English / 27.01.2022 / 6678

How are the coolest among us being controlled?

Nikolay Mokhov, author from the Dark Side of Business

School teachers remind me of elephants on a rope. Do you remember this urban myth? In Africa, a small elephant was tied to a tree with a rope, so that he couldn’t run away. The elephant grew up, but he got used to the rope’s power, which he could now easily tear off. Nevertheless, the habit was stronger than common sense. At the same time, the latter isn’t something they lack. Elephants are highly intelligent animals. They could teach some humans a lesson…

Let’s go back to school teachers. Some of them would tear off the rope and run to freedom, away from the classrooms stinking of children’s sweat. All the way into business. Ever seen people like them? I’ve got to tell you, it’s one hell of a view. I’ve been on principals’ meetings with an ex English teacher. Back in her days she was in charge of an exemplary school, but the yearning for power and big money led her into big business.

Being able to give out grades is the greatest management skill one could acquire

Under her management, construction bosses turned into obedient children. Her orders were treated like homework — they would often forget to do it, and when they did, they’d blush as if they were young girls being told off. So, I was sitting down and contemplating:

— How? How can this woman make forty-year-old men turn into small boys and explain themselves, as if they were C students standing by the classroom board? What is the deal with that? Maybe she had some kind of a special voice? A posture? The most advanced hypnotizers would not be able place themselves that way… What is her secret?

Destiny, as if it was some kind of a mockery, always made me bump into other teachers.
Some were in control of millionaires, other hypnotized bigger audiences, and if gentlemen in suits were raising their hands to ask questions… then they were simply laughed at.

From the heading

Where does the price come from?

The Marxists took offense at me. We have an article called "Don Juan's Wall". In the article, I wrote about the unexpected consequences of quarantine. But I made an ideological mistake. I refused to consider the overproduction crisis as the cause of the Great Depression. And then it hit me.

The Student

I’m watching time grinding big businesses to dust. Some of them I know quite well. Just yesterday, their owners used to think they were rich. Today they find out: a couple more months of quarantine and only dust will remain of all their treasures. And not golden dust — gray dust. Tomorrow, those who used to be held up as an example to all will be forgotten. New heroes will appear. Looking at these stories, I remember the words of my Teacher:

Queen of the spoken word...

Tanya’s mother beat her weekly. She tried to restrain herself, and not hit her child every day, but it didn't always work out. It was all thanks to her daughter being so different with her fantastical stupidity and incredible self-confidence.

“You realize that you can't even work as a janitor? Today, even they have a higher education... And you can't even string three words together," shouted the fat math teacher.

The thought of eternal life

Neuroscientists say that the bigger the brain, the longer a mammal lives. And there is also a commonplace observation: people who are engaged in research, teaching, and theoretical science live long. You can count straight from Plato, who died at the age of eighty. His colleague Newton at 84, Mendeleev at 72, Einstein at 76, physicist Niels Bohr at 77, and so on. And the other day I was walking around Cyprus with a PhD, so she told me: