In Defense of Sharks

I participated in a experiment tonight. A woman with her doctorate in psychology and three college students came to a meeting of middle school and high schoolers and talked to us about leadership skills and conflicts/conflict resolution. And they said that there are five styles/personality types when it comes to leadership/conflict resolution(boy, I do love the / tonight). They are:

The Accommodating Teddy Bear

The Compromising Fox

The Collaborating Owl

The Competing Shark

and The Avoiding Turtle.

They displayed up on a screen various characteristics of each type and I immediately identified with the Competing Shark. The screen said that they stand firm for what they believe in, like to argue and debate, and can be a little uncompromising. And that describes me pretty well. So I walk over to the section of the room where the Sharks are. And then things developed.

They divide us into two groups turtles/bears/sharks and owls/fox and told us to build a bridge out of lego. Pretty standard social experiment behavior from what I have heard. Now, maybe you have seen a problem with this. The two compromisers are paired together while the strong willed people and the(for lack of a better word) weak willed people are paired together. Maybe you have guessed that the whole point was for the Sharks to dominate the turtles and bears while the owls and foxes get along perfectly fine.

But that is actually not what happened, or at least not exactly. The owls and the foxes worked well together, dividing into teams, recognizing skills, ect ect. But they were a fairly small group. compared to my group.

My group started off with four guys basically saying that they thought we should build this bridge(because the other needed rope and we did not have rope) and we all agreed on it. Then a few of us started building while a few others looked on and the rest chatted with each other at the back. Then someone suggested that we switch with another group and we did. Then we swapped again but there were so many people that it became a little unorginized.

So then we compare bridges(both were fine, by the way) and discuss some of the outcomes. And that is when our Doctor lady reveals her true colors, as a shark hater and Owl lover. She was, in my opinion, rather snide about the sharks, subtly implying that they were dominating the process. She also outright praised the 'head' owl(who was a total freaking shark, he stuck to his guns and controlled the situation. He also did not really care about including everybody, but hey, I'm not jealous or anything).

So then I get home and look at the sheet that they passed out and was shocked to see what I found under sharks. Apparently I do not value relationships and like to force people to do what I want. I am not afraid to use aggressive behavior and I am threatening/intimidating. I feel that this is spinning sharks in a way that is unfair. Here is how I define sharks, at least as it applies to me:

I am a passionate and intense person and I am not afraid of speaking my mind. I do not want to hurt others and I certainly do not want to force anyone to my side. I honestly believe that I am right and if you only understood my position fully you would agree with me. I love debating issues(it has been scientifically proven that good conversation sets of pheromones in your brain). I know I come on strong but I hope that others see that I am simply passionate. Saying that I do not value relationships is quite frankly silly because my way of strengthening relationships and teams is through debate and conversation. I grow closer to people through talking to them and discussing ideas. I like to see both sides but if I feel that I am right then, logically speaking, I must feel that, if you idea is contrary to mine, then it is wrong. I believe that those who fear confrontation and speaking their own mind(cough turtles/bears cough) do both themselves and others a disservice. I believe that compromise is good but that at the end of the day there needs to be a decision and compromise can only be gained through a free exchange of ideas. If everyone is a compromiser then there would be no need for conflict resolution, which brings me to the experiment.

My group was set up to fail and we did not. The sharks did not dominate we were open to others' ideas and took many of them. It was a fair and open discussion. It was not our fault that many of the others had no interest in participating. I actually feel that if we had done what the owls/foxes did then our bridge what have turned out better, but it would have been less inclusive. Actually, when you look at it, the foxes were much more dominatory(is that a word?) then the sharks. They had six people working on building and a few others working on presenting it, but what were the others doing? The answer is nothing, and I know this because after we built the two bridges we had to team up to build one bridge and the owls took over. There was no compromise and there was no cooperation. It was basically "We need six people to build. Ok, now the rest of you can give advice if you want but keep it to a minimal." We sharks were much more open and we tried to give everyone a shot. So when we are basically told that we dominated the others I personally find it insulting.

I hope that I have made sense in this post(it's kind of late) and have presented a look at sharks or at least me specifically(I am very sharky, very sharky indeed) that is more favorable.

I am not afraid of my own mind or my personality and I do not take kindly to be asked to be ashamed of myself. I am an intense person and intense people change the world and make great art. So, basically, don't diss the sharks.

---
Rock4ever
A Proud Shark

My John Green Problem

So I went to a Wrock concert last night(Wizard Rock for those of you who are not hip to the extraordinarily geeky culture) and a great deal of the attendees and at least one of the performers are "Nerdfighters" which is an organization started by Young Adult author John Green.

