The War in Heaven and the Nameless Virtue
You have a new boss (not the one portrayed above). Against all precedent, he doesn’t change all the old boss’s policies. He keeeps all the ones that working. You’re pretty impressed with your new boss. He is one of a kind.
Most bosses have to put their own stamp on things, even if they have to fix what isn’t broken. It feels more like an authentic expression of themselves that way. It feels more boss-like. It feels like being in charge. It takes a rare virtue to accept the implied subordination of accepting the work that someone else has already done. The nameless virtue, in fact.
I see Satan as the archetype of all those new bosses. He was quick to point out the flaws in the existing plan. His plan wouldn’t work as well. In fact, it wouldn’t work at all. But by a superficial metric it looked better on paper: Souls Returned to Heaven, Estimated Yield 100%. It also was more him. It put him squarely at the center. It expressed himself. Not just implementing, but creative. Not just working towards a goal, but giving himself scope. His plan looked good by what was, to him, a much less superficial metric: Satan, Large and in Charge, 100%.
The Founder of the firm preferred his own ideas and promoted another manager that he thought would implement it better. Satan started a whispering campaign and managed to disaffect nearly a third of the company. Ultimately mass firings were the only way to save the corporation.
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: LDS, Mormon, Mormonism, nameless virtue
Bruce Charlton
November 23, 2014
@G – Yes indeed – and it’s even worse! Because if you question the new boss’s plan for 100 percent salvation; then he will paint you as someone who is either complacent with less than 100 percent, or actively wants to see people damned.
In modern public sector institutions, I have experienced managers who avoid real managing – difficult decisions about priorities, especially what parts ought to be cut to build-up growth in other parts – by saying they want all round growth in all parts.
Perhaps this is one of the commonest and most insidious aspects of modern dishonesty – the refusal of leaders to make tough decisions in a clear and explicit fashion, to acknowledge that all good comes at a cost – and explain that cost; then follow-through despite that cost.
But when a leader does try to do this, he will surely be removed by some committee above him – committees can’t make tough decisions.
A personification of Satan for modern times would be the voting committees that administer almost everything – from supreme courts and parliaments down to peer reviewers and job interviews and casting committees and the millions of casual votes here and there to decide this and that.
Satan works at the level of the invisible, indefinable committee decision, but none of the participants in that decision feel responsible for it. Evil has, apparently, been conjured ex nihilo – from nothing.
Bookslinger
November 23, 2014
@BC, I think you’d find Ann Coulter to be a kindred spirit. She makes the same connection in her book “Demonic” which uses Gustave Le Bon’s “The Crowd” as a basis. (I left a comment on your blog, but the two links in it may cause it to be treated as spam.)
Your themes of PC-ism are dealt with in her books:
– Mugged
– Demonic
– Treason
– Godless
– Slander