Crappy Analogies - "The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws"

Many a young ambitious Japanese worker has been reassured by these words spoken by seniour management when the organisation has proved perplexingly resistent to innovation and change.
'The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws' basically means in practice that to avoid causing jealousy amongst your superiors you should basically operate as a dumb robot until 'the time is right to strike'. The first problem with this advice is that Japan on the whole has produced about 5 innovators in the past 5 decades. Soichiro Honda, that guy from Nintendo, The guy that designed the walkman, Nigo of BAPE and the guys from 'Mr. Children'.

It would seem that oportunities to strike are few and far between.

Furthermore I like calling analogies into literal contexts to evaluate their merits.

I put to you that whilst this particular piece of advice seems all mystical and nature inspired, if you look at nature there isn't a single furry little thing that isn't petrified of Hawks, and generally speaking any bird. They know exactly how dangerous a fucking hawk is whether it is hiding it's claws or not. Even if it is a harmless seagull most of the creatures labelled as 'prey' are not going to take that chance.

The Hawk infact hides it's claws for aerodynamic reasons. The act of hiding it's claws gives it greater speed and manueverability in the air which if anything should make its appearance more terrifying not less.

The fact that such a well known analogy could have such a gaping flaw calls into question why it has permeated so fa. Why does this stupid meme replicate?

Well because the analogy should be 'The first born shark eats all the feotuses' Someone who is already 'there' as in occupying a managerial position doesn't want any young talent rocking the boat. So the idea is simply to crush people when they are young into accepting a whole stack of norms designed primarily for preserving the status quo.

In other words, wait around so long to get to the position that I will be old and retired and won't care if you have it anyway, by then you will be such a bitter disgruntled prick that you will put all your energy into ensuring the next generation have no chance to shine either.

The system works, unless you are actually in business to make money. Japan has always been wonderful at designing incredibly tight self sustaining systems of power. Since the Tokugawa shogunate though they have also always been terrible at percieving the proper scope of systems they are within.

The only surprising element of Japan's sinking into depression is that they actually admitted it, which means they must actually be sinking into some kind of calamity, since they've been really great at hiding true unemployment in superflous construction work, pretending bad debts are in fact good.

And I would leave a lot of the blame at the feet of a system that expends far more energy preserving an image than actual productive efforts. From Education right through to retirement Japan spend 60-80% of time and effort establishing 'cultural norms' such as 'The Talented Hawk Hides It's Claws' but if you think about this A hawk would have to be incredibly talented to eat a rabbit without using it's claws at all. The most likely outcome for most hawks using this advice would be a slow painful death at the hands of starvation.

Better advice is that of Mark 'Marky Mark' Twain: "Respect your superiors, If you have any."

Exactly the people who could have saved Japan have been successively discouraged and crushed by this 'sage-like' advice. The business of business is business. It simply is never 'about you' and the irony of this notion, that business should concentrate on business is that if followed correctly then the human cost would be much less if companies did actually pursue profits instead of all the other petty human concerns such as status, power, seniority, recognition, political influence, street cred etc.