above-board markets, the shops and such you go to everyday. Then there are black markets, the so-called underground economy. Poised somewhere in between the legitimate and the underground, however, lies another type of market. This is a liminal sort of market, a market for which we need an experienced navigator. This is the realm of “the guy for that.”

We know we are in the realm of this kind of guy whenever we hear someone say “I got a guy for that.” Need a passport in three days? There’s a guy for that. Want to build a greenhouse but don’t want to drop thousands at the home center? There’s a guy for that too. Need to dump some garbage from a construction job but the landfill rates are exorbitant? Go get a guy. Need a prescription but your country doesn’t allow generic pills to cross the border? Another guy. Need to offload your wine cellar to pay the alimony? Craig Finn can find you a guy.

Now the great thing about the guy for that is, although in some cases all the above may be different guys, there are some guys that do it all. This is the type of guy who can get you cut-rate auto parts one day, scalped tickets to the Garden the next, and a little something something for your loft party on the third. Life is divided into specialists and generalists, and here we have the generalist version of the guy for that. Mike Ehrmantraut from the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul TV series is a classic example of a generalist guy for that.

How does one become a generalist guy for that I wonder? What winding set of life ways leads someone to be able to source whatever you need at short notice? What even are the essential skills of such a guy? I don’t know, but I think the generalist form of the guy for that pops up fairly regularly in the army. Soldiers, whether confined to base or in the field, generally have tightly restricted access to the many pleasures that life can afford. An abundance of rules, meals ready to eat, and a dreary PX may be all they have to work with. That’s where the guy for that comes in. This is the guy who knows when a few ladies are coming through town, down to party. This guy has a line of a van full of meats, has those sweet French cigarettes from across the border. This guy is on top of it. Army fiction is full of these kinds of guys, scamps and scoundrels who are yet always portrayed quite sympathetically by the author. The reason for this is easy to see—if the author has actually been in the army (as a great many nineteenth and mid-twentieth century writers were) he (usually he here) would know and appreciate the many benefits of having a guy for that around, no matter what other undesirable qualities the guy might possess. After all, anyone who hooks you up with quality meats is easily forgiven.

And then there is the specialist guy for that. The specialist guy for that usually possesses a certain rare and highly developed technical skill of some kind. While the generalist guy for that is basically a fixer, good at procuring items and turning them over at a mark up, the specialist guy for that is a technician, an artist even. Here we have the counterfeiter and the stamp forger. The guy who can jailbreak your phone, the safecracker. Here too we have the saboteur, and, of course, the bomb maker. As is easily apparent from this run down, the specialist guy for that tends more toward outright criminality than does the generalist.

There is a great scene in the film The Battle of Algiers where the Algerian rebels who are involved in an insurrection against the French are planning some bombings in the city. They go to a bomb maker, a guy in the back of a dingy shop, naturally, who leisurely and precisely wires the bomb. The scene is entirely wordless, and features close-ups of the bomb maker’s hands as he arms the bomb. The director Steven Soderberg has said that he could watch a whole film about this guy, and I know what he means. He means, I think, that there is a whole world behind the bomb maker guy that could be explored. Who is he? Where does he come from? How did he come to be the go-to-guy for bomb wiring in Algiers in 1961? What does he do in his spare time? We get answers to none of these questions, just a sparely presented introduction to his art. But that’s enough to know for certain that he’s the guy for that.

We will close with a couple of questions. First, what about the gal for that? My theory is that while the gal for that surely exists somewhere, it’s more likely that—proximal to the guy for that—she plays a slightly different role. Shady guys hang with shady gals, no doubt, but the gals tend to occupy another, perhaps larger and certainly less easily definable, place in the proceedings. This is a subject for a future post.

Second, what happens to the guy for that in a future where more of our movements, financial transactions, and even thoughts are tracked and monitored? Will the guy for that slowly go extinct? I don’t think so—at least I hope not. I suspect there will always be a place for the guy for that: the hustler who can see the angles, play the edges, middle the situation before anyone else even knows there is a situation.

All in all, regardless of the relative morality of guy for that activities, I salute him. Also, I gotta go build a greenhouse. I got a guy for that.

Note: If you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy another foray into linguistic anthropology “On “Dude” Usage.” You can find that here.

Posted on by Matt Thomas · 2 Comments

Keeganisms in the Wild: An Exploration

New Note: I’m republishing Keeganisms for colleagues and friends in the IB world. The piece grew out of my early years in international education, when I was trying to understand not just what we teach, but how adults actually grow, change, and make meaning inside institutions.

Readers interested in my time working at Ritsumeikan Uji and for the IB may also enjoy this piece on great and good talkers, and this one, a tougher piece, on being badly overworked in 2012.

This piece remains one of the clearest statements I’ve written about adult development, leadership, and the limits—and possibilities—of institutional life.

Finally, I am happy to report that the great Stephen Keegan is alive and well. Rock on, sir.

Note: This piece is a re-write of my very first piece of linguistic ethnography. For a fuller explanation of linguistic ethnography check out On “Dude” Usage. A “Keeganism” here is simply a notable phrase used by the former head of the IB Diploma Program for Asia-Pacific Stephen Keegan. Keegan was based out of the Singapore office, which was at the time one of three “hub” offices around the world.

Although fitting in with my other efforts at linguistic ethnography, in this piece I approach Keeganisms as if they are a rare species, like a certain kind of elusive salamander or something. If this little conceit if effective, as it hope it is, this is only because the Keeganisms under investigation are themselves so glorious.

Introduction:

When Stephen Keegan spoke, dozens listened. I was one of them. Darwin sailed around on the Beagle, ran across some turtles in the Galapagos, and his investigation of all that changed the world. While I don’t pretend that my little survey of Keeganisms will change the world, I would not be able to forgive myself if the species was simply lost to time.

Keeganisms were known to flourish between the years 2008-2013, in and around the greater Pacific Rim. Without being able to definitively establish the evolutionary arc of the species, naturalists suspect an increasingly florid progression over the years. For my own part, I was marginally aware of the species in 2008-2009, but did not realize the bounty that Keeganisms provided the scientific community until 2010. What follows is an analysis of some of the most common variants of the species as I was able to observe. All of these instances were found at IB events where Keegan was speaking in public.

Keeganism #1:

Here is Keegen in 2010 describing what the IB provides to its schools in the way of services: “We are not special. I mean, of course we are unique and special in many ways.”

Keegan is making the point that there is a consistency across high quality high school curricula and programs, and that the IB is not somehow in a wholly different category. The first sentence, “we are not special” is a bald statement to this effect. Keegan immediately realizes, however, that this is possibly an infelicitous soundbite, and qualifies with a politician’s cover “I mean, of course we are unique and special in many ways.”

