Note: My editor and I are working through a few new pieces and shoring up chapters for a non-internet publication down the road. In the interim, here's part of the answer to the people who send emails asking "Why write this shit?"
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Groupthink (n) - A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.
- Irving Janis
If you're being honored, you cared too much. I don't ever want to be honored because it will undoubtedly mean I'm terminally ill or surrounded by people who All Agree on Something, and have taken the time and energy to get together because of it. I realize that, were I to be honored, the group seated at tables before me would, of course, agree with me, or something I did. But that wouldn't make it any easier for me to stomach the accolade. The fact is, there's no worse place to be than a room full of people magnetized to each other by fervor for achieving a common objective. They read the same papers, listen to the same radio stations and watch the same television programs. That some of these gatherings, these mob efforts, may be necessary to effect an arguably positive social change, doesn't make the overwhelming majority of them - rubber chicken dinners where like minds can pat each other on the back - palatable or worth holding. The sort of honorifics I attend are generally a group of narrow minded people reinforcing one another's belief in the certain rightness or brilliance of whatever it was that brought them to the room that night, be it states' rights, women's rights, civil rights, gun rights, better health care, less trans fat in cookies, freedom for Mumia, saving hammerhead sharks, solar power, a Palestinian state, topless beaches in New Jersey, keeping the Death Tax or the present fixation of People Who Know More Than You - the overwhelming evil of everything George W. Bush has done, will do, or even considers doing while pondering Archie and Jughead on the toilet.1 I'd much rather spend time with people who disagree with me, probably because I retain the presently quaint notion that considering a differing view might teach me something. I'm fairly certain I know nothing for certain, but I do know this - sitting in a room full of people drinking the same Kool Aid isn't likely to exercise my grey matter.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
- George Carlin
The performance at testimonial dinners resembles a travelling religious revival. First, someone discusses the group's storied history and mission, all the wonderful things it's done and intends to do. The second speaker talks about the state of the group's crusade, how it's faring against its enemies, be those market forces, the government or a similarly constructed group with an opposing view, ginning the group's wine greased emotional triggers. By way of example, the Federalist Society would talk about how it's winning the war against activist judges, but caution that "much yet needs to be done." Greenpeace would talk about how we've reached a watershed moment in the war on global warming, but big industry lobbyists are still throwing billions toward melting the polar ice caps. The third speaker roasts the honoree a little, then introduces him with a laundry list of his achievements. "And people, Bob Featherstone has worked more tirelessly than anyone here to see that (insert crusade here) became a reality. Day and night, he has wah wah wah---" It pours from the podium, the cruelest of reminders that life doesn't come with a fast forward button. Applause follows. Everyone sits. The honoree's sermon begins. He:
"The oil companies are artificially inflating the price of oil because they know they have a limited window to soak us all, and they're grabbing as much as they can while they can. They don't care about people or the pain they're inflicting on the average consumer."
"Absolutely. They're jimmying the price through the roof because they know we're running out of the stuff."
"The government needs to pass a windfall tax as soon as possible!"
These are the kinds of exchanges I hear among many lawyers, educated people, presumably considering both sides of an issue. Lawyers love rules, because more rules mean more legal work, which means more money for lawyers. The greatest solution to any problem is a statute, regulation, tax or tariff. I usually just smile during these discussions; in a room full of like minds, there's no debating. What would be achieved by offering them facts about the research and development costs of oil producers, or how Chinese and Indian demand is actually the driving force behind higher prices? Would anything be gained by suggesting they put down the New York Times' fictionalized Op-ed page, recognize DailyKos as the political "X-Files" it is and perhaps read an evenhanded assessment of our future oil reserves in the Journal or Economist? That would only succeed in making enemies. You never win an argument with anyone who fucks you or signs your paychecks. I just smile, bite my lip and sip my drink.
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
This lip biting has turned me, and I'm sure many of you, into "Reverse Zeligs." For those of you unfamiliar with the term "Zelig," I'll explain. Leonard Zelig is the main character in "Zelig," Woody Allen's 1983 mockumentary, set in the 1920s and 30s, about a man so desperate to be accepted he actually chameleons into whatever type of person he's around, from a head of state to a doctor to, finally, a member of the Nazi party during WWII. I do the reverse. I enter any organization with an open mind, embracing the possibility of its goals dovetailing into mine. The problem is, most organizations, or at least most law firms, observe an intellectually dishonest and infuriating single mindedness. Criminal defense lawyers tend to see every prosecution as overreaching. Prosecutors see every indictment as a righteous stab at justice. Civil defense lawyers view almost every personal injury case as a whorish cash grab. Plaintiff's lawyers view insurance companies as heartless predators stealing premiums with no intent of paying claims. Commercial lawyers pretend their client's view of the contract fought over is the only correct view of it. People consider the other side's view, but only for purposes of finding ways around it, no matter how reasonable it is. Nobody on one side of a business or court dispute ever admits, even amongst their co-workers and allies, that the other side might have a point - that their position might be more reasonable, sensible or plausible. We put on blinders and plow forward, eschewing such considerations as counterproductive, treasonous. The associates strap in for the fight with our "Nuremberg alibis" in place.
