What Makes the Crazy That Way

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 20 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

Most analysts will give you a social or political explanation for why the Crazy is that way. When I first began analyzing history seriously, early in the last decade, I would have given you that.

But what I've learned is that type of analysis is wrong. Sarah Palin isn't crazy because of Bush, or because there's some chemical in Wasilla setting us against one another.

What drives us crazy is economic change, which closes doors for those who can't adapt and opens doors for others.

The economic change now driving us is fundamental. The focus of economic growth has moved from the office to the campus.

Remember “The Organization Man” and “Mad Men?” Both saw offices as the centers of a new world, as the locus where money and power intersected.

Life was lived in two places, in “town” and at “home,” and these were separate. For folks who had based their lives on manufacturing, who had been taught by life that making stuff was key, this was impossible to accept. And we still have old lions who think that, because we don't make most of the world's goods, there's something wrong with us.

In our time these life images have morphed into “The Office” and “Dilbert.” Office life is no longer the mainstream of economic activity. Just as automation created in offices made many factory jobs obsolete a generation ago, so networked computing is making many office jobs obsolete in our own time.

So the center of our economy has shifted, to the university campus. This has deep implications that can easily drive you crazy.

For one thing, on a campus there is little separation between working and living. Even if you're running or doing yoga you can be working out a problem. Your day is not tied to a single location – you move from place to place. Meals are part of the workday, bouncing ideas off people with different disciplines. It's deeply engrossing, consuming, and your need to be around other people grows.

College towns are insular, whether they're out in the country or in the middle of a city. Yet they're connected, to all other college towns, networked through societies and shared attitudes, shared challenges. A professor in Lincoln, Nebraska has a lot more in common with a professor in Boston, Massachusetts than his neighbors who work in offices, even Lincoln offices. Minds and values are different when you work in a college, even if the college is Oral Roberts.

When life is built around the office, you tend to want a suburb. You physically get away from work, and having 10 or even 30 miles between yourself and your work is acceptable. When it's built around a university, this is no longer acceptable, because you're never really turned off, because you need constant stimulation from others throughout the day to be productive. You can simulate this stimulation online, but it's not the same as being there.

So college professors and students live close to campus. Students live on-campus, and professors live nearby. I used to think this was because colleges were nice places to be, but as I've witnessed the construction of new colleges downtown, I've seen there's more to it. Discovery is a multi-disciplinary endeavor. It's hard to find out new things when you're isolated, in cubicles, behind walls.

Work is play, but play is also work. Google looks more like a university campus than an office for a reason.

In the factory era, university life was seen as a luxury. In the office era, it was seen as preparation. Now, in the university era it's the center of economic activity.

Which means central cities become more attractive. You want to be around those other minds all the time, that's what stimulates new thoughts, so isolating yourself in a car and a suburb is non-productive. As the pressure of university life rises, the time lost to commuting or a cul de sac becomes an increasing drain. Suburbs are no longer attractive.

Their cost is also rising.

Now let's look at this from the inside.

You've built your life around the suburb, the commute, the office. You have a world of “home,” with church, family, soccer games, and you have a world of “work,” close to the center, in an office or cubicle.

Its costs are rising, it's no longer the economic mainstream, those functions are being moved either offshore or to the Cloud. Your whole world is circling the drain.

What else can you do, in that case, but act out? You fight politically to pull power away from the cities. You resent universities and all open-ended inquiry. You tie yourself more closely to your church and your cul de sac. But now home values have collapsed, while those near universities have held steady. You lose your office job and your skills are obsolete, because there's no more need for middle management. You need to do something to prove your value, and what creates value now is discovery, which is being done almost exclusively in and around universities.

This change didn't all happen at once. The process actually began a generation ago, as the office age was entering its prime. But offices cost too much and produce too little today. The way to overcoming current scarcity lies in discovery, it lies in what's happening on our campuses, and in the businesses they spin-out. And that's a different lifestyle. It's what you thought was a phase, a way-station, something you did on your way to your real life, yet what was peripheral is now the center. And you can't go back.

When places like Wasilla no longer make any economic sense, when commutes cost too much and office jobs are like factories were for your father, when absolutes have become barriers to inquiry and necessary growth, then everything you were taught was true seems false, and you're not going to be happy about it.

That's where today's crazy comes from. Those outside the Creative Class are where union factory workers were a generation ago, their lives and homes and attitudes are under siege, collapsing around them. What I have seen in my life as slow-motion, gradual change has become for them a tornado, and there's no place they can run to, no further suburb that will keep them safe from it.

Crazy becomes the rational choice. Reject change, put things back as they were, pretend the world can be as it was.

But that's crazy.