On Slow Horses
Reconsidering the Genius Class
In my Peasant Theory, there are the Rulers, the Geniuses and the Peasants. It is a functional description of how class operates in the US. If you have to ask which class you’re in, then you’re obviously a peasant. That’s OK because you are in good company. The series of spy novels by Mick Herron has been masterfully crafted into a television series by the new clutch of producers at Apple and the show has its perfect star in Gary Oldman. His embodiment of Herron’s character Jackson Lamb is one of those that make all imitation unthinkable, as it is inconceivable to think of Vizzini as anyone other than Wallace Shawn. What if I told you there was a better Morpheus than Laurence Fishburne’s. There will never be.
So the impact of this drama, as I continue through the books, is working its way into my thinking. The premise of Slow Horses is daring. What if, instead of 007, we were to pay attention to the misfits of Her Majesty’s Secret Service? What of those geniuses who suddenly found themselves on the outside of the favor of the rulers and were thus forced to the stables of the gimpy but not put down. The employees of Slough House, run by the interminably cranky and hostile Jackson Lamb who regularly excoriates his charges amidst ball scratching and farts, all have reasons to doubt themselves but still have their training. What if every dog has his day? What if during the course of the grunt work you are assigned your better instincts wake you up to the possibility that you may be on to something? What if the higher ups who take it for granted that you are a loser fail to see something you have found?
Herein lies the probabilities that while cows may come and cows may go, bullshit cannot go on forever. Diligence may earn rewards even if those rewards are not privileges. It helps that while treated like peasants, we consider our genius seriously and this, while not ruinous of class relegations, reminds us that the truth belongs to those who take the time to suss it out. Then of course the burden of truth, especially in spy novels, can be dangerous. The more corrupt the rulers, the more deadly the danger.
The difficult thing about being a peasant in America in particular is that we inherit the ideas that:
It’s a big country
We are owed freedom
These compliment each other in such a way that we have a sense that there is some part of America that’s just right for us if we can only get there, or that if we could get the wrong sorts out of where we are, we would be there. As such there is always room for them and us, just don’t get in our way. Much, therefore, needn’t be resolved so long as we segregate ourselves properly. In so doing, we find we have not bothered to learn the art of collaboration, outside of what our employment demands of us and partisan moral effrontery rewards us in the self-esteem and attention-seeking department. If it’s not our full-time graded job to make a better society, we’re left as consumers of the dreck we’ve made of it, ever complaining even louder now that we’re outnumbered by worse peasants than we are. I still say that peasants are good company, because your auntie is, and you know exactly which auntie I’m talking about. The kind, smart, generous one who never visited New York City, but could probably teach them all a thing or two. But I’m here to talk about the geniuses, sub-geniuses and underemployed. It might include your auntie if she ever screwed up the courage to leave the boonies of Indiana.
To remind you…
Peasant Theory Recap
If you remember my Peasant Theory, it tells you that there are three functional classes of Westerners in general and Americans in particular (as it was generated thinking about the devolution of American democratic institutions). They are the Ruling Class, the Genius Class (aka the Slice) and the Peasant Class. These classes apply across every endeavor and so it applies firmly to my profession and yours. I reiterate that simply because one is a peasant doesn’t mean one suffers in misery. We have many millions of quite comfortable peasants. They simply have no authority and their expertise is not indispensable. Understand as well that we Americans do not find any of these classes unapproachable. We are all very pleased to party with whomever shows up, regardless of their situation in one of the three groups. Furthermore, we all sustain the hope that there is always a possibility of upward mobility. Yeah well… When a peasant tries to act like a genius or a ruler, the results are predictably sad. Keyword “In over your head”. When a genius tries to act like a ruler you get Dr. Emilio Lizardo. Here is your handy guide for the failures of upward and downward mobility that should sound familiar. If you need further explanation, hit me up in the comments section.
The Genius who is demoted and underemployed rightly or wrongly is the subject of discussion. This is the slow horse. These are the people, I think, who are right smack in the middle of my target audience. People who on any day of the year could write a paragraph or two that belongs in the middle of anything published by the New York Times, but don’t have the opportunity because they have screwed up, or haven’t screwed up enough courage to apply. Unlike the misplaced ambitions of the failure scenarios, these folks are not trying to be anything other than what they are. They are just trying to get the appreciation and satisfaction they deserve. Maybe they’re a day late and a dollar short, maybe they figured there would be more brass rings at which to grab, but their horse is trotting instead of galloping and it’s becoming a saddle sore pain in the ass. What to do? What to do?
First you have to realize that all horses die. The faster ones get to the glue factory first. If you’re aiming to blaze a trail of glory across the sky like a pyrotechnic wonder, then you had better have a long fuse and get far upwind of your mortar. Too close to the ground you’re just an IED. In either case, you have one chance to make an impression, and you may have already made it. Count your biggest blessing. Maybe that was your one job.
