Rush Is Talking About The Amygdala

He just doesn’t use the word:

Well, I interviewed Fran Tarkenton, a former Hall of Fame quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings and a number of other teams for the Limbaugh Letter the other day, because he has a book extolling the virtues of failure.

The Power of Failure: Succeeding in the Age of Innovation. It’s obviously a different take on this whole idea of thinking for success, power, positive thinking. Fran Tarkenton writes that that can get you in trouble, that an outsized focus on positive thinking removes you from reality, and whatever you do, whatever endeavor you’re in, you had better be rooted in reality and stay there, which means you need to admit what you can’t do. And who advises that? Most people advise, “You can do anything! you set your mind to it, you can do whatever you want to do.” But some really smart people say it’s just as important to realize your limitations… You know, Eastwood said it once in a movie. Man’s got to know his limitations. When you have a gun pointed at you, you have to know your limitations. You have to stay rooted in reality.

This is the amygdala’s experienced-based recognition of what works and what doesn’t, and the importance of that as seen by a seasoned competitor. Many in media, who made the right relationships and were just handed book contracts, where the publisher would even bulk buy enough books to put the book on bestseller lists, promote the idea that you can do anything. The reality in a competitive milieu is different.

This is also a subtle measure of a change in the culture, and the psychologies within it. When you are in the middle of a dot-com boom, it is easy to begin thinking anything is possible, and focusing on books that say you should do whatever you want. As times turn harsher, we are designed to begin being careful, and staying within the bounds of safety and certainty. This is related to reduced sexual activity among the youth, increased migration, growing nationalism, and it likely presages a change in the amygdala-controlled activity of investing. The world is turning K.

I laugh when I see these things, because in Rush you have a brilliant guy at the tip of the spear, and yet he is still just a smidge behind the readers of this site.

But that is OK – he will catch up. It is inevitable.

Apocalypse cometh™