Do you have questions about the site? Write to bruce at perens.com .
List of all articles we've ever published.
Source Code
Developer's Documentation
RSS
XML Sitemap
XML News Sitemap
![[Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
Stupid boy does good
I've been struggling with this one for a while, because it involves talking about my brother, and he didn't ask to get talked about, even though it isn't actually about him, just the difference between him and me.
There was a character in the TV series "Dad's Army" called "Pike", and the Bank Manager / Captain Mainwearing often looked at Pike and said "Stupid boy."
Now my brother did very well, went to uni, got his degrees, and worked his way up, this is the Accenture / PWC / City field, and he went about as far as you can go, short of breaking into the Board level, so he clearly isn't stupid, but...
... but, much to mum's chagrin, I often call him stupid, because while he went down the "management" road, I went down the "practical" road, more in line with my dad, so "stupid" in this context really means "out of touch with the practical realities", and even that doesn't mean "out of touch", per se, just the practical realities... this is complex, but important.
It comes down to the difference between casual familiarity with something, and different fields of knowledge.
This of course cuts both ways, I'd be useless in his field, and of course each of us probably feels that our own field is the significant one, he can just hire an artisan, innit...
What is most significant is this, we both came from the same place, the same environment, the same background, and he, being older, had first choice, but somewhere at university dropped engineering and went into management sciences, so the whole nurture vs nature thing looks slightly askance, we had the same nature, and we had the same nurture, hell, we even went to the same school and had many of the same teachers, and the two roads really separated at school leaving / university starting age, long after nature and nurture have done their thing.
So anyway, he comes down with a bunch of bits to convert the SWB series II Land Rover from ragtop to hard top, and while doing this we touch on my cnc mill conversion and computers and suchlike, things that to me are all just things you do, not worth mentioning, but after he has left I think about it, I didn't consult him or work WITH him in any way doing the conversion, to me it was a piddly easy job, so you just do it, "grab that", "hold that there" "go round and check those bolts are tight".
My brother isn't stupid, but I guess he got treated as stupid, by me, because he wasn't "casually competent" at things, I've turned into my dad, and he hasn't, and I don't suppose that is either good or bad, it just is.
But the point of all this.
He didn't ask me to write about him, so let's just say my brother has made good money all his working life, compared to the working man he is loaded, he is thinking about retiring and buying a country house down here and a few acres, we're talking money, he's thinking in retirement he can do a bit of consulting at 500 quid a day, and thanks to his working life to date he has the contacts and reputation to pull it off.
So yes, he will bitch about the price of filling the tank with diesel, same as you or me, but it is just bitching, he doesn't have a list of wanted toys on the refrigerator that can be acquired on the cheap now and again, if I don't fill the tank with diesel every week.
So he sees the same things as me, the economy going to hell in a handcart, but not only does he see it from a different perspective intellectually, from the management consultant point of view, he sees it different personally.
He simply doesn't have the "casually competent" skills to survive a downturn, just like 99% of my neighbours, but, on the other hand, he isn't starting from the same place.
If you pick me, one of my neighbours, and him, probably all three of us, if analysed by an accountant, have a net worth (once assets and liabilities are totted up) around zero, me because I have some assets but no liabilities, my neighbours because they have some assets and matching liabilities, and him because he has loads of assets, and loads of liabilities.
But economic downturns don't affect people like him the way they affect people like me.
I think he is fucking nuts to be considering buying a country house now, and I know the estate agent is rubbing his hands with glee, me, I'd wait 18 months for property to crash and buy at the bottom of the market, but there is the point, he isn't me.
So "stupid" takes on a new meaning, I think he is stupid to consider it, bet he... he knows he has those contacts and that reputation, and just because the proles lose their shirts, he will still find his 500 quid a day consulting gigs... the gulf between the rich and the poor.
My brother is basically middle class, dad was working class made good, me, I'm working class made something or other, not quite sure what, round peg meets square hole.
This, more than anything, is what I am seeing in society now, the progression up through working class to middle class is no longer a relatively smooth slope, there is a real gulf opening up and that first step between the two is an utter bitch.
Going up you need a rocket assist, going down you need a parachute, anything else and the "landing" will break your bones and you topple backwards into obscurity into the chasm in between the two classes.
So my brother and me, came from the same nature, came from the same nurture, but there is a big gap there now, and seeing him outside where the local working class women push their prams from the nursery past the landie where he is stood, he doesn't fit into working class any more, he ain't comfortable here.
The similarities between out outweigh the differences, and at the end of the day ("stupid boy, Pike.") he is my brother, but the differences are there, and the effect of the differences outweighs the effects of the similarities... casual competence, money, recession, none of these things mean the same thing to him as they mean to me.
Fact is, it is people like my brother who are steering the economy, not people like me, I don't know the last time, if ever, he "took care" of something or some bill for my (our) mum, not because he is callous or bad or mean, he just doesn't see money the way we do, I didn't even bother trying to tell him how much (how little) we live on, he just wouldn't get it, in the sense I might as well be jabbering away at him in Swahili.
He says to me "I can find an electrician, and a plumber, and a builder, who all went to school together, so I can just hand them a set of keys and they get on with it." and I am thinking "no wonder you get ripped off you stupid bastard." but then again, when the time taken to manage these people has to be factored against your earning capacity... it's chump change, so not so stupid, not even doesn't care, just doesn't even see that he is being ripped off, that's what things cost, whip the plastic out and 5 seconds later it is forgotten.
Different perspective.
So we've done the ragtop to hardtop conversion, he is very pleased (dunno why, trivial job) and says "anything I can do for you, let me know" and he means it, fair play to him.
So I say, quoting a line from The Boys from the Black Stuff, "gissajob" (give me a job)
My brother, bless his middle class heart, just looks at me "You don't want a job, you like doing what you're doing."
Yeah bro, I like it better than being a minimum wage monkey, but I don't like it better than doing a real job, making something, making a difference, and screw the money, but I might as well be speaking Swahili, so I smile at him and say "Yeah, beats working for a living." and Jim Morrison starts running through my head.
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange