We’re similarly shocked whenever authority figures who are supposed to know what they’re doing make it plain that they don’t, President Obama’s healthcare launch being probably the most serious recent example. We shouldn’t really be shocked, though. Because all these stories illustrate one of the most fundamental yet still under-appreciated truths of human existence, which is this: everyone is totally just winging it, all the time.
Institutions – from national newspapers to governments and politicial parties – invest an enormous amount of money and effort in denying this truth. The facades they maintain are crucial to their authority, and thus to their legitimacy and continued survival. We need them to appear ultra-competent, too, because we derive much psychological security from the belief that somewhere, in the highest echelons of society, there are some near-infallible adults in charge.
In fact, though, everyone is totally just winging it.
I enjoyed this quote, and have had a great number of self depreciating laughs with other young professionals about how we were totally winging it.
But it is not true.
There are those winging it, but they are faking it until they make it, and make up a smaller group than represented above. The much larger group is made from a rainbow of wrong! Biases, ignorance, bad information, misinformation, conflicting agendas, the list goes on.
The group of people just winging it, pushing their limits, faking it until they make it, are only piece of the bigger picture of stuff done wrong. It is not fair to overrepresent their influence. Although, it is always a comfort to know there are others out their in the same boat, just winging it.
-- Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, May 21, 2014
I enjoyed this quote, and have had a great number of self depreciating laughs with other young professionals about how we were totally winging it.
But it is not true.
There are those winging it, but they are faking it until they make it, and make up a smaller group than represented above. The much larger group is made from a rainbow of wrong! Biases, ignorance, bad information, misinformation, conflicting agendas, the list goes on.
The group of people just winging it, pushing their limits, faking it until they make it, are only piece of the bigger picture of stuff done wrong. It is not fair to overrepresent their influence. Although, it is always a comfort to know there are others out their in the same boat, just winging it.