Well, Okay. Good Luck With That!
They wanted to make it a company holiday.
I opposed doing it because I saw it as a passing political fad. Making it an official day off felt like a capitulation. And that’s what I said at the board meeting when the idea was proposed.
“That’s not how it will be perceived,” the head of PR told me.
“How will it be perceived?”
I can’t remember the words she used because it was PR language. PR language is like marketing language, with which I’m familiar. At its best, it means to simultaneously inform and soothe. But her message was clear: “The company will look like it’s being run by a clutch of grumpy old fogeys.”
Still, I persisted.
“And just who would see it that way?”
“Just about everyone. The press. The local community. Even the employees.”
The press? Sure. The local community? I was dubious. But our employees? No way! We are, after all, a Libertarian-leaning publishing company. I’m aware of the fact that many of our younger employees are recent college graduates, freshly baked in gender studies, CRT, and Marxism. But surely the more experienced employees would have a more real-world view. They would see the situation as I did.
I suggested we pick up the discussion at our next board meeting. During that pause, I phoned several of our CEOs, explained the situation, and asked how they saw it. Shockingly, they all sort of agreed with our PR pro.
“It’s a different world, Mark,” one of them (a 30-something) explained. I could almost feel his hand patting me gently on the shoulder.
The night before the next board meeting, I told K the story and asked her what I should do. “Make it official,” she said.
“But it’s a capitulation. A broken link. It’s going to end badly.”
“You don’t know that.”
No, I didn’t know that for certain. But I did feel it. And strongly. It was a contest of intuitions – those of two of the oldest fogeys against a dozen younger people that were actually in charge.
We could have insisted on having our way. But what would that have accomplished? It would have made us feel that were doing the “right” thing. That was certain. And it might have preserved one link of sanity in the future chain of our company’s business culture.
But, again, we didn’t know that.
At the meeting, I voted in favor of the holiday. But in doing so, I told them what I thought: that this was a mistake that would end badly. That this capitulation could lead to others that would eventually do the company harm.
“We will make sure that doesn’t happen,” they said.
I figured they would say that. And I knew they would believe it. So I wanted to leave them with something – the smallest seed of doubt that would, in the future, alert them to what was happening if they were wrong.
I said, “Well, good luck with that!”
“Good luck with that” is an expression I picked up from Jordan Peterson. He’s the Canadian professor of psychology and evolutionary biology who first became internet famous for opposing government mandates on gender-preferred pronouns. That put him on dozens of TV and online programs, where he debates academics, journalists, and celebrities on a host of “woke” topics. Like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, he is superbly good at arguing his point. And, when he wants, dismantling the arguments of his opponents.
But there are times, for one reason or another, when Peterson chooses not to dismantle an opponent’s argument. He does this most often when talking to younger people and after they make a definitive statement about carving out a brave new world.
He pauses. Then he smiles and says, “Well, good luck with that.”
The statement is obviously sarcastic, but it doesn’t feel nasty in the way that sarcasm often does. It feels gentler somehow. It feels avuncular. It feels like stoic resignation. Like experience whispering to innocence.
So, that’s what I did. I capitulated on the vote because I wasn’t sure I was right. But I left them with a seed of doubt in case I was.