Neoliberalism has shaped a society where
you have to sell your personality in addition to your work. The five prominent features of
alienation are (Seeman, 1959).:
powerlessness,
meaninglessness,
normlessness,
isolation
self-estrangement
Alienation in the sense of a lack of power has been technically defined by Seeman as “the expectancy
or probability held by the individual that his own behavior cannot determine the occurrence of the
outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks." Seeman argues that this is “the notion of alienation as it
originated in the Marxian view of the worker’s condition in capitalist society: the worker is
alienated to the extent that the prerogative and means of decision are expropriated by the ruling
entrepreneurs".[23] Put more succinctly, Kalekin-Fishman (1996: 97) says, “A person suffers from
alienation in the form of 'powerlessness' when she is conscious of the gap between what she would
like to do and what she feels capable of doing”.
Alienation in neoliberal society occurs because in work each contributes to the common wealth, but
they can only express this fundamentally social aspect of individuality through a production system
that is not publicly social but privately owned, for which each individual functions as an
instrument, not as a social being.
Relationships under neoliberalism become more and more mediated
by money. Individuals become estranged to themselves in the quest to stay alive, where “they lose
their true existence in the struggle for subsistence”
The resemblance of
neoliberal culture with Soviet society is shocking.
Soviet society too was based on fear, hypocrisy, double-talk and many lies.
The important communist bureaucrats were diabolically able to wrap very pragmatic and selfish
actions in completely irrelevant Marxist-Leninist talk. The major difference
from the neoliberalism is that the generations formed in communist times
were extremely cynical and bitter, while neoliberal corporatist culture keeps pushing
credulity, self-blame and “a positive attitude.” Just like under communism,
under neoliberalism the corporate workplace culture refuses to be aware of itself. It wraps
a simple and pragmatic set of actions with a complex and irrelevant
set of behaviors and justifications, all the while somehow mysteriously
passing on the management wisdom over the years.
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society
with "White Collar" in 1951, describing how modern consumption-driven capitalism has shaped a society where
you have to sell your personality in addition to your work.
Perceived in terms of roles, rules, and functions rather than as individuals, many
workers feel more like objects than people. Marx termed these reactions alienation, a
result, he said, of workers being cut off from the finished product of their labor. He pointed out
that before industrialization, workers used their own tools to produce an entire product, such as a
chair or table.
Now the capitalists own the tools (machinery, desks, computers) and assign each worker only a single
step or two in the entire production process. Relegated to performing partial, highly specialized
tasks that seem remote from the final product, workers no longer identify with what they produce.
They come to feel estranged not only from the results of their labor but also from their work
environment.
Bureaucratic alienation is closely connected with the impersonal, dehumanized nature of large
scale organizations. The leadership everywhere is limited to representatives of the elite
which are disconnected from the need and aspiration of the rest of workers. Who as a
result face alienation.
Alienation is connected with two major aspects of bureaucratic structure: centralization and
formalization. We can distinguish two major forms of alienation: from work and from
human relations (depersonalization)
Alienation (Entfremdung) is the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society,
because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his and her humanity.
The theoretic basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker
invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the
right to think (conceive) of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character
of said actions; to define their relationship with other people; and to own the things and use
the value of the goods and services, produced with their labour. Although the worker is an
autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and
diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in
order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value, in the course of business
competition among industrialists.
In a capitalist society, the worker’s alienation from his and her humanity occurs because the
worker can only express labour — a fundamental social aspect of personal individuality — through
a privately owned system of industrial production in which each worker is an instrument, a
thing, not a person; Marx explained alienation thus:
Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have,
in two ways, affirmed himself, and the other person. (1) In my production I would have
objectified my individuality, its specific character, and, therefore, enjoyed not only an
individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the
object, I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective,
visible to the senses, and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. (2) In your enjoyment, or use,
of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied
a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of
having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s essential nature...
Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.[1]
The four types of Entfremdung are:
(I) Alienation of the worker from the worker — from the product of his labour
The design of the product and how it is produced are determined not by the producers who make
it (the workers), nor by the consumers of the product (the buyers), but by the Capitalist class,
who, besides appropriating the worker’s manual labour, also appropriate the intellectual labour
of the engineer and the industrial designer who create the product, in order to shape the taste
of the consumer to buy the goods and services at a price that yields a maximal profit. Aside
from the workers having no control over the design-and-production protocol, alienation (Entfremdung)
broadly describes the conversion of labour (work as an activity), which is performed to generate
a use value (the product) into a commodity, which — like products — can be assigned an exchange
value. That is, the Capitalist gains control of the manual and intellectual workers, and the
benefits of their labour, with a system of industrial production that converts said labour into
concrete products (goods and services) that benefit the consumer. Moreover, the capitalist
production system also reifies labour into the “concrete” concept of “work” (a job), for which
the worker is paid wages — at the lowest possible rate — that maintain a maximum rate of return
on the Capitalist’s investment capital; this is an aspect of exploitation. Furthermore, with
such a reified system of industrial production, the profit (exchange value) generated by the
sale of the goods and services (products) that could be paid to the workers, instead is paid to
the capitalist classes: the functional capitalist, who manages the means of production, and the
rentier capitalist, who owns the means of production.
