Feelings v Facts — Sea Change?

Posted on by

Big Red Car here on a slightly gloomy morning, y’all. How are you feeling on the heels of the Super Bowl? Feelings?

Was it SUPER for you and how are you feeling? [News flash — nobody really cares, but the Big Red Car is just trying to be polite. He will get that way from time to time. Not often, but sometimes.]

Somebody told the Big Red Car — never bet against old guys with super model, legal immigrant wives in anything. Sounds like good advice, no?

LUIS GUERRA JR./©2011 RAMEY PHOTO 310-828-3445 NO ITALY/NO SPAIN New York, May 2, 2011 Arrivals at the "Alexander McQueen - Savage Beauty" Costume Institute Gala At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art. PGagu68

Tom Brady, an old guy with a super model, legal immigrant wife. Winner.

So, the Big Red Car has been thinking about some things.

The Age of Feelings

We have been enmired in an age of feelings. Stop right here and go read something else if you don’t agree. Get a cortada and check your Insta.

Recently, we have been “feeling” a lot of things which hit its apogee with the former President Obama — this is not a political diatribe as the Big Red Car has been on pretty damn good behavior for the last six months of the campaign. Check the paucity of political posts. [OTOH, The Boss has been out there on the web making friends of thin-skinned, whiny liberals of all stripes.]

Full disclosure: The Big Red Car has never been comfortable with leaders who cry. Maybe it’s the military thing. Maybe it’s an Old School thing. Cryers make the Big Red Car nervous. Very nervous.

President Obama would publicly emote his feelings with displays of tears and totally rehearsed speeches filled to overflowing with faux emotion. Business leaders, also, were always telling us how some initiative was intended to counter some bad feeling. You may pick your own cause.

The liberal leaning, whiny lefties, still wrestling with how the Electoral College works, are notorious for communicating how their feelings are in the ICU. Stop it. [Sorry. Got caught in a rip tide there for a few seconds.]

The Age of Results

With the turn of a new year, the election, a new administration, the Super Bowl, it feels (haha, feels) as if the orientation of mankind and society has changed to results. Not what you feel but what you can actually get done. This new President, this Trump person — the rest of the White House can’t keep up with him. What a pace for a 70-year old guy, no? He even works on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Boss sees this with his CEO clients. There are some who talk a damn good game and, then, there are the ones who show up in overalls, work boots, jeans, flannel shirts, and work gloves — and CRUSH it. They do the work. They get the results. Only then do they decide how it makes them feel.

Work, results first. Feelings second.

Winning feels good. Winning requires results, not feelings. Feelings come after the results.

That’s it for today. Results. The Age of Results is upon us. Results talk and bullshit walks.

So, CEOs, here’s the advice — go pick up a set of overalls, get fitted for work boots (break them in carefully, so you don’t get blisters), buy a flannel shirt, get some deerskin work gloves, buy a bandana — get to work. The problem with identifying opportunity is it is often camouflaged as work.

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car looking for a paint job. I want results and I want you to get them. The Age of Results.

The Donald wife

President Trump, a guy with a super model, legal immigrant wife who knows something about winning.

Do not bet against old guys with super model, legal immigrant wives, y’all. Haha. That cracks me up.cropped-LTFD-illust_300.png

9 thoughts on “Feelings v Facts — Sea Change?”

  1. Having been in the position many times as the one Knighted to drive new results in a company I see patterns emerging in the media and political class that are common in business re-engineering.
    First a leaders is brought in who is measured on results so that is what they do. The team learns quickly there is a new game and players take their roles:
    1) The serious team player – gets on the program quickly, has a few “WTF” Moments when Work life balance is replaced with results equal rewards and success is so much sweeter than a sweat lodge! A keeper.
    2) Play alongs – they pretend thinking they can out stay the new pace or new leader.
    3) Resentment dungeon dwellers – Play alongs who in time grow dark and bitter
    4) Warriors of the old stage – usually connected but begin campaigns that range from Passive aggressive to cloak and dagger with the board. They require a band of useless idiots to mount protests.
    5) Winners, those that have been waiting for this for a long time and embrace, ask relevant questions, are curious about what can happen. (Promote these folks and hire their friends) These are folks who prefer a bonus check to a latte and threw their participation trophies in the trash, better yet sold them to kids who never showed up for a profit! These folks are not victims, they understand that everything is a choice and every choice returns something.

    If a leader can drive for long enough the non- winners begin to grow silent. Human nature likes winners it is in our DNA. Others will loose their relevancy over time.

  3. Yup, feelings, AKA, emotions. Those topics took me a while to understand.

    I grew up emphasizing the rationalize side and not the emotionalize side, and that was good in some ways and bad in others.

    Here is some of the bad: To understand emotions, likely need to start with those emotions best known to you, your own.

    If don’t understand emotions and pursue just rationalism, then often will hurt the emotions of others, intending to or not, and that’s a good way not to get invited to the dance, party, meeting, dinner, anything.

    For a mistake, just assume that others are highly devoted to rationalism and are willing to suppress their emotionalism, their “feelings” in favor of (your version of) rationalism! That’s a good way to have a lot of time alone.

    Early on, I liked music, a lot. But I liked instrumental music, that is, without words. Why? Because I could find the words less than fully rational.