Why is it a Keeganism? The classic form common to the first type of a true Keeganisms can be expressed as (A+D=A>D) where A (Affirmation)=a statement that shows an aspect of Keegan’s actual feelings or opinions about a given matter, and D (Denial)=a qualification which serves to qualify and reduce the sting of the truth-telling in A, but which does not fully counterbalance or neutralize the sentiment of A, thus A>D.

In this case, “I mean, of course we are unique and special in many ways,” gets Keegan off the hook for his heresy, however it is rather obviously a cliched cover (although one does appreciate the “in many ways.”) From a formal point of view, then, this is a classic Keeganism, perhaps the prototype; from a content point of view we can find better.

Keeganism #2:

And we did find better later that year or the next at a meeting of East Asian IB Diploma Coordinators. Here, Keegan is commenting on one of two commercially available software products which were competing for market share for IB schools at that time. “I am not promoting their product. I am promoting the concept of their product (….) They are the future. Of course the future will take many forms.”

In this case Keegan has an opinion about which product if preferable, however in his capacity as an IB employee he cannot state this outright. Instead, he gives an extended tribute to one of the competing companies before making clear that he is “not promoting their product.” Likewise, when he catches himself saying that their product “is the future,” he hastens to make sure we understand that multivalent nature of said future. Thus, he is again “covered.”

“I am not promoting their product. I am promoting the concept of their product” is actually a structural reversal of the classic Keeganism, which reappears in “they are the future. Of course the future will take many forms.” In the first, Keegan’s true opinion comes second, the denial first. Matters are further complicated by the introduction of the word “concept.” While it may be the case that a concept at times can be a free floating entity, in this case Keegan’s semantic distinction is taken, as it is probably intended, with a large measure of salt. Thus again a key feature of the species–the “denial” is consistently underweighted as compared to the affirmation: D+A=D<A.

With Keegan’s statement about the future, the classic structure is back, with a twist. The sentence “of course the future will take many forms” is so nebulous, so frankly metaphysical in its lineaments, that it verges on absurdity. It is also highly arguable, as while it may be true that the characteristics of the future will vary from place to place, it is at least possible to argue that the future will take precisely the form it takes: not a plurality of forms, but exactly one. Of more direct relevance is the point that if the future will take many forms, and in only one of those forms are “they” that future, then why are they “the future” at all? Of course, this is precisely the genius of this particular Keeganism; the “denial” is so slippery that is dissolves almost entirely, assuming instead a purely formal aspect (f). A+D=A(f).

Keeganism #3:

Not all Keeganisms have such an overt affirmation/ denial or denial/ affirmation structure, however. Others slip their denial/ qualification into the body of the affirmation itself. For example: “This alternative is being described as a valid reliable assessment.”

This Keeganism came at an IB conference for the Asian region, Keegan is describing highly contentious changes to the IB Visual Arts curriculum, which at the time the IB was defending against continued protests from art teachers (a fractious bunch when agitated it turns out). An advanced degree in communication theory is not required in order to parse this Keeganism; simply put the addition of “is being described as” shifts the locus of affirmation to some distant body doing the describing and away from Keegan, who is instead stating an unimpeachable fact–somebody somewhere is describing the assessment as reliable. Nonetheless, Keegan is not entirely distancing himself from the affirmation. In fact, there is no counter-affirmation present here, simply a qualification that insulates Keegan from a bald statement of validity and reliability.

Keeganism #4:

Here is Keegan at his final public appearance in Japan before his resignation: “We are delighted to be part of a global organization with global requirements.”

With this one, structurally we are in similar territory, but the valence differs. Keegan is describing some recent “rationalization” of IB services around the world, a change which would reduce some of the autonomy of the Asia Pacific regional office. In fact over the next few years the IB Asia Pacific office, and all of the “hub” offices, would be downgraded from essentially autonomous power centers with a Head of Office of their own to simply branches of the global organization with no clearly assigned leadership of their own. The acute listener will understand that Keegan’s loyalty is more to the region than the global organization; with some justice he feels that Asia-Pacific is the model region. This point has to be borne in mind when approaching this particular Keeganism.

On the face of it this is a fairly simple piece of sarcasm directed at the global infrastructure. However, there are a few complicating factors. First, Keegan uses the plural pronoun–thereby implicating his fellow presenter, and, perhaps, his entire regional office. Of course, the singular here would be far too “on the nose”; still, the “we” puts his colleagues in an interesting position. Second, the repetition of “global” here confers the style we have come to expect from a true Keeganism. Third, there is perhaps more ambiguity here than we might as first suspect. Keegan actually does understand the drive to standardize the regions and the need for global requirements, and he can explain this need in unironic terms. One suspects that an aspect of heart versus head is present here as well. In practice, however, on the communication front lines, Keegan has difficulty standing fully behind the ramifications of certain of these global requirements.

Here is where it gets tricky–the affection with which Keegan was held around the region was in large part a result of his ability to walk a very fine line between representing his employer and representing the region, its Diploma Coordinators, and its Heads of School. In order to sustain this somewhat ambiguous position, Keegan had to be able to ironize, even ridicule, the larger organization. However, were he to cross too far into irony or counter-statements he would risk losing credibility even as he gained affection. Keegan was aware of the bend of this curve, which is why his most overtly heretical affirmations were always immediately qualified. In essence, Keegan was excellent at “triangulating,” and in so doing, it could be argued, simply doing his job.

Keeganism(s) #5:

Then there are a set of statements that fit neither of the above types, but nonetheless qualify as Keeganisms on account of their peculiar word choice/ structure. As the following examples were all taken from a single presentation, one suspects that this category was in fact pretty capacious. Naturalists to this day do not entirely agree as to what counts as a true Keeganism, and there will always be a certain degree of controversy on this point. Here are a couple of examples of these disputed Keeganisms (IB Answers was a kind of help center which would answer stakeholders questions online or by phone):

“Will we be absolutely consistent in absolutely all areas? Absolutely not.”

“IB Answers has provided some answers. They specialize in answers, so it was easy to do.”

First, these enter the realm of possible Keeganisms on account of the repetition of a keyword across sentences. In the first instance, we can imagine the a more normal construction (e.g. a non-Keeganism): “Will we be absolutely consistent in all areas? Probably not.” The meaning here would be similar, however, the addition of the second “absolutely” moves us away from a mere admission of occasional inconsistency to something closer to a statement of purpose. Keegan is not simply stating that inconsistency will occur, he is celebrating it. I believe this to be a Keeganism.

As for the second, one has the suspicion that it may be a standard line, or at least to be making a repeat appearance. A minor area of controversy, of whispered side conversations among modern linguists, is to what extent all Keeganisms are original to their moment. While we have not in fact been able to prove the charge, a line like “they specialize in answers” does raise the antenna of the more conspiratorially minded among us.

Keeganism #6:

Here is Keegan again on IB Answers, which sometimes struggled to get their story straight: “You really have to have more effective answers. It’s a world that really has to be refined.”

The beauty of this Keeganism once again lies in the details. Were we to hear: “You really have to have more effective answers. It’s a process that really has to be refined,” this would account for nothing more than an honest admission of an area of the IB infrastructure that bears improvement. For anyone who knows Keegan, it would be completely unremarkable, as the steps by which an answer is generated through IB Answers are easily imagined as a process. But is IB Answers a “world”? One thinks of Tolkien, of the Wizard of Oz, of the books of Tintin–these are “worlds.” The construction is so odd, so specific, so suggestive of depths and complications unimagined and unimaginable to the listener, that we are swept up in the possibilities, and are once again in the presence of a genuine Keeganism.

Keeganism(s) #7:

“Global PD really has moved in a different way.”

“There is so much happening of a very intriguing nature around the world.”

In this final type of Keeganism we have the apparent qualifier which, under closer examination, turns out to be essentially contentless. After remaking on some recent changes to the IB’s professional development (PD) structure, Keegan’s “global PD really has moved in a different way” is possibly a compliment; however, the use of “different,” instead of any one of a large number of possible alternatives, “better,” “more effective,” “preferable,” etc., so obviously leaves the whole question open that we recognize a stealthy, if minor Keeganism. It is almost as if Keegan, so accustomed to hedging and jousting with language, finds himself here incapable of giving forth a bald, uninflected, statement of praise. From contextual clues we may be able to glean which way Keegan is leaning; on the face of it the sentence could mean absolutely anything.

As for, “there is so much happening of a very intriguing nature around the world,” but of course there is. There is so very much happening that we might almost be tempted to conclude that the future will take many forms.

Dedication: For Steve, thank you for your service.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On Good Talkers and Great Talkers (featuring my friends Kelly Rudd and Marc Campbell)

New Note: I am republishing this piece on the back of a recent exchange in our group chat with Kelly Rudd. As detailed below, Kelly is a great talker, and like many a great talkers he is also periodically full of it. We were reminiscing about a trip to the Selkirk Mountains in 1992 with Kelly, Mason Anderson, Richard Barkley, and myself. We were supposed to spend about a week up in the mountains, however a big storm came in. We had to shelter in place, and then left the next day. Kelly was responsible for the tent situation, and had only packed a tarp–no tent. So we struggled to put up the tarp in the rain and then I said I would sleep in the car rather than under the tarp. The whole area was already soaked, “pre-soaked” in Kelly’s questionable formulation, because at the end of the day, soaked is soaked.

In any case, after I said I would sleep in the car Kelly came up with the immortally absurd formulation: “Well you will actually get just as wet because of the condensation.” Uh huh. I slept in the car and was, predictably, bone dry and the boys were pre-soaked, regular soaked, and post-soaked. We drove on to Wyoming and had a great trip, but the condensation episode has stuck with me ever since.

This piece also features my friend from Hamilton College, Marc Campbell, as well as some fast talking by me. I hope you enjoy it.

I think I’m a pretty good talker. But I’m not a great talker. The reason I know this is because my friend Kelly is a great talker. And I can’t hold a candle to him.

In this piece I want to explore what makes a good talker good and a great talker great. Here, our conclusion can be partially stated upfront: a good talker will almost always also be a good BSer. Everyone knows what BS is, of course, and the term is usually used pejoratively, more or less, for example in phrases such as “oh that’s a bunch of BS,” or “come on dude, cut the BS.” However, BS is clearly also an essential element of the talker’s toolkit (from now on we will simply use the term “talker” unless specifically delineating between a good and a great talker). BS alone though does not a great talker make. There has to be something else involved. Let’s see if we can figure out what this might be.

We will start with an example from my professional life. I work in a high school in Japan, and it’s a fairly complex place. Although a Japanese school, it also features two different international courses and over time we have welcomed a wide variety of visitors from around the world for various reasons. A few years back, we hosted a group of educators from Abu Dhabi, including at least one representative of the Abu Dhabi Ministry of Education. My boss at the time was a Japanese gentlemen who spoke decent, but not phenomenal, English. He was set to give a welcome speech to this group, and my boss loved, absolutely loved, networking and hosting visitors at our school. It was his singular passion. The higher ranked or more “prestigious” they were the better. A visiting teacher from Elton College would be treated like the Pope, accorded all of the pomp and ceremony of a royal visit. Although an inveterate networker, my boss was not a natural public speaker, and he was uncomfortable making such an important speech in English, so he asked me to write something for him. Some people might have found this request to be annoying or even insulting, but I relished it. The role of the ghostwriter is one I greatly enjoy, because it gives me a chance to slip a few little things in there just for me. I have a bit of a weakness for inside jokes.

The Abu Dhabi visit was in early April, just in time for cherry blossom season in Japan. A few places around the world, including Washington D.C., celebrate cherry blossom season; however, in Japan it’s huge. People come from around the world to see the blossoms, and there’s even a special type of event called the hanami where folks from salarymen to universities students and everyone in between will set up tarps or blankets by the river or in a park under the cherry blossoms and get blasted. The Japanese refer to the cherry blossoms as sakura. So, I thought, what would be more natural than to open the speech with a reference to the sakura?

I don’t remember much about the speech, but I do remember the first few lines. They went like this:

It is my great pleasure to offer you a very warm welcome to Japan and (school name). We are deeply honored to receive such a prestigious group from the wonderful country of Abu Dhabi. And indeed, you have fortunately come at the perfect time to see the famous Japanese cherry blossoms, the sakura.

Now this might not sound too out of the ordinary, however for me the genius lay in the last comma. In my head I heard a deep and pregnant pause between “the famous Japanese cherry blossoms” and “the sakura.” As I like to say, it was funny to me. I sent the speech to my boss and we didn’t really have time to go over it, so I just hoped for the best. Now my boss wasn’t much of a writer, but he was, in his own way, a showman. He had clearly spent time practicing the speech, and when he spoke these first lines his delivery exceeded even my wildest expectations. Not only was the pregnant pause there, it was deeper and more profound than I had dreamed. He has perfectly grasped the import of the comma. This dude fucking nailed it.

What does this have to do with BS? Well, when I wrote the lines above, in my own way I was BSing. I knew my boss’s taste for VIPs ran deep and so made sure to lay it on pretty thick (“great pleasure,” “very warm welcome,” “wonderful country,” etc.). Also, the comma, in its own way, was total BS. And the fact that my boss killed his delivery meant that he not only understood BS on an elemental level, he relished it too.

Later on during that same meeting with the Abu Dhabi folks my boss presented about some English vocabulary system our school was using as part of the English curriculum. This was a software program designed by my boss’ buddy that the school had paid an absurd amount of money to lease. It was, predictably, a piece of trash. However, my boss built it up as the greatest piece of educational tech since whatever, and showed a little of it on an overhead screen. The visitors were no dummies though, and one of them asked a sensible question: “why did you decide to go with this essentially handmade program where there are a lot of well-known and tested commercial programs available?” My boss wasn’t going to touch that one, so he turned it over to me. Now, I knew this thing was complete garbage; however, I also recognized, in addition to the need to save face, the opportunity to lay on a little BS. So I said something like:

“Well, that’s a really good question (always start with this when BSing an answer because it gives you time to think)

we chose this program after looking carefully at the alternatives (not true—we had looked at no alternatives)

and we felt in the end that this program best met the very specific needs of Japanese learners (also total nonsense—there is nothing so specific about Japanese learners that a software program needs to be so tailored).

