GAMBLING ON HAPPINESS : LOVE, KNOWLEDGE AND RISK

AN ESSAY

For three years, my close friend Joe Simeone composed an operatic adaptation to the 1952 play "Dial M For Murder." Last week, I attended an opening in which he presented several passages from his work. In brief, the opera follows the same intricate plot as the play: A man named Tony blackmails both his wealthy wife, Margot, and another man named Lesgate; Tony exploits the blackmail to entice Lesgate to murder his wife; the plan goes wrong and Margot kills Lesgate in self-defense; Tony manipulates the evidence to pin the murder on Margot; the police arrest Margot and she is sentenced to death; an enterprising police detective worries about the verdict and discovers that Tony orchestrated the result; Margot goes free and discovers her husband's betrayal.

Through the operatic form, Joe Simeone tells the story with a keener eye for emotion than plot. He did not compose an "operatic thriller;" he composed an opera. As such, he explores the emotional relationship between Tony and Margot with greater detail than the play. At the outset, Simeone tells us that Tony's and Margot's marriage was "loveless," but that Tony had recently begun to shower affections on his wife. To make that point, the opera begins with a sweeping aria in which Margot reveals that she has "rediscovered" her love for her husband. This is ironic, of course, because Tony has already betrayed her; he is even planning to kill her. During the aria, Margot sings a remarkable line: "It's a risk to believe love is real."

Margot may seem naïve for daring to believe that her devious husband actually loves her. But she is not alone. We all want love in our lives because love is a tantalizing pathway to happiness. Yet love is a troublesome thing because it cuts in two directions. We can love and we can be loved. Real happiness exists only when both elements find expression in a relationship. When only one person loves, the result is unrequited disappointment because the other does not return the feeling. And when only one person receives love, the result is awkward discomfort. Put another way, love only really "works" when there is no disparity between the emotions on both sides.

Sigmund Freud said as much. In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud explained that human beings generally "strive after happiness; they want to become happy and remain so." Civilization and its Discontents (Strachey, trans. p. 25). He went on to explain that happiness has both a "positive and negative aim," namely: "[the] absence of pain and unpleasure and the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure." Id. Additionally, Freud noted that happiness cannot arise as long as unhappiness exists in a person's life. And unhappiness is "much less difficult to experience" than happiness. Id. at 26.

Freud identified three main sources for unhappiness: (1) our own bodies, which are doomed to aging, pain, discomfort and decay; (2) the external world, which can "rage against us with unimaginable forces of destruction;" and (3) our relations to other men. Civilization and its Discontents at p.26. He went on to say that unhappiness flowing from our "relations to other men" represents the worst possible unhappiness: It is the unhappiness of betrayal, deception, unfaithfulness, personal disappointment, spurned love, heartbreak, frustrated yearning and all the other bitter emotions that arise when our relations with others do not follow the path we wanted.

If so much unhappiness can flow from relationships with others, why do people bother with them? Freud posed the same question. He offered one surefire way to avoid "relationship unhappiness:" "Against the suffering which may come upon one from human relationships the readiest safeguard is voluntary isolation." Civilization and its Discontents at p. 27. He called this the "happiness of quietness." By eliminating a source for unhappiness, a person makes it easier to experience happiness.

But Freud acknowledged that "voluntary isolation" is not very satisfying. After all, mere freedom from unhappiness is nowhere near as fulfilling as experiencing positive happiness. For that reason, Freud explained that human beings constantly gamble on love to satisfy their "passionate striving for a positive fulfillment of happiness." Civilization and its Discontents at p. 32.

Put another way, freedom from unhappiness and pain is not enough. People want the ecstasy and joy that flows from real, positive happiness. And positive happiness flows most strongly from that most dangerous category: Relations with other men. Still, the potential emotional payout from love is so great that people all too willingly take their chances with it. Nonetheless, Freud warned: "The weak side of this technique is easy to see; otherwise no human being would have thought of abandoning this path to happiness for any other. It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love." Id. at 33.

Against this background, Margot sang more than she knew when she observed: "It's a risk to believe love is real." Love is an extremely dangerous risk. When a person dares to abandon himself to love, he makes himself "defenseless against suffering;" he even risks "helpless unhappiness" if he does not get the emotional payout he expects from the relationship. Worse, these unhappy results depend exclusively on "relations to other men." Specifically, the "love pathway to happiness" depends on how another person acts and feels. We humans are subjective creatures. We know only what we sense. Facts exist only to the extent that we manifest a subjective belief in their reliability. In that light, it is very difficult to gauge whether another person feels any emotion as we do, let alone love.

Beyond risk, love is about knowledge. Freud said that love has two components: Loving and being loved. We only feel love's joy when we know another person feels strongly about us, too. It is not enough to feel strongly about another person. Rather, love's intoxicating pleasure only really arises when we are satisfied that another person feels as strongly about us as we do about them.

But how do we know that? It is hard enough to know what exists in anyone else's mind. Yet when we risk our happiness on love, we force ourselves to decipher what another person feels and thinks. This is extremely difficult; in fact, it is nearly impossible. There is no way to know for certain whether another person loves us, because we cannot literally step into that person's mind. Rather, we must examine secondary facts to make inferences about the other person's beliefs. This is an imperfect method at best, but it is the only one we have. Even direct statements from our love interest are not definitive proof of what he feels. Humans are, after all, infamously dishonest.

In this light, it is easy to see that love is no easy thing. It does not just a risk; it demands some faith, too, because the facts necessary to establish love are unknowable.

Again, the question arises: With these thematic difficulties in mind, why bother with love? Consider just how much is at stake. By daring to love, a person opens himself to boundless unhappiness and pain flowing from "relations to other men." True, if his love pans out, he feels overwhelmingly positive emotions: That is the potential payout from the "risk." But in order to experience love, a person must satisfy himself that another person feels a certain way. It is impossible to certainly know what another person feels, so love actually involves a double risk: (1) Risking the relationship in the first place; and (2) Risking that a person will feel the way you expect. Disappointment can arise from either risk. There is nothing you can really do to stop it; you can't control how another person thinks or feels. In this sense, love is also a risk because a person must entrust his happiness to the subjective whim of another person over whom he has no control. And because human beings are notoriously untrustworthy and inconstant, it almost seems an unreasonable risk.

If love is so unreasonable, then why do so many people pursue it? The fact that human beings--like Margot--blindly risk love is testament to the assertion that reason does not rule us. If human beings were entirely rational, they would probably never love. After all, rational thinking involves balancing risks against benefits. A rational mind analyzes the potential pain that could result from a transaction and queries whether the potential pleasure is worth the chance. As Freud explained, love can yield immeasurable pain. And because that pain flows from forces largely beyond our control (i.e., the whims of others), it really makes no rational sense to take the risk. Although love offers a huge benefit in pleasure, a reasonable man would immediately see that it always presents an intolerable risk in pain. That risk would invariably outweigh the benefit in pleasure.

But we know that human beings live to love. They cast reason aside. They take the risk, even though it is unreasonable. Put simply, love's emotional payout in happiness is so intoxicating that it overwhelms human reason. Love's pleasure is so hypnotic that it submerges all potential pitfalls. Among those pitfalls is the dangerous need to place individual emotional well-being in the hands of another person--and that person is probably not trustworthy. Men ignore those risks when they love because it just feels so, so good. If reason held men in check, they would never allow themselves to remain blind to the dangers. But blind they remain; they dive headlong into the risks because it just feels so damn good.

"It's a risk to believe love is real." In one line, Margot expressed the timeless--yet perilously uncertain-- human quest for love. She hinted at the risks. She knew there was a danger. But love made her feel so good that she willingly blinded herself to it. She suspended her reason. Objectively, that might appear foolish. But we all have done it. And we probably always will. Love is never objective.

In short, we all desperately want positive happiness. We are not content with the "happiness of quietness." No, we crave "relations with other men." We gamble on positive happiness by playing familiar games. Those games are rarely reasonable. In fact, most are extremely dangerous.

Love is probably the most dangerous game of all: Enticing, risky, unknowable, unverifiable, tempestuous, fickle, maddening; yet offering pleasure beyond imagination. It is a recipe for unreasonable risk every time.

ARE LAWYERS ALLOWED TO CARE ABOUT FAIRNESS?

AN ESSAY

I like fairness. I always have. Even when I was a kid, I couldn't stand it when people got preferential treatment when it appeared to me they didn't deserve it. I didn't like it when other kids cheated at games, or when I saw that some kids' parents had more money than mine. "That's not fair," I complained. When I was young, I earnestly believed that everyone should have an equal chance to succeed at things. And I believed that success had something to do with merit. For me, fairness expressed whether a situation was fundamentally right or wrong. It was intuitive. I even thought that our government cared about fairness.

My understanding about fairness changed over time. I learned that fairness had two dimensions, one substantive, the other procedural. "Substantive" fairness referred to the intuitive judgment whether a situation was right or wrong. "Procedural" fairness referred to the technical circumstances that either gave or withheld an equal chance to achieve a particular result. For example, racial realities in America reflect "substantive unfairness" for black people because their economic social situation is largely worse than that for comparable white Americans. On the other hand, court rules and contract terms might reflect "procedural unfairness" because they tilt technical rules to favor one party over another in a dispute. Substantive fairness is basically a "justice" inquiry. Procedural fairness is more technical. But both imply a confrontation between opposing forces with "something at stake."

In law school, I cared about both substantive and procedural fairness. I used to complain about results in particular cases because they were "unfair" to one side or the other. This amused my professors. Slowly, I learned that while the law professes to supply "procedural fairness" to both sides in a legal dispute in an effort to assure "substantive fairness" (AKA "justice"), the reality is that fairness does not really matter. Procedure and form are more important than substance in the law. The side with greater resources and greater procedural tact will win. One motion beats another motion. A dismissal beats a complaint. A judgment beats a plea. Papers must be filed properly or they will be rejected, no matter how cogent their arguments. Sometimes these procedural results lead to "substantive fairness." But it is really irrelevant. Judges simply look to see whether the lawyers' behavior matches the rulebook. Legal officiating, then, is really just a technical exercise; it is not necessary that both sides have equal procedural opportunities. And it certainly is not necessary that the ultimate result be "substantively fair."

And how could it be? After all, fairness only enters the analysis when two sides confront one another. Fairness comes into play not just in the law, but also in fistfights, football games and poker tournaments. When two sides compete for a result under common rules, fairness rears its head. When something is at stake, fairness matters. Children scream "No fair" only after investing themselves in a game that offers some reward; without confrontation, fairness does not really matter. People want fairness when they strive to obtain a result that will favor them and disfavor someone else. They want to know that they had every opportunity to vindicate their desire to win. In legal terms, litigants want to know that they had every chance to advance their interests, or to protect them if they are threatened.

This creates a dilemma. After all, lawyers in our legal system--like rabid children vying for victory in a game--badly want particular results. They are not neutral guardians committed to abstract principles like "procedural fairness." Rather, they are biased advocates determined to win. In fact, they take an oath to "zealously" represent their clients' legal interests, and that means pulling out all the stops to prevail. This is problematic because fairness and bias do not go hand in hand. If fairness means giving the other side exactly the same opportunity to win as you, then fairness reduces your chances to win. As a biased advocate, you must increase your chances to win, not reduce them. In that sense, lawyering and fairness appear antithetical to one another.

Still, lawyers inevitably say that they just want "fairness" for their clients. But here they confuse their terms. Yes, they certainly want "substantive fairness," namely, a biased result that intuitively pleases the client. But they do not want "procedural fairness," namely, giving the other guy an equal chance to win. Additionally, lawyers misuse the word "fairness" all the time. They say they care about fairness, but they really mean "favorable results for me." If they win, they say the process has been "fair." If they lose, though, they say they were treated "unfairly." This has nothing to do with abstract fairness. This is mere bias and disappointment.

We should not be surprised that lawsuits are brutally acrimonious affairs because we follow the adversarial system in the United States. That means we basically allow two diametrically opposed, biased parties to battle it out to determine various property and liberty rights. One side gains; the other loses. It is always a zero-sum game. As such, advocacy is essential. The lawyers must go for the throat or their clients lose everything. Courts praise the adversarial system because they say it leads to greater "truth." After all, according to the apologists, the "truth" will inevitably come out as two sworn enemies struggle to gain an advantage over each other. And when money is at stake, they will stop at nothing to win. Truth, then, is the "collateral fallout" from biased adversary confrontations.

And here again arises the dilemma. How can fairness matter in bitter confrontations like this? Will either side in a lawsuit value fairness to the other when they are sworn to ruin each other? That is like asking NFL teams to ensure that their opponents get all the favorable flag calls they deserve. In other words, it is sheer fantasy. When two sides confront each other and stand to lose all if they do not win, fairness to the other guy is the last thing on their minds.

I mention all this because our legal system professes respect for fairness. Everyone in court says they are either "aggrieved" or "wrongly accused." They say they just want an opportunity to be heard in a fair forum. Yet during that opportunity to be heard, they want to treat the other side as unfairly as possible in order to win the fight. No one really cares about securing "ultimate fairness." Individual litigants--and their lawyers--just want biased results.

Judges should care about fairness. But as merely technical stewards committed to determining whether lawyers meet the standards set out in motion rulebooks, they have little power to reflect on power disparities between the parties--or unfairness in the rules themselves. Court rules and civil procedure protocols present fairness problems in their own right. Judges do not have the authority or discretion to deeply think about larger fairness issues. Their job is technical, not philosophical or ethical. Behavior either falls within the rule or without. Sometimes the result is fair, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's "fair" to bar an injured person from filing a lawsuit because he missed the date by one day. Sometimes it isn't. But from the judge's perspective, rules are rules. And that ends the judge's role.

This is why so many legal cases arouse disgust in neutral onlookers. From a detached perspective, it appears that fairness means nothing in the average lawsuit. Rather, it appears that mere compliance with rules and deadlines takes precedence over the question whether each side has a fair shot at a particular result. And lawyers do their best to belittle, degrade and discount everything their opponents say in court. This gives the impression that they would be just as satisfied if they won unfairly as if they won fairly--just so long as they win. Fairness seems the last thing on their minds. Indeed, they only mention "fairness" if they lose a point, in which case they say the result is "unfair."

In truth, we cannot blame lawyers for acting this way: They are biased advocates in an adversary system. They are trained to exploit rules in order to obtain private results, not to ensure that abstract fairness flows from every confrontation under the law. Lawyers are not philosophers or ethicists; they are employees hired to do a job. And employees are biased toward their employers because they receive pay to act only in their interest.

Bias and fairness are mutually exclusive. That is why I think it is extremely difficult--if not impossible--for our legal system to consistently deliver fair results. That is not to say that biased advocacy does not sometimes lead to abstract fairness. But that is a side effect at best, not an intentional result.

LEGAL "VICTORIES" : PURE EXAGGERATION, AND A BAD WORD CHOICE

AN ESSAY

Law firm websites amuse me. I get priceless satirical material from them. Generally, they take themselves extremely seriously and want to show that they are “winners.” They toss around words like “success,” “results,” “every time,” “reliable,” “professional,” “result-oriented,” “highly successful,” “preeminent,” “unique,” “client-focused,” “team spirit,” “effective” and “experienced.” This all makes me laugh because I know what law firms are like. There is nothing rarefied or glorious about them. They are profit mills in which lawyers pool their efforts to twist the law in their favor. Their “experience,” “results” and “success” flow from their dogged ability to wear down their opponents, then either make money or save money for their clients. For all concerns and purposes, American law practice is an elaborate game. One side wins. The other loses. It is adversarial. And it is seethingly bitter, as all competitive games are.

Big law firms like to report their “recent victories.” After all, “victories” show that the law firm has “won many games,” and potential clients want to win “their game,” too. When betting on a sports team, you want to choose the team most likely to win. You can tell whether a team is more likely to win if you know how often they have won in the past. A law firm’s “past victories” create the impression that it can defeat the opposition again, make money and deliver “success” to a new client. The “victory” metaphor is sport-like, even warlike.

But is law practice supposed to be sport-like? Are legal problems really nothing more than games to be manipulated and won? Or are they miniature wars in which the “enemy” must be hunted down and destroyed? Is this really appropriate rhetoric? After all, law is supposed to provide a rational framework in which to resolve civil disputes. It is supposed to provide reasonable, neutral rules by which to adjudicate problems that might otherwise spur violence. Civilizations invented law to neutralize private violence among citizens intended to redress perceived grievances. In that sense, there is nagging irony in the assertion that lawyers should pursue “victory” for their clients. If law is just and neutral, results should flow as a matter of principle, not as a matter of martial triumph. Law, in other words, is supposed to replace armed conflict as a means to solve problems. Yet the rhetoric of “winning” and “victory” suggests that law is no different from uncivilized, violent struggle. Armies win “victories” by killing those who oppose them in battle. Is this what we expect from lawyers in their “legal battles?”

Let us examine the word “victory.” The word has a decidedly martial connotation. There is nothing detached or nonviolent about it; it involves prevailing over another person or group after a fierce competition or struggle. According to Webster, “victory” means: “1. final and complete supremacy or superiority in battle or war; 2. a specific military engagement ending in triumph; or 3. success in any contest or struggle involving the defeat of an opponent or the overcoming of obstacles.” Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.). Two of the three meanings deal specifically with war. The third mentions “success” after “struggling with” and “defeating” an “opponent” in a “contest” with “obstacles.” Victory is a hypercharged, even romantic word. It implies the euphoria that flows from armed triumph over an enemy. It feels good to defeat “opponents” and “overcome obstacles.” It feels good to display “complete supremacy or superiority” over an “enemy in battle or war.” There is nothing more primal than proving domination over an opponent through force. It is crude, animalistic and base. Strong lions overpower weaker ones. They win “victory” over their competitors after a “struggle for supremacy.”

