Contracts

Pandoodle is growing.  We've booked a great deal of consulting business creating custom media solutions, games mostly, for clients around the world.  With this expansion we are moving from our older cowboy model of shoot first, deal with the details later to a more sophisticated model of approaching each projects in stages with the right resources and procedures so that the company and our customers are clear in their expectations and protected legally.  With my extensive legal training, that is arguing with my father who is in fact an attorney, I am charge of drafting the contracts that the company will present to our subcontractors and vendors.  It might sound boring, but I have enjoyed learning to some basic degree how contracts work and constructing binding expectations and terms with nothing more than language.  It reminds me of playing football in my next door neighbor's backyard when I was very young.  The older boys in the neighborhood would change the rules of the game midway through a play, shouting, "It's now full tackle!"  They were bigger than me, and my protests amounted to nothing.  Invariably, they always won.  The power to dictate terms and ensure they are followed is great power indeed.

This example reminds me of another contract that is less overt than one signed on paper, the implicit contract between two adults as to the modicum of behavior towards each other that we expect and follow.  We assume that a real world that is intelligible and constant for normal human beings does exist externally of ourselves, and that our behavior towards one another is rooted in this reality.  For example, people do not like being manipulated or hurt, but they do like being treated with respect and kindness.  Many people affected with a mental illness do not recognize a fixed reality, and one of the most difficult challenges of dealing with such a person these fundamental assumptions of behavior towards others do not exist.  Without a firm grasp of reality, an insane person's behavior typically follows the will of their emotions; however, their reason still abides but is corrupted and made subject to this emotional turmoil.  A common metaphor for a crazy person is a horse without a rider.  I would argue that that metaphor better represents an irrational person.  A crazy person is more like a centaur, their rationality and emotions inseparable, but the latter being dominant.  Rather than addressing and responding to reality, an insane person will often use their rational facilities to force their reality in place of yours, shaping the rules to their advantage.  The smarter they are, the more dangerous they are.  In backyard football, the older boys would change the rules to their advantage, justifying it with the generality that might equals right.  There was no question as to whether what they were doing was right or wrong.  Everyone knew it wasn't fair, but no recourse existed.  Insanity is more unsettling than brutishness, because when it changes the rules, it does not recognize any reason to justify itself.  A crazy person breaks and makes rules to accord with the turbulent reality within their mind.  A sane person's less flexible view is at a disadvantage; thus, crazy always wins.  The only way to deal with crazy is to never engage.