I read an essay this week that gave me a whole new framework for observing popular culture and understanding why, as Chilean author Armando Zegri once noted, “Joy is a fruit that Americans eat green.”
The essay is entitled, “How ‘The Karate Kid’ Ruined The Modern World” and the author is David Wong, Senior Editor of cracked.com, the website of Cracked, the satirical magazine that many of us read as kids.
The message of the title is that movies like “The Karate Kid” and “Rocky” instill in people the false security that if you just give it your best shot, you can achieve anything in a relatively short period of time.
Wong takes issue with this conventional wisdom, introducing the concept of “Effort Shock”:
It seems so obvious that it actually feels insulting to point it out. But it’s not obvious. Every adult I know–or at least the ones who are depressed–continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is, when you go shopping for something for the first time and are shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only it’s with effort. It’s Effort Shock.
Like sticker shock, Effort Shock is that rude awakening that the “price” a person needs to pay (in terms of discipline, hard work and self-sacrifice) for accomplishing something worthwhile far exceeds what’s anticipated at the outset. And like the consumer who’s unwilling to pay what he perceives to be an inflated price, many, if not most, people faced with a higher than expected price for success simply walk away.
Effort Shock goes a long ways in explaining the subprime mortgage crisis, reality television, and the “American Idol” phenomenon. Whether it’s owning a home that’s clearly beyond your means, being “famous” rather than accomplished, or taking the fast track to stardom, society’s obsession with “self-esteem” dictates that we’re all “special” and have a birthright to have whatever we want without having to pay our dues. When the first bill comes due, we’re stunned. It can’t possibly cost that much!
Politics is not immune from Effort Shock. Back in April 2007, when the junior senator from Illinois was being heralded as the great hope of the Democratic Party for winning back the White House the next year, I wrote a post on this blog entitled Coincidence? – I think not!, in which I jokingly implied that the resemblences between “Barrack” Obama (few people could spell his first name back then) and American Idol flash-in-the-pan Sanjaya Malakar were so great that they might very well be the same person.
Fast forward three years. Aside from a brief run on the reality show “Survivor,” Sanjaya has faded into obscurity, either unwilling or incapable of paying the price needed to succeed. And what became of Sanjaya’s “twin”? Like the rest of us, I think he may be reeling from Effort Shock.
It can’t possibly cost that much to be Leader of the Free World!
Can it?
Do people really suffer, “effort shock”? This all is certainly true in some cases, but for most, I believe, they hit a point where they know they no longer are capable of advancing. Remember the book,
“The Peter principle”?
I did consider the book to be a very good theory but I didn’t agree with it completely. I spent long hours arguing the book with an aware friend of mind. I broke my position into two sections. I believe most people are smart enough to know where their level of incompetence is and strive hard to get as close to it as possible and stop accept and be happy there. (To not accept and be happy ensures misery bitterness etc.). In the second part of my position I did agree but only in respect to those employed in government, unions and other such organizations where there are extreme protections, or excesses of money against being fired or demoted. This debate with my friend was in 1974.
I’ve added a third position and it’s probably the most relevant today. Are people really unwilling to put forth the effort? Do they really start off well intentioned then get lazy? Or, as time goes by and their efforts start to pay off, do they come to the conclusion that it’s no longer worth it as the government is going to take so much away from them?
Speaking for myself I have reached the highest level of competence I will ever reach. In my profession I probably could get promoted to my level of incompetence, but I’m smart enough not to cross it as it would most likely result in my being on the street with no job at all. But even where I am now I haven’t hit a, “effort shock”. I could make a lot more money. I regularly turn down over time and jobs on the road that would make a lot more money for me because for the most part would it end up in the hands of those who put no discipline, hard work or self-sacrifice into anything, except voting for those who will continue to ensure they don’t have to put discipline, hard work self-sacrifice into anything.
In other words most people haven’t hit a effort shock. I think that like me, allot of people have hit, “what good does it do shock’.
Reading deeper into the Peter principle article led me to this
Negative selection. Where do we see this today? LOL.
You bring up some very interesting points as usual, celtictexan.
Your “first position” sounds all too familiar (“He done stopped preachin’ and startin’ meddlin’!
). As I look back over my six decades, I can see that this is exactly what I’ve done. In essence, I’ve had three very satisfying careers – strategic intelligence collector, foreign language educator, and now intellectual property specialist (concentrating on trademark administration). But in each case, I chose a route that afforded me less prestige and pay, but more security.
In my first two careers, I could have made more money doing what I was doing as a military officer (either commissioned or warrant) or as a civilian. But I chose to remain “only an NCO” (as I was called on more than one occasion), even though my educational level (two master’s degrees) would have easily qualified me for the more prestigious and lucrative positions. (I have also chosen to remain a paralegal rather than go to law school, but at my age, taking on that kind of commitment in time and money seems counterproductive).
But the payoff was that as a noncommissioned officer, there was virtually no chance that I would be caught up in a reduction in force and lose my job. And as a paralegal, I don’t have to worry about defending myself against a malpractice suit or losing my license.
It wasn’t a question of effort; I’ve worked as hard and achieved as much or more than my colleagues in higher positions. It was a question of priorities; personal satisfaction in a job well done has always been more important to me than money or prestige.
Regarding your “third position,” any government that pursues a “take from the rich and give to the poor” policy assumes that the day will never come when so many hard-working people simply opt out (or “go Galt,” to use the vernacular of Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged) that the system becomes unsustainable. Jerry Doyle says, “If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul’s vote.” But as we’re now seeing in Greece, when Peter is either unwilling or unable to support the ever increasing number of Pauls out there, even the loyalty of Paul comes into question.
Getting back to Effort Shock, the more I think about it, and remembering some of the comments posted on David Wong’s essay, I’d have to say that Effort Shock is something that primarily hits young adults. But I still think it’s an interesting concept nonetheless.
One last comment about Negative Selection. I found it interesting that the person that came up with the theory is Serbian. I’m sure he saw this first hand in the Yugoslavia of Josip Broz Tito. Tito was a charismatic dictator who held together the normally antagonistic Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrans and Kosovars by the sheer force of his personality. After he died, the bureaucracy he had assembled through negative selection couldn’t possibly sustain the artificially created “nation” of Yugoslavia.