In all our experience working with Japanese students, we felt like we needed something bespoke and fit-for-purpose, and we are really happy with our choice… (when BSing it is advised to throw around words like “bespoke” and “fit-for-purpose” in the hopes of throwing your listener(s) off the scent).

I probably went on some more, but you get the idea. The questioner thanked me and we moved on, however I knew that I had not in fact thrown him off the scent. He knew that I was BSing; I knew that he knew that I was BSing; and I like to think that maybe he knew that I knew that he knew that I was BSing. If so, he played his part in our little production to a T as well.

How did I feel about packing so much BS into one afternoon? I felt great about it. In the long history of bullshit corporate communications, the exaggerations and white lies I told that day rank pretty low down the list in terms of negative externalities if you will, and our visitors went away feeling welcomed and catered to, BS vocabulary programs aside. I guess in this instance I was a “pretty good talker.” However a great talker needs to do more than smooth over an awkward question in an education meeting. A great talker needs to prove it when there is substantially more on the line. To explicate this point, let’s take a look at an incident where my friend Kelly talked some dude out of murdering us.

My friend Kelly is a great talker. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been a serial exaggerator, however, far from being a limitation to his conversational ability, it’s a huge asset. This is because, unlike another type of exaggerator who exaggerates their own role or place in a story (let’s call this the “narcissistic exaggerator,”) Kelly instead downplays his own role while simultaneously boosting usually one other player into comic, even mythic heights (let’s call this the “comic exaggerator”). Kelly is a lawyer, and if he’s telling a story about a country lawyer he’s run across, for instance, this fellow gets built up and built up, his every mannerism and turn of phrase turned up to 11, until we have not just a comic figure, but a heroic one. As for Kelly’s own role in whatever drama he is recounting, that gets dismissed with an “aw shucks, I was just kind of there” wave of his metaphorical hand. Kelly has had this ability forever, and has honed it to an art form. I have good reason to think that his abilities as a talker are instinctual, rather than learned, however, because of an instance where he had to draw on skills far different than his normal style.

One time my friend Kelly and I decided (well he decided and I went along) to walk from suburban Spokane where he lived all the way up to a kind of resort/ lodge place high up on Mount Spokane. The walk was about 20 miles, and would take all day. Now, a 20 mile hike is one thing—that’s pretty long—however hikes can be quite pleasant for those so inclined. This was not a hike though, as the whole thing was on public roads, most of them out in the middle of nowhere. All in all, this was not the best plan Kelly ever came up with, however we set out and were about 10 or 12 miles into the trek, outside of town, when a reddish car came flying down the hill in front of us. The driver saw us and swerved right at us. This, unfortunately, is something that sometimes happens in the U.S. for reasons passing understanding. This dude though didn’t just swerve toward us a bit, he full on tried to take us out. So much so in fact that his car went perpendicular to the road and halfway into the ditch and got stuck.

This seemed bad, and my instinct was to run with Kelly into the nearby field. Kelly, however, had other ideas. The guy got out of the car and started yelling at us: “you fucking kids…, fuck you…, etc.” Not very creative, but still pretty worrying. Kelly though had the situation in hand from the get-go. He walked right over to the guy (who was at least 10 or 15 years older than us) and started talking to him:

Hey buddy, what’s going on? You having a bad day man? Anything I can do? Looks like your car get a bit stuck there—that’s OK, my friend and I will help dig you out.

Now I knew Kelly pretty well and knew he was a good talker from way back as mentioned. But this was another level. And the effect on the irate driver was incredible. In no time at all the guy was apologizing to Kelly, telling him his woes, and asking how we could get his car out together. Sure enough a few minutes later we were all three pushing and pulling his car out of the ditch and he went on his way.

What was going on here? Kelly must have realized somehow that the driver didn’t bear any specific ill-will toward us and was just engaging in a little road-rage because he was an angry about something or other. Also, the guy’s car was truly stuck, and neither Kelly nor I are small dudes, so he might not have liked his odds if it came to a fight. But there was just something about the way Kelly approached and disarmed him so quickly that I couldn’t really wrap my mind around. I realized then that my friend Kelly was not just a good talker, he was a great talker.

Although I’ve never seen anyone else pull off what Kelly did on that day, the general form of what he did I have seen before. In fact, a very similar, but slightly lower-stakes, incident happened when I was in university and attended a fraternity party. I was not in a fraternity and didn’t want to be. I did go to some fraternity parties just because that was what people did. Occasionally these parties could be creative, but mostly usually they were every bit as cliched as you might imagine—bros broing out and trying to get laid, women doing whatever the female equivalent of broing out might be, drunk billiards in the basement, people passing out on jungle juice, etc. Not only do these sound like terrible parties now, they were pretty terrible even back then. Nonetheless, I was at one, along with some friends from my dorm including Marc Campbell. Marc is maybe not the purest form of great talker that Kelly is, but he’s pretty darn good. While Kelly’s style is often oratorical (and BS laden—more on that in a moment), Marc’s style is smoother and has more of a cool jazz feel. Where Kelly goes for the comedically dramatic exaggeration, Marc stays more in the realm of gentle patter. Both talkers though achieve a sort of hypnotic effect through their respective styles, and Marc’s patter came in handy at this particular party.

We were a group of about five, and had barely entered the door when some guy I didn’t know came up and started getting in our face for no apparent reason. He was directing his attention to another member of our group—maybe they had run into each other before? It wasn’t clear, but what was clear is that this guy was itching for a fight right out of the gate. Now I have been in plenty of situations where I have had to try to defuse something or someone from kicking off, and have some skills in this arena. However, most people’s instincts, my own included, still tend to be a little defensive. Most people, even if committed to defusal, might say something like: “hey dude, settle down. There’s no need to be so aggro man. Just chill.” This kind of approach can work, however there is no guarantee that it will. Sometimes people who are looking to pick a fight will fall back on a kind of bizarre and unwarranted self-righteousness, coming back with something like “I’m not gonna fucking chill man—don’t tell me what to do. You wanna see aggro, I’ll give you aggro.” So the “dude settle down” approach is a bit hit or miss. Marc Campbell could do better.

Instead of telling the guy to chill, Marc Campbell pulled out a Kelly-like move. Although he was not the direct object of the guy’s ire, he went right over to the guy and stuck his hand out. “Hi I’m Marc,” he said “nice to meet you. What’s your name?” Just like that. Marc didn’t even reference the fact that this guy was acting like a total ass-clown for no reason at all—in fact he acted like he didn’t even notice it. The effect on this guy was exactly the same as with the angry driver. The guy calmed down immediately and he and Marc started rapping. In no time at all the situation was completely defused and everyone was friends.