Now I am not part of this organization because, as I like to say tong-in-cheek, I do not want to be part of a John Green cult of personality. Intended humor aside, as I have written about on this blog before, I have a bit of a problem with Mr. Green.

But, on the face of it, I should love John Green. I like his genre of writing, I like his music, and if he recommends a book chances are I will like it too. I share his politics, he is a straight guy who is very pro gay rights, I am a straight guy who is very pro gay rights. He likes to put humor in his books I like to read humor in books. He likes to have romantic themes in his books and I like to read romantic themes in books. So, basically, I should love him. I also am a fan of Nick Hornby who writes very much like John Green and Mr. Green seems like a nice enough guy. So, again, I should love him, logically speaking.

But, I do not. I don't hate him but I don't particularly like him. I find him to basically write the same character over and over and I also find him to be unnecessarily crass. To be fair, I have laughed out loud at some of his jokes("Pretty god**** well adjusted from Paper Towns for example) I have never been blown away by his stuff. I am considering trying him again, but I just don't really like him. And I am utterly and completely astound by the fact that so many people like him. I honestly don't see why he is so popular. Is it because he puts himself out there so much? Is it that his books are really accessible? Is it that he really is good and I am just crazy? I don't know but I find it really odd.

Book Review: The Rot and The Ruin by Johnathan Mabarry

Let me just say this up front, before I say anything else at all about this book, I have never read another Zombie book, I have never seen a Zombie movie, and I have never seen a Zombie tv show. This is, in fact, my first rodeo. So take that into consideration as you read the review.

Anyway, The Rot and The Ruin is a book about a boy called Benny who lives in a town called Mountainside which is a town that was set up after First Night(which is when the dead rose and started attacking people. Benny's brother, Tom, is the only member of his family still living and is a Bounty Hunter who's job is to hunt down reanimated family members for his clients. Benny does not like his brother because he feels that he(Tom that is not Benny) is a coward because years ago(on first night) he ran(with Benny) out of his house as their mother was being attacked by their father. All that Benny can remember about that night is his mother wearing a white dress with red sleeves screaming at them while their father dragged her back into the house. Benny instead looks up to a different bounty hunter called Charlie Pink-Eye. Eventually Benny has to get a job with Tom and discovers many things about the world.

This book is driven, primarily, by its plot and that is not necessarily a problem. Once this book gets its hooks into you it is(and I know that this sounds like a cliche) hard to put down.

But......Ah the characters and the writing. Benny, the main character, is not particularly likable and his romance feels a little forced(though his romantic interest is awesome) and his relationship with his brother is fairly ridiculous. Benny comes over as more than a little bit of an idiot. This brings me to the writing.

Now, this may(and probably will) sound very strange but....Mr Mabarry writes too much like me. The book felt like something I or some of my writing friends might write. And I believe that they are good writers but...if you are a published adult writer who is making(presumably) good money you should be able to write better than a 15 or 16 year old. I am not a fan of really dense writing(I view it as being normally self indulgent) but this is written very un-dense without being sparse. This reads like my book(which will return to Amazon very soon, by the way)and that is not really a good thing. It has a good and intriguing plot but it is really...for lack of a better word...surface level.

There are also serious problems with the characters and their relationships. For example the main romance happens after one character has said definitively that he does not want a relationship with the other character. The final confrontation with the villain happens like four times. They threaten him, he has a dramatic monologue about his beliefs and then....they do it again! And, I believe once more after that. When they finally kill him it is in the least satisfying way possible. I wanted that [Insert insulting name of choice] to die really bad throughout the whole book. And when he finally did it there was nothing. I mean, [slight spoiler warning] he gets hit in the head with a pipe. I wanted him to go down and I wanted it to be violent. Chop his head off or shoot him or something, but make it dramatic for God's Sake.

There are also problems with the continuity of the book. For example: One character is always telling the main character not to swear but then, later in the book, he begins to swear. Another character has a family member killed in a very brutal way and they are upset for like a page and a half. A different character would have died like three times but was always essentially unhurt.

The book is also very predictable, I saw X coming and thought "Oh I must be wrong, he won't do X" And then....HE FREAKING DID X. And then on top of that he did Y, which was just as obvious.

The ending was extraordinarily unsatisfying, starting with the climax and continuing on to the end. I want, not only more closure, but more...vindication. I wanted there to be a point, and there really wasn't. The book as a whole is kind of down on human nature as a whole.

One very good thing about the book is that he made the villains humans instead of Zombies. He made the point that you can't really blame Zombies for what they do. They can't control their actions. But humans can. I know that I'm right about this because the author states it. He is not a huge fan of subtlety

It was a fun read and I will read the sequel. But, I don't know, it could have been way, way better. It fit in with the common stereotype of "teen lit" being surface and unchallenging.