It may go down in history as one of the all-time-great discoveries of our pre-COVID-19 Age (assuming, of course, we really do enter a different age in COVID'S aftermath)
I mean our Global Modern Discovery that certain things we humans have long been conditioned to recognize as virtues - patience, kindness, humility, consideration, attentiveness, etc - have been grossly over-rated.
The trouble with these ancient virtues is obvious: Thinking of other people all the time - or hell, even most of the time - is just too much work. And worst of all, work of the wrong kind (which means, conversely, one can never work too hard at the right things). There are just too many different kinds of people out there for them all to be worth thinking about. Even among the various individuals you're likely to meet on a given day, there are far too many different types of them even to keep track of, much less acknowledge and respect and be kind to individually. Surely, then, there must be some larger-scale - or even global? - method of streamlining your dealings with all of them? And in such a way as conduces to the most productive and profitable advantage of the Aggregate Whole?
The solution rather, as our Age has been busy discovering,* is to think and reflect upon the needs of others as little as possible, and instead to think primarily of oneself, but with one CRITICAL proviso: It has got to be your right Self.
* Or at least until we were so rudely interrupted by global pandemic.
The Key - you guessed it - is to make one's Self so perfect(ionist), so efficient, so self-lessly driven and determined and dedicated, so exquisitely, exactingly conscious and conscientious of every slightest flaw, facet and function of the Whole Operation* - to make yourself, in a word, so indispensable - that the people around you don't just excuse your many apparent rudenesses and inconsiderations; they applaud and encourage them. Indeed, they dread the prospect of you becoming even marginally nicer, for fear that the Whole Operation - which could be anything: a country, a company, a church or charity or other agency, or even a single family or household - the Whole Operation will come crashing down like London Bridge. Possibly even to the lasting detriment of the whole global economy. Or at least of your country's place in it.
* Which is, after all, to be mindful of practically everyone in your purview. Maybe not so much of their needs, but most definitely of their uses?
And meanwhile, most of your peers and colleagues - so far as they value their jobs, positions, professional and collegial esteem and reputations, etc - will want to make you more or less their Gold Standard of Indispensability. Even if they otherwise hate you for your seeming abruptness, harshness, etc. Which means that, more and more, they're going to want to see you not just as a necessary prod and goad to their own best efforts, but as an exemplary model of selfless diligence and dedication to the Aggregate Whole (however hard you may be on the individual parts). Or if nothing else, an exemplary rival.
So what's all this got to do with the Coronavirus? Nothing directly, so far as I'm aware. It just seemed to me as good a time as any to reflect on certain fashionable ways of recognizing and rewarding talent - especially within our busy organizations and other collective entities. Ways that, for all their seeming functionality, may become all too quickly dysfunctional in crisis times. And all the more so, during our present crisis of organizational (self-)confidence. As good a time as any to reflect, namely, on those policies of personnel recruitment and advancement that, for all I know, played a vital role in propelling both of us Indispensables - Superchina and Superamerica - into our respective places of highly stoic unpreparedness for the Global Challenge of our Lifetimes.
(Edited.)
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