What about Dilbert? LO10554

Durval Muniz de Castro (durval@ia.cti.br)
Fri, 18 Oct 1996 09:15:36 -0700

Replying to LO10530 --

Benjamin Compton wrote:

> I've been a fan of Dilbert. I read his comic strip. I bought "The Dilbert
> Principle." I allow employees to post Dilbert cartoons in my office. I
> laugh when I read Dilbert. Dilbert clearly reveals the absurdity and
> foolishness that are often found within organizations.
>
> BUT. . .
>
> He doesn't present solutions to the problem he identifies. He leaves his
> readers with a sense of nagging dispair. The basic message of the cartoon
> is: Managers are inept, deal with it.

[Quote of prev msg trimmed by your host...]

In order to progress to one objective we need both positive and negative
signs. The positive ones show the direction where our target is. The
negative ones warn about the dangers of the journey. Sometimens they also
warn us that we have not arrived yet--indeed, we never arrive, but have a
tendency to believe that. The best efforts to improvement are always on
the edge of absurdity and foolishness and we should be grateful to be
reminded of that. When we forget the dangers along the way, we are likely
to be caught by one of them.

Laughing is a way to manage the tension between our vales/desires and our
reality. It becomes a problem only when laughing is all we do. It should
be a safety valve to avoid excessive pressure, but not an opening that
drains all our energies, which should be channeled to action!

By the way, I think there is some archetype associated to this
behaviour...

Durval Muniz de Castro
Fundacao Centro Tecnologico para Informatica
Campinas, Brasil

-- 

Durval Muniz de Castro <durval@ia.cti.br>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>