Re the point on Carnegie's promotion of manners, Rich and Rick, I agree with their value. My comments were more generally about self-help literature than a detailing of pros and cons in Carnegie.

I have indeed read his book though, being something of an aficionado of self-literature (for more than one reason), and I'm afraid that I'm not a huge fan. Part of the problem is the over-freighting of simple common sense. For example, Carnegie proclaims that there is "one all-important law" of human conduct, which if we obey "will bring us countless friends and constant happiness," and that is, "make the other person feel important." Dewey and James are called upon in support of this insight.

Well, who can dispute that if one can be friendly and diplomatic in interacting with others, and even complimentary when appropriate, you and the other person and society benefit, and a nicer time is had by all? Granted, the personable and civil people would seem to have a pleasanter time of it generally than what Carnegie calls the "crabapples." (Though some of the sweetest people I know are also pretty crabby--four persons come to mind right off the bat, and I wouldn't change anything about their way of being--I'm not sure how that possibility gets incorporated into the Carnegie world view.) And granted, civility and civilization have to be learned and practiced; they're not automatic.

I don't say that it is trivial to point all this out. I've worked in offices. I've been in rooms that also had my five siblings in them at the same time. The insight is non-trivial. But it does grate on my sensibilities to be informed of what an all-encompassing cure-all "making the other person feel important" is. Personal relations can sometimes become a machinery under the weight of such instructions. Sometimes you just know when somebody is applying a self-help technique to you instead of just dealing with you naturally.

This is what Mencken called "the uplift." In modern self-help, Carnegie-esque insights get refashioned in line with the latest lingo. So a fellow named Wayne Dyer--as friendly in demeanor as you could possibly wish for--suggests that if you're too curt in a particular instance, or you're grumpy with your mate or whatever, or you're a teenager who is belligerent toward his parents, you're "cutting yourself off from Source." Now, aside from the fact that I don't know what the heck that means (except that it has something to do with that darn Ego), there's the further problem that I don't know what the heck that means (except apparently something not too palatable when you try to pin it down). Watch PBS during one of their fundraising weeks and see if you can catch an intelligible definition of "source" in Dyer's spiel. He's one of their stars who get trotted out ad infinitum when they're trying to raise money. 

As Luke has pointed out, there's a wheat and chaff problem, and there's wheat as well as chaff in some of these books. The caliber and usefulness varies widely. 

(Edited by David M. Brown on 6/16, 4:17am)

(Edited by David M. Brown on 6/16, 4:38am)

(Edited by David M. Brown on 6/16, 4:43am)

See also Jeff Perren's fine report on the "management philosophy" saturating many workplaces. 

One of the more popular business buzz-phrases today is "Emotional Intelligence," or EI, whose popularity has grown thanks to the same-titled book by Daniel Goleman. Without attempting to analyze at length this latest in a long line of business management hoo-haw, the concept refers to using non-cognitive (non-intellective) skills to succeed in business.

 

Among such "skills" are Empathy, Managing Relationships, Self-Awareness (of one's emotions), and several others.

 

As with many "cover" philosophies, or sets of beliefs that use valid facts, phenomena, or concerns as cover to put over a hidden agenda of questionable views (such as Environmentalism), EI is one more in a long line of management "philosophies" whose putative purpose is to elucidate the proper code of goals and behavior for those working in large businesses....

 

Well, what's so wrong with self-awareness, empathy, etc.? On the face of it, nothing.

 

But EI advocates don't stop there. Even a cursory review of the literature shows one thing very clearly--these attributes are considered far more important than the 'traditional' intellectual qualities, such as high IQ, abstract reasoning ability, creative insight, deep knowledge of subject matter, etc....

 

Apart from this being an obvious false alternative, is it even true? Are "affective" (resulting from emotion) considerations more important than "intellectual" ones?

These pitched battles or non-battles over patent baloney are not only about philosophies but also about communication.