(II) Alienation of the worker from working — from the act of producing
In the Capitalist Mode of Production, the generation of products (goods and services) is
accomplished with an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive motions that offer the worker
little psychological satisfaction for “a job well done”. By means of commodification, the labour
power of the worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological estrangement (Entfremdung)
of the worker results from the unmediated relation between his productive labour and the wages
paid him for the labour. That division of labour, within the capitalist mode of production,
further exploits the worker by limiting his or her Gattungswesen (species-essence) — the human
being’s power to determine the purpose to which the product (goods and services) shall be
applied; the human nature (species-essence) of the worker is fulfilled when he or she controls
the “subject of labour”. Hence does capitalism remove from the worker the right to exercise
control upon the value and the effects of his and her labour, which, in turn, robs the worker of
the ability to either buy (consume) the goods and services, or to receive the full value from
the sale of the product. The alienation of the worker from the act of producing renders the
worker unable to specialize in a type of productive labour, which is a psychologically
satisfying condition; within an industrial system of production, social alienation reduces the
worker to an instrument, to an object, and thus cannot productively apply every aspect of his or
her human nature.
(III) Alienation of the worker from himself, as a producer — from his Gattungswesen
(species-essence)
The Gattungswesen (species-essence), the nature of a person is not detached from their
activity as a worker; as such, species-essence also comprises all of their innate human
potential as a person. Conceptually, in the term “species-essence”, the word “species” describes
the uniquely human traits that are characterized by a “plurality of interests” and
“psychological dynamism”, whereby every person has the desire and the tendency to engage in the
varied activities that are practically and emotionally benevolent, by means of social
connections with other people. The cognitive value of a person consists in being able to
conceive of the ends of his actions as purposeful ideas, which are distinct from the actions
required to realize a given idea. That is, man is able to objectify his intentions, by means of
an idea of himself, as “the subject”, and an idea of the thing that he produces, “the object”.
Conversely, unlike a human being, an animal does not objectify itself, as “the subject”, nor its
products as ideas, “the object”, because an animal engages in directly self-sustaining actions
that have neither a future intention, nor a conscious intention. While a person’s Gattungswesen,
their nature, does not exist independent of specific, historically conditioned activities, the
essential nature of a human being is actualized when a person — within their given historical
circumstance — is free to subordinate his will to the external demands he has imposed upon
himself, by his imagination, and not the external demands imposed upon him by other people.
Relations of production
Whatever the character of a person’s consciousness (will and imagination), the worker’s
existence in society is conditioned by his or her relationships with the people and things that
facilitate survival, which is fundamentally dependent upon co-operation with others, thus, a
person’s consciousness is determined inter-subjectively (collectively), not subjectively
(individually), because Man is a social animal. In the course of history, to ensure human
survival, societies have organised themselves into groups who have different, basic
relationships to the means of production. One societal group (class) owned and controlled the
means of production, while another societal class worked the means of production; in the
relations of production of that status quo, the goal of the owner-class was to economically
benefit as much as possible from the labour of the working class. Moreover, in the course of
economic development, when a new type of economy displaced an old type of economy — agrarian
feudalism superseded by mercantilism, in turn superseded by the Industrial revolution — the
rearranged economic order of the social classes favoured the social class who controlled the
technologies (the means of production) that made possible the change in the relations of
production. Likewise, there occurred a corresponding rearrangement of the human nature (Gattungswesen)
and the system of values of the owner-class and of the working-class, which allowed each group
of people to accept and to function in the rearranged status quo of production-relations.
Exploitation and revolution
Despite the ideologic promise of industrialisation — that the mechanisation of industrial
production would raise the mass of the workers, from a brutish life of subsistence existence, to
the self-respect of honourable work — the division of labour inherent to the capitalist mode of
production, thwarted the human nature (Gattungswesen) of the worker, and so rendered each man
and woman into a mechanistic part of an industrialised system of production, from being a person
capable of defining his and her value through direct, purposeful activity. Moreover, the
near-total mechanisation and automation of the industrial production system would allow the
(newly) dominant bourgeois capitalist social class to exploit the working class to the degree
that the value obtained from their labour would diminish the ability of the workers to
materially survive. Hence, when the proletarian working-class become a sufficiently developed
political force, they will effect a revolution and re-orient the relations of production to the
means of production — from a capitalist mode of production to a communist mode of production. In
the resultant Communist society, the fundamental relation of the workers to the means of
production would be equal and non-conflictual, because there would be no artificial (class)
distinctions about the value of a worker’s labour; the worker’s humanity (species-essence) thus
respected, men and women would not become alienated, from themselves and their society.
Powerlessness
Alienation in the sense of a lack of power has been technically defined by Seeman as “the expectancy
or probability held by the individual that his own behaviour cannot determine the occurrence of the
outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks." Seeman argues that this is “the notion of alienation as it
originated in the Marxian view of the worker’s condition in capitalist society: the worker is
alienated to the extent that the prerogative and means of decision are expropriated by the ruling
entrepreneurs". Put more succinctly, Kalekin-Fishman (1996: 97) says, “A person suffers from
alienation in the form of 'powerlessness' when she is conscious of the gap between what she would
like to do and what she feels capable of doing”.
In discussing powerlessness, Seeman also incorporated the insights of the psychologist Julian Rotter.
Rotter distinguishes between internal control and external locus of control, which means
"differences (among persons or situations) in the degree to which success or failure is attributable
to external factors (e.g. luck, chance, or powerful others), as against success or failure that is
seen as the outcome of one’s personal skills or characteristics".[24] Powerlessness, therefore, is
the perception that the individual does not have the means to achieve his goals.
More recently, Geyer remarks that “a new type of powerlessness has emerged, where the core
problem is no longer being unfree but rather being unable to select from among an overchoice of
alternatives for action, whose consequences one often cannot even fathom”. Geyer adapts cybernetics
to alienation theory, and writes (1996: xxiv) that powerlessness is the result of delayed feedback:
“The more complex one’s environment, the later one is confronted with the latent, and often
unintended, consequences of one’s actions. Consequently, in view of this causality-obscuring time
lag, both the ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’ for one’s actions increasingly tend to be viewed as
random, often with apathy and alienation as a result”.