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Posted on by Matt Thomas

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s “The Social Construction of Reality” and Related Issues

Author’s Note: This piece is a re-write of a piece from my first blog, Classical Sympathies. At that time I was interested in the relationship between the individual and his or her place of work/ organization. Classical Sympathies was fortunate to have a number of regular readers, some of whom took the time to comment, sometimes at length. The blog got a surprising amount of traffic for some reason, although it is now lost to time. Some pieces from back then are, looking back, a little too flowery, however the style was the style. Andrew Inch, a guy that a uncatagorizable cross-section of people here in Japan knew back in the day, was one of the most prolific and interesting commenters, and I have left his remarks in this re-write.

Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality:

This piece will look in some detail at Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality, and comment on some of the ideas that it raises. Anyone who works in an organization will be aware that the intersection of the individual, in all of her preferences and particularities, and the institution can involve some friction. In The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann spend 45 pages on the topic of “institutionalization,” so they had obviously gave the matter some thought.

They make the point that while man (The Social Construction of Reality, published in 1966, uses the gender-specific term), makes his world, he is given to losing sight of this and projecting (or “reifying”) aspects of the social world so that they are perceived as entirely external and beyond his control. They write:

“Man’s self-production is always, and of necessity, a social enterprise. Men together produce a human environment, with the totality of its socio-cultural and psychological formations” (51).

Human culture, then, is invented. However, being prone to reification, people tend to:

“{apprehend} the products of human activity as if there were something else than human products–such as facts of nature, results of cosmic law, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world {and experiencing it} as a strange facticity, {…} over which he has no control” (89).

When mis-apprehending social reality as something other than the product of his own action and consciousness, man forgets that:

“the social world was made by men–and, therefore, can be remade by them,” but, ironically that,“reification is a modality of consciousness {…} Even when apprehending the world in reified terms, man continues to produce it” (89).

We can extrapolate the statement “even when apprehending the world in reified terms, man continues to produce it” to suggest that the perception of sedimented, externally controlled or created, facticity continually creates the very facticity in question. Put slightly differently, the denial of agency diminishes, even uncreates, free-will, while the exercise of free-will depends in large part, perhaps entirely, on the strength of one’s belief in it.

Now, this is not to argue that reification is simply false-consciousness, or that groupings within society do not go to considerable trouble to perpetuate and legitimate reification of their activities. Berger and Luckmann make this quite clear in their analysis of what they call “socially segregated subuniverses of meaning” such as “Hindu castes, the Chinese literary bureaucracy, or the priestly coteries of ancient Egypt” (85), (and we would add to this list lawyers, doctors, television pundits, university English departments, etc.). They write that subuniverses:

“become esoteric enclaves {…} to all but those who have been properly initiated into their mysteries {…} The outsiders have to be kept out {but} if the subuniverse requires various special privileges and recognitions from the larger society, there is the problem of keeping out the outsiders and at the same time having them acknowledge the legitimacy of this procedure. This is done through various techniques of intimidation {…} mystification and, generally, the manipulation of prestige symbols” (87).

“And generally the manipulation of prestige symbols” indeed. Those who engage, consciously or unconsciously, in the manipulation of prestige symbols are, in Berger and Luckmann’s language, involved in creating a “typification.” The acceptance of typifications, in turn, sediments social facticity and brings into being a taken-for-grantedness in the performance of social actors.

The authors indicate that while the typified actor may “act-into” a socially authorized way of acting in public, the same actor, in the privacy of their home, the confessional, or the bar may seek to establish a certain “role distance” through behaviors which blur, or indeed outright contradict, their public “face;” this distance is apt to shrink again when the times comes once again for the actor to take up their public role. In so doing, the actor re-activates that segment of the self which is objectified in terms of the currently available socially available typification(s).

When I started my first blog in 2009 I wrote at some length about why I wore a necktie at work, even though I didn’t really have to and some co-workers thought it was a little strange. My buddy Andrew Inch wrote an extensive, and highly perceptive comment on the topic which is instructive here. Mr. Inch, it will be apparent, is one smart dude. It’s kind of long, but it is worth it.

“Reflection on MT’s devotion to this apparently innocuous task, knotting a piece of cloth around his neck each morning, leads us towards what has become a key element of many recent theories of ideology. Derived from Pascal’s advice to non-believers, ‘kneel and pray, and then you will believe’, the French philosopher Louis Althusser sought to assert the materiality of ideas, and how ideology works through our actions as well as our words to define us as certain sorts of subjects. For Michel Foucault, one of Althusser’s students who sought to break with Marxism and the concept of ideology, the knotting of that neck-tie might have been considered a ‘practice of the self’, a way of disciplining oneself in line with a particular matrix of power and knowledge. The question that I think both of these thinkers struggle to address, however, is the extent to which we are able to shape our own selves, rather than simply being shaped by power. What scope do we have to resist the power embedded in these apparently mundane everyday motions? {…} By kneeling to pray, or standing in front of the mirror adjusting the knot, we perform belief and so take on socially available identities. And as for the rest of us in that office – what was the effect of not knotting the tie each morning? At times there were no doubt some who reveled in the non-conformity of that not knotting. In truth, however, did our alternative practices of the self not simply reproduce a slightly different, perhaps less respect-able but nonetheless conformist, relationship to the rules and rituals that regulated life in that particular setting? Was not wearing a necktie not just another kind of necktie after all?”

“In truth, however, did our alternative practices of the self not simply reproduce a slightly different, perhaps less respect-able but nonetheless conformist, relationship to the rules and rituals that regulated life in that particular setting?” This sentence is phenomenal, and predicated on a particularly alert and acute piece of self-knowledge. Mr. Inch is saying that those in the office who refused to put on a tie, or who flaunted the organizational dress code altogether, while thinking that they were “rebelling” and “sticking it to the man,” were in fact playing into a pre-determined archetype every bit as much as I was with my neckties and apparent “conformity.”

Mr. Inch is essentially making the same point that Berger and Luckmann do when they point out that roles and typifications are “endemic to social interaction {…} All institutionalized conduct involves roles.” And then, the authors bring matters home:

“The institution, with its assemblage of ‘programmed’ actions, is like the unwritten libretto of a drama. The realization of the drama depends upon the reiterated performance of its prescribed roles by living actors. The actors embody the roles and actualize the drama by representing it on the given stage. Neither drama nor institution exist empirically apart from this recurrent realization” (75).

In short, both Mr. Inch and Berger and Luckmann do not confine the acting out of prescribed roles, the submission to typification (e.g. “conformism”) to those in positions of authority within an institution. To the contrary, I read them both as saying that both the master and the servant, the “teacher’s pet” and the “bad boy,” the necktie wearer and the necktie shunner, the consummate insider and the professional rebel are all engaged in the recurrent realization of pre-typified activity.