But should lawyers be no different than lions in the wild? Or conquering generals bent on defeating their opponents in battle? I thought law was supposed to elevate us from such violent impulses. I thought law was supposed to replace war with rational principle and reasonable discussion. By using the word “victory” to describe legal “success,” however, lawyers debase themselves. They misunderstand the law. They use it as an arena or a battlefield, not as a rational platform for resolving differences. They approach legal questions like battles, not as opportunities to show their civilized ability to transcend warlike thinking. “Victory” is alluring because everyone likes to “dominate,” “defeat” and “succeed” over a recalcitrant foe. But the question remains: Is law really the right forum to pursue that quest?

Perhaps it is. In the English legal tradition, after all, law functions in an “adversary capacity.” Two sides “face off” against each other. Each side has diametrically opposed interests. One wants land; the other one refuses to give it up. One wants compensation for an injury; the other one refuses to pay. One claims he had a contract; the other says there was never a deal. No matter the facts, “adversary justice” places each side in a “competitive” position. The law assumes that people will make the best arguments—and, ironically, “tell the truth”—in order to satisfy their threatened self-interest. Lawyers step in to vindicate each side’s self-interest. They have only one goal: To defeat the opponent’s arguments and convince the court to grant whatever the client wants.

In this sense, we see that “adversary justice” is profoundly “game-like.” Just as two competitors yearn for “supremacy over the other” in a game, two sides in a legal dispute square off to achieve the same thing. Just as sportsmen must adapt their play to acknowledged rules in their quest for victory, lawyers, too, must contend with “court procedures,” “discovery protocols” and various other “steps” on the road to ultimate success. Each side tries to manipulate the rules to obtain an edge over the other. After all, when “victory” is at stake, you do everything you can to increase your chances to win. In the “adversary system,” competition is fierce. After all, only one side can win; and someone has to lose, too. When money is on the line, the gloves come off. Victory becomes an obsession. Just as two generals struggle violently to obtain an edge over each other in battle, so too do two lawyers savagely grapple with one another for the court’s favor. In all these cases—games, war and “adversary justice”—the breathless quest for victory engenders ruthless competition and narrow-minded commitment to one’s cause, even if it is unjust.

This is all very ugly. We all know who people who insatiably pursue victory in all life’s pursuits. We recoil from those who seek in all things to defeat us. True, sometimes we all enjoy competing for accolades and laurels, whether in games or in life. But there is a limit beyond which we refuse to compete for decency’s sake. Those who compete in everything come off as barbaric and swinish, even if they ultimately win. There is something disgustingly selfish about an endless thirst for victory. After all, victory implies a violent struggle for domination. That is a primal, overweening, animalistic impulse. If we live in a civilized community, we seek to avoid coarse brutishness. Yet the insatiable thirst for victory requires exactly that. Those who publicly broadcast and flaunt their “victories”—like so many law firms—appear wretchedly selfish, even gluttonous and shameless. After all, they are advertising their ability to struggle, fight, brutalize and ultimately dominate their opponents in savage conflicts. That is something Genghis Khan might do, not someone who claims to live in a civilized community.

I think lawyers should excise “victory rhetoric” from their vocabulary. “Victory rhetoric” stems from war. In my view, law should replace armed conflict, not imitate it. But this might be asking too much. After all, even “civilized” human beings retain a lurking instinct to dominate their fellow men. They like the euphoria that springs from “victory,” whether in war, sport or commerce. This is why so many things in our lives—including the law—are “gamelike.” Victory in games provides a primal, emotional charge that humans crave. If they can’t get an emotional charge from battle and physical supremacy over other men, they turn to substitute sources, like games, careers and other competitive fields. All these things provide an opportunity to dominate others, even if without violence.

Yet there is nothing noble about “pursuing victory” and the basely euphoric emotions associated with it. Saint Augustine wrote extensively about games and competition in his Confessions. He confessed before God that he routinely pursued the bestial emotions that flowed from “victory in games” as a child: “In competitive games, I loved the pride of winning…even in [these children’s games] I was overcome by a vain desire to win and was often guilty of cheating. Any breach of the rules I would not tolerate and, if I detected it, would fiercely denounce it, though it was exactly what I was doing to others.” Confessions, at pp. 12, 22 (Oxford University Press 1992). Tellingly, Augustine observed that children are not the only ones who seek “victory in games.” He writes: “Behavior does not change when one leaves behind domestic guardians and schoolmasters, nuts and balls and sparrows.” Id. at p. 22. Rather, adults play games, too, and they seek the same base emotions as children. Just like children at play, they cheat, manipulate rules and engage in hypocrisy. He writes: “[The] amusement of adults is called business.” Id. at 12.

Against that background, should lawyers really crow about their “victories?” Are they no better than children? In sum, we should be very wary about transforming life’s pursuits into competitive games. When we do, we lower ourselves into something resembling animal squalor. I find it both sad and ironic that lawyers—through their ugly “victory rhetoric”—bring the law down to the level of children’s games.

I thought we had come further than this as a civilization. I thought law was supposed to elevate us from violent competitions. Apparently not, at least in the American “legal market.” It’s all just a “win-loss column.” Reason and principle have nothing to do with it, especially if you get an “L” for following them. When you thirst for victory, you do anything for a “W.” Principle is an impediment on that path, not an advantage.

HAPPINESS, UNHAPPINESS, WORK, CAREERS AND DRINKING

AN ESSAY

When I practiced law, I learned the real meaning of the word “unhappiness.” I have garbled memories about my months in practice. Impressions flitter back to me without warning. No matter how they reappear, they put a bitter taste in my mouth. They confirm to me that I made the right decision to abandon the legal profession. They remind me just how awful I felt every day in a law office.

Before I practiced law, I never thought much about the concepts “happiness” and “unhappiness.” In my young mind, happiness was uncomplicated; it simply meant that you generally “felt good” in your circumstances and that “nothing was wrong.” Applying that definition, “unhappiness,” too, was easy to understand. It was just the “opposite of feeling good.” “Unhappiness” depended on “happiness.” If I knew one, I could abstractly imagine the other. I never considered that “unhappiness” could have an independent meaning.

It does. The mere fact that the word “unhappiness” contains the word “happiness” does not mean that “unhappiness” depends on “happiness.” To the contrary, “unhappiness” is a unique, pervasive, all-consuming feeling of malaise that darkens your entire outlook on life. It is not merely the absence of happiness; it is much more. It is a poisonous, enervating, hopeless mental condition. When you are unhappy, life appears bleak and pointless. Days pass slowly, even torturously. You just want to lie down and go to sleep. You expect bad news at every turn. When you are unhappy, you do not think to yourself: “I am not happy.” You think: “I am unhappy; and unhappiness has nothing to do with happiness.”

Practicing law made me unhappy. I could not bear to get up in the morning. I would lie in bed and pray that the minutes on the clock would not pass. From the moment I walked into the office, difficulties arose. My supervisor would yell at me for failing to make a phone call or fax something. She would reject my explanations with vague advice, such as: “You need to do better, remember more and move faster.” Of course, she never told me how to make people answer the phone or return calls. Nor could she tell me how to make the U.S. Mail move more quickly. Whenever I mustered the effort to fulfill her requests, she had a fresh rebuke for me. She called me names and told me she would dock my pay if I kept “fucking things up.” I tried to emphasize that no one had trained me. She told me to train myself by reading a 900-page “best practices manual.”

I felt disillusioned. I entered law practice after a very successful law school career. I thought my academic success would carry over into practice. It did not. Whenever I talked about legal theory, I was told to be quiet and do “case management” instead. That meant making phone calls and setting up appointments with doctors and engineers. Law had nothing to do with my practice. It was an elaborate horse-trading game that happened to revolve around a courthouse. All the while, intimidating people besieged me from all sides. My own supervisor told me I was incompetent. My adversaries called our lawsuits “baseless, stupid and worthy of sanction.” I even made judges angry because my supervisor instructed me to file idiotic motions in court. In short, I was castigated for following orders as often I was for failing to follow them. It was classic Catch-22 material.

My life degenerated into pure negativity. Nothing ever felt right. No matter what I did, I expected to be insulted, censured or criticized. I never received even one encouraging word from anyone. I remember losing interest in everything, even things I really liked. My libido vanished. Lawyers in my firm sympathized with me. But they, too, endured the same hardships I did; they had little time to worry about me.

And I could not escape. I stayed in the office for 11 hours or more for six days a week. I had no vacation time. I received cell phone calls before and after I left the office. The bad news and mean-spirited criticism never ended. Six months into my law practice experience, goodness seemed to have evaporated from my existence. It had become one grim, emasculating failure after another with no end in sight. My boss even reneged on a promise to increase my salary after six months, explaining: “You haven’t earned it yet.”

That’s when I learned what “unhappiness” really meant. I quit. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Since then, life has dealt me more tough cards. But at least I do not face ridicule, scorn and criticism every hour. I happier now than I was when I practiced law. In any event, I know I am not “unhappy” anymore.

Could anyone be happy in such circumstances? I remember something my supervisor said to me one Friday evening. It was about 6 PM. I was working on something that had to be done on Monday; there was still a long way to go. I knew I was going to be back in the office on Saturday, but I wanted to knock some work out before the weekend. Everyone else had gone home except my supervisor. She wanted to leave, too. So she came into my office and said: “Would you wrap it up? You’re cutting into my drinking time.”