Meaninglessness
A sense of meaning has been defined by Seeman as “the individual’s sense of understanding events in
which he is engaged”.[26] Seeman (1959: 786) writes that meaninglessness “is characterized by a low
expectancy that satisfactory predictions about the future outcomes of behaviour can be made." Where
as powerlessness refers to the sensed ability to control outcomes, this refers to the sensed ability
to predict outcomes. In this respect, meaninglessness is closely tied to powerlessness; Seeman
(Ibid.) argues, “the view that one lives in an intelligible world might be a prerequisite to
expectancies for control; and the unintelligibility of complex affairs is presumably conducive to
the development of high expectancies for external control (that is, high powerlessness)”.
Geyer (1996: xxiii) believes meaninglessness should be reinterpreted for postmodern times: "With the
accelerating throughput of information [...] meaningless is not a matter anymore of whether one can
assign meaning to incoming information, but of whether one can develop adequate new scanning
mechanisms to gather the goal-relevant information one needs, as well as more efficient selection
procedures to prevent being overburdened by the information one does not need, but is bombarded with
on a regular basis." "Information overload" or the so-called "data tsunami" are well-known
information problems confronting contemporary man, and Geyer thus argues that meaninglessness is
turned on its head.
Normlessness
Normlessness (or what Durkheim referred to as anomie) “denotes the situation in which the social
norms regulating individual conduct have broken down or are no longer effective as rules for
behaviour”.[27] This aspect refers to the inability to identify with the dominant values of society
or rather, with what are perceived to be the dominant values of society. Seeman (1959: 788) adds
that this aspect can manifest in a particularly negative manner, “The anomic situation [...] may be
defined as one in which there is a high expectancy that socially unapproved behaviours are required
to achieve given goals”. This negative manifestation is dealt with in detail by Catherine Ross and
John Mirowski in a series of publications on mistrust, powerlessness, normlessness and crime.
Neal & Collas (2000: 122) write, “Normlessness derives partly from conditions of complexity and
conflict in which individuals become unclear about the composition and enforcement of social norms.
Sudden and abrupt changes occur in life conditions, and the norms that usually operate may no longer
seem adequate as guidelines for conduct”. This is a particular issue after the fall of the Soviet
Union, mass migrations from developing to developed countries, and the general sense of
disillusionment that characterized the 1990s (Senekal, 2011). Traditional values that had already
been questioned (especially during the 1960s) were met with further scepticism in the 1990s,
resulting in a situation where individuals rely more often on their own judgement than on
institutions of authority: "The individual not only has become more independent of the churches, but
from other social institutions as well. The individual can make more personal choices in far more
life situations than before” (Halman, 1998: 100). These choices are not necessarily "negative":
Halman's study found that Europeans remain relatively conservative morally, even though the
authority of the Church and other institutions has eroded.
Relationships
One concept used in regard to specific relationships is that of parental alienation, where a
child is distanced from and expresses a general dislike for one of their parents (who may have
divorced or separated). The term is not applied where there is child abuse. The parental alienation
might be due to specific influences from either parent or could result from the social dynamics of
the family as a whole. It can also be understood in terms of attachment, the social and emotional
process of bonding between child and caregiver. Adoptees can feel alienated from both adoptive
parents and birth parents.
Familial estrangement between parents and adult children “is attributed to a number of biological,
psychological, social, and structural factors affecting the family, including attachment disorders,
incompatible values and beliefs, unfulfilled expectations, critical life events and transitions,
parental alienation, and ineffective communication patterns.” The degree of alienation has been
positively correlated with decreased emotional functioning in the parent who feels a loss of
identity and stigma.[29][30]
Attachment relationships in adults can also involve feelings of alienation Indeed, emotional
alienation is said to be a common way of life for many, whether it is experienced as overwhelming,
or is not admitted to in the midst of a socioeconomic race, or contributes to seemingly unrelated
problems.
Social isolation
Social isolation refers to “The feeling of being segregated from one’s community”.[33] Neal and
Collas (2000: 114) emphasize the centrality of social isolation in the modern world: “While social
isolation is typically experienced as a form of personal stress, its sources are deeply embedded in
the social organization of the modern world. With increased isolation and atomization, much of our
daily interactions are with those who are strangers to us and with whom we lack any ongoing social
relationships.”
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, migrants from Eastern Europe and the
developing countries have flocked to developed countries in search of a better living standard. This
has led to entire communities becoming uprooted: no longer fully part of their homelands, but
neither integrated into their adopted communities. Diaspora literature depicts the plights of these
migrants, such as Hafid Bouazza in Paravion. Senekal (2010b: 41) argues, "Low-income communities or
religious minorities may feel separated from mainstream society, leading to backlashes such as the
civil unrest that occurred in French cities in October 2005. The fact that the riots subsequently
spread to Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, and Switzerland, illustrates
that not only did these communities feel segregated from mainstream society, but also that they
found a community in their isolation; they regarded themselves as kindred spirits".
Social alienation among returning war
veterans
Because of intense group solidarity and unique daily hardships brought by combat, many veterans feel
alienated from citizens, family, and friends when they return. They often feel they have little in
common with civilian peers; issues that concerns friends and family seem trivial after combat.
There is a clarity of focus and purpose that comes with war that few in civilian life will ever
know. Add daily doses of high adrenaline and a kind of pure loyalty among those you fight alongside,
and combat is a perfect baptism into tribal brotherhood.
Afghanistan veteran Brendon O'Byrne
says, "We were really close. Physically and emotionally close. It's kind of terrifying being in such
an emotionally safe environment and then suddenly be expelled into an alienated, fractured
society." Feeling alone and alienated—that's scarier than bullets.
