“To err is human. To cover it up is weasel.” (Scott Adams).
And so, the author and cartoonist, Scott Adams lays out his explanation of how things are in our workaday world. In his book “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel: A Guide to Outwitting Your Boss, Your Coworkers, and the Other Pants-Wearing Ferrets in Your life” written way back in 2002, Adams explores “The Weasel Zone”. This is the “gigantic grey area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. And “it’s where most of life happens.”
He adds, “Sometimes also known as Weaselville, Weaseltown, the Way of the Weasel, Weaselopolis, Weaselburg, and Redmond.” [reference to where Microsoft is headquartered].
“In the Weasel Zone everything is misleading, but not exactly a lie. There’s a subtle difference. When you lie, you hope to fool someone. But when you’re being a weasel, everyone is aware that you’re a manipulative, scheming, misleading sociopath.”
When the weasel knows that you know he’s weaseling, Adams feels it is a form of honesty–“a weasel form”. Examples that he gives are that “No one believes the engineer that says he will explain things briefly. No one believes a contractor that says the job will be done in a week… No one believes a politician who says that large contributions don’t influence his decisions.”
Political writers have called this behavior in Washington, Japanese Kabuki theater signifying a lot of bluff and bluster but it’s all staged. Around 2008, the word kayfabe popped up which is a term for the unspoken art of fakery in pro-wrestling.
A therapist friend recommended a book called “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Tavris and Aronson. I read a couple chapters and then skimmed through the rest. The premise in “Mistakes” is that people use a lot of self-justification to defend bad decisions or hurtful behavior. Another phrase for this is “cognitive dissonance”.
But Scott Adams’ book is much more fun than the Tavris and Aronson book. He doesn’t pussy foot around. Plus, it’s got cartoons
I don’t think those guys are Jungians. The physician, Carl Jung, saw that people were different as did many physicians like Hippocrates. It was a simple as that. People different from me aren’t bad, they are just different. People are born with a certain kind of hardware, he reasoned. They are maybe a MacOS or Microsoft Windows or some kind of Linux. We are born with preferences in the way we take in information, how we make decisions based on that information and where we get our energy from i.e the outside world of people and places or by being alone with oneself. As we grow up our family, friends and work act like software. They enhance or inhibit our growth as a unique human. Jung recommended working on our own strengths, our preferences until well into our twenties. Then we should try to get in other people’s shoes and try to understand them from their point of view. He called that individuation. I call it growing up.
For the record, Adams is a critic of the Jungian psychological test known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. “The idea is that people can be categorized by personality type and you can work with them better if you take that into account. Okay, I buy that. My quibble with the theory is that if you aren’t bright enough to know that people have different personalities, you’re asking a lot of the Myers-Briggs training to get you over the hump. My second quibble is that their personality categories don’t include weasel, moron, or flaming butt-hole. I don’t know about you, but I rarely have problems with any other type of personality.”
This is exactly what my rancher husband says every time I talk about someone that displays no empathy. I try to explain it by personality type or Asperger’s. Rancher will say, “He’s just a”butt-hole”. But rancher theory breaks down when his own friend displays butt-holeness. “Oh, he means well,” or “he’s a good guy”. See that’s what we hear every day on the news about politicians. “He has good intentions, I’m sure”. Really? Really? Well that gets into defending your tribe or being a particular male way of looking at friendship. And that’s another essay.
So, this is where I’m supposed to come up with some uplifting idea or advice. I learned this from Scott Adams too. Adams advice is to embrace the inevitable and go weasel. (He may be winking a bit with this advice.) But I’m one of those who is still part of the resistance. So here goes my uplifting advice: living in Weaseltown works for most people. Again, to err is human, but to cover up the mistake is weasel. They go with the flow. They talk themselves into a peaceful conformity. But for we few, we happy few who feel exhilarated by using curiosity and self-examination to discover the man behind the curtain, it’s time to put on our flippers and goggles because we need to get into that river once again and start swimming upstream as difficult as that may be. But we could also channel the Scott Adams of his book “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter”” and try to persuade the others that the non weasel way might be the best way to get you where you’re going.