I will never forget that. It made me seriously think about life, careers, happiness and success. Here was a successful law firm manager who divided life between “work time,” namely, Monday morning through Friday afternoon, and “drinking time,” namely, Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. When she said “I was cutting into her drinking time,” she implied that she drank at any moment she wasn’t working. For her, life was binary: Working and drinking. She must have liked drinking, because she did not like the fact that I was keeping her at work during her drinking time. If she had liked working, she would not have minded staying at work for a few more hours. But she was upset because I was encroaching on “her time,” and in “her time,” she liked drinking.

I am sure this is a common sentiment. But what does it really say about happiness and success in America? People are so proud of their jobs, especially people—like my supervisor—who achieve prominence and wealth. Yet despite this pride, they always yearn for days off so they can go get drunk. People say they love their work. But if they would prefer drinking to work, are they really being honest with themselves? Sigmund Freud wrote that intoxication is the “purest, most effective method” by which to ward off unhappiness. Civilization and its Discontents, S. 44 (Fischer Verlag, 10th Ed. 2007). Drinking “drowns cares.” If my supervisor loved drinking, she must have had “cares” she wanted to “drown.” This showed me that, beneath the collected exterior, she was somehow unhappy, too. She may not have been abjectly unhappy, but she must have been unhappy enough to want to drink as soon as she got home on Friday night. My unhappiness sprang both from my ill treatment and my disillusionment with a profession that cared nothing for the principles I struggled so long to master. My supervisor’s unhappiness came from some other source. I do not know what made her unhappy. She was powerful and had much more money than I did. She commanded people around the office and owned three apartments. Yet she was upset with me because I delayed her weekly rendezvous with the bottle.

Can we ever really find happiness in employment? It seems that every working person “lives for the weekend.” I know I do whenever I work a “traditional job.” I do not delude myself by saying “I love my job.” I do not like being a servant. I do not like sacrificing my time for a few dollars. Sure, in many cases it is necessary to sacrifice time for money. But that does not mean I like it. That is why I meticulously count the days toward Friday. During the week, a part of my mind always resents the idea that I am stuck doing someone else’s bidding for a shekel or two. Friday, however, represents a liberation from service. Working people divide their mental lives between weekdays and weekends. Weekdays are boring, stressful and unsatisfying. Weekends are exciting, free and fun-filled. The human brain does not like stress, obligation and constraint. Yet it loves freedom and fun. If it came between weekdays and weekends—and if money were not an issue—everyone would choose the weekend: Who would willingly face stress and obligation if there were no compensation for the pain? That is just the way our minds work. It is easier to be happy when you do not face stress, ridicule and failure. Even if you do not face extreme pressure at work, you still have to show up and sit in one place for over eight hours a day. Your brain would much rather be doing other things during that time, like drinking, sunbathing, shopping or surfing. That’s just the way we are, no matter how much guilt-ridden social programming we’ve absorbed to the contrary. We are trained to say “we love to work at traditional jobs.” But this is self-delusion.

Ironically, traditional jobs tend strongly to induce unhappiness. They consume time, leaving only limited opportunities for personal satisfactions. The fact that so many people—even wildly successful people—yearn to drink on Friday night is compelling evidence that people would “rather not be working” if they had the choice. More to the point, the persistent mental distinction between “workday drab” and “weekend fun” vibrantly illustrates that employment makes people unhappy. Workdays are “unhappy time” and weekends are “happy time.” It is childishly simple, yet accurate. “Weekend fun” makes us “happy.” “Weekday drab” runs us down, then thirst for “fun.” Without sufficient “fun” in our lives, we are not “happy.” We may not be truly “unhappy,” but we set ourselves up for unhappiness.

All this makes me wonder whether our entire social program even cares whether people achieve happiness. We learn to work at traditional jobs. We hear rhetoric about it all the time. It is “good” to have a stable job. It is “good” to know your place in the workplace hierarchy. It is “good” to spend your best years serving some company’s economic interests. And it is “good” to make money in the process. We hear that it is important to “be happy.” But how can we be happy if we spend 72% of our lives (ie, 5 days from every 7) wishing it were the weekend? Is it “good” to be happy only 28% of the time? Against this background, it almost seems revolutionary to want happiness 100% of the time. No offense to office workers, but if you say you are “100% happy” at your job copying papers, answering phones, staring at spreadsheets, delivering coffee and cataloging documents, I don’t believe you. I know that every Wednesday morning you secretly say to yourself: “Only two more days to go….only two more days to go.”

Happiness should not be a revolutionary sentiment. I made it my goal in life. I have experienced unhappiness. It is deeply unsettling. It makes you doubt life altogether. It makes you just want to give up. Still, avoiding unhappiness is more difficult than it seems. In our society, we learn to serve. We learn to spend our time to benefit others in order to win some monetary reward. Only a few have the freedom to spend their time as they please. But happiness lies in the power to say: “I will do what I want to do.” On weekends, working people say: “I will do what I want to do,” and they do what they want. On weekdays, they say: “I must” and they do not do what they want to do.

This is not a good recipe for happiness. Yet this is the program we’ve received from day one. When we sit in an office dreaming about the weekend, we understand just how little time we have to be happy in this world. Freud put it best when he said: “Our chances for happiness are already limited by our constitution as living organisms. But it is much less difficult to experience unhappiness.” Civilization and its Discontents, S. 43 (my translation) (Fischer Verlag, 10th ed. 2007).

When we divide our time between “work days” and “drinking days,” we obviously don’t like the work days as much as the drinking days. Yet we work much more often than we drink. Where does that leave us? Or do we drink because we work? If we do, what does that say about work? Should we defend it so proudly?

THE DISAGREEABLE ASSHOLES' LEAGUE FOR TOTAL STRESS, PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS AND, BY THE WAY, FUCK YOU, TOO

By : Ms. D. Samantha Crabtree-Farkingbeech, Esq., Partner, Cunting, Snidewell, Screech & Dourpott, LLP, a Fortune 250 Law Firm Specializing in Client Service to the Software Industry; J.D., Harvard Law School summa cum laude (1990); Author, “Work is the First Word in Work-Life Balance,” (an American Bar Association Publication)(2008); Voted Best Litigator, Atlanta, Georgia Bar Association; Married; Mother of two.

God fucking damn it. What the hell do you want? Can’t you see I’m in a hurry? I’ve got a meeting in five minutes. Do you think I have time to sit down and talk to you about this? Maybe you didn’t notice, but it is a weekday; I’ve got deadlines. If I don’t call Dick Henry back in five minutes we could lose four fucking million in fees. And I’ll be damned if I let that happen. Not on my watch. Shit, now my phone is ringing again. Who the fuck is it?

I didn’t make partner in this law firm being nice. If you want to succeed here, “being nice” is not an option. I didn’t bill 4100 hours last year and set a revenue record kissing ass or being polite to people. Sure, maybe a smile here and there for a judge or a client is OK. But once you start working cases, you’d better hang up your nice hat and start acting like a winner. Winners don’t ask; they tell. When opposing counsel asks for a delay because their witness is running late, you tell them: “Fuck no. We had an agreement. You signed it.” Then you make phone calls and yell at people for costing you time. Basically, you’ve got to put some gravel in your voice, break out your BlackBerry® and start telling some junior associate that they have their head up their ass because time is ticking.

Yeah, I’m stressed. Yeah, I take Tums. It’s stressful trying to win cases for software companies, especially when they have all kinds of dirty laundry to hide. Do you know how difficult it is to sift through 40 million pages looking for some damning admission some low-level programmer made in 1993? Do you know how difficult it is explaining to a judge how you’re going to catalogue 700,000 boxes of documents on some custom-made computer program? You spend more time defending your dumb-ass IT staff than talking about the case. At least you don’t have to talk about the law. The law doesn’t win cases. Management does. And management is stressful. Do you know what it’s like to take 230 phone calls every 16 hours? Do you know what it’s like trying to keep everyone’s name straight? Have you ever been so busy that you can’t even squeeze in time to take a shit? Welcome to my life.

But I don’t regret anything. I came a long way to get where I am now. I’m proud of myself. Not everyone can be a partner at this law firm. You need to take hits for the team in order to make it here. You need to handle stress every day. You need to juggle 14 different tasks at once, yet somehow still bring in new clients, win existing cases and cover up negative information about old clients. That takes serious talent. It’s not easy to remember every single fax and email you sent in May 2007. They all sort of blend together after a while. But that’s what separates the women from the girls: Women remember every piece of paper that ever crossed their desks; girls forget phone conversations two minutes after they end. You can’t pull anything over my eyes. If I see something once, I remember it. If I hear you say something, don’t try to lie to me later, because I remember everything. I can even remember if you used the word “of” in 2004. That’s what makes me a killer lawyer: I remember what people say. Yeah, it’s stressful. But it sure pays off.