They know how to deal
with bullets, and in combat they're dealing with bullets together. But now they're dealing with
their loneliness, by definition, alone.[36] It is loneliness and normlessness why so many soldiers
choose to return to combat.
As filmmaker and war correspondent Sebastian Junger
says, "They didn't want to go back because it was traumatic, but because it was a place where they
understood what they were supposed to do. They understood who they were. They had a sense of
purpose. They were necessary. All these things that young people strive for are answered in
combat."[37] War twists and shifts the landmarks by which combat veterans navigate their lives,
casting light on darkened areas that for many people remain forever unexplored. And once those
darkened spaces are lit, they become part of us. Veterans often see their wartime experience as the
most selfless and meaningful period of their lives.[citation needed] In a different perspective,
"even in the quiet moments, war is brighter, louder, brasher, more fun, more tragic, more wasteful.
More. More of everything."
The experience of the Vietnam veteran was distinctly different from
that of veterans of other American wars.[39] Once he completed his tour of duty, he usually severed
all bonds with his unit and comrades. It was extremely rare for a veteran to write to his buddies
who were still in combat, and (in strong contrast to the endless reunions of World War II veterans)
for more than a decade it was even rarer for more than two or more of them to get together after the
war.[40] Korean War veterans had no memorial and precious few parades, but they fought an invading
army and they left behind them the free, healthy, thriving, and grateful nation of South Korea. No
one spat on them or called them murderers or baby killers when they returned. Only the veterans of
Vietnam have endured a concerted, organized, psychological attack by its own people. Never in
American history, perhaps never in all of Western civilization, has an army suffered such an agony
from its own people.[41] The Vietnam War was a long, contentious conflict (1955–75) which in the mid
to late 1960s started to lose political and domestic support, most notably in academia and film that
often portrayed soldiers of this conflict as ignoble adding to their social alienation. That the
Vietnam War was ultimately lost on April 30, 1975, furthered the sense of meaninglessness and
malaise.[42] It has been demonstrated that as the perception of community alienation increases, an
individual's sense of confidence or mastery in decision making will decrease, and so too their
motivation to socially engage.
Political alienation
One manifestation of the above dimensions of alienation can be a feeling of estrangement from, and a
lack of engagement in, the political system. Such political alienation could result from not
identifying with any particular political party or message, and could result in revolution,
reforming behavior, or abstention from the political process, possibly due to voter apathy.[44]
A similar concept is policy alienation, where workers experience a state of psychological
disconnection from a policy programme being implemented.
Self-estrangement
Self-estrangement is an elusive concept in sociology, as recognized by Seeman (1959), although he
included it as an aspect in his model of alienation. Some, with Marx, consider self-estrangement to
be the end result and thus the heart of social alienation. Self-estrangement can be defined as “the
psychological state of denying one’s own interests – of seeking out extrinsically satisfying, rather
than intrinsically satisfying, activities...”.[33] It could be characterized as a feeling of having
become a stranger to oneself, or to some parts of oneself, or alternatively as a problem of
self-knowledge, or authenticity.
Seeman (1959) recognized the problems inherent in defining the "self", while post-modernism in
particular has questioned the very possibility of pin-pointing what precisely "self" constitutes.
Gergen (1996: 125) argues that: “the traditional view of self versus society is deeply problematic
and should be replaced by a conception of the self as always already immersed in relatedness. On
this account, the individual’s lament of ‘not belonging’ is partially a by-product of traditional
discourses themselves”. If the self is relationally constituted, does it make sense to speak of
"self-estrangement" rather than "social isolation"? Costas and Fleming (2009: 354) suggest that
although the concept of self-estrangement “has not weathered postmodern criticisms of essentialism
and economic determinism well”, the concept still has value if a Lacanian reading of the self is
adopted. This can be seen as part of a wider debate on the concept of self between humanism and
antihumanism, structuralism and post-structuralism, or nature and nurture.
Mental disturbance
Until early in the 20th century, psychological problems were referred to in psychiatry as states of
mental alienation, implying that a person had become separated from themselves, their reason or the
world. From the 1960s alienation was again considered in regard to clinical states of disturbance,
typically using a broad concept of a 'schizoid' ('splitting') process taken from psychoanalytic
theory. The splitting was said to occur within regular child development and in everyday life, as
well as in more extreme or dysfunctional form in conditions such as schizoid personality and
schizophrenia. Varied concepts of alienation and self-estrangement were used to link internal
schizoid states with observable symptoms and with external socioeconomic divisions, without
necessarily explaining or evidencing underlying causation. R.D. Laing was particularly influential
in arguing that dysfunctional families and socioeconomic oppression caused states of alienation and
ontological insecurity in people, which could be considered adaptations but which were diagnosed as
disorders by mainstream psychiatry and society.(Laing,[1967] 1959).[45] The specific theories
associated with Laing and others at that time are not widely accepted, but work from other
theoretical perspectives sometimes addresses the same theme.
In a related vein, for Ian Parker, psychology normalizes conditions of social alienation. While it
could help groups of individuals emancipate themselves, it serves the role of reproducing existing
conditions.(Parker,2007). This view can be seen as part of a broader tradition sometimes referred to
as Critical psychology or Liberation psychology, which emphasizes that an individual is enmeshed
within a social-political framework, and so therefore are psychological problems. Similarly, some
psychoanalysts suggest that while psychoanalysis emphasizes environmental causes and reactions, it
also attributes the problems of individuals to internal conflicts stemming from early psychosocial
development, effectively divorcing them from the wider ongoing context.[48] Slavoj Zizek (drawing on
Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis) argues that in today's
capitalist society, the individual is estranged from their self through the repressive injunction to
"enjoy!" Such an injunction does not allow room for the recognition of alienation and, indeed, could
itself be seen as an expression of alienation.(Zizek, 1994).
