The Fallback Fallacy

From reading pinstripe prison and looking around, personal experience and combined with a new almost phallic fixation on fallacies I have come to determine a common one that shapes most peoples careers.

It is the fallback fallacy. The all too familiar notion encountered by most people that ever express an interest in any of the arts, or professional sports and what not. I'm pretty sure at one stage in your life you would have heard the soft cooing tones of this message:

"Just go to university and get a degree first, that way you'll have something to fall back on when you are done."

I'm not sure if the smartest people I know say 'fuck that' and just go all out for what they want or whether the smartest people I know say 'fuck that, sort of,' and then go to university and get a degree in the fine arts or physical education or something.

I'm pretty sure Morley who did an 'entrepreneurship' was stupid though.

On the surface it makes sense. If I try and fail I'll have this net to catch me. We can all picture some kind of trapeze net to catch those flying through the air arms outreaching for their glorious goal:



A trapeze net is still suspended in the air and from what I understand, kind of like a trampoline or hammock and pretty comfortable. The fall itself may prove quite enjoyable and exhilarating.

That said what if the metaphore isn't so neat. What if your safety net is infact somekind of trawl net:



Now of course my metaphore isn't so easily translatable, the net is obviously a safety net and not a fishing net. But think now on this, say you get a degree in an occupation that is bonafide such as accounting, law, marketing, finance or human resources. I choose this crosssection because each of those professions tends to favor certain personality types over others. And suppose you really enjoy 'chats' and 'meeting lots of people' and outrageous fashion. Chances are you wont really enjoy your full potential working as an accountant. Just as if you have no time for idiots, find meeting new people a drag, and cant stand it when people 'blather on' you probably shouldn't be doing HR.

In this case your safety net is more like a drag net than a trapeze net. It drags you down into the suffocating, murky depths in the dark and that's where you stay tangled up until you suffocate.

For a lot of people this is the first component of the fallback fallacy. Their safety net may be 'safe' in the mathematical sense with little chance of variation from expected results. But many secure jobs are ones people would never pick in the knowledge that that is what you will spend the bulk of your life on.

Which is that age old adage of courier choice 'find something you love and figure out how to make money from it.'

The real fallback fallacy is that people finish their uni degree and then immediately fallback on it.

That is like I don't know, always choosing heads, or always going rock in rock paper scissors. Choice is good because you have choices and should make them.

That's the whole point of having a fallback qualification, it's meant to make you more capable of pursuing your dreams. More willing to take risks. But it seems for achieving your dreams you are far better off burning the ships, burning your bridges so you have to succeed or perish. (kind of like the most successful/thrilling trapeze artists).

Woody Allen says "Eighty percent of success is showing up." and I firmly subscribe to it. Most people just never show up for their dreams. The climb up on the platform, push their swinging trapeze out of the way and launch themselves spreadeagled on the net. Meanwhile some other acrobat's across the gulf with their arms out waiting to catch them.

I remember reading in SLAM magazine in one of their rare well written article on racism persisting in the magazines. One comment was that some guy (maybe a coach I can't remember) was certain 'there's a white micheal jordan out there somewhere, he just never got to the leagues because he's now busy being a dentist or lawyer or something.' I would say the probabilities of their being a white Michael Jordan are much lower than there being a Michael Jordan in the first place. But I still think the point is valid.

The number of people competing for a spot in the NBA draft each year of which half at best get any real shot at ever becoming a starting five player, and less than half of those become franchise players with any franchise player really only having a 1/30 chance of winning a championship, multiplied by the 6 championships Jordan won, or 13 championships that Bill Russell won, and the chances of becoming the world conquering champion that Jordan was are very very slim.

But Jordan went for it because from his socio economic background it seemed like a good bet, we are lucky to have opportunities in the developed world. But we take very few of them, we don't use our social safety nets to take risks on sweeping innovative reforms. We use them to be safe. We laze about in safety nets all day long.

The man that can read but doesn't is no better than the man who doesn't read at all.

Just as the man who does have hair and does nothing exciting with it may as well have no hair at all. (and no cutting your hair short and putting gel in it then 'mussing' it up is not exciting)

So too a society full of safety nets and fallback degrees that doesn't use them to take chances is no better than an undeveloped nation with no opportunities at all.