Will’s Thoughts | Outsmarting Yourself

Will’s Thoughts – Being So Smart That You Outsmart Yourself

Over the years, I’ve known a few times when I was so darn smart, that I outsmarted myself. I reckon it ain’t something to be real proud of, but as they say, ‘manure manifests’. The other evening I was sitting here, ankle deep in thought, watching a television show about an American guy trying to set up and run a call centre in India. Funny premise, funny show. Who would have ever thought the Americans had a sense of humour? Being a person who likes to abstractly reconstruct ideas, my mind began whirrin’.

Now when the average person watches shows, they laugh at punch lines, struggle to catch what is being said and curse the commercials, but oh, not I. Every scene that I watched made me realize I was witness to an accidental evolution of business, and the realization made my heart sink. How could we not have seen it coming? Our greed completely blinded us. Our wants outweighed our sanity. Being weird to the tenth power, the irony of it all made me grin like a Cheshire cat. I sat there shaking my head, watching Goliath teach David how to make and use a sling.

You see, folks in Canada and the USA were as fond of telemarketers as they were of the tax Gestapo, so they stopped telemarketers by forcing the companies to move offshore. The companies then trained thousands of employees to become proficient at disguising accents and overcoming objections. No one gave any serious thought to the fact that these now highly trained individuals live in the strongest emerging markets in the world, and now they can use their newly acquired skills to work for their own country’s companies, selling their country’s products and wares, while we end up with no jobs, no taxes paid and even more telemarketing calls.

Other classic examples are the ‘economic bailouts’ of the last few years, designed to deal with debt. In the US, a total of $9.7 trillion was allocated to relieve debt, but not one penny of it did. Instead, it was a massive cash gift to financial institutions, who ferevently pray that the public doesn’t realize that if the govenment had directed the money toward mortgages, instead of giving bankers bonuses, every single home in the United States would now be paid off. The trusting and patriotic American public was economically crucified, while smiling world bankers licked its blood from their fingers.

I laugh now when I hear, ‘and the experts predict’. I reckon that if the experts really were experts, we sure as heck would not be in the mess that we are in. ‘Experts’ remind me of when I was 8 years old, and getting ready to go for a bike ride one morning. I knew I’d get thirsty, so I cleverly tied a canteen of water to the handle bars. I leapt upon my Schwinn ‘starship’ and was off on my adventure. As my little legs pumped furiously, propelling me toward mach one, the canteen suddenly lodged between the tire and the bike frame, creating the world’s first rocketless ejection seat. Examining the crash scene, the real cause of the accident was apparent – Mr. Smartypants thought he was being really smart, when he wasn’t really being smart at all.

Will’s thoughts prove that everybody has opinions, but he has way more than he should. From dogs that won’t stop barking, to the antics of his spouse, ‘Crazy Lady’, Will’s Thoughts will make you smile.