Frantz Fanon, an early writer on postcolonialism, studied the conditions of objectification and
violent oppression (lack of autonomy) believed to have led to mental disorders among the colonized
in the Third World (in particular Africans) (Fanon, ([2004] 1961).
A process of 'malignant
alienation' has been observed in regard to some psychiatric patients, especially in forensic units
and for individuals labeled 'difficult' or who aren't liked by at least some staff, which involves a
breakdown of the therapeutic relationship between staff and patients, and which may end in the
suicide of the patient.[49][50] Individuals with long-term mental disorders, which may have
originally stemmed from social alienation, can experience particular social and existential
alienation within their communities due to other people's and potentially their own negative
attitudes towards themselves and 'odd' behavior.
Disability
Differences between persons with disabilities and individuals in relative abilities, or perceived
abilities, can be a cause of alienation. One study, "Social Alienation and Peer Identification: A
Study of the Social Construction of Deafness",[52] found that among deaf adults one theme emerged
consistently across all categories of life experience: social rejection by, and alienation from, the
larger hearing community. Only when the respondents described interactions with deaf people did the
theme of isolation give way to comments about participation and meaningful interaction. This
appeared to be related to specific needs, for example for real conversation, for information, the
opportunity to develop close friendships and a sense of family. It was suggested that the social
meaning of deafness is established by interaction between deaf and hearing people, sometimes
resulting in marginalization of the deaf, which is sometimes challenged. It has also led to the
creation of alternatives and the deaf community is described as one such alternative.
Physicians and nurses often deal with people who are temporarily or permanently alienated from
communities, which could be a result or a cause of medical conditions and suffering, and it has been
suggested that therefore attention should be paid to learning from experiences of the special pain
that alienation can bring.
In art
Alienation is most often represented in literature as the psychological isolation of an individual
from society or community. In a volume of Bloom's Literary Themes, Shakespeare's Hamlet is described
as the 'supreme literary portrait' of alienation, while noting that some may argue for Achilles in
the Iliad. In addition, Bartleby, the Scrivener is introduced as a perfect example because so many
senses of alienation are present. Other literary works described as dealing with the theme of
alienation are: The Bell Jar, Black Boy, Brave New World, The Catcher in the Rye, The Chosen,
Dubliners, Othello, Fahrenheit 451, Invisible Man, Mrs Dalloway, Notes from Underground, One Flew
Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Stranger and The Myth of
Sisyphus, The Trial, Waiting for Godot, The Waste Land, and Young Goodman Brown.[55] Contemporary
British works noted for their perspective on alienation include The Child in Time, London Fields,
Trainspotting, and Regeneration (Senekal, 2008 & 2010b: 102-123).
Sociologist Harry Dahms has analysed
The Matrix Trilogy of films in the context of theories of alienation in modern society. He suggests
that the central theme of The Matrix is the "all-pervasive yet increasingly invisible prevalence of
alienation in the world today, and difficulties that accompany attempts to overcome it".
See also Langman's study of punk, porn, and resistance (2008) and Senekal's (2011) study of
Afrikaans extreme metal.
British progressive rock band Pink Floyd's concept album The Wall (1979) and British alternative
rock band Radiohead's album OK Computer (1997), both deal with the subject of alienation in their
lyrics.
"... With the boundaries between home and the workplace blurred as the result of many people working from home, Friedman describes work burnout as a "pandemic within a pandemic." ..."
"... "It's quite natural to feel burnt out right now," Friedman said. "And it's because of the decimation between work and life boundaries and the fact that we're all juggling our kids on top of our basic work responsibilities." ..."
"... The better approach, he said, is to learn more rather than working less in order to increase your energy. Learning new things will provide a mood and confidence boost, while also fulfilling one's "basic psychological need for growth." ..."
"... "What we know from the research is that when you take care of the entire employee by fulfilling their basic human psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they tend to be more productive," Friedman said. "So this is something that should be top of mind for any leader hoping to motivate their staff." ..."
"... "[Employees are] having the ability to focus in a way that just isn't available to them in the office," Friedman said. "And I'm heartened by the fact that I think more organizations are aware of those biological needs." ..."
Changes to the workplace brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic will cause "a revolution in the way that organizations operate,"
Dr. Ron Friedman, social psychologist and author of " Decoding Greatness
," told Yahoo Finance Live
.
With the boundaries between home and the workplace blurred as the result of many people working from home, Friedman describes
work burnout as a "pandemic within a pandemic."
"It's quite natural to feel burnt out right now," Friedman said. "And it's because of the decimation between work and life
boundaries and the fact that we're all juggling our kids on top of our basic work responsibilities."
Amid a nationwide
labor shortage , many Americans are returning to work in person, with the
CDC reporting that
52.6% of the population is inoculated with at least one dose and 43.9% are considered fully vaccinated. However, a recent study found
that 73% of U.S. workers
have some anxiety about returning to in-person work. And although some believe these concerns will
ease over time , working
from home has taken a mental toll on many in the workforce.
Friedman, who has consulted for Fortune 500 companies, political leaders, and global non-profits, describes burnout as a situation
in which the requirements of an individual's tasks consistently outstrip the amount of energy they have available.
According to Friedman, there are two main ways of alleviating burnout. One of the strategies is to reduce the demands of work,
which may be difficult for many. Friedman admitted that a pitfall of this strategy is to attempt to cram more work into less time
when trying to work less, which ultimately elevates stress levels in the end.
The better approach, he said, is to learn more rather than working less in order to increase your energy. Learning new things
will provide a mood and confidence boost, while also fulfilling one's "basic psychological need for growth."
