Every time I watch a legal drama on TV, I remember why I dislike them and the people in them so much. It`s not that an incessant supply of these shows has stimulated an over-supply of lawyers. It`s not that the characters in them are so terribly earnest and principled (not even Ally McBeal was beyond posturing). It`s that they get so moralistic about such irreconcileable things.
Today - if we`re to believe the increasingly hysterical plot lines of The Practice - a lawyer might passionately argue for a child`s right to sue his parents for the vicious beatings they administered to him in his youth. A decade ago, the political climate would not have favoured children as a political grouping to the extent it does today, and if such a case came before the courts, the very opposite could have been argued, with every bit as much moral rectitude.
My intention is not to argue for one or the other. My point is that both can`t be right, and surely lawyers must know this and tone down on their outrage. My point is that if I had to make my living in defence of volatile societal ethics and laws, and I had to keep a stern moral mug while constantly changing my tune, I`d feel pretty stupid.
The myth of progress
They`re not paid to think outside the confines of their paradigm. They`re paid to process.
Carel Alberts, technology editor, ITWeb
Can`t one change one`s mind when a better option comes along? Of course. But to argue that progress marches on is all very well, except for two things. Firstly, progress is NOT what characterises, for instance, our education system today. And if we can already see that without the benefit of hindsight, or we can at least be sure that "progress" dictates that we`ll probably feel differently about outcomes-based education tomorrow, it must be clear to humans that we shouldn`t take our own opinions so seriously.
Why, then, lawyers` insistence on being sole keepers of the truth? If there is one thing I`ve learnt about lawyers (as well as many PRs, most new religious converts, almost all ex-smokers and any number of adherents to fashionable pursuits like colonic irrigation or reiki healing), it`s that they will happily grandstand and pose, yet hardly ever stop to examine their own motives or notice how ridiculously self-important, even intolerant, they must seem to others.
It`s useless
Not only are they hard-pressed to examine the plausibility or veracity of their stance, they`re often not even aware that one must always perform such self-scrutiny for signs of folly. Those on the inside of the legal machine, the slavishly politically correct and drones who dance to the tune of their client masters find it tough to know what about them bothers people.
Why can`t they see it? I`ll stick with lawyers by way of an attempt to explain. Any young lawyer who finds himself cocooned in a straitjacket of rules and plagued by the messianic attitude that all lawyers suffer from at some point in their careers, doesn`t exactly have much room to breathe, much less think. They`re not paid to think outside the confines of their paradigm. They`re paid to process.
Do you believe the things they told you?
Techno-zealots are different, but just as blinker-prone. Unlike lawyers who follow the swiftly changing currents of societal dictates when making up their minds, these people often get one big idea in their life and stick to it. As believers in one camp or another, they`re so caught up in what they`re trying to do, which is "the right thing", that after a time they cannot see where they went wrong. They went wrong when they put all their chips on one colour. Religion has no place in technology.
Some examples seem in order. Life-long Linux proponents (some of whom have NEVER tried to install Mandrake Linux or at least familiarised themselves with the arguments from the opposition) are in danger of falling into this trap. A freelancer whose services I once wanted to use, felt so strongly against Microsoft that he refused to do an article on server consolidation on Windows platforms. Which was his right, but I can`t help feeling he must have suffered terribly at some stage, and that refusing the commission had cost him a month`s payment on his car. Oh well, he`s otherwise a totally reasonable chap.
I once worked with someone who was the exact opposite - Microsoft was the industry`s saving grace, he maintained. Its platforms are more user-friendly, more interoperable, and they represent the default standard (by virtue of the company`s dominance) over anything else out there, he said. And moreover, Pepsi is better than Coke, he added. Which was where I knew to stop listening.
So to sum up, and to illustrate that Shakespeare and Mike and the Mechanics can be quoted in the same piece: Neither a berater nor a lawyer be. Don`t believe the things they told you, and don`t believe the things you`ve read.
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