Explication With Reference to Obama and Talleyrand:

Now, it is true that the above reading of Berger and Luckmann may leave the door open a purely cynical outlook by suggesting that all forms of behavior by institutionalized actors are equal. This is not quite what I wish to argue. Barack Obama has defined his political philosophy as “ruthless pragmatism.” While I understand this formulation, it does seem a little cold (as Obama is famously said to be) What if we added the word “principled” here? Could “principled ruthless pragmatism” sustain meaning without slipping irrevocably into the realm of the oxymoronic?

Let’s take a closer look in relation to organizational life as opposed to the political sphere. “Principled” because one’s initial agreement to engage with institutionalization (through the acceptance of a job offer for example) assumes a principled acceptance of the role one will be asked to play and the attendant tasks and behaviors that will be expected.

“Pragmatic” in that in order to accomplish anything in the social world, wherein competing interests, visions, and ideologies are, and ever will be, an unavoidable reality, one must be prepared to lose the battle in the service of, hopefully, winning the war. It has been my experience that the inability to lose a battle is a problem for many people in the modern workplace. Related to the ability to lose a battle is one’s attitude toward “compromise.” Is “compromise” a dirty word? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, the actor who blithely declares “there can be no compromise where my principles are concerned” may sooner or later find their principles encased under glass in their own private shrine to imagined rectitude. In other words, total denial of the possibility of compromise is tantamount to surrendering all hope of getting anything done. In the immortal words of William Jefferson Clinton, “sooner or later, you have to cut a deal.” On the other hand, there are a certain class of situations where certain compromises just do not feel acceptable, situations where one has what we could call an existential objection to the terms of the proposed compromise.

The question does not, I think, concern whether deals should be struck in general, they should, so much as whether any individual deals is in the long term interest of the project in question and the people involved with this project. This is where “ruthless” perhaps applies. At the very least, the pragmatist needs to accept in herself a degree of strategic focus where goals rooted in principle are concerned. We cannot deny, of course, that this is an easily misused sentiment—if we continually apply “pragmatic ruthlessness” to a project which we are deeply attached to there is the real danger of a concomitantly continual shifting of the moral goal-posts. In short, these are muddy waters.

Talleyrand, Napoleon’s foreign minister is, perhaps, most famous for his remark that “treason is a matter of dates.” Gives you the chills, does it not? Benjamin Schwarz writes of Talleyrand:

“Arguably a turncoat, possibly a degenerate {…} certainly a shameless flatterer and world-class bribe taker, Talleyrand was also the most skillful and farsighted diplomat of his age and a man of arresting grace, wit, and style {…} He was as seductive as he was obviously dangerous {…} Talleyrand subscribed to the idea that statecraft’s modest but arduous task is to enable one’s country to survive and prosper in the world as it exists–not to transform international relations and not to further the alleged cause of mankind” (The Atlantic, December 2007, 93-4).

A hero or a villain? Schwarz is not sure, but he is charmed. For my part, I see in Talleyrand perhaps an 18th century form of “principled ruthless pragmatism” where France’s survival and prosperity was the principle from which his ruthless pragmatism stemmed. While your own cause may or may not be the triumph of the French nation, the application of a ruthless pragmatism in the service of a deeper principle does hold a certain appeal. However, I just don’t personally feel that “ruthless” is really the most appealing qualifier for pragmatism in regards to acting within the public sphere.

Comment:

Instead, I am more interested in understanding how and when to “follow the rules” and surrender to form, as opposed to how and when to do a little end-run. To function effectively within an organization it is essential to realize the power inherent in form. At times, often times really, a “surrender to form” is required. However, instead of simply surrendering to form and that being that, we may be able to add a qualifier of our own. Certain situations may call for a “strategic surrender to form” for the moment, while at the same time “bracketing” or “pocketing” the possibility of the end-run. Here, perhaps, we may have a window into a pragmatic post-post-modern stance which takes post-modernism’s relentless questioning of form and turns it inside out, recognizing that the tyranny of form is something we bring upon ourselves by allowing form to tyrannize.

Put another way, we can expand slightly on Berger and Luckmann’s claim that “an apprehension of reification as a modality of consciousness is dependent upon at least relative derefication of consciousness, which is a comparatively late development in history and in any individual biography” (90). I would suggest that an apprehension of reification as a modality of consciousness is dependent upon at least relative dereification of consciousness which may then lead into the ability to either and/or alternately i) embrace reification and role typification as a strategy (that is to inhabit a form which brings with it certain prerogatives and forms of access), and ii) radically overthrow reification and typification through the recognition that the establishment of social facticity is but a spectacular bluff resting on the manipulation of prestige symbols and the shaman’s art whereby an illusory thinness is reflected as an eternal massivity. In so doing, we may be of service to truly worthwhile cause, protecting a space for action and free-will in the face of the ever-expanding institutionalization of both the public and the private sphere. That might be worth working on.

Dedication: For Mr. Inch. Thank you for commenting. You rock baby.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On “Dude” Usage

Note: This piece is a re-worked version of one of our early attempts at what might be called “linguistic ethnography.” Linguistic ethnography, as I see it, is basically the study of how language is used and evolves with special attention to the social role of language. A comprehensive look at dude usage is a bit beyond the scope of this blog; therefore, what follows is a breakdown of some of the more interesting dude variants as used, primarily (although not exclusively) by and between North American males. Longtime readers may recall the original version of this piece, which has been updated with a brand new dude variant.

Introduction:

“Dude” I think, goes back to cowboy culture and something called “dude ranches.” I don’t really know what a dude ranch is, however I suspect it is horse-related. I do though know a bit about the modern use of “dude.” Below are some examples of “dude variants in the wild.” I am neither endorsing or critiquing and of the phrases or behaviors described. Dude variants simply abide.

I: “Dude, what the fuck?”

One of the classic dude phrases, this is used to register sincere umbrage, usually with a friend or “mate.” Examples include: a friend says something unkind about a woman you both know, a friend steps in front of your putt on a golf course, a friend takes the last juice from your refrigerator without asking, etc. “Dude, what the fuck?” is a little tart, however it contains an opportunity for the offender to “climb down.”

Example:

Guy 1: Dude, I don’t know about that chick Tracy. She’s blowing me off and she’s really becoming kind of a bitch.

Guy 2: Dude, what the fuck? You know Tracy’s a friend of mine and she’s cool people. Come on man.

Guy 1: Sorry man, you’re right. It’s just been a rough week.

Guy 2: Dude that’s totally understandable. We love you man—we got you.

Comment: Illustrated here is a principal of male friendship where guys can speak sharply to each other, offend, and just totally get over it the next moment. Guys marvel at women, who seem sometimes to drag reconciliation after a conflict across a greater expanse of time, and count themselves lucky, in this instance, to be guys.