I started the Disagreeable Assholes’ League for Total Stress, Professional Success and, By the Way, Fuck You Too in 2005. I started the party because successful people like me need a real political voice. We don’t have time to sit around and debate political topics. We have copies to make, depositions to take and phone calls to return. We don’t even have time to screw our husbands on Sunday afternoons, let alone talk about health care, environmental protection or voting rights. Yet we deserve to be heard because we are successful Americans. Just because we spend every day working our asses off at high-end law firms doesn’t mean we don’t exist.

We exist, all right. And we’re damn important, too. We believe it’s time for people to know just how important Disagreeable Assholes are in this country. We believe all Americans should know what it takes to achieve professional success. We believe all Americans should understand what it means to be a winning professional. We are determined to dispel the myth of slacker success. No one gets anywhere in this country being nice. No one sets billing records or revenue standards with smiles and apologies. In this law firm—and in every other respectable business enterprise—only winners survive. Winners are not just assholes—they are disagreeable assholes. Anyone can be an asshole. But not everyone can be sufficiently disagreeable to achieve professional success. Assholes complain, whine and make things difficult on everyone around them. Disagreeable assholes do all that plus cite legal rules, refuse to show mercy, reject appeals and never experience joy. Most importantly, disagreeable assholes enjoy arguing, fighting, resisting and contesting anyone who stands in their way.

For us, being “disagreeable” is a way of life. We do not feel good about anything. We fight everybody and everything, all the time. We don’t stop until we’ve been paid. We are always anxious, stressed, angry, pissy, vengeful, uncompromising, unforgiving, devious, nefarious and mean. We do not agree on anything; that’s what makes us disagreeable. We disagree on where to go to lunch, what to do on Thanksgiving and how best to copy 40,000 documents. We disagree on how much to leave as a tip, how best to get to the airport and how to greet colleagues. And we especially disagree with any suggestions made by our opponents. If our opponents suggest holding a meeting in the Sheraton because it is close to our offices, we will disagree and insist that we hold the meeting somewhere further away. If our opponents suggest that we split phone costs on a case, we will disagree and threaten to obtain a court order imposing full liability on them. We disagree for disagreement’s sake. In this business, being an asshole is not enough; one must also be disagreeable.

People say that “disagreeable” is a negative word. They even say that “assholes” are not pleasant. We disagree with both assessments. In our view, our critics fail to understand that professional success depends on assholes; more particularly, it depends on disagreeable assholes. No one achieves fantastic financial success in the United States without bitterly fighting over everything. Professional success means merciless combat every day until either financial victory or heart failure. In professional life, competition abounds. Everyone is out to take your money. Everyone plots ways to steal your business. Everyone is conspiring, eavesdropping and conniving—even supposed friends. Cowards and nice folks don’t stand a chance. Cowards and nice folks let opponents walk all over them. But disagreeable assholes sniff out treachery at every turn. They suspect everybody and everything. They scream, yell and threaten until the problem subsides. We are problem solvers.

We say to our critics: How is that negative? Wouldn’t you protect your business with all your strength? Our critics can complain all they want that we are “hard to get along with” because we are “disagreeable assholes.” But frankly we don’t give a shit. We’re the top revenue producers. We’re the partners. We won. They didn’t. They can go ahead and be nice. Who’s living in the villa, and who’s renting the crappy studio in Queens? Let our critics complain. In our book, being labeled a disagreeable asshole is a compliment, not a pejorative.

Our critics also say that stress is bad. They say that professional success is important, but not when it imposes excessive stress. We disagree. Disagreeable assholes like us know that stress is a badge of honor. We work for a living. We don’t screw around or wait for 5 o’clock. No, we stay in the office all night and beyond. We sacrifice everything to win, even our health. We don’t worry about the husband and kids. They can take care of themselves. When it comes to professional success, winning is more important than family and health. True, winning is difficult. Competing for victory raises emotions and causes anxiety. But so what? To be a winner you need to compete like a winner. That means relishing stress, not complaining about it. We have high blood pressure. We get ulcers. We sigh all the time. We shout. We snap at people. We throw things. We castigate and insult. We stamp our feet and tremble. We break out in sweats and guzzle coffee at midnight. We lose our hair at 30. We get hemorrhoids. We eat fast food. We worry constantly whether we’ll make deadlines. And we are fabulously successful.

This is just how we roll. It pays off, too. Winners don’t relax; they stress out. Stressing out wins cases and makes money. What is so bad about that? When all is said and done, people remember the disagreeable asshole who screamed and threw binders around at 4 AM before the big filing, not the chilled-out copy boy who went home at 4:45 PM the day before. Put simply, relaxation and tranquility do not yield professional success. In that light, we are proud to be stressed. I might have ulcers and hemorrhoids. You don’t; but who’s the partner with the $1,400,000 annual salary? I’d rather be a disagreeable, stressed-out asshole with a seven-figure salary than some relaxed nice guy who struggles to pay cell phone bills and travels by bus.

We are the Disagreeable Assholes’ League for Total Stress and Professional Success—and by the way, fuck you, too. We include that final phrase because we really don’t care what anyone says about us. We are in charge. We are more successful and richer than our critics. Our critics do not want to adopt our lifestyle, so they just resent us. We have a word for them: If you cared about your career, you would act like us. We didn’t tell you to be polite and friendly. You made a choice to be agreeable. We made a choice to be disagreeable. Our choice brought us stress and success. Your choice brought you relaxation and poverty. We employ you; you work for us. So you can criticize our lifestyle all you want. It won’t change who’s in charge. Disagreeable assholes rule this world. Nice guys like you just follow along and try not to get run over.

But you don’t have to stay polite and poor. If you really want to make a difference in this world, you can stop being nice and start acting like a disagreeable asshole. You can be a winner, too. Stop insisting on “work-life balance.” Start competing. Start mistrusting and exploiting. Start swearing and sighing. Get your calendar straight through 2011. Start yelling at people. Stop tolerating incompetence and tardiness. Make people afraid when you walk into a room. Get some stress in your life. You can do it. You need to stop thinking that stress is bad. Stress makes fortunes, and fortunes yield success. The choice is yours.

WHAT I REALLY THINK ABOUT THE LAW (AND LAWYERS)

AN ESSAY

For almost a year now, I have written essays and satires criticizing “the law.” Some mock the legal profession. Others mock the inane factual intricacies of the common law. Still others criticize the unfair power relationships underlying so much contemporary legal doctrine. Still, when I criticize “the law,” I am not advocating anarchy. I am actually criticizing something much more subtle, including people who use law for bad purposes. When it comes to human law, there are men who win and men who lose. It is “game-like.” Some men sit as judges between other men who desperately want to win. It is not neutral because men are not neutral by nature. Men use the law to advance their own causes, whether to protect or acquire property or to condemn men’s bodies to pain. It is instrumental, not academic. Yet human law is supposed to be detached, at least in theory. It is supposed to represent larger principles, not petty interests. But in using law, men pervert principles for their own gain. They could care less whether they do “abstract justice.” This tension represents the focal point of my criticism.

Interestingly, I had to study law for years before I could safely formulate these views. I came from a family that ridiculed lawyers. I was told from an early age that lawyers were “sleazebuckets,” “liars,” “thieves” and “gladhanders” who said anything necessary to make a few dollars. My parents labeled them “rude,” “impolite,” “unscrupulous” and “mean-spirited.” My father had one encounter with the civil justice system in his life. He often recounted it to me. During a deposition about some air conditioning sale gone wrong, the opposing lawyer cast spiteful doubt on every single thing he said. He said it made him feel horrible. He said the lawyer gave him the impression that he thought my father was lying about everything, when in fact he was telling the truth. He also said the lawyer asked convoluted questions in such perplexing language that he could not even really figure out what he wanted to know. Then, after the deposition ended, the opposing lawyer and my father’s lawyer joked around and talked about playing golf on the weekend, as if the foregoing inquisition had been “just another day at the office.”

These pejoratives burrowed deeply into my consciousness. I did not harbor good impressions about lawyers. In my early experience, I did not know many lawyers firsthand. They seemed rather boring and aloof. More often, I saw them mocked in television shows, movies, jokes and literature. These lampoons commonly tracked my parents’ criticisms: lawyers were unethical, mean, ridiculous, fast-talking, text-parsing word-benders determined to make money no matter what. Even Shakespeare’s generation pronounced the dominant judgment on lawyers: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” King Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, sc. ii. Apparently, for centuries people have just not liked the way lawyers make them feel. In a word, my upbringing taught me that lawyers were “bad” because they condescended to any artifice to win arguments, all the while manipulating inscrutable language. In essence, lawyers were “bad” and “mean” because they did not speak plainly. And because they “did it all for money.”