As for how companies and other organizations should approach the issue of burnout among their staff, Friedman argued that leaders
must take a more holistic approach to caring for employees. He stressed the need to care for the "entire employee," rather than just
the "sliver of them" who is in the office from 9 to 5.
"What we know from the research is that when you take care of the entire employee by fulfilling their basic human psychological
needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they tend to be more productive," Friedman said. "So this is something that should
be top of mind for any leader hoping to motivate their staff."
Fritedman cited realizations among workplaces that leaders must take additional steps to meet employees' biological needs if they
wish to fulfill their basic psychological needs. Because people have been doing things such as taking naps and going for walks during
the day, he suggested that peoples' biological needs have been better satisfied during the pandemic than they have been in generations.
These things allow for better focus that would not be possible in an office setting, according to Friedman.
"[Employees are] having the ability to focus in a way that just isn't available to them in the office," Friedman said. "And
I'm heartened by the fact that I think more organizations are aware of those biological needs."
Thomas Hum is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @thomashumTV
Executives at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have voiced worries that workers who stay remote
could wind up as second-class corporate citizens, falling behind in
promotions and pay , so the company plans to track rates of advancement for office-based and
remote staff in an effort to make sure nobody lags behind.
Ford Motor Co. is
pushing ahead with digital efforts to help bring office workers back to its Dearborn, Mich.,
corporate headquarters, while eyeing a future where many of them continue to work from home,
company officials say.
For now, the auto maker is aiming for a gradual return of some employees to the sprawling
campus beginning in July, with "significantly reduced capacity" to retain social distancing, a
spokeswoman said.
Interesting essay over at Turcopolier.com about the atomisation of US society by Identity
Politics, Selective Censorship and Political Correctness (aka self-censorship).
The United States of 2 Americas
Posted on April 25, 2021 by Steven J. Willett
The following article by Ret. Col. John Mills from The Epoch Times should be of
interest to readers of this site.
Commentary
If you haven't noticed, the United States is reorganizing itself into two Americas --
blue and red. Although there is a president of the United States, state governors are in many
ways now driving the national narrative in this new America. etc, etc.
Jonathan Frostick, who does information technology work for financial services firm HSBC,
wrote on LinkedIn that his first thought while having a heart attack was "this isn't
convenient" for a meeting with his manager the next day. His second thought: "How do I secure
the funding for X (work stuff)."
His wife was fourth on the list of concerns, following worries about updating his will. But
since recovering in the hospital, he said he has re-evaluated his goals, outlining his
overhauled goals in a post that's gone viral
on the business-focused social network.
No more days packed with Zoom calls, for starters, the U.K.-based worker wrote. "I'm
restructuring my approach to work," Frostick continued. "I'm really not going to be putting up
with any s#%t at work ever again â€" life literally is too short."
Frostick's post is striking a chord at a time when the boundaries between work and home life
have all but disappeared for millions of white-collar workers. With more than 203,000 likes and
more than 10,000 comments on LinkedIn, people are posting their own experiences with work,
health setbacks as well as sending him well-wishes.
Frostick updated his post to say that he's "up and walking."
"I never expected this post to hit home the message it did â€" but I'm pleased as
it has seemingly helped a lot of people," he wrote early on Wednesday.
... ... ...
Frostick, who didn't immediately respond to a request for comment,
told Bloomberg that his work days stretched to 12 hours, with him and his colleagues
spending long amounts of time on Zoom. The 45-year-old, who has three children, said he took
responsibility for blurring the line between work and home life.
"Whereas before I would finish sensibly anywhere between five and half six, I'd be finding
myself there on a Friday at 8 o'clock at night exhausted, thinking I need to prep up something
for Monday and I haven't got time, and I started then to actually work weekends," Frostick told
the publication. "That's my responsibility. I think that was probably for me where it was those
blurring of boundaries."
Many people have developed a love-hate relationship with Zoom during the pandemic . While it makes remote
work possible, it can also lead to burnout
, with Citibank CEO Jane Fraser last month designating Fridays as a Zoom-free
day to battle video-call fatigue. She also urged workers to set "healthy work boundaries"
and avoid scheduling calls outside business hours. "[T]he blurring of lines between home and
work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being," she
said in a memo to employees.
In the meantime, Frostick said in a LinkedIn update that he has an excellent manager, and
added that he wasn't forced to work on weekends.
"Yes I shouldn't have, but I wasn't forced to. I am deeply passionate about what I do. I'm a
(fortunate) living example of getting the mix wrong," he noted. "You are in charge of YOUR life
â€" make changes.
When Jonny Frostick realised he was having a heart attack this month, the first thing that occurred to the
HSBC
contractor
was: “I needed to meet with my manager tomorrow, this isn’t convenient.â€
Then he thought about funding for a project, his will, and finally, his wife.
Frostick, who manages more than 20 employees working on regulatory data projects, chronicled his near-death experience in a
viral
LinkedIn post
that had been viewed almost 8 million times. The 45-year-old Briton is the latest financial employee to weigh
in on the
work-till-you-drop
culture
during a pandemic that’s obliterated the lines between office and home life for droves of workers.
“Whereas before I would finish sensibly anywhere between five and half six, I’d be finding myself there on a Friday at 8 o’clock
at night exhausted, thinking I need to prep up something for Monday and I haven’t got time, and I started then to actually work
weekends,†Frostick said in a phone interview from his home in Dorset, England. “That’s my responsibility. I think that was
probably for me where it was those blurring of boundaries.â€
Jonny Frostick and his wife, Adel.
“We all wish Jonathan a full and speedy recovery,†said HSBC spokeswoman Heidi Ashley. “The response to this topic shows how
much this is on people’s minds and we are encouraging everyone to make their health and wellbeing a top priority.â€
Isolation and hours of Zoom calls
Frostick said he and
colleagues spend a disproportionate amount of time on Zoom calls, and work days can stretch to 12 hours. The isolation of remote
work also takes a toll, he said.
