Saturday, May 9, 2015

To Institutes of Which I Want To Be A Founding Member

The Institute for Mondays, in which we explore the nature of Mondays. We have on staff doctors, psychologists, economists, educators, and retired politicians to study the impact of Mondays on each of these areas of life. We include not only actual Mondays, but days that act like Mondays (for example, that Wednesday that just "feels like Monday"). We would also study the impact of the lack of Mondays based on individuals and cultures that don’t have Mondays or have figured out how to balance their lives so that Mondays seem like any other day.

The Institute for the Study of Persons Who Use Their Blinker While Driving, founded with the belief that there are two types of people in this world: those who use their blinkers while driving and those who do not. We study the differences between these two groups and how those differences reflect different behaviors in areas such as faith, education, charitable giving, long term relationships, and general character. This was originally founded as the Institute for the Study of Assholish Behavior, but was later changed to reflect the exact nature of the character.

The Institute for the Study and Promotion of Culinary Poultry. Our mission is to encourage the use of and creativity with all forms of poultry as the best of the animal meats. Although this seems obvious to us--fried chicken, are you kidding me? Does food get any better than that?--it seems that poultry in all its forms--chicken, turkey, duck, capon, cornish hens--does not get the epicurean respect it deserves. Except by the French, who are all honorary members.
 The Institute for the Creation of a Meetingless World works towards a utopian vision of a whole world that either keeps all meetings to 10 minutes or less (which we call meetinglets) or eschews meetings altogether in favor of clear communication and appreciation for autonomy. Our tactics include public shaming of individuals who conduct meetings that last over the ideal time by live tweeting a metacritique of the meeting starting with minute 11. However, if it is clear in the first minute that several minutes will be wasted with chit chat or unnecessary exposition by the meeting leader, live tweeting/public shaming will begin sooner. We work to empower meeting attendees to leave or question the need for the meeting. We do not include in our mission meetings where actual lives are at stake. However, the lives must be real and the danger imminent. These cannot be hypothetical lives nor can the danger merely be perceived and not verified.

The Institute for Intuitive Being/Rational Override: created with a deep trust in our human intuition for knowing what is ethical, healthy and kind. We promote ways to reconnect with that intuition and deconstruct our 21st century lives in areas where we have created the greatest barriers between intuition and our daily decisions. However, we also understand that intuitions can be unethical, unhealthy and mean. In those instances, we advocate for a move away from intuition to pure rationality. With reason, all aspects to any question or problem will be weighed and balanced appropriately. We have created a task force whose job is to decide in which situations one should use intuition or reason. They have, as yet, offered no reports. They are still meeting in the conference room. They ask for a lot of paper and snacks, but they will not adjourn the meeting.

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