Now I have some questions.
But, first, some kudos and a critical note.
Being over 40, I am old as dirt when compared to the early twenty-something audience Pink and Ten Pas intend to reach, so Manga is not my traditional vernacular. However, being the mother of a tweener, I have retrieved from the backseat floor of my car a fair amount of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards; and working in the publishing industry, I have lugged home enough Manga samples from the BEA, to know what sells. Still, I wondered, why is Diana of the Chopsticks (Bunko's goddess) such a black belt b*tch? In one frame, she chucks a stapler, hard, at Johnny's head. And she is forever mangling the young man's name, on purpose, it would seem. Is meanness a Manga convention of which I am unaware, having seen only what sells, not what is Manga hardcore?
Ten Pas's Manga drawings are entertaining: just enough Westernization of the characters to feel authentically exotic without being distracted, especially if Manga isn't your thing. I also enjoyed Ten Pas's little side stories inserted through out...Bunko and Diana's synchronized kata performance between chapters One and Two being my favorite.
Perhaps Ten Pas's renderings of recognizable cultural references were intentional: was the Starbuck's in one frame a product placement? Is Bunko's bald friend an avatar of Pink pal, marketing guru, and well-known chrome dome, Seth Godin?
With Bunko, Pink and his publishing posse achieve perfect word count. It's hard to tell an effective story in few words. Ten Pas's cheeky illustrations drive the Bunko bus along, but the further an allegory aspires to travel, the wiser (and more ruthless) the edits must be.
And, while it's subtitled, "The last career guide you'll ever need," Johnny Bunko's tale is, make no mistake, absolute allegory. It's the tale of a young man in his first "real" job, hating every minute of it, and going on a Hero's Journey in search of why and how to change his predicament so that he works and lives in harmony with himself. Yay, Dan Pink. Really.
Since we've come to (somehow) operate in a world of professionals with "communications" degrees hanging on their walls and prescriptive non-fiction books about the metrics of marketing on their nightstands, anyone who wants to tell me a good story about navigating one's purpose in life by way of the constellations of commerce is welcome in my world. For a minute there, with the exception of Patrick Lencione's fans of his chirpy-but-lovable consultants, I didn't think there was anyone left who actually read prescriptive fiction.
Once upon a time (excuse the punny literary device), such stories were taught as ways we might engage our imaginations and chart our course. For that reason alone, I hope Pink's book does well. However if what Pink himself in earlier books and articles has predicted is true--that we have entered the Age of the Right Brain, then Johnny Bunko will ring true with readers.
But, will Bunko be a man for our age?
To re-cap the six tenets of Bunko's message:
- There is no plan.
- Think strengths, not weaknesses.
- It's not about you.
- Persistence trumps talent.
- Make excellent mistakes.
- Leave an imprint.
Sounds good. Harmless, even. But, as we plough the fields of our right brain, and eschew the path to Accounting, we're bound to unearth many dilemmas. Such as, are we prepared to live in a world where our corporations no longer take care of us? (Financially anyway; there is a trend towards providing immediate "quality of life" types of perks--part of the right brain infiltration.) While we are forging the smithies of our souls (a good thing), following our bliss and not our parents' advice, will we be able to support a family, much less ourselves?
In other words, thinking with our right brains requires we have a very stout heart pumping in our respective chests. That's because we will be flying without the so-called security net. Oh, wait. Enron. Arthur Andersen. Dot bomb. Okay, so it requires we ADMIT that we've been flying without a net for a decade or more now. (Stout heart and some solid stones. That oughtta do it.)
I believe Pink is right: the era of heuristic thinking has arrived. What lags isn't our longing to embrace our bliss and run away with it, it's something else--something that if we don't get it together, Bunko's journey will offer us an empty ride.
We do not have a practical system that supports our longings, no matter how devoutly and excellently we adhere to items 1 through 6. Complicating the application of Pink's advice is the bizarre twenty year social experiment we've perpetrated nationally--largely through our schools, and definitely in the media--that in fact, everything is about you.