I can't do that for too long, which probably explains why I've been through a handful of firms and a bunch of areas of law. Unless the case is cut and dry and my client dead right on its claim, I can't put the other side's argument out of my head and charge into battle a True Believer. As I watch the True Believers around me buy Zelig-like into their organization's infallibility, suspend disbelief and cheerlead the cause, I inevitably find myself reverting to a Reverse Zelig stance. I play The Game, nodding in agreement as a partner scowls about the terrible things our client's opponent has done. And I lie with the best of them, arguing passionately for our client's position, even though I don't believe it, even if I find it absurd. But as the partner develops a deeper belief in the case, and becomes more and more certain of the truth of the crusade, facts be damned, I do the reverse, finding myself less and less certain, and having less and less respect for the partner. I recognize the discipline and determination necessary to completely delude yourself, but that doesn't make it a laudable endeavor. The more I observe the organization's willful ignorance, the less I believe in what it does, and the more I view my lying, to both the court and the people around me, as sport. I'm bullshitting the people I work with about believing in something they've bullshitted themselves into believing, and when they believe me, they send me to court, where I bullshit someone else about it. I'm so crooked from doing this it's a miracle I don't wake up every morning staring myself in the asshole.
"You believe the world's 12 thousand years old? "That's right." Okay I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready? "Uh huh." Dinosaurs. You know the world's 12 thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, they existed in that time, you'd think it would have been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point. "And lo Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus...with a splinter in his paw. And O the disciples did run a shriekin': 'What a big fucking lizard, Lord!' But Jesus was unafraid and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus's paw and the big lizard became his friend."
- Bill Hicks
If I had to guess the genesis of my Reverse Zeligness, I'd go with organized religion. Experience with a religiously affiliated school is the finest way to ensure an irreligious adulthood. If you're perceptive in the least, at about age ten you run into the Vehemence vs. Validity Ratio. The VVR holds that the vehemence with which a person or a group advocates something is inverse to the quantifiable validity of the position advocated, and necessarily inverse to the number of rational people who'll accept it. See: Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman. Trickle Down Economics has a 3:1 VVR; Biblical Literalism somewhere near the odds of a mule winning the Preakness next year. Faith caught me as a terrifically insidious self-delusion early. I recall listening to the religion teacher and thinking, "Lemme get this straight... the less the thing seems plausible, the more I ought to believe it?" I'm not above spirituality, and I buy the concept of God based on objective rational considerations, not faith. Faith sounded then, and still sounds today, like an absurd marketing device contrived to keep a religion in business (on the same plane with the presumption Paris Hilton is actually singing on her recent album).
You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed,
You're gonna have to serve somebody...
- Bob Dylan
You're probably thinking "There are a lot of shrewd rational people working in law firms and offices who buy into Groupthink, and they can't all be self delusional or simps." I can't speak for every type of office, but in law, an adversarial system staffed largely with intelligent people, workers rationalize themselves into Groupthink using what I'd call a "Macro Justification." Instead of looking at each of your cases, you view them in totality. The seven clients he believes are innocent allow a criminal defense lawyer to defend the three out of ten he knows are guilty. That he's put away dozens of murderers, rapists, child molesters and drug dealers makes it alright for the prosecutor to hammer an innocent high level target to get press for his future political campaign. That Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and Philip Morris hurt citizens proves all corporations are evil, and justifies a class action lawyer bringing dozens of frivolous actions against other corporations. Instead of looking at your own practice, you look at yourself as part of a your field. You're not "Bob Smith, Esq.," you're "Bob Smith, the prosecutor," "Bob Smith, the asbestos lawyer" or "Bob Smith, the defense lawyer." This allows you to avoid consideration of the right or wrong of any individual case. I've always wondered whether firms have an accepted level of immorality, an industry standard, akin to the casualty and worker death projections of builders putting up skyscrapers. Perhaps lawyers "round up." If 50% or more of the firm's clients have legitimate cases, the firm is moral. If 7 out of 10 of the people a DA convicts are actually guilty, those convictions justify the office's destruction of an innocent high profile defendant's life for the DA's political gain. We certainly don't all believe the fiction that, because it's an adversarial system, we have a right and obligation to remain amoral, and merely act in a functionary capacity. Who knows? Rationalizations are fluid enough for laymen... lawyers change them every half hour or so.
Or maybe its just suspension of disbelief. Perhaps most people realize life's easier when you sacrifice your natural skepticism and just buy into the group's identity. Gives you something to stand for...
At the conclusion of Zelig, Leonard returns from Germany to a hero's welcome, rescued from the Nazis he'd previously joined. That's not the ending of the Reverse Zelig's story. Nobody holds a petite filet and lobster tail dinner for moral relativists or raises thundering applause for a person's lifetime of rationally considering both sides of an issue. We worship blindered advocates, and, truth be told, there is something to be said for willful ignorance. It's much easier to do what you do when you believe, however misguided, that what you're doing is right, and when you make it the sole reason for your waking every morning. Reverse Zeligs are lost moderates bobbing in a sea of True Believers, sinfully open to suggestion. Unlike Leonard, they never pay the price to belong.
...Which seems a fine bargain to me.
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1 Putting aside, of course, the shared economic objectives of the group no one discusses during the dinner, for fear of tarnishing the thin fiction of altruistic motives binding the group.
Posted by PhilaLawyer at 8:38 PM