The importance of seeming earnest …
There is nothing more annoying than a colleague demonstrating that (s)he is trying hard. Except perhaps the colleague who is actually doing so.
For, unless we are completely self-absorbed, we accept that there will always be someone else better than us at whatever we do. What annoys us is when a colleague gets ahead of us not due to the fact that (s)he is better, nor even if (s)he has simulated doing more, but when she actually does more.
And this is precisely the lesson Oscar Wilde teaches us in The Importance of Being Earnest: it is all in a name, and nothing more. That, regardless of your characteristics, what you can do, etc. your name supersedes everything else. For, even though both Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing are perfectly fine men (or good rascals, depending on your leanings), Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax will have nothing to do with them unless they were appropriately named.
One could read this as a warning about the superficiality of mankind — that one cannot see beyond surfaces, names, brands — but that would be missing the point.
For, it is so much that peeling back the layers of illusion reveals a reality; it is that illusions are crucial to reality. And we see this in our daily rituals: it is irrelevant whether we mean a good morning to another or not; failure to proclaim it would cause an actual rift in the relationship. What is even worse is if the one receiving the greeting does not respond. For, it is not the content of the response that matters (one can reply to how’s it going? with the exact same thing and all would be fine), it is the fact that there is a response. In breaking the appearance that we care for our fellow man — that we acknowledge their existence — we potentially rupture the entire relationship. Which is why « the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined, girl ». Whether one believes what one is told is also beside the point: it « does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer ».
After all, what is more beautiful, elegant, than a ritual that both parties do not mean; even more so when both partake of it in full knowledge of its artifice.
This is why even though Gwendolen only wants to marry an Ernest, she does not discount Jack even when she discovers that he had hitherto been lying about his name. What is crucial is that he has been keeping up appearances as an Ernest. As Algernon says: « you look as if your name was Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn’t Ernest ». The fact that Jack eventually discovers that his birth name is Ernest is hardly the point: in fact, when he finds out, he exclaims, « it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth ». What is important — the thing that brings him together with Gwendolen — is the fact that he is performing the fact that he is Ernest; that he looks like Ernest.
If one plays the game properly in getting ahead, one merely shows that one is trying hard without actually doing so. In actually trying hard, one is not merely showing oneself to be earnest, one is actually being so. And here, one must not forget that the rules of engagement in any office entail a notion of us vs. the management (or if you’re in a hippy mood, the people vs. the man). Getting ahead by simulated work protects the illusion that we are colleagues, working together; and if one gets promoted, the fault lies with the boss. And thus, we can maintain the collegiality based on the notion that we had hoodwinked the man. Actually trying hard only reveals too clearly — shatters the illusion — that we are actually competitors.
So, even as we all know that getting ahead is always at the expense of a colleague, we need to maintain the illusion that we are all working together.
Even if we might actually be trying hard.
Especially if we are.
And what is more elegant than demonstrating to the boss that we are working, whilst keeping up the illusion (to our colleagues) that we are pulling wool over the man’s eyes.
After all, « in matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing ».