Thursday, November 15, 2001

Jeneane, that sure is good advice, that Chicken Lomain tip, I'll remember that one.

I didn't take your rape of voice comment overly literally, I just took some poetic licence with it to fit into my own post. As I noted, analogies are inadequate substitutes, but as Chris notes, stories (analogies) are all we've ever had. Warts and all, they'll just have to do.

I'm curious about your humour policy corporation. I read last night where Chris talks about the corporation having no soul, no heart, and no sex. This resonates with me because I've often found myself explaining to people (who had apparently expected more sense from their employers) that a corporation has no brain, no intelligence.

Instead, they just have policy. This may be because they are top-down command and control junkies as Chris reckons, or it may be because it's just the simplest way to cover a lot of ground. Or maybe it's just that that's all that they have. When all you have is a hammer then everything starts to look like a nail, as the saying goes.

If you work in business you will constantly find examples of policies that have unintended (not to mention ludicrous) consequences, and you'll routinely find them being ignored by the people who are supposed to enforce them.

And a good thing that is, too!

But this also intrigues me because it links into some fundamental political philosophies that interest me. Gonzo is in some senses a celebration of individualism, a liberation of the individual from enforced servitude to a collective policy in the formulation of which the individual had no participation, and (to the degree that it succeeds) a victory over that collectivism in a business context.

It occurs to me that the faults and failures of your traditional corporate marketing division can be seen as parallel to the faults and failures of your typical government departments.

Neither of them have a brain, a mind, a heart, or a soul.

What they do have is, a) Policy, and b) The Means to enforce it.

It further occurs that railing against the policy may be missing the point, since it can only exist because the means to enforce it exists.

One of the things that struck me about some of Chris' examples are that he is advocating different policies, but has not yet got to the point of advocating no policies. He's moving towards a more benevolent dictatorship but he's yet to acknowledge the implicit continuity between serfdom and employment as he envisages it.

Will he ever get to freedom as the context in which policy meets its inherent limitations?

(If traditional marketing is a "divine right of kings" Monarchy:) Is Gonzo Marketing libertarianism or social democracy?

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