II: “Duuuuuude”

This is used when a guy sees a guy he knows and hasn’t seen for a while. It is often coupled with a hand shake and “bro-hug” and/ or a slap on the back.

Example:

Guy 1 (seeing his friend approaching): “Duuuuude”

Guy 2: Hey buddy, what’s up man?

Guy 1: Duuuude, how the fuck are you?

Guy 2: Dude, it’s crazy to see you man.

Guy 1: Dude, I know right. So what are we doing? Are we drinking yet or what?

Comment: Illustrated here is the multi-purpose functionality of both “dude” and “man,” which may seem interchangeable to the untrained ear, but in fact have different nuances and ideal placements in male patter. And, a good long “duuuuuude” can be very satisfying to unleash.

III: “Dude, that’s not the way we need to go here”

“Dude, that’s not the way we need to go here” exists in a family of phrases which includes for example, “dude, that’s really not gonna get it done,” “dude, I’m going to ask you to take a step back and check yourself for a second,” etc. These are all part of the very wide set of phrases that a manager can use with a direct. Modern managerial theory is divided on whether or not “dude,” is acceptable in supervisory conversations of this sort, and strong opinions exist on both sides. I side with the “yes” camp, but only in a basically dude-centric culture. As a middle-manger for many years I have often used phrases such as these while perhaps using the person’s name or just “hold on” in place of “dude.” But in my head, I’m saying “dude” every time.

IV: “Dude I’ve been thinking…”

This can go a lot of ways. It’s a crisper “dude,” and an entry into a SERIOUS TOPIC. Often found towards the end of drink two or into drink three, when guys are staring to get comfortable with their feelings, this phrase is usually either a precursor to a promise to spend more time together, or to a project or idea the guy has that he wants to share with his buddy.

Example:

Guy 1: Dude I’ve been thinking…

Guy 2: Uh oh. That’s never good…

Guy 1: Shut up dude and just listen for a second, man. I’m seriously thinking about building a greenhouse. Like seriously dude.

Guy 2 (thinking): Man, that actually sounds pretty sweet. A greenhouse. Cool man. That’s really cool.

Guy 1: I’ve got a line on this guy who can get me the parts for like $400. I just have to assemble it. Man, this could really be big.

Guy 2: Fuck, man. That’s awesome dude. I’m proud of you.

Comment: An exchange such as the above will often be accompanied by some light physical contact, actual or attempted, if not a full-on “bro-hug.”

V: “Dude, I’ve got this”

“Dude, I’ve got this” is used to tell a friend to back off from attempting to assist with a task a guy thinks he has under control.

Example I:

Guy 1 (seeing his friend trying to carry two beers up a narrow set of stairs at the bar): Dude, let me give you a hand.

Guy 2: Thanks dude, I’ve got this.

Guy 1: Of course you do dude. But we’ve all had a few and I just don’t want you to spill anything.

Guy 2: Dude, I said I’ve got this.

Example II:

Guy 1 (watching his friend trying to fix a flat tire on another friend’s bicycle): Dude I think you may need to take the tire all the way off first.

Guy 2: Thanks dude, I’ve got this.

Guy 1: Sure dude. I’m just not sure you’re gonna be able to fix it like that.

Guy 2: Dude. I’ve got this.

Comment: “Dude, I’ve got this” is clearly a softer way of saying “back off,” and if you push a guy who is in “I’ve got this” mode, you may in fact elicit a “back off.” Because in most cases neither guy wants to get to the “dude back off” stage, most of the time Guy 1 will concede after the second “I’ve got this” is played. In Example I, Guy 2’s repetition of the phrase is more or less in the same tone as its initial use. In Example II however, we see the tone of Guy 2 shift with the repetition. While “thanks dude, I’ve got this,” is said in a light, casual tone, “Dude. I’ve got this” sees him breaking out the pause-as-warning. So in fact it would sound something like this: “Dude (pause) I’ve got this.” As implied above, this guy usually ends the conversation.

VI: “Alright dude”

“Alright dude,” is usually said towards the end of a conversation or phone call and serves as an indicator of a positive conclusion to the encounter.

Example:

Guy 1: Alright dude, it’s been good catching up.

Guy 2: Dude, for real. Always fun man.

Guy 1: Let’s do it again.

Guy 2: Cool man—I’d like that.

Guy 1: Alright dude. You be good.

Guy 2: Dude, bro, it’s all good. Check you later.

VII: “Dude, check this out”

“Dude, check this out” is a highly versatile phrase used to draw a friend’s attention to a matter of interest.

Example I:

Guy 1: Dude, check this shit out. It’s a shuffleboard, man. Whaddya say?

Guy 2: Duuuuude, shuffleboard…

Example II:

Guy 1: Dude check this chick out right over there, behind the begonias. She’s just looked your way, like three times.

Guy 2: Shut the fuck up man. She’s not looking at me. Get out of here, dude.

Guy 3: Dude, she totally is. You should totally go over and say hi.

Guy 2: Come on guys. Knock it off.

Guy 1: Dude, she just did it again…

If you have come across a dude variant that you think merits inclusion pop it in the comments with an example or two and we’ll see what we can do.

Posted on by Matt Thomas · 1 Comment

On the Prefix “Soft”: Part I

The prefix “soft” is incredibly useful. Generally speaking, it indicates either actual relative softness (e.g. “soft cream,” a softer form of ice cream), or a certain gentleness and/ or flexibility obtaining to a non-tangible concept (e.g. soft schedule). This piece (which will be broken up into a couple of posts) will explore a number of instances of the prefix “soft” at greater or lesser length.

“Soft-schedule”

Francis Wade in the classic blog post “Hard vs Soft Scheduled Items” comments thusly on soft scheduling:

Professionals who undertake the discipline of Scheduling at higher skill levels (Orange and Green belts) have their calendar as the central point of focus (…) Their lives would be made much easier if Outlook were to distinguish between different kinds of segments, recognizing them as either “hard” or “soft.

(Let’s just pause for a moment to appreciate Wade’s capitalization of “Scheduling,” as well as his reference to “Orange and Green belts” as scheduling skill levels. This dude is serious about scheduling.) Wade here hits on an essential point, Outlook (the Microsoft program) does not (or did not, Wade was writing in 2011) allow users to classify schedule items as “hard” or “soft,” viewing instead all items as identically fixed. In Outlook, something is either on or off one’s schedule. This is a problem according to Wade because:

A soft item is one that only involves the user, and can easily be moved around one’s calendar, with few immediate consequences. They might have great importance, but a late start would not endanger the end result.

Obviously, Wade is differentiating a soft item from a “hard item.” Thus, in the realm of scheduling, “soft” indicates that the item is flexible because it is individually owned. For example, a teacher may have “grade papers” on her schedule at an appointed time, however in practice everyone knows that this schedule item is fungible.

