I see the limits of the man, because I have limits. That's my confession.
From "Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain", Scientific American (2008):
The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity.
If we don't appreciate how the limitations of a single human being affect the capacity of the presidency, then the assessment of our candidates' performance will always yeild dissapointment. And that constant dissapoinment regarding Obama is the basis of a loser attitude: always whining about what should have been. This site reeks of it.
Look, Obama is not going to bat 1.000. I run an organization with five distinct projects going at the moment. I've basically stretched my brain to its processing capacity limits, and I have to accept the fact that my effort on each of those is not what it could be. Each project gets roughly 20% of what could be. So the mental challenge of guiding these efforts forward at the same time is terrifying at times. I have moments of sheer panic where I don't know why I'm doing a certain project, or even the whole thing. I have to grapple with the fact that I may have to kill some of my babies to save the others. Sometimes I just want to walk off the job and go live under a palm tree for a year.
But at least in my situation I have some effective control- I can hire/fire people and directly adjust my budget. I don't, for example, have to allow small-minded idiots elected by other small-minded idiots to run my HR and accounting departments. Yet every night I go to bed thinking "I don't earn enough for this crap."
So it just sounds awful to me to really hear (i.e. not just read) the sort of mob whining that goes on here on Kos after an Obama compromise. It really reads like a bunch of adolescents who think every problem is easier to solve than it actually is- that they're entitled to an impossibly perfect outcome. It bodes poorly for the site's relevance, for this movement and the country as a whole. This community really needs to ask itself in these situations: "Did Obama just jump the shark, or did we? How having these nattering nabobs of negativity within our own movement help?" There's a sizeable crowd here that throws a giant fit each time they don't get what they want...instead of knuckling down and trying harder.
Read More