But somehow I wound up in law school. Perhaps I was fighting against my own nature when I decided I would study law. At the time, I just wanted an income in life. I studied literature in college. To my chagrin, I found no “literature firms” that paid living wages. In my early twenties, I had knowledge—some would say “useless knowledge” because it did not readily translate into “corporate employability”—but no trade. Yet I needed a trade to pay rent and buy food. I struggled with this for a while. I bounced around doing translations and freelance German-language jobs. I jostled my brain to figure out how to bandy my existing knowledge into a paycheck. Ultimately, I settled on the law because it involved language, rhetoric, writing and—in some sense—government and principle. Despite all my childhood distaste for lawyers, I nonetheless came to understand that there was something redeeming about the law, something intangible and good. I always loved studying history, philosophy and government. I knew that law played a role in these disciplines. It may not have been obvious, but I knew it was there. There was a “hidden allure” in the law beyond mere squabbles for property. It could bring about positive social change and cut through injustice. I did not know how it did these things, so I decided I would learn how it did. At the same time, I said to myself: “I’ll find out what the law is really all about and I’ll get a paycheck in the end, too.” This is how I landed in law school.

Six years later, I can confidently say that you will never meet a lawyer who detests the law as much as I do. Yet there is more to that statement than meets the eye. I learned that the law does indeed prompt the criticisms my parents taught me as a child. But I also confirmed that there is a “hidden allure” in the law that undermines those criticisms. I came to despise the law because—on the whole—the law’s negative characteristics outweigh its positive characteristics. Practice wins over theory in the law, even though much legal theory is thematically pleasing. In short, there is profound tension in all legal discourse. There is tension between practice and principle. Principles transcend; practice does not. Principles exist no matter what result follows in a particular case; practice aims solely to achieve particular results. Principles work only when their adherents follow them; practice demands “flexibility,” even if that means abandoning principle to win. In my “legal career,” I fell in love with principle because principle represents something larger than winning. That made me a terrible practitioner. Law firms do not want discerning legal scholars who insist on adherence to principle. They want discerning legal scholars who are willing to ignore, manipulate and distinguish principle in order to win a case and make money for the firm. This is what repulses me about the law: Principles are all well and good; but principles don’t pay.

Still, not all legal principles are good. I do not restrict my criticism to shameless legal practice. The law indulges in pure intellectual foolishness, too. For example, many lawyers proudly say that we live under the “rule of law.” The “rule of law” requires that government reference written laws and follow authorized procedures before taking adverse action against men’s bodies or property. Government must act according to verifiable law or not at all. There are great advantages to this theory. It prevents “tyranny” because it stops government from arbitrarily imprisoning people or seizing property. It bars government from harming people based solely on individual caprice or ill-will. In that sense, the rule of law cuts down on arbitrariness and “unreasonable conduct” in government. Additionally, by imposing rigorous procedures on government power, everyone theoretically has a chance to defend themselves prior to adverse action. In theory, everyone can know the laws under which government acts.

But the “rule of law” can lead to absurdity, too. After all, if government can act solely according to law, what happens if laws are evil? The government can be evil? In short, the rule of law can insulate the government from internal challenge as much as it can help to ensure order and transparency. Lawyers tend to think that as long as something is “written in law,” it is “right,” even when common decency, intuition, conscience or natural feelings of justice might dictate a contrary conclusion. For example, the “rule of law” in 1954 dictated that government could lawfully segregate African-Americans and whites in public accommodations. Lawyers in the Brown v. Board of Education case could point to no written law requiring that blacks and whites enjoy equal access to public accommodations. In fact, written law explicitly authorized segregation. Yet the Supreme Court ignored the rule of law in that case. It said that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause did not tolerate “State-sponsored racial segregation” because such segregation stamps blacks with a “badge of inferiority.” I agree with the Court, even though no written law directly supported its conclusion. But under the “rule of law,” this was an abysmal decision. If the Court had been truly faithful to the rule of law, it would have followed precedent and applied the law as written. At the time the Court decided Brown, there was nothing in the law about “badges of inferiority” or “psychological trauma.” It made these things up. In short, the Court did not just look to the law to render its decision. It looked to principles beyond the law, or at least implied in the law.

To our ears, this sounds courageous. It even sounds noble. But as a technical matter, the Court disparaged the “rule of law” in Brown. In this sense, Brown provides a fine example for the proposition that the “rule of law” can enslave as much as it can protect. When it comes to the rule of law, the result depends on what the law says, not what conscience or justice says. When the law is bad, the result is bad. Viewed strictly, judges have nothing to say about it.

Yet Brown also shows that inspiring principles do sometimes penetrate the law. I love Brown because it testifies to the “intangible allure” hidden in the law. It shows that justice and “natural right” do sometimes prevail over unjust written laws. And more importantly, it shows that justice and “natural right” constantly pull against the law, even if they disrupt its “orderly administration.” Justice always looms in legal questions. Often legal rules are consistent with justice. Sometimes they are not. In theory, judges and lawyers are not allowed to consider anything beyond the law. That is another reason why I criticize the law: It makes it difficult for judges and lawyers to follow their conscience. Rather, it induces them into a “culture of compliance” in which wooden adherence to written requirements supplants principle. In Brown, the Court refused to “comply” with unjust written requirements. Unfortunately, that does not happen very often. More often, judges and lawyers simply follow the path written in the law; and most troublingly, it rarely bothers them.

My struggles with the law mirror the tension between written law and intuitive justice. I think the tension between law and justice fascinates many people, not just those who have studied law. Movies like The Dark Knight become popular because they tap into this fascination, challenging the idea that the law is supposed to deliver justice, or even cares about it at all. At the same time, people confuse the law with justice. They expect the law to deliver results that are consistent with their intuitive sense about what it is right. Often, they discover to their horror that written law dictates a far different result. Those unlucky to be caught up in civil litigation quickly lose all illusions about lofty principles as cases drag on for years, costing both sides millions while lawyers battle over schedules and copy costs. Moreover, when people “get to know” lawyers, they do not see men and women committed to finding justice. Rather, they see men and women committed to complying with technical requirements in precisely such a way as to avoid punishment and to maximize their chances of winning (and fees). Professional ethics rules provide the best example for the proposition that lawyers do not need a conscience to win: They just need to follow what the rulebook says, even if they have no respect at all for the spirit behind the rules. This is the spiritual and intellectual vacuum that flows from fanatical commitment to the “rule of law.” Justice has no place in such a technical maze. It is all about compliance. If compliance results in justice, fine. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too. In both cases, it’s “legal.”

These are the reasons why I despise the law. But it is a selective repugnance. I do not like the law for its fanatical devotion to form, compliance, technicality and procedure. I do not like the law for its tendency to lure people to believe that its “administrative rules” lead to justice. I do not like the law because it teaches practitioners to ignore conscience and principle when pondering questions that involve both. I do not like the law for the “culture of compliance” it creates in order to replace intuitive justice. In short, I do not like the law because there is nothing noble about complying with rules, especially if they are bad.

Yet I love the law for the brightness it offers. There are principles in the law that offer avenues to justice. There are principles in our Constitution that exalt individual rights, conscience, belief and self-definition against government power. Daring judges and lawyers see the brightness in these principles and apply them to break stultifying legal traditions. While I believe in the rule of law to the extent necessary to protect individuals from tyranny, I do not blindly comply with unjust rules because they are rules. Nor do I feel just for complying with rules simply because they are rules. Rather, I put my trust in principles that may not find expression in written law. And I truly care about those principles, even if they are not profitable.

This makes me a renegade among lawyers.

GET AN EDUCATION THAT WORKS : GET A DEGREE IN WINNING

AN EDUCATIONAL MESSAGE

By : Professor Victor A. Siegreich, Ph.D. in Victory Management, Winnings University of New Jersey; Senior Lecturer in Winning; Author, “I Just Want to Win : Getting Ahead in Life Fast,” Doubleday Publishers (New York 2004); Former Managing Member, Baldwin, Gorman & Slippings, LLC a statistical consulting firm serving Federal Reserve Banks.

Isn’t it about time you ended your losing streak in life? Haven’t you had enough setbacks, letdowns and heartbreaks? Aren’t you sick of being rejected from jobs and romantic partners? Basically, aren’t you just sick of losing? You’re probably asking yourself why you can’t muster a win in life. After all, you always followed the rules and lived to be fair. You respected other people and never cut the line. You thought that being nice and studying hard would lead you to success. You thought that decency and politeness would ultimately pay off in your life.

You were wrong. Your quest for simple decency let the other guy get the job. Your commitment to kindness and intellectual enrichment confused you while the other guy got the girl and made the money. But you aren’t beaten yet. You can come from behind to win at life. Winnings University can help you do it.

Here at Winnings, we offer education that works, not education that enriches. First and foremost, we teach that life is a game that can be won. It has rules and customs. It offers rewards. Just like any game, a person who knows the rules—and who knows how to exploit them easily—will always come out ahead. More importantly, life is a game with competitors. Everyone is racing for the same goal; and there can only be one winner at a time. At Winnings, we remind our students that life is a game that must be won. And we teach our students that results matter, because winning is the ultimate result.

Traditional education fails to appreciate results. In liberal arts colleges, for example, professors teach that knowledge is valuable in itself because it “enriches the mind” and “gives its own psychic rewards.” This is nonsense. In fact, traditional education dooms untold students to failure in life because they do not learn that life is a game. Rather, they learn that life is a “unique experience” that “everyone experiences differently.” They learn that “everyone is valuable, no matter his abilities” and actually do not feel bad when they lose at something. In short, traditional education does not teach students how to win.