Which brings me to my first question: are there really legion college graduates entering the workforce today who were exhorted to follow the same general advice my generation and the one before it was? Namely, as Bunko's tale recounts, "If you want to get ahead, you have to have a plan. Major in accounting. That way you'll always have a job." If so, I don't meet these people. Where are they? To be fair, I do meet young adults who have no idea what they want to do, but were actually brave enough to get degrees in philosophy or art history. Now, though, they are either too scared or too jaded by failed attempts to apply their passion in an economy that doesn't seem to have a place for them.
But I also meet many kids who seem aimless and unemployable. They didn't even get "bad" advice telling them to become IT or accounting majors. They have not been taught anything that anchors them to themselves, much less their future. They seem to have a vague uneasiness about them--as though they are aware they've somehow been ripped off. They were taught it was all about them, that the world never says "no", and yet, I wonder if what I am sensing in them is the internal question, "If I'm so special and unique, why can't I impact the world?"
They don't have any practical skills, such as how to communicate clearly or solve basic problems--essential in a customer-intense, touchy-feely world. And they know they're not going anywhere as a result. Just because we're becoming more about our imaginations, doesn't mean we don't need structures for how to interact. We need them even more!
Is this deficiency the fault of our schools? Kinda. Moreso, it's the fault of us all as societal sleepwalkers. We've allowed unevolved thinking to run rampant. It sums up this way: Me, Liberal, You Conservative. Me good, you Bad. AND...Me, Conservative, You, Liberal. Me good, You bad. Insert a little chest pounding, and you get the picture. It's a perfect canvas for finger pointing, but not actually growing our minds.
We've been so weirdly focused on the debate of who has the better solution for how to train our children's minds, that we've devolved into an adolescent us v. them, fighting over whether prayer should be allowed in schools, or to hand all questions of meaning and purpose over to the church of self-primacy. The larger question of how to offer students tools like critical thinking so they could work their own way through the human continuum seems to have never entered the debate. Thought control has been the real battle ground.
The more effective way to prime our minds would be: Me, Human, You Human. Me have power to operate somewhere on the continuum of good and bad, and so do you. Now what do we do?
That sort of attempt at citizenship has to be the ultimate goal of right brain thinking or we're screwed. The right brain being in the forefront doesn't mean we should lobotomize the left. The left brain's skills for money management and creating order out of chaos, remain important. Further, if Pink's tenet "It's not about you" is to really have any power in the world, then it will foster the understanding that it's just absurd to think that one group has the complete, right answer to anything--ANYTHING!
That goes for the trend of today's generation, being "socially aware"--especially by those kids who are aware that they want to connect to themselves and to feel meaning . How effective their attempts to apply Pink's "give back" and "leave an imprint" will be, hinge upon how integrated they are as human beings. Can they handle that the world they wish to improve is filled with villains who are also heroes and vice versa? If they've read enough allegory, and Shakespeare and other Classics--or whatever prescriptive fiction that comes from their respective traditions--while they're at it, they might have a chance. They might then even produce their own stories, a la Bunko, that record their growth in a contemporary way.
And here is my second question: are we, as right brained artisans of a new world, willing to stop characterizing Capitalism as the left brained greedy root of evil (See above "Me Tarzan, you Bonehead" example) and instead teach our right brain-dominant work force how to actually operate within Capitalism? If companies are not going to provide for our retirement as they once did for the Boomers, then what? We're either left to socialize our right brained population, or give ourselves the practical skills for managing our money, investing our money, and allowing our system to actually operate the way it's meant to: freely.
What's that old saying...the one that came up a few times during the 1787 Continental Convention...oh, right: with great freedom comes great responsibility...? If it takes the arrival of the right brain to loosen the stiff chauvinism of the left one so that we actually grow up, integrate both lobes, and follow the six steps of Bunko's journey, then The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is most definitely a relevant tale for our age.
###
