BOOK: Have you ever read the works of Shan Yu?
SIMON: Shan Yu, the psychotic dictator?
BOOK: Yep. Fancied himself quite the warrior poet. Wrote volumes on war, torture… the limits of human endurance.
SIMON: That’s nice…
BOOK: He said “live with a man 40 years, share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano’s edge. And on that day you will finally meet the man.”
SIMON: What if you don’t live near a volcano?
BOOK: I expect he was being poetical.
I am a sucker for a movie or TV show that presents a compelling scene or story, that conveys a complicated topic most humans will never experience, or likely never fully grasp with any bit of reality. I am a bigger sucker when such a scene or story starts taking on a small shred of reality, in a different context, that I can piece together.
While I can’t compare my point to being held over a volcano’s edge, I feel that slowly meeting and getting to know someone over 20 years and watching a variety of mental toils take effect, may come in a distant second. In addition to compassion fatigue, spending decades in an industry you believe in that keeps failing, no matter how hard you try to improve, wears a person down in many ways. Some of them often destructive to themselves and those around them.
We’ve reached a point in InfoSec where there are hundreds, maybe thousands of veterans that are reaching a critical mass. The number of disillusioned professionals that cannot tolerate their beloved industry is incredible. Some I know have sworn off the industry, vowing to work outside their niche market, and forsake the rest of the industry. This is great for them, bad for the industry who could desperately use their experience and knowledge, and absolutely fair to both. I won’t get into the debate of “oh but there is a next generation“, and just say that a community who loses a significant portion of their elders will suffer tremendously, even if they don’t realize it until many decades later.
if Shan Yu were on social media, I think he would be fascinated watching the story unfold, and amazed at how much he could learn about people during their industry-induced downward spirals.