Unclear communication obscures the badness of bad advice--or even the lack of anything to say altogether. I witnessed this kind of thing playing out in many of the "reports" I word-processed, some years ago, for a Jersey City consulting firm. I still remember how proud was one gal, a fresh college grad, of her essentially vacuous but high-sounding wordology. How it could have helped the client I don't know, but that is what she had imbibed about how to shine in the job. It reminded me of how a "smart kid" in school might try to fake a report after having failed to do any of the necessary research. The tactic is to just keep babbling in as portentous a way as possible, making sure the abstract pronouncements never come within a light year of any single particular fact. Then hope the teacher doesn't notice.

This was the same firm at which the CEO periodically brought the whole company together in a sort of town hall to emote and discuss how interpersonal relations might improve. Further, various departments were regularly invited to submit their written "evaluations" of how employees in other departments were doing. All this accomplished approximately zero; that's not how management and procedures get improved. That's not how performance and results get assessed. It's okay for an "Oprah Winfrey" show, but not for doing your job.

Yes, this stuff is discouragingly omnipresent. As long as we're more free than not, though, genuine talent, brains and dedication still has a chance to win out over expertise in faddish jargon-spewing or sentiment-spewing. But people holding the jobs at the firms must develop the habit of declaring the emperor's state of dress or undress. Because they know--a lot more than they are often willing to say.

(Edited by David M. Brown on 6/13, 11:48pm)

How fonts are viewed varies widely on monitors, and depends on screen resolution, whether you're using a Mac or PC, etc.

Meanwhile, you're posting in a serif font, which is per se harder to read on a monitor than a sans-serif font.

Re the point on Carnegie's promotion of manners, Rich and Rick, I agree with their value. My comments were more generally about self-help literature than a detailing of pros and cons in Carnegie.

I have indeed read his book though, being something of an aficionado of self-literature (for more than one reason), and I'm afraid that I'm not a huge fan. Part of the problem is the over-freighting of simple common sense. For example, Carnegie proclaims that there is "one all-important law" of human conduct, which if we obey "will bring us countless friends and constant happiness," and that is, "make the other person feel important." Dewey and James are called upon in support of this insight.

Well, who can dispute that if one can be friendly and diplomatic in interacting with others, and even complimentary when appropriate, you and the other person and society benefit, and a nicer time is had by all? Granted, the personable and civil people would seem to have a pleasanter time of it generally than what Carnegie calls the "crabapples." (Though some of the sweetest people I know are also pretty crabby--four persons come to mind right off the bat, and I wouldn't change anything about their way of being...I'm not sure how that possibility gets incorporated into the Carnegie world view.) And granted, civility and civilization have to be learned and practiced; they're not automatic.

I don't say that it is trivial to point all this out. I've worked in offices. I've been in rooms that also had my five siblings in them at the same time. The insight is non-trivial. But it does grate on my sensibilities to be informed of what an all-encompassing cure-all "making the other person feel important" is. Personal relations can sometimes become a machinery under the weight of such instructions. Sometimes you just know when somebody is applying a self-help technique to you instead of just dealing with you naturally.

This is what Mencken called "the uplift." In modern self-help, Carnegie-esque insights get refashioned in line with the latest lingo. So a fellow named Wayne Dyer--as friendly in demeanor as you could possibly wish for--suggests that if you're too curt in a particular instance, or you're grumpy with your mate or whatever, or you're a teenager who is belligerent toward his parents, you're "cutting yourself off from Source." Now, aside from the fact that I don't know what the heck that means (except that it has something to do with that darn Ego), there's the further problem that I don't know what the heck that means (except apparently something not too palatable when you try to pin it down). Watch PBS during one of their fundraising weeks and see if you can catch an intelligible definition of "source" in Dyer's spiel. He's one of their stars who get trotted out ad infinitum when they're trying to raise money. 

As Luke has pointed out, there's a wheat and chaff problem, and there's wheat as well as chaff in some of these books. The caliber and usefulness varies widely. 

(Edited by David M. Brown on 6/16, 4:47am)