Politics

It is interesting to note that the average human dedicates so few mental resources to the comprehension of grand strategy that their comprehension of the words of politicians may as well be nil. Simply put, a politician needs only manipulate their emotions and reframe their thoughts in order to push forward a plan that would make little sense to any learned thinker. The politician operates without independent scrutiny or intellectual audit. When I think about how politics works, I cannot help but be both amazed and disgusted by it. I am amazed by how easily it works when one understands the principles, and disgusted by the same. Can it be that the majority of humans are little better than animals in comprehending such matters? This is applicable in the workplace as well, whereby a more politically savvy co-worker may climb the corporate ladder and thus gain more command than one of his/her intellectual capability may suggest. In fact, it seems that the people who dedicate more time/thought to developing political prowess than technical skill wind up on top. This creates a vicious cycle that is detrimental to organizations. It seems to me that there is a sweet spot that must be hit whereby a person has a basic grasp of political savvy while primarily developing technological savvy. A good example of the archetype would be successful technopreneurs who successfully market their own product while being rather adept at the technologies themselves. This, I think, would be a fairly productive balance point.