“We’re not able to have those other conversations off the side of a desk or by the coffee machine, or take a walk and go and
have that chat,†he said. “That has been quite profound, not just in my work, but across the professional-services industry.â€
The former construction worker took a different path into finance to many of his peers. A native of Bournemouth, an English
coastal town, he worked in his father’s building business and didn’t get a bachelor’s degree until he was 29.
When he arrived in
London, the self-described country boy had to learn how to use the Underground subway system, and mixed for the first time with
ballet and theatre aficionados. From there, he went down a path of intense work that included stints at Accenture, JPMorgan, UK
government ministries and Deutsche Bank. He cultivated a so-called mask to fit into corporate culture.
Frostick, who has three young children, said he is responsible for the overwork and neglect of his health that culminated in the
heart attack. Now he wants to share his wake-up call with others.
‘This could happen to you’
“I owe a responsibility to myself and other people,†Frostick said. “This happened to me, this could happen to you. You need to
change that.â€
He wants to drive conversation about the post-pandemic work culture and hopes employers will implement a more flexible approach.
In the post, Frostick vowed to make changes, including limiting Zoom calls, restructuring his approach to work and spending more
time with family. The post received more than 201,000 likes and generated thousands of messages from people who are rethinking
their attitudes.
Frostick is still recovering from his hospital stay, and only has enough energy to get out of bed for a couple of hours at a
time. He’s enjoying time with his wife and children, and eventually wants to do more work on a dilapidated Mercedes. There’s
some talk about non-executive director roles or advisory work. Someone suggested he write a book.
The decision to write the raw LinkedIn post comes at a precarious time in his life and finances, said Frostick. He’s racked up
costs from court proceedings with his ex-wife over child-care arrangements for their daughter.
“My back’s against the wall,†he said.
Still, he doesn’t blame HSBC for his health problems and is bullish about future prospects.
“I don’t think this should reflect badly on the place where I work, I think it’s fairly consistent across the industry, and I
think that’s why it’s resonated with so many people,†he said. “If an organisation didn’t want to employ me because I’d actually
taken a moment to reflect, and capture this, then that’s probably not the right place for me to be working.â€
"... Lockdowns as being inherently against the working class is a capitalist (liberal)
falsification: if you pay them while they're kept safe in their homes, you'll have the best
of the two worlds for the working class (being paid without working). This option is only
an anathema for the middle class and the capitalist class - who can't imagine a world
without the proletarians serving them ..."
We all live in an interconnected world and middle class, capitalist class (whatever that's
supposed to mean) and proletarians alike supply goods and services to one another. Money is
the medium that facilitates such exchanges. It follows then that proletarians also serve one
another and ditto for the other classes.
If working classes are paid to stay in their homes, who then supplies their needs? In
spite of Jeff Bozo's efforts and those of Elon Musk, not all transport is self-automating and
robots in Amazon warehouses still need some human inputs to operate quickly and without
hitches.
One could also argue that working fulfils other, non-monetary needs. Karl Marx actually
foresaw this when he wrote about anomie in capitalist systems of production, in which workers
are denied control over their lives and the work they do by being denied any say in what they
produce, how they produce it, the resources and environment needed to produce outputs, and
maybe even whether they can be allowed to work at all.
Lockdowns can be viewed as another method in which to deny people control over their work
and work environments. People socialise at work and lockdowns may be a way to deny workers a
place or a means to connect with others (and maybe to form unions). Is it any wonder then,
that during lockdowns people's mental health has become an issue and public health experts
became concerned at the possibility that such phenomena as suicide and domestic violence
could increase?
You can understand this from this quotation. It is the internal contradictions of the wesern
capitalist system that is driving the changes we observe, not "pressure applied by China",
which I would say is a myth.
"The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal: it lies
in the contradictionariness within the thing. This internal contradiction exists in every
single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictionariness within a thing is the
fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other
things are secondary causes."
"It (Materialist dialectics) holds that external causes are the conditions of change and
internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through
internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature
can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis."
Mao Zedong. "On Contradiction" August 1937. Selected Works, Vol.1, p.315.
Lockdowns are a medical protection to eradicate a contagious virus.
The lock downs we have had are fake and we're designed to fail. For political reasons.
The very people who complained 10 months ago, were responsible for them not working,
10 months later those people are still complaining. They are the ones who have prolonged the
contagion.
They are to blame. That includes the polatians and duped public.
It's deliberate !
"... workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving rate." ..."
Amazon is famous for its extreme efficiency yet behind the curtain is a crippling culture of
surveillance and stress, according to a study by the Open Markets Institute.
The think tank and advocacy group that repeatedly takes companies like Google and Facebook
to task warned in the
report [PDF] that Amazon's retail side has gone far beyond promoting efficient working and
has adopted an almost dystopian level of control over its warehouse workers,
firing them if they fail to meet targets that are often kept a secret.
Among the practices it highlighted, the report said that workers are told to hit a target
rate of packages to process per hour, though they are not told what exactly that target is. "We
don't know what the rate is," one pseudonymous worker told the authors. "They change it behind
the scenes. You'll know when you get a warning. They don't tell you what rate you have to hit
at the beginning."
If they grow close to not meeting a target rate, or miss it, the worker receives an
automated message warning them, the report said. Workers who fail to meet hidden targets can
also receive a different type of electronic message; one that fires them.
"Amazon's electronic system analyzes an employee's electronic record and, after falling
below productivity measures, 'automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding
quality or productivity without input from supervisors'," it stated. The data is also generated
automatically: for example, those picking and packing are required to use a scanner that
records every detail, including the time between scans, and feed it into a system that pushes
out automated warnings.
Always watching
As with other companies, Amazon installs surveillance cameras in its workspaces to reduce
theft. But the report claims Amazon has taken that approach to new lengths "with an extensive
network of security cameras that tracks and monitors a worker's every move".
Bezos' bunch combines that level of surveillance with strict limits on behavior. "Upon
entering the warehouse, Amazon requires workers to dispose of all of their personal belongings
except a water bottle and a clear plastic bag of cash," the report noted.
For Amazon drivers, their location is constantly recorded and monitored and they are
required to follow the exact route Amazon has mapped. They are required to deliver 999 out of
every 1,000 packages on time or face the sack; something that the report argues has led to
widespread speeding and a related increase in crashes.
The same tracking software ensures that workers only take 30 minutes for lunch and two
separate 15-minute breaks during the day. The report also noted that the web goliath has
patented a wristband that "can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their
hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction".
Amazon also attempts to prevent efforts to unionize by actively tracking workers and
breaking up any meetings of too many people, including identifying possible union organizers
and moving them around the workplace to prevent them talking to the same group for too long,
the report claimed.
It quoted a source named Mohamed as saying: "They spread the workers out you cannot talk to
your colleagues The managers come to you and say they'll send you to a different station."
The combined effort of constant surveillance with the risk of being fired at any point has
created, according to workers, a " Lord Of The Flies -esque environment where the
perceived weakest links are culled every year".
Stress and quotas
The report said Amazon's workers "are under constant stress to make their quotas for
collecting and organizing hundreds of packages per hour" resulting in "constant 'low-grade
panic' to work. In this sense, workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are
robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving
rate."
At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to
check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25
minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said.
Amazon also allegedly fails to account for any injuries, the report said, to the extent that
"Amazon employees feel forced to work through the pain and injuries they incur on the job, as
Amazon routinely fires employees who fall behind their quotas, without taking such injuries
into account."
It quoted another piece of reporting that found Amazon's rate of severe injuries in its
warehouses is, in some cases, more than five times the industry average. It also noted that the
National Council for Occupational Safety and Health listed Amazon as one of the "dirty dozen"
on its list of the most dangerous places to work in the United States in 2018.
The report concluded that "Amazon's practices exacerbate the inequality between employees
and management by keeping employees in a constant state of precariousness, with the threat of
being fired for even the slightest deviation, which ensures full compliance with
employer-demanded standards and limits worker freedom."
Being a think tank, the Open Markets Institute listed a series of policy and legal changes
that would help alleviate the work issues. It proposed a complete ban on "invasive forms of
worker surveillance" and a rule against any forms of surveillance that "preemptively interfere
with unionization efforts".
It also wants a law that allows independent contractors to unionize and the legalization of
secondary boycotts, as well as better enforcement of the rules against companies by government
departments including America's trade watchdog the FTC and Department of Justice, as well as a
ban on non-compete agreements and class action waivers.
In response to the allegations in the report, a spokesperson for Amazon told us: "Like most
companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazonian – be it corporate
employee or fulfillment center associate and we measure actual performance against those
expectations.
"Associate performance is measured and evaluated over a long period of time as we know that
a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour. We
support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help
them improve." ®
HOT TOPICS US/GLOBAL ECONOMICSManaging A Zoom
Conference As of the end of this week, I completed chairing the 30th annual
international conference of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, with
54 participants from around the world. It basically went well, and it was kind of cool to make
introductory remarks at 8 AM during EDT, with somebody on at 6 AM their time in Montana and
someone else on at 10 PM their time in Sydney, Australia. It can be done, and even with
parallel sessions happening.
Of course there were the usual snafus of people getting bad internet connections and
disappearing or becoming mute while presenting, which does not happen in live sessions. There
were also some people who failed to present due to not being able to properly load or manage
their slides or videos, although I have seen problems with this sort of thing even in live
conferences.
Something I throw out there for anybody managing one of these involves how we managed the
parallel sessions. So we had both a co-host/moderator, who managed entry to a session, as well
as a session chair who managed timing by speakers, with on this following the old
incentive-compatible strategy of usually having that be the final speaker in the session,
giving them incentive to keep the earlier presenter in line on timing. Indeed, in our wrapup
session someone noted, accurately near as I could tell, that there may have been better
adherence by speakers to time limits in this format than is often the case in live sessions. We
also had it that each parallel session had its own Zoom link so that when somebody wanted to go
from one to another, they would need to leave the whole conference and reenter. But that seemed
to work, and it beat having breakout rooms because with those in Zoom if one goes into a
breakout room, one cannot go back to the original space.
Of course, we missed the direct personal interaction, no schmoozing in the hallways or over
food and drink at reception or dinner. We did have a social hour at end of first day, simply a
wide-open joint session with people saying whatever, and some waved beer bottles around. But
not the same thing as live. Oh well.
There was one time slot where there were some more serious problems and confusion with the
sessions, but otherwise, the problems were mostly garden variety. We had our max attendance of
32 for our keynote speaker, Simon Levin, a mathematical ecologist at Princeton, with that going
very well. And indeed, in general, things went better than I was worried they might, and I am
glad to have it over and behind me.
"Anticipatory anxiety" is a mental state that is different from fear, and from general
anxiety. Psychiatrists and psychologists with a special interest in this anticipatory
mechanism have called the human brain "an anticipation machine." It has a literature. This
mechanism has been strongly at work during recent months, and yet, very little has been
written or explained about it by medical experts who know what they are talking about.
Psychiatrists do not opine on epidemiology or pulmonology, and yet the reverse has been
commonplace.