The Crook and the Idiot

It is far better to be ruled by a crook, than it is to have an idiot in charge.

You gradually realize this after working for some time. Some workplaces are nice. They have good culture, good policies, and good people. If you happen to work in these nice places, this message will not move you and you will not understand. But meanwhile, in another part of town on the other side of the tracks, there subsists workplaces that are utter shit-holes. And in these festering shit-holes, sometimes the boss is a crook, and sometimes the boss is an idiot.

Prefer the crook.

On the face of it, this goes against intuition. The crook will do bad things. Yes, this is true. The crook will do bad things. But here's the thing. You know this. His actions have limits, and you can prepare yourself to deal with them.

The crook will do bad things. Even terrible things. But he will never ever hit the button that says, "Warning! Do NOT press this button. This button will blow up absolutely EVERYONE."

You do not have this guarantee with the idiot.

Stupidity is limitless. Prefer the crook.

I finally came across a movie I could not watch. This is coming from someone who is a jaded soul. I have watched some of the most debauched gorefests without flinching. I even sat through The Elephant Man, which has one of the most heartbreaking lines in cinema, when Joseph Merrick screams at his tormenters, "I am not an an animal. I...am...a...human being." The Elephant Man comes close to being unwatchable. Yet I sat through it.

But I switched off this movie.

The movie is The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, based on a true story, and directed by Werner Herzog. I'll let Wikipedia give you the Cliff Notes version.

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man, wearing a black overcoat and top hat, who feeds him.

Did you get all that? This really happened to someone. A child spent seventeen years in solitary with a fucking toy horse. The first scene of the movie shows the boy playing with the toy horse. And when I say "playing", I mean sitting on the stone floor of his prison (because his legs had atrophied from disuse), and moving the toy back and forth in a small arc (because, chains). Other than the monster who kept him chained and fed, that toy horse was his nearest connection to another living thing.

Werner Herzog is a master. He proves that you don't necessarily need million dollar effects  and pyrotechnics to push someone over the edge. A simple scene does the job just as well.

That toy horse did it for me. That is as far as I got.