A love letter to LinkedIn, thought for the day, life coaches and motivation gurus everywhere, this is a collection of airheaded aphorisms that sound profound but ooze vacuity. This is not just when that home insurance lawyer tags impenetrable Kierkegaard aphorisms with #quotestoliveby - I mean how does one live by “life expresses the result of our dominant thoughts?” — what does it even mean, and if it does mean something, won’t it just happen automatically? — but something in more wishful denial of how significance the world in general, and Denise in accounts in particular, attaches to your problems.
- Be the best version of yourself — assuming you are possessed of self-awareness and good judgment, which most of you are not.
- Your value does not decrease based on someone else’s inability to see your worth — except that it does, actually.
- You do not inspire people by showing them how amazing you are, but by showing them how amazing they are — but in most cases neither of you will be inspiring anyone.
- Blowing out someone else’s candle won’t make yours burn any brighter — except that’s why they turn the lights out at the cinema.
- Every boss started out as a worker — as did every deadbeat and every grifter.
- Every journey starts with one step — however pointless it may be.
- We rise ourselves by lifting others — you say rise, you mean “subjugate”.
- It takes being let down to appreciate those who lift you up. Be a lifter — or, be the one who lets people down and have an equal impact.
- Believe this: You are exquisite. You are exceptional. You are limitless. — or, better still, don’t believe it since, if you are seeking spiritual guidance from LinkedIn it almost certainly isn’t true — at least, not in a good way. Even if it might be, there’s much less scope for injury and disappointment if you proceed by assuming it isn’t.
- We will all have more leisure time in the future — this isn't LinkedIn yogababble so much as delusional conventional wisdom from the thought leaders of the day. Examples are Daniel Susskind in his fantastical A World Without Work and David Goodhart in his otherwise excellent Head Hand Heart. The idea that robots and artificial intelligence will entirely supplant the need for human labour assumes that a manual activity which can be entirely and cheaply automated will nonetheless hold its value, that an economy to which the majority of participants do not what contribute will still function more or less as normal, and that the economy not only can be fully determined but has been: that our current polity is in some kind of fully taxonomised, Taylorised final state in which no new activities or work categories can emerge, and all that do currently exist can be more effectively carried out by machine. These three assumptions being transparently absurd, this gets the Yngwie Malmsteen paradox 180° back to front. increasing automation will create more risk, not less semi-colon will generate more complexity not less, and and will lead to more catastrophe, not less. We will all be kept busy.