In my opinion, Wade is right on as far as he goes. His point about Outlook is a seminal one. However, I do not agree that we can only soft schedule something that applies only to ourselves. I believe we can just as easily soft schedule a call with a friend or a meeting at the pub. If my friend texts me and wants to speak on the phone tomorrow, I might reply with “sounds great, let’s soft-schedule that for 2 PM.” This means, clearly, that 2 PM is the target time, however it may be a little earlier, or, more probably, a little later. If you think about your own life you will probably recognize the role that soft scheduling plays in it. In fact, soft scheduling is everywhere, you probably just don’t use the term.

(Before we go any further I want to address the issue of hyphens. Mr. Google suggests that “soft schedule” should not be hyphenated, nor, in fact, should basically any of the terms this piece will examine. I can give this one to Mr. Google because it is just easier to skip the hyphen. However, logically, and even emotionally, I like the hyphen for a lot of “soft” prefixes. This is because the hyphen, in my view, serves to attach the prefix to the term, thereby underlining the fact that we are engaging in an act of proactive and meaningful categorization.

An additional grammatical point here is that nowhere in Wade’s piece, for example, does he use “soft schedule” as a verb phrase, or indicate that we can do so. Folks in general massively underrate the effectiveness of turning a noun phrase like “a soft scheduled item” into a verb phrase “to soft schedule.”)

In any case, you get the idea with soft scheduling. Let’s move on.

“Soft pedal”

A soft pedal originally referred to a piano pedal, which is interesting, however for our purposes it means something else. According to Collins dictionary: “If you soft-pedal something, you deliberately reduce the amount of activity or pressure that you have been using to get something seen or done.” (Look at this s***—Mr. Collins Dictionary is hyphenating soft-pedal! Mr. Google, though, disagrees. Why would we hyphenate soft-pedal and not soft schedule? What’s going on?)

We see soft-pedaling all the time in politics. A politician or party will advance an idea and then back away slightly from said idea without entirely abandoning it. They just turn down the temperature around it. It will be apparent that soft-pedal is lexically and conceptually related to a number of other idioms, for example “tap the breaks,” “put on the back-burner,” “let’s put a pin in that,” and, my favorite and perhaps quasi-original to me, “to bracket.”

(When we bracket something, we acknowledge the existence, and importance, to one or more parties in a conversation, of the item in question while indicating that the item needs to wait or be placed in the background for the time being. We may bracket an item because we don’t have time to deal with it right now, because it doesn’t fit conceptually with what else we are doing, or because it is too sensitive, political, or otherwise complex to address at the current moment. As an example, let’s imagine a newly hired HR manager at a large company. In the first week on the job she is told by multiple people of an alleged instance of sexual harassment from a senior male manager to a subordinate younger female. The HR manager is told that everyone knows about this instance and that nothing has been done or said on any level. Now, our HR manager (let’s call her Jessica) is in a tight spot—obviously the allegation is a live issue, and perhaps a growing one as it has not even been acknowledged. Also, by very virtue of the fact that this complaint has come to Jessica several times immediately after her hiring it is clear that other employees are expecting her to do something about it. And she should. On the other hand…Jessica is brand new. She probably does not have a full handle, or even much of a grasp, of the corporate culture or power dynamics at the company. She does not know who to go to, necessarily, and even if there is a specified reporting flow for these kind of complaints, and, this point is crucial, she knows already that even if there is a flow it is not functioning properly. In fact, if she was to bring the matter immediately to a direct superior she could well be stepping on a political land mine. So our Jessica, god bless her, may say to her colleague something like: “I get it. This sounds like a serious issue and I understand that the fact that it has not been addressed only exacerbates the situation. However, let’s bracket it for the time being, and in the meantime I’ll try to learn more and see what the right next step might be.” Now in theory is this the right call? Maybe not. Maybe Jessica should go guns blazing up the chain. But no, she really shouldn’t. She should listen, observe, assess. In other words, she should probably bracket.)

Back to soft-pedal. Unlike soft schedule, which is basically always a positive, soft-pedaling can cut both ways. Soft-pedaling can be a risk. Take for example the Democratic primary contest for the 2020 presidential nomination in the United States. As any political watcher knows, candidates in primaries generally tack further to the left or right and in the general tack back to the center. The reasons for this are obvious, however in the digital age where every word, every micro-shift in a candidate’s position, gets analyzed in depth in real time, it is becoming far harder to tack from side to side without coming off as inauthentic. In the 2020 primary, Bernie Sanders’ plan for Medicare for All became the default position of anyone running anywhere near the left lane of the party. Now, the fact that Medicare for All was unlikely to get passed even under a Sanders administration, much less that of a bandwagon candidate like Kamala Harris, made it basically safe for a leftish candidate to champion the cause right through the primary.

Two candidates, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, initially jumped on-board with Medicare for All as they were trying to run in the left (Warren) or center-left (Harris) lane. Other candidates including Joe Biden (the eventual winner) and Pete Buttigieg were running basically as centrists, so they weren’t obligated to support it. Others, such as Andrew Yang, were niche candidates and/ or somehow on a tangent to the left/ center axis, and were therefore not endangered by the issue one way or the other. Harris and Warren could have just stuck with their support, however as the primary advanced they felt compelled to soft-pedal their position. This was probably from some combination of media demands for them to differentiate their plan from Sanders’, advisors telling them they needed to triangulate ahead of the voting, and, in Harris’ case, a lack of a political core that left her susceptible to political wobbling. Harris was going to lose in any case; she was a bad candidate with a toxic relationship to her staff and a habit of telling ridiculously embellished life stories. Warren, on the other hand, arguably lost her shot at the nomination because of her decision to soft-pedal Medicare for All. She couldn’t get her position straight, started to dissemble and flop-about, and her candidacy stalled in the Fall of 2019 as a pretty direct result. Such was the fall-out from her soft-pedal.

Nonetheless, in politics and in organizational settings the soft-pedal can be a crucial move. In an office environment a manager or manager group may try to roll out a new initiative and run into headwinds from employees. Said managers then have a choice, they can continue to push straight through and force the initiative, in the process risking the goodwill and enthusiasm of the team, or they can soft-pedal. Here, the soft-pedal is often the right call because it is quite different from “the climb down.” When managers climb down (or “back down” in more common parlance), they may put the issues to rest however they will likely lose face. Sometimes a climb down is necessary and hygienic, as when the managers realize the initiative is simply a non-starter and it’s best to cut their losses. The soft-pedal, however, allows for two things: i) it allows the managers to save face and to maintain the flexibility to bring the initiative back, perhaps in a revised form, at a later date, and ii) by leaving the initiative on the theoretical table while taking it “off the front burner” employees are reminded that the point behind the initiative may still be important in the future. When and if the initiative is brought back, the issue set has been “seeded,” and this seeding can “prime” employees to be more receptive the next time around when the initiative (by this time re-packaged) is re-introduced. Of course, the managers can also just allow the initiative to die off of its own accord over time while avoiding the (more sudden) climb down.

Such are the pros and cons of the soft-pedal. Handle with care.

to be continued…