I try to just watch a movie or a TV show without some little nitpicker sitting on my shoulder. I love to lose myself in a show. I think a lot of people feel the way I do. That’s why a bunch of us still love a darkened movie theater and why those movie houses probably won’t go away.
So when I read that somebody saw somebody’s haIr extensions and they didn’t have that blonde hair dye back in the 1800’s or they don’t like the way somebody sounds “cuz my Momma is from those parts and she don’t sound like that”, I just let out a big sigh.
When in doubt turn to the Greeks:
“The whole is something besides the parts“, said Aristotle a long time ago, in his wisdom way.
“The whole is greater than the part.” – Euclid said, in his mathy way.
That’s right. Most of the time the whole is a whole lot better than each individual little part. So savor the meal and stop picking nits. And, for good measure, kick that sucker off your shoulder and give him the boot.
Some thoughts on the series 1883 and The Gilded Age
Switching from 1883 on Sunday to The Gilded Age on Monday is a “Tale of Two Countries”! Taylor Sheridan’s new Paramount Plus series 1883 is about the Dutton family of his Yellowstone series. It’s how the Tennessee farmer James Dutton and his family got to Montana in the first place to build their empire. Julian Fellowes’s new HBO series The Gilded Age is about how the scrappy Russell family (with ties to Irish potato farmers) built their fortune in railroads and now are trying to elbow their way into New York City’s snooty old money society. The Texas to Montana series has a lot of grim but determined people in brown/grey homespun clothes bouncing around in rickety wooden wagons bumping along the vast prairies of the West while some taciturn ex Civil War veterans in boots and chaps mosey behind them pushing a herd of cattle. The New York City series has a bunch of prim but equally determined people in rustling silk dresses swishing into carriages in order to parade around a flower filled bustling Central Park while dandy men in jodhpur pants and derby hats trot along beside and nannies push babies instead of cows.
Both stories take place after the terrible U.S. Civil War in the years 1882 and 1883. America is a land of dreams for immigrants from Europe and some choose to work their way up the ladder in the big cities and some decide to literally hitch their wagons up and head to the untamed and open West to stake their claims to the land. Those pioneers must contend with hostile Indians, nasty bandits, big ass storms and sneaky snakes. The New Yorkers must deal with hostile neighbors, nasty gossips, big ass bankers and sneaky snakes.
There’s lots more to be said about both stories, but for now Cowboy Clay and I would like to suggest that you watch both together. One is harrowing and seat of the pants type storytelling that can scare the crap out of you and can have you dissolving into tears in the next scene. It’s a bourbon and branch kind of night.
So, it’s a relief that the story the next night is a more relaxing trip in a smooth-riding carriage while our eyes feast on the sumptuous costumes and scrumptious lobster spread and our ears hear snarls from wicked tongues. It’s a sipping Champagne or a nice IPA kind of night.
Two stories. Two countries. Two Americas. The more we watch the more we see all the contradictions of this vast country; between stinginess and sharing, meanness and caring, cowardliness and daring, hell and heaven. And then there is that freedom thing; the feeling of freedom when you take off that gun belt and strip down to your long johns or when you take that darn corset off and slip into your nightgown or better yet when you slip into some trousers and jump on your horse and take off at a gallop and feel that wind in your hair! Yeehaw, we say, and pass those fish-egg things.
Weaseltown -An Homage to Scott Adams (Written in 2013 and revised 2026)
“To err is human. To cover it up is weasel.” (Scott Adams).
And so, the author and cartoonist, Scott Adams lays out his explanation of how things are in our workaday world. In his book “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel: A Guide to Outwitting Your Boss, Your Coworkers, and the Other Pants-Wearing Ferrets in Your life” written way back in 2002, Adams explores “The Weasel Zone”. This is the “gigantic grey area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. And “it’s where most of life happens.”
He adds, “Sometimes also known as Weaselville, Weaseltown, the Way of the Weasel, Weaselopolis, Weaselburg, and Redmond.” [reference to where Microsoft is headquartered].
“In the Weasel Zone everything is misleading, but not exactly a lie. There’s a subtle difference. When you lie, you hope to fool someone. But when you’re being a weasel, everyone is aware that you’re a manipulative, scheming, misleading sociopath.”
When the weasel knows that you know he’s weaseling, Adams feels it is a form of honesty–“a weasel form”. Examples that he gives are that “No one believes the engineer that says he will explain things briefly. No one believes a contractor that says the job will be done in a week… No one believes a politician who says that large contributions don’t influence his decisions.”
Political writers have called this behavior in Washington, Japanese Kabuki theater signifying a lot of bluff and bluster but it’s all staged. Around 2008, the word kayfabe popped up which is a term for the unspoken art of fakery in pro-wrestling.
A therapist friend recommended a book called “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Tavris and Aronson. I read a couple chapters and then skimmed through the rest. The premise in “Mistakes” is that people use a lot of self-justification to defend bad decisions or hurtful behavior. Another phrase for this is “cognitive dissonance”.
But Scott Adams’ book is much more fun than the Tavris and Aronson book. He doesn’t pussy foot around. Plus, it’s got cartoons
I don’t think those guys are Jungians. The physician, Carl Jung, saw that people were different as did many physicians like Hippocrates. It was a simple as that. People different from me aren’t bad, they are just different. People are born with a certain kind of hardware, he reasoned. They are maybe a MacOS or Microsoft Windows or some kind of Linux. We are born with preferences in the way we take in information, how we make decisions based on that information and where we get our energy from i.e the outside world of people and places or by being alone with oneself. As we grow up our family, friends and work act like software. They enhance or inhibit our growth as a unique human. Jung recommended working on our own strengths, our preferences until well into our twenties. Then we should try to get in other people’s shoes and try to understand them from their point of view. He called that individuation. I call it growing up.
For the record, Adams is a critic of the Jungian psychological test known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. “The idea is that people can be categorized by personality type and you can work with them better if you take that into account. Okay, I buy that. My quibble with the theory is that if you aren’t bright enough to know that people have different personalities, you’re asking a lot of the Myers-Briggs training to get you over the hump. My second quibble is that their personality categories don’t include weasel, moron, or flaming butt-hole. I don’t know about you, but I rarely have problems with any other type of personality.”
This is exactly what my rancher husband says every time I talk about someone that displays no empathy. I try to explain it by personality type or Asperger’s. Rancher will say, “He’s just a”butt-hole”. But rancher theory breaks down when his own friend displays butt-holeness. “Oh, he means well,” or “he’s a good guy”. See that’s what we hear every day on the news about politicians. “He has good intentions, I’m sure”. Really? Really? Well that gets into defending your tribe or being a particular male way of looking at friendship. And that’s another essay.
So, this is where I’m supposed to come up with some uplifting idea or advice. I learned this from Scott Adams too. Adams advice is to embrace the inevitable and go weasel. (He may be winking a bit with this advice.) But I’m one of those who is still part of the resistance. So here goes my uplifting advice: living in Weaseltown works for most people. Again, to err is human, but to cover up the mistake is weasel. They go with the flow. They talk themselves into a peaceful conformity. But for we few, we happy few who feel exhilarated by using curiosity and self-examination to discover the man behind the curtain, it’s time to put on our flippers and goggles because we need to get into that river once again and start swimming upstream as difficult as that may be. But we could also channel the Scott Adams of his book “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter”” and try to persuade the others that the non weasel way might be the best way to get you where you’re going.
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Posted in Bar Codes, Media, Social Commentary, The Accidental Activist, The Cowgirl Contrarian
Tagged Carl Jung, Myers/Briggs, Scott Adams