At the end of every JCorps event we take at least two group photos. We take one “normal” photo and one “silly” photo. “OK, everyone go crazy and pretend you’re having a good time!”, we tell the group. They laugh, and arms and tongues and legs go out and up and over. And everyone looks like they’re having a great time — because they are. Personalities and energies shine through. Except for one or two people, almost every week, who think, “no, that’ll make me look silly”, stand still, and hold their long-practiced pose. When the photo comes out, they look uptight, un-fun, and out-of-touch.

People who worry about looking silly look silly!

I’ve found that success only comes from running into the immense possibility of failure. Everything great in life takes risk. My greatest regrets are not the failures — those are easily forgotten or corrected, and often admired — they are the times I didn’t go for it. They are the times I didn’t ask for something, the times I didn’t speak my mind, the times I didn’t kiss the girl. I am kept up at night by the times I held back, in action, or words, for fear of looking silly.

JCorps works because we don’t have committees. We have Team Leaders, and each Team Leader has their own responsibilities. If they don’t do them, they don’t get done.

Committees are cesspools for breeding the lowest common denominator. The second you put a group into a circle and require a vote you get everyone held up by the dumbest person in the room, some tool that joined the committee because he or she “wanted to make a difference”, when anybody who’s ever made a difference knows you don’t do it by committee.

With JCorps, and all ventures, you give individuals responsibility, you and they know they’re accountable, and you and they know what happens if they drop the ball. There is no possibility for blaming a partner or co-worker: it’s all your fault.

It’s also incredibly freeing and inspiring: You can do whatever you need to do, within certain broad guidelines, to get the job done. You are in-control. You are the leader of this initiative.

On the contrary, nobody has ever walked into a committee meeting and thought, “Wow, this is going to be productive!” I go to committee meetings rarely, and only for free food (I count a meeting with sushi as “highly productive”), comedy material, and networking. Nobody’s really there to get anything one. That’s the job of individuals.

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Although, if you still insist on meetings, spare everyone the back-and-forth of finding a meeting time, and coordinate with GatherGrid.

For a country big on privacy, we spend a lot of time minding other people’s business.

I include in this all the time spent debating gay marriage. Why do we care who marries whom?

Have we solved all the more-pressing issues? Did we solve the education crisis only to realize kids aren’t learning to read because Bert and Ernie sleep together?

This is religion sticking its head where it doesn’t belong.  (Which is ironic, given that sticking things where they don’t belong is their main complaint.)

People are afraid of creating loveless marriages of convenience. Too late. People complain about children being raised without a mother or father. Too late. People worry about a skyrocketing divorce rate (Ha. You don’t want them to marry because you’re afraid they’ll get unmarried?). Too late.

We have an abundance of opportunity in this country to make a profound difference, and spending our time budding into personal lives is no way to get that done.

I’m often motivated by mustard.

When I first started doing comedy I’d have to follow Tonight Show comics, folks with their own Comedy Central and HBO specials, SNL cast members, and movie stars. If I listened to the voice in my head that said, “Oh my god, she’s so much better than me”, I’d never get on stage. So I remembered mustard.

It’s from this video of Malcom Gladwell at TED talking about how there’s no such thing as “better” mustard. Every mustard is someone’s favorite.

“Mustard does not exist on a heirachy. Mustard exists… on a horizontal plane. There is no good mustard or bad mustard. There is no perfect mustard or imperfect mustard. There are only different kinds of mustard that suit different kinds of people.”

So I get on stage and be the mustard that I am today. Fortunately, it’s usually someone’s favorite.

(And sometimes a girl tries to see if I’m a squeeze bottle!)

Chances are, you’re already dead.

You have so much you’d like to do in life, but you don’t do it. You put it off. You worry how it would look if you did it now. You worry how it would look if you failed. You worry it wont be what you really wanted.

You worry you don’t know enough, have enough, want enough to do it. You have too many things you have to do before you do it.

You see living as somewhere out there. You see life as distractions keeping you from living. You’re breathing, and moving, and fixing, but you’re not living.

Living is a decision. The decision to take the risk. The decision to pursue and persevere. The decision to make mistakes.

Regret is our most heavy pain. Going through life without making mistakes is the biggest mistake you can make.

Basically, Obama’s economic plan works like this:

If you’re good at making money, he’s going to take a lot of it away and give it to someone who isn’t as proficient. Then he’s going to take some of that person’s cash, and give it to someone even worse at making money. So, really, the only way to get paid under Obama is to be a total fuckup.

Obama calls this “Distributing the Wealth”, which is the same term the Soviets used. I guess it sounds scarier in Russian.

I wonder how far this concept goes in Obama’s plan for “change”. If you’re forcing the rich guy to share his wealth with the poor guy, let’s force the attractive guy to marry the ugly chick.

I can see Obama digging that. He’d call it “Distributing the Genes”: Tall people mate with short people, smart people mate with stupid people, and skinny people mate with Walmart shoppers. Of course, we won’t say they’re fat, we’ll say they “distribute the jeans”. (I’ll mate with someone who can resist bad puns.) To help gain support for the initiative, and jump-start the program, it would be legal for women to gang rape Patrick Dempsey.

Actually, that’s too much initiative. They’d just mail ugly women his genetic material. I just did a google-search and it turns out we’re very into artificially inseminating cows (If your steak tastes tense, perhaps it’s because the cows aren’t getting laid.) A search of “artificial insemination of cows” returns almost one million results! Those cow farmers sure have a lot of time on their hands. And also probably a lot of bull gunk. Never shake a cow farmer’s hand.

But I’ve digressed…

Here’s the major problem with Obama’s philosophy: He doesn’t think you can help yourself. In Obama’s world, you don’t make yourself successful; the goverment has to do it for you. Ah, the American Dream. Oh, wait, no, that’s Soviet Russia again.

And the problem with the government solving all your problems (besides that it’s never worked) is “learned helplessness“. Obama is creating a world where you are told you cannot make choices and you’re unable to care for yourself. You have no freedom and no ability. You have no motive for initiative. If you want to know what that’d be like, imagine your entire life took place at the DMV.

If that sounds good, vote Obama.

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Ari Teman, Oct 17, 2008, NYC
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