Moss: I don’t gotta sit here and listen to this s**t.
Blake: You certainly don’t, pal, ’cause the good news is — you’re fired. The bad news is — you’ve got, all of you’ve got just one week to regain your jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. ‘Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money for their names. You can’t close the leads you’re given, you can’t close s**t. You ARE s**t! Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it ’cause you are going OUT!
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
The
truth is that unless you are really rich, you work for Mitch &
Murray. Yes, that includes you, Vox writer changing the world one
smarter-than-thou opinion at a time. Yes, that includes you, tech
start-up developer kicking back in your flair-bedecked WeWork cubicle.
We
don’t feel the crushing power of the Mitch & Murray pecking order
as palpably as the salesmen berated by Alec Baldwin feel it, because the
language of David Mamet has been replaced by the language of Dick
Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The modern Mitch & Murrays don’t browbeat us. They nudge us.
They convince us that a set of steak knives is a darn good outcome,
that it’s a promise kept rather than a threat delivered. Coffee’s not
just for closers. No, no … coffee is for EVERYONE. In fact, let’s put
some caffeine into everything you drink. Something nice and caffeinated
to wash down that big slice of office birthday cake.
Most importantly, today’s Mitch & Murray writ large — the system
of Mitch & Murrays — provides credit to the non-rich, essentially
limitless credit for anything that’s intangible or depreciates quickly,
anything that lets the non-rich FEEL rich. How about a nice dinner out?
New smartphone? You deserve it! How about a couple of years of graduate
school? More than a couple of years, shooting for a tenure track
position? [Heh, heh] I mean … why certainly, even better!
Go on, try the eggs. They’re delicious.
The pecking order is real. It is beautifully masked in modern human
society, but no less brutal and no less cruel than in the chicken coop.
How
do you escape the pecking order? How do you quit Mitch & Murray?
Well, you can make a lot of money. That’s the tried and true method.
Enough money to build a walled garden around you and yours, expanding it
as you can to take in others. F-you money. Somewhere between merely
rich and really rich should do the trick, depending on how many
generations you want to protect within those walls. Unfortunately,
that’s a big gulf these days, that distance between merely rich and
really rich, and it’s getting wider every day.
But there’s another way.
No
matter how much money we have or don’t have, we can reject the idea
that we can be Someone Who Matters to the World and instead embrace the
idea that we must be Someone Who Matters to the Pack. Now maybe your
pack IS the world. Probably not, but maybe. If it is, then be bold and
matter to the world. But more likely it’s your family. More likely it’s
your friends. More likely it’s your partners and employees. More likely
it’s your church. More likely it’s your school. More likely it’s your
country. It’s damn sure not your political party. It’s damn sure not an
oligarch.
Why should we reject this notion of being Someone Who
Matters to the World? Because that’s the shiny lure that the Nudging
State and the Nudging Oligarchy dangle in front of bright young things.
And bright not-so-young people, too. The shiny lure of mattering
is how they set the hook — which is debt — and that’s how they reel you
in. Because once you’ve got that hook in your mouth … once you’re up to
your eyeballs in debt … it’s soooo hard to ever get free. I know of
which I speak. So do a lot of people reading this note, I bet.
The
simple truth is that we can’t escape the pecking order. We can’t escape
economic inequality and the hard-wired impulses to brutality and
cruelty used to support inequality. Not for long, anyway. Walled gardens
never last.