    So, the instrumental music did an end run around filters of rationalism!

    So, tough not to like

    R. Strauss, The Blue Danube, Vienna Philharnonic Orchestra.

    at

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6t318FgFdc

    right, with four pretty girls!

    For more pretty girls,

    Australian Ballet, Coppélia, 1990

    at

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK6koS1b0uQ

    right, where an old guy wants a pretty girl so much he tries to make one, Coppélia, in his workshop.

    So, lots of emotionalism, and can’t argue with its meaning on the grounds of rationalism!

    Next, once understand feelings, need to try to guess the feelings of others and, then, to respond in ways that help their feelings. This skill is difficult enough if know to try and learn and do try and much more difficult if don’t even know to try.

    Next lesson, I got from an expert:

    Of COURSE, women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems between men and women.

    One of the biggest mistakes I made was to fail to understand the emotions of the girl I knew when she was 12-13 and I, 14-15. Now that I understand MUCH more than I did then and remember many of the clues I got then, I can guess what the heck was going on: Net, every second we were together, maybe 500 hours alone, many women and girls had told her some really scary things about boys and men; her emotions were screaming at her; and she was struggling with all her strength not to give in to her emotions.

    In short, she was 99 44/100% emotions and the rest water. She was also the prettiest human female I ever saw, in person or otherwise, e.g., from Hollywood or models. Literally. No joke. She was a total dream — pretty, sweet, darling, adorable, precious.

    Rationalism? That was my job, and I was good at it, but I also needed to understand her emotions and do mostly just two things: (1) Via her emotions make her happy — the happiest hours I ever had were when I was with her and she was happy to be with me (no doubt one of Mother Nature’s favorite ideas). (2) Keep her safe.

    I was big on keeping her safe; without any consideration of rationalism, I would have instantly risked my life to defend or protect her. No joke. Indeed, once to accept her invitation to come see her, I had two choices: (1) Walk my bicycle on a sidewalk and be late or (2) ride my bicycle in the street, four lanes, fast, heavy traffic, with no room for a bicycle, with cars going by me 1 foot away at 40 MPH. I took (2) where I could have been knocked off my bicycle and run over 10 times, seriously injured or killed. I knew it was that dangerous but didn’t want to be late to see my girl. I’d ridden to another state, nearly to a third one, all over my city and out of town, and that one night was by far the most dangerous riding I did. I had about 25% chance of dying.

    I really liked the girl; right, grand understatement since I really loved the girl. Lots of emotionalism. But, what the heck is the purpose of rationalism if not to enable emotionalism?

    I would have been much more willing to risk my life to defend or protect her.

    That girl and I could have done really well, safely, been high school sweethearts, gotten married, done well as husband and wife, mother and father, parents and grandparents, and, thus, achieved “the greatest prize life has to offer”. But, due to my failure to understand her emotions, from the strong clues I did have, we had a misunderstanding and lost that great opportunity.

    The desire to keep a girl happy is not nearly new: A common situation is a daughter of 4 having her father wrapped around her little finger: She has learned that to get whatever she wants from Daddy, at most she has just to shed a tear — one is enough, two already suspicious overkill! With two tears she will start to look no merely sad but manipulative, which if course commonly soon she is!

    Lesson: Emotions are darned important, and everyone needs to understand emotions, both their own and those of others.

    This day, Super Bowl LI plus 1, is a good day to understand rationalism versus emotionalism!

    For rationalism, it does look like in the first half of the game Brady came to understand the Falcon defense, and in the second half he took that defense apart like a kid taking apart, say, Daddy’s lawn mower engine! Ah, Brady did rationalism!

    But, now, in

    Warner Todd Huston, “A Legion of Liberals in Despair Over Patriots Win”. Breitbart, 6 Feb 2017.

    at

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/06/legion-liberals-despair-patriots-win/

    with

    Immediately the hash tag #notmysuperbowlchampion started trending with many slamming Brady and Trump.

    Naturally, many liberals were crushed by Super Bowl 51 and took to Twitter to lament that it felt just as bad as how they felt on Election Day last November when Trump pulled his own come-from-behind win.

    Um Atlanta actually won if you look at this other metric that nobody counts.#notmysuperbowlchampion pic.twitter.com/hHmDhpsOvY

    Did the Russians hack the Super Bowl, too? Is nothing sacred?

    — Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) February 6, 2017

    the emotionalizing snowflakes were melting!

    For more, as in

    Ken Klukowski, “Travesty of Legal Errors in Immigration EO Lawsuit”, Breitbart, 6 Feb 2017.

    at

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/06/travesty-legal-errors-immigration-eo-lawsuit/

    the judge’s temporary restraining order (TRO) of Trump’s executive order (EO) banning immigration from a few heavily poor, heavily desert, heavily Mid-East and African countries, long ago identified by the previous Administration, was some really badly written legal work.

    So, with such bad rationalism, we have to suspect a gross excess of emotionalism.

    That’s the bad news.

    Maybe the good news is that it is fairly clear that the TRO and the whole action will be rejected by the courts. Then the challenges to Trump’s EO will be dead.

    So, for some more good news, if get sued, have some overly emotional plaintiffs low on rationalism do the suing so that have an easier time winning the case!

Comments are closed.