A Proper Punk
It is then incumbent on you to take on aspects of a Type 1 Punk, who doesn’t give a monkey’s what other people think, because other people’s thoughts don’t guide your capable hands. Because you are very selective and rational about which literature, arts, music and information you subject yourself to, especially when it comes to your particular expertise. Because you already have common sense and are not so narcissistic that you have to be up on the latest and greatest of things that you really don’t even understand. Because you don’t wish to be a boor. Well, that’s my kind of punk. The kind that doesn’t burn up all his extra energy showing off that he’s some kind of hip rebel. The kind who can be happy with something smaller than a 65 inch TV. A mellow, somewhat shabby, non-striver who savors trust and competence over brilliance and flash. This would be a baseline yokel and well-adjusted peasant. I like that kind of person. And I do like the trend of women on Reels who show their sparkle filters then turn them off saying “That’s not what I look like.” and give a lovely rabbit toothed smile.
I often think what it would be like to live in a country where it would not be uncommon to find cowboy poets and truck drivers with high IQs. I would have liked one or two of the high-profile attorneys from New York and DC who excoriated the lame bastards of Ferguson to relocate and lift up that benighted municipality with their advanced talents and insights. I would like to hear the end of philosophy majors moaning about their 200k college debt and some pride in their job at the local library. But I understand human vanity. I understand why people read the book of one economist, Picketty or Sowell and tweet out condescension for the uninformed masses, which they were six months ago. I’m subject to the same desire for likes. Who doesn’t want to be liked? The more important question is who doesn’t want to be corrected? That’s the character difference between the proper punk yokel and the one who thinks he’s a sovereign citizen.
A nation full of people who are willing to serve their neighbors and do honest work has a much better chance of being a fair democracy. The Role of Ambition in peasants is a glorious thing to behold when they achieve self-determination and seek to share that culture of success with their neighbors. This is the realm of possibility where we all don’t break our necks trying to optimize our every productive waking moment, rather that we try to be good shepherds and curators of the skills and knowledge we have acquired.
It almost looks like genius. Let’s call it a flash of genius, but this has always been in the peasant ambit. Making this child into a child star would be quite the error. I am pleased that we don’t know his name. If this video makes you smile and be grateful for this bit we have retained in our culture, then we are fellows. This is what we should conserve.
The Burnout of Slow Horses
The arc of a proper punk is what I think happens to the trajectory of slow horses. They stop yearning for the spotlight and work to get over their disgust of themselves and of their denigrated peers. They establish a sometimes genuine, sometimes desperate need to prove themselves as per their original ambition without ever becoming unselfconsciously overconfident. They always check themselves because they know exactly how to wreck themselves. Plus some overbearing bastard is always checking them as well. Jackson Lamb in the series is that overbearing bastard who is a purposeful grotesque, having faced the most devilish dangers of the Cold War in the form of the discipline of Moscow Rules. The slightest error could mean death.
As long as I have been using Evernote, my personal cache of the most interesting stuff I’ve read on the net, I have had a category for Security & Paranoia. That along with my interest in the intelligence business and a number of other things has given me a measure of respect for the Moscow Rules. And yes I have been to the Spy Museum in DC and the gift shop at Fort Meade. The closer we draw to the postmodern semiotic swamp, the more important it is for the Genius Class to draw a path of truth through it without becoming agents of hegemonic control. Even if that involves the shitposting of provocateurs like @ConceptualJames. After all, what is truth without humor? Truth with humor serves the open society. Truth without humor ratchets up the gears and chains of a jagged edged meritocracy machine.
We shouldn’t want to attach ourselves too tightly to such machines, especially those that are tied to ideological monasticism. That is the fate of our genius and our Genius Class when rulers are heartless, or politically partisan, or are AIs, or take on any of the moral hazards of power & leadership without a corrective and gentle hand. Running genius into ruin is what alienates us all. It’s what makes us want to buck the system. You have heard the stories of the heartlessly rigorous corporations. I’ve heard of such brutal efficiencies experienced at: {Disney, SpaceX, Wells Fargo, Bridgewater}.
Slow Horses, the series, is attractive to people who have experienced being sidetracked and otherwise hobbled in their ambitions. I know quite a few people like that. To recognize the aesthetic and translate it over to other contexts is what I’m thinking about. For me the context of dehumanizing alienation springs best from what I call the idiot-proof city. R Crumb illustrates the progression best in his Short History of America.
In my mind’s eye, I see this same devolution in organizations, in popular culture and in the content and flavor of the interwebz. Crumb’s mosaic was made in 1978 but we have seen how it gets worse. How even the paved over gets paved over with slicker and shinier accents and accoutrements. We are living in that future with thousands of TV channels and virtually infinite choices. True the info-pollution as left us with fewer billboards in our city streets, but that’s all moved online. The rulers have declared that hills will be flattened, the trees leveled, the roads paved, and the GPS navigation narrated in a pleasing voice so that peasants don’t have to lift a finger. The geniuses have figured out how to get all that done.
Of course the driver of the new 800 horsepower electric automobile thinks himself superior to the driver of the horse. Horses have been sequestered to places outside of the city, out to the boonies and small markets. Out with the local yokels and your beloved auntie down in Jackson County where the roads get crooked and don’t lead anywhere yuppies want to be. So remember that truth and nobility don’t have a fixed address. Remember that the peasant knows how to take care of his own horse.
Extra Credit.
What if 30 years from now we look at people using social media the way that we now look at people who smoke cigarettes and drink hard liquor? What if there is no real moderation possible? Who are the slow horses of Silicon Valley in the genius class who know that already who were also-rans in the race to monetize? What kind of economy is left over for the rest of us?
Maybe there’s something to horses we could stand to learn.