Nice Work, If You Can Lose It an Axolotl-Style Career Move

Nice Work, If You Can Lose It an Axolotl-Style Career Move Getting canned is supposed to be like getting caneda clear sign youve rubbed somebody the wrong way, gotten under their skin and are getting whacked for it. Yet, the recent otherwise under-reported story of the Fox Business News cancellation of Judge Napolitanos breathtakingly bold, indeed audacious and top-rated libertarian-oriented Freedom Watch, suggests a very different, opposite lesson In employment, one can advance two steps forward by taking one step back, i.e., by getting kicked upstairs. Napolitano, a gutsy straight-talking, hard-hitting former New Jersey Superior Court judge suggests as much himself, in his parting message to his fans In television, shows are cancelled all the time. Two of my former shows have been cancelled, and after each cancellation, Fox has rewarded me with mora and better work. (Source Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars.com.)If he is right, his next work or show should be mind-bogglingly fascinating and important, since incisive and insightful Freedom Watch, which debuted on the Fox Business Network (FBN) in June 2010, was, as I saw it, the mostmake that the onlyoutspoken government-leery, corporation-bashing, anti-war, liberty-championing watchdog show Id ever seen on a major network (Jesse Venturas truTV.com Conspiracy Theory, currently in hiatus, having been broadcast only on cable).Axolotl and Career RecoveriesEqually fascinating, but in a totally unexpected way, is how Judge Napolitanos career trajectory at Fox eerily relates to the strange physiological powers of limb and tail regeneration in an obscure but remarkable Mexican salamander called the axolotol. If amputated, an axolotls limbs and tail will regrownormally and completely. The key similarities to the process by which Judge Napolitanos career has advanced at Fox News are thatboth the Judge and the axolotl land on their (new) feet, so to speak, after being cut.their recoveries seem to defy common sense in that they are recoveries from losses that normally are serious handicaps and virtually, if leid completely, insurmountable or fatal.their reversals are double-reversals not only setbacks, but also reversions to a prior stage of (physiological or professional) development.Because it is so similar to the gutsy judges career history, yet unusual and remarkable, this recovery-through-reversal process as it occurs in an injured axolotl deserves a detailed explanation. When an axolotls limb or tail is amputated (ideally, by accident, rather than human design), something strange happens before it fully regenerates The cells of the tissue destined to regenerate undergo reverse evolution and regress to an evolutionarily earlier, less specialized cellular form and level of developmentas though they are taking a big developmental step backward in order to recover and advance.In Judge Napolitanos case, it appears that the axolotlesque despecialization and regression have already begun In a February 2012 press release mentioning the cancellation of Freedom Watch, the Fox Business Network said, Currently one of the leading judicial analysts on television, Judge Napolitano will continue his role on both FOX Business and FOX News, providing key legal insights surrounding the growing intersection between Washington and Wall Street that he is being assigned on-air roles as a general consultant and commentator on legal issues pertaining to business.If the axolotl pattern holds hereafter as it has in his past, he should, in time, fully recover from this setback and see his career grow into bigger and better things.(This is not the only huge evolutionary surprise that the axolotl serves up It is also a neotenic speciesa creature that, although when fully grown is adult in size, is actually an oversized juvenile, in this case, a larval form of a normal salamander. Being neotenic, although the exceptio n, rather than the rule, does characterize other species, includingor so the evolutionary biologists sayhumans, who are described as overgrown chimpanzee fetuses, much as the typical alien in an SF movie resembles an overgrown human fetus.)So, what happens to axolotls whose limbs are cut off has been mirrored in what has happened (so far) to Judge Napolitano when his shows have been cut one step back for one step (or eventually more) forward. As the French famously put it, reculer pour mieux sauter (to run back to make a better jump forward).Because the Judges career can evolve more quickly than the axolotl species, his capacity for regeneration doesnt pause at mere recovery as he has described it, the post-recovery jobs have been even better than the ones lost.(For a brilliant analysis of the similarities between axolotl reversal-based regeneration and the developmental pattern of human creative processes in science, humor and art, you cannot do better than to read Arthur Koestlers masterpiece, The Act of Creation. For science history buffs, there is Thomas Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which Kuhn describes the same 2-step process of reversal as advance-through-undoing, in the history of paradigm shifts in the sciencesa process in which the old prevailing views are gradually destroyed and their rubble used to erect a new theory and world view, e.g., the replacement of Aristotles earth-centered planetary system with the Copernican sun-centered model.)As for other sciences, there is the analogous principle in chaos theory that states that increases in complexity arise from spikes in instability and disorder, the presumptive antitheses of complexity, much as despecialization and regression of its cellular tissue is, at face value, the opposite of regeneration of a more specialized, developed and restored limb.Clearly, in going out on a network broadcast limb, Judge Napolitano ultimately got it sawed off by Fox News, despite a strong showing. But if axolotl physiology does provide any predictive clues, he will, in short order, be growing a new and maybe stronger limb to challenge and another leg to stand onand with which to take another strong stand...At least until his next higher-up cant stand it and the Judges out-on-a-limb limb-bough format.