There are two kinds of people in this world . . .
My 2 cents
Haven’t we all been told or heard that there are two kinds of people in the world? Example: A very good and competent boss I once had at a chemical plant, came back from the daily, morning meeting of the minds looking rather frustrated. I was alone in the control room, and he paced back and forth. I could tell he was sorting out what he wanted to say. Finally, he looked at me and said, “There are two kinds of people in this world. There are planners and doers.” He pointed to me and said, “You are a doer. Right now, there are a dozen planners, planning what you are going to do. None of them have any idea of how you are going to do what they are planning.” I just laughed, because I had come to accept that that was par for corporate culture.
My boss, Al, was a Connecticut Yankee, drafted in 1945 at age 18, only to arrive in Europe in time to pack a machine gun up and down the hills as part of the occupying forces. I do not think he ever had to fire a shot in anger. After his discharge from the army, he came home, went to college, earned an engineering degree, went to work for a major chemical company, and worked his way up. That last part sometimes meant moving around the nation to where ever that next rung up on the ladder happened to be. That was one reason he ended up in the Cajun land of south Louisiana. Another reason was the economy. Old processing plants close and new ones come online. Sometimes the rust bucket and the upgrade are a thousand miles or more apart, or on another continent.
Al had to learn what colleges do not normally teach. He had to learn the unwritten rules that governed life (and career death) in the corporate hierarchy. What he learned was when and whom to best please, and when and whom to best fool. By fool, I mean how to withhold information carefully and judiciously, or play dumb. Corporations of the 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s ran pretty much on the same model as most Federal bureaucracies. Make of that statement what you will. I am sure others out there have had different experiences than I have.
This brings me to another familiar saying:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” ---- Abraham Lincoln
What can be said about fooling people can also be said about pleasing people. “You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” Abe’s saying and its antithesis foster another category of there being two kinds of people in the world.
These two kinds of people are politicians and those who would for no reason ever get into politics. Politics should not be the convoluted migraine of a mess that it is, but because of our “human” nature . . . . Mama told me that it takes all kinds to make up a world, and because of these “all kinds” politics has evolved to favor certain creatures, or characters.
In my youth, I worked for two years, eight months as a procurement forester for a sawmill. That was not the kind of work I wanted, but forest land management jobs were few, and procurement foresters were a dime-a-dozen. I enjoyed meeting people and doing the work, but somewhere into that third year, I realized I just did not have the kind of character needed to be a top-notch timber buyer. It was not the kind of character that I was raised to have. It was an acquired taste (character) that could at times leave a bad taste in your mouth. Not to denigrate timber buyers in general, there are many good and honest people in the business. They are tireless people, with a drive to over come the “used-car-salesman” stigma (if I may borrow a worn-out cliché).
So, getting back to my topic, looking back over the last decade or so, and considering current events (and my age), the two kinds of people in this world, as I see, at least in America, are (1) those in organize crime, and (2) the rest of us petty criminals who are being extorted through taxes, fines, and fees to support the organization. Governments, ancient and modern, become legal forms of organized crime. (I admit that I am not the first to infer this gem of wisdom.) And human history keeps repeating ad infinitum, or until mankind is no more.
What two kinds of people make up your world? Put in your two cents, and leave a comment.
Very true. Life experiences come at us from all directions. We each can find ourselves in circumstances that others may or may not experience. Hence, my curiosity at the experience and lessons learned by others. Thanks for your "two cents."
This is great and very thought-provoking. As Stephen Sondheim once wrote: "There are two kinds of men and only two. There's the one staying put in his proper place. And the one with his foot in the other one's face..." And that pretty much says it all really. He wrote that in the late 70s, but it's probably even more true now... 😎