This is fatally flawed thinking for many reasons. First, life is a competition. Even the animal kingdom reveals to us that organisms must compete for limited resources on this planet. We are not different from hyenas or birds. Bold birds get the catch; lazy ones do not. Second, life is about results, not process. Results mean winning. In the animal kingdom, winning means getting food and dominating other animals. So too among humans: For us, winning means getting money and employing other men to work to make us even more money. Third, life is not a “unique experience” where the “individual matters.” Quite the contrary, life is an easily understandable game with easily understandable rules. Everyone wants to win, and everyone can learn how to win. Everyone wants the same results. Process is irrelevant; results are everything. We know who wins and we know who loses. Traditional education tries to conceal these brutal truths by offering an elixir for failure in life. But at Winnings, we simply acknowledge the truth about life and teach our students accordingly.

At Winnings, we have a simple motto: “Winning matters, no matter how you play the game.” Contrary to Vince Lombardi’s apocryphal excuse for losing, winning is everything; how you play the game doesn’t really matter. After all, winners get things done. They take charge. They beat the losers and take what they win. Nobody hears from the losers. After they lose, they don’t matter. So when a winner wins, no one remembers how he did it. He gets to tell the story. In life, the winner literally takes all, including the right to tell others how he won. And once he wins, he can sit back and savor his victory. That is why it is absolutely essential to win in the first place. Without winning, you become a loser. And nobody listens to—or even remembers—a loser.

Sadly, most people are losers. But it is not their fault. Our educational system justifies and even laurelizes losing mentalities. By focusing on process rather than results, losers whine about fairness when they should be looking for creative ways to win the game. Additionally, losers become indignant when people they consider “stupid” somehow manage to outwit them at life’s game. Rather than asking themselves why they lost, they cross their arms and whine that they are entitled to success because they are smart. This is a losing mentality. And our educational system perpetuates it by fooling students into thinking that abstract knowledge is valuable.

Knowledge is not valuable unless it translates into winning. Theory is worthless unless it translates into winning practice. Thinking never won anything; doing did. At Winnings, we make our students understand this. We do not care for erudition, theory or overintellectualism. Rather, we stress that practical success and know-how are much more valuable than critical thinking. After all, thinking leads only to paralyzed rumination. Thinkers vacillate. Doers just get up and get things accomplished. In a competition between a thinker and a doer, it is obvious who will win. The doer will get up earlier, put in more hours and doggedly pursue his goal until it is done. He will not think about the purpose of the activity or his existential disgust with his lot. A thinker, by contrast, will half-heartedly attend to his work. He will spend his time moping and questioning things rather than ruthlessly suppressing the competition for the ultimate win. A doer will run circles around a thinker. Intelligence does not matter. In life, the more zealous competitor wins. At Winnings, we understand that.

We do not believe in enrichment. At Winnings, we teach our students the skills they need to defeat each other in life’s competitions. We do not delude them into thinking that merely “knowing more” and “thinking more deeply” will bring them success in life. In our educational philosophy, results are everything. If an “enriched mind” does not bring results, it is not “rich” at all. We would much rather cultivate an “unenriched mind” that gets the job done than an “enriched mind” that wastes time considering theoretical nonsense. To that extent, we do not teach art history, African-American studies, Native American Oral History, Color Use in Late Romantic Painting, literature, music studies, philosophy, Japanese Theater, American Cultural Development or Non-Profit Institutional Management courses. Instead, we teach “Shortcut Analysis,” “Believable Deception Management,” “Intimidation : Theory and Practice,” “Ethics are for Losers,” “The Loss Avoidance Practicum” and “Money as Goal : A Result-Oriented Approach.” Our courses teach valuable, practical skills that immediately translate into winning. We do not waste our time with knowledge that does not pay.

In America today, education is a serious investment. Many students assume crushing debt for the opportunity to study at college. We believe that students have a right to expect a return on their investment. That is why courses at Winnings arm students with the knowledge, skill and values they need to win at life. We teach them that morals and ethics do not apply when they must win. In fact, we teach that morals and ethics are serious handicaps in life’s competition. We teach them that it is perfectly normal to exploit others for financial gain. And we teach them that it is better to make a profit than to do the right thing.

By the same token, we also teach our students that many people do not like winners. To address this issue, we offer courses dealing with envious people. In life, losers become embittered and resentful. No one likes to lose, and losers get angry after a lifetime of losing. They channel their anger toward winners and even attempt to derail their successes in the future. To deal with these issues, we offer courses such as “Intermediate Grudge Dodging” and “Don’t Hate; Appreciate.” Our faculty knows how to foil angry losers. We are pleased to offer students a way to foresee losers’ antics. In sum, winners do not let losers divert their attention from winning.

Winnings University can give you the education you really want. No matter whether you are a struggling young professional or a youthful high school student who wants to be successful in life, Winnings offers programs tailored to meet your needs. We are here to teach you winning ways. We are here to help you stop thinking and start doing. We know that this is difficult. After all, we recognize that you have made your way through an educational system that taught you it is “OK to lose once in a while.” At Winnings, we will eradicate that mentality. We have no tolerance for losers; and you should have no tolerance for losing. At Winnings, we will teach you how to stop making excuses and how to get the most from people. We will teach you never to quit. We will teach you real determination. We will teach to be annoying and downright unbearable when you need to be. We will teach you to suspend your “friendliness,” “politeness” and “compassion” in order to ruthlessly crush and surpass your competition.

You would not be looking into Winnings if you did not like the way your life is going. We can understand that you might hesitate before deciding whether to study with us. After all, you probably think that friendliness, knowledge and fairness are good things. Perhaps you do not want to be a ruthless, result-oriented winner who only thinks about outdoing the competition in life. Well, if you want to be a loser, that’s your decision. Winners do not worry about these things. At Winnings, we teach our students to ignore their conscience and just win. Your conscience and your ethics are slowing you down. They stop you from doing what is necessary to win. Yet you wonder why you fail. Isn’t it obvious? You have a conscience, that’s why. You have ethics. You want to be fair. You want to treat others as you would have them treat you. But tell me the last time ethics helped you get a job. When did your conscience secure a merger deal? I’ll tell you when: It didn’t. When you were fair, did people treat you fairly in return? No, they didn’t. And they never will. Who do you think you are? Jesus Christ? He didn’t win at life, either. He was poor and ended up nailed to a cross. In a word, people want to win in this life. If that means treating you unfairly, well that’s what they will do. Conscience and ethics are for losers and saints. Losers and saints don’t win in this life.

At Winnings, we offer a way to end your losing streak. Stop complaining about the winners; be one. Stop tying your hands with ethics. Just shut up and start cutting corners like the winners do. Fight with both hands. Stop learning worthless facts about 17th Century Dutch painting and religion. Stop reading Shakespeare; he won’t pay your bills or make you wealthy. Learn something meaningful. Learn how to win. It’s about time you actually got something out of your education. At Winnings, you can. With us, you will learn that winning is better than knowledge. With a degree from Winnings, you are guaranteed to win in life. That’s what it’s all about. Our education will transform you. With time, study and effort, you will abandon unproductive behaviors such as ethics, conscience and fairness. With time, study and effort, you will learn to make every move count. You will learn to manipulate every rule and exploit every relationship. Your education will actually do something for you, not just make you “smart.” Again we say: What good is “smart” if you wind up a loser?

Take your life in a new direction. Get a degree in Winning, Victory, Conquest or Domination. You can do it if you try. Transform your life. Come from behind. Knock it out of the park. Dunk it. Sack it. Put it through the uprights. Sink the putt. It’s fourth and goal. It’s the bottom of the ninth and you’ve got a runner in scoring position. It’s time to step up and win. Swish, baby, swish…3-pointer.

Winning matters. It feels good. It pays. It’s valuable. Learn how to do it at Winnings University.

We offer financial aid to all those who qualify.

THE SHADOW PEOPLE

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Have you seen the shadow people? If you get up early in the morning, you see them scurrying stone-faced from their apartments in fresh suits with laptops, briefcases or duffel bags. If they are women, you can smell newly-applied perfume as you walk past them. The women carry expensive designer bags in which they mix work papers with a few personal things. Both the men and women look like they just got out of the shower. If you don’t pay attention, you will miss them because they move fast. They move down the hallway, jump on the elevator and zip out the front door where they hail cabs. You might never see them again for three months. Then you discover that they live in your building.

I live in a pretty typical Manhattan apartment building. I thank good fortune for the fact that I do not have a “traditional job.” It lets me come and go as I please. I get up around 7:30 in the morning and go to bed around midnight. I do not have to dress up every day and I am free to leave the premises without punching a time clock or otherwise accounting to anyone for my whereabouts. I meet people who live in my building. I get used to seeing them. But occasionally I will get up earlier than 7:30. On those days, I invariably encounter “shadow people.” Just last week, I counted four new “shadow people” in my building. One lives on my floor. He is probably 30, but his facial expression makes him look about 57. I saw him at 6:45 one Thursday morning. He was on his way to work. Later the same day, I saw him coming home—still in his suit—as I came back to my apartment with dinner at 9:30 PM. On Friday morning, I was up early again. There he was, this time with wet hair and smelling like he had just washed. It was 7:00 AM. He was on his way to work again.

You know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people with no life-work balance. I do not like to judge others’ lifestyles, but I can’t understand the shadow people. I do not even need to meet them to know they are unhappy. It is evident. They have drawn, haggard faces. They move intensely. They look cranky. They do not stop for anything. They are always rushing. They have to be somewhere all the time, and the clock is ticking. They even curse and mutter to themselves when there is a delay of any kind. They mouth profanities in subway stations, elevators and grocery stores. If something does not go according to plan, they let others know how upset they are. After all, they have important things to do. And people expect them to be somewhere else, namely, at work.

Anyone who spends 14 hours a day working in a corporate office will eventually collapse into unhappiness. True, bright-eyed young workers who want to bootlick their way to success might have the capacity to ignore time and discomfort for a while. But as the months pass—and opportunities for youthful personal enjoyment wane—resentment and misery replace zeal and cheer. Shadow people are all relatively young. They all have something to prove. When they were very young, they lived their lives to prepare for work. Now, they are actually “living the dream.” Yet as the reality dawns on them that time escapes—and they are not getting any younger—something else displaces their enthusiasm, something desperate and intolerant. You can sense it when you encounter them. There is always some pressing issue, a phone call, a meeting. There is always something urgent, something that demands immediate attention. There is no time to waste. And that is precisely the problem. There is no time for anything anymore. Not even sleep. When time moves like that, years can pass in a flash.

Shadow people frighten me for two reasons. First, their intensity makes me feel uneasy. Second, they show me an alternate reality that is truly terrifying because it runs counter to everything I hold dear in my life. On the intensity question, who likes being around perennially nervous, edgy, rushing, pushy, unexciting people who only think about getting to work on time? Who likes enduring brutal stares when you accidentally hold up the line in the morning? Shadow people have no mercy because they live intensely. They are racing. They are competing. They have to work as many hours as they can to get a promotion, make partner or win some other monumental work-based accolade. Any moment outside the office is wasted time, and they are not afraid to tell you that. They do not tell you directly; you can just feel it by the way they look, act and speak. In short, don’t get in their way. Thankfully, it is easy to avoid them. You just need to sleep past 6 AM and get home before 10 PM.

Shadow people’s “alternate reality” frightens me every time I see it. I could have been in their position. If life had carried me in a different direction with the law, I might have been an associate at some monolithic law firm. If I had, I would have become a shadow person. I would have donned a costume every morning before dawn, crept into my office and worked on mergers until night fell and well beyond. I would have contended with billable hours requirements, overweening supervisors, supercilious colleagues and bitter rivals. Outside the office, I would have rushed to and fro in an effort to make deadlines and get home in time to snatch a few winks. Or maybe I would have just slept in a cot in the office, then washed up in the firm’s 57th floor restroom. If this had been my life, I would not have had time to reflect. I would not have had time to be forgiving. My face would have become drawn, my temples gray and my eyes sunken. I would have had no time to create anything but pleadings. I would have had no time to think for myself. Instead, I would have been a legal automaton working maniacally toward “partnerhood.” Although not all shadow people are lawyers, they all share one thing in common: Total dedication to success in the employment-centered life program.

What is that, exactly? It is what it says. To use my definition, a life program refers to a lifestyle coupled with core, guiding values, assumptions and prejudices. Lifestyle simply means a person’s everyday routine: What time to get up, what time to eat, how to dress, how to speak, where to go, what to do, etc. But a life program infuses that routine with guiding values and prejudices. In my life program, I infuse my daily routine with a respect for time, a desire to enrich my mind with new knowledge and the freedom to live independently. “Traditional success” does not guide me, nor do I feel badly that I have not achieved it. I do not put faith in “traditional success” because I believe that “traditional success” depends too much on the judgments of others. In the shadow person’s life program, however, external judgments are all-important. They want to succeed in a hierarchical system. To do that, they must please those in “superior hierarchical positions” by giving them the results they want. Their own values are irrelevant to that task. Rather, they must assume the superior’s values. Their superiors show up at the office early and stay late. So the shadow person does the same. They imitate their “successful superiors.” To achieve success, they turn to employment. And it is not just any employment. Shadow people aim high. They want stressful jobs and stressful tasks. They do not want to work 8 hours a day. They do not care about how much they sacrifice. They transform their values to suit the arduous endeavor ahead. In the “employment-centered life program,” shadow people live to work. They do not work to live. There is no balance between work and life. For shadow people, work is life, and life is work. Work provides meaning as much it provides opportunity for “success.”

But there is more to this phenomenon. Because employment is central to the “employment-centered life program,” the values of modern employment play a key role in the shadow person’s existence. These values not only control the shadow person’s bodily movements (ie, summoning his body to the office for countless hours; compelling him to adhere to mundane protocols; subjecting him to cruel and abusive treatment by superiors, etc.), but they also influence his overall perceptions. He gets dressed in a suit every morning because that is the rule. Still, he does not resent it. Why? If he reflected on the question beyond the mere “requirement” to dress formally, he would realize: “One must dress well at work in order to dignify and respect the job.” In this sense, his job takes on a noble status. Just as courtiers had to wear their best when appearing before the King, so too must modern employees wear their best to appear at work. They must dignify employment as an institution. Shadow people revere their jobs because their jobs exercise sovereign power over them in every way. That is what motivates them to get up before dawn and put on a suit. They are answering the King’s call. Employment changes their values, whether they know it or not.

You may say: “People wear suits at work; so what?” It may seem obvious. Yet I mention it because there is no real reason—in the abstract—to dignify employment. Employment means nothing but compensated service by a servant on behalf of a master. The master’s work may be utterly repugnant, selfish or unethical. It may be utterly mundane, unexciting and unprofound. Why then should the servant dignify it with fine clothes? Why dignify something that may be undignified? In my view, the idea that “employment” deserves intrinsic “respect” by “dressing well” bespeaks a hopelessly servile mindset. It is as if “service to a private economic master” has replaced “presence before the King” as the event necessitating “respectful” dress. The job has become the sovereign. Not only must the employee answer the King’s every command; rather, he must also “dignify his majesty” by appearing in his best clothes before him. The irony is that most employees at large offices rarely see anyone from the outside world while at work, rendering all their fine dress superfluous. They are not impressing anyone. There is no one there to see them. They are simply “dignifying their jobs” in the abstract. They are just following the “employment-centered life program.” And that program demands respect for employment in the abstract.

Shadow people live purposively. You can see it when you encounter them. They always have a place to go and something to do. They are always on phones or rushing off to accomplish some important task. Everything has a purpose in their lives. Every action and every thought ostensibly leads a step further to the coveted promotion, the coveted big account or the coveted deal. Purposes provide guidance and reassurance. Purposes transform into goals, and goals set purposeful action in motion. Purposes ward off meaninglessness and win “success.” On the other hand, purposes beget risk. One can either fulfill a purpose or fail to fulfill it. That means that purposes involve winning and losing. Winning fulfills the purpose. Losing leaves the purpose unfulfilled. When human beings engage in activities that involve winning and losing, their minds narrow and their emotions darken. They fixate on winning and do their utmost to avoid losing. Winning feels good; losing hurts like hell. To avoid losing and to maximize their chances to win, shadow people compete. That means they put forward their maximal efforts to accomplish their purposes, necessarily to the detriment of all those who seek to accomplish the same purpose. Competition means a spirited, contested quest to win something. It raises emotions and tensions. It raises expectations and sharpens nerves. It spawns imaginative methods calculated to win victory and avoid defeat. In victory, it intensifies good emotions. In defeat, it exacerbates bad emotions. The “employment-centered life program” constantly involves competition. That is why shadow people are so intense. They are racing to win, no matter how banal the activity. If they lose, they fail to fulfill their purpose. And that would undermine their reason for living. For shadow people, everything in life becomes competitive, from catching a cab to ordering dinner to getting the long-coveted promotion. Put simply, when people are competitive, they are not pleasant. They are trying to win. If you threaten their chances to win, you will receive no quarter from them.

Who are these people? Do you recognize them? I call them shadow people for two reasons. For one, they move quickly and almost unnoticeably, like shadows. Second, they are like shadows because they merely reflect others’ light. Shadow people live their lives for “employment-centered success.” As such, they tailor their values, habits and lifestyles to match the requirements needed to achieve that success. This makes them “shadow-like” in the sense that the “employer shines the light” and we simply see their silhouettes.

When a shadow person moves quickly down the hallway at 5:30 AM, Tumi bag in hand, he is not rushing for himself. He is rushing to fulfill his employment-related purpose. It is not his purpose. He just thinks it is his purpose. By dutifully rushing somewhere at an ungodly hour, he thinks he is advancing up the chain. But he would not be running back to the office if someone did not expect him to be there. He is expected; he does not expect. And he would not seek to advance up “the chain” if he did not implicitly revere “the chain” itself. That is shadow-like. After all, shadows are passive. They depend on some other object to exist at all. So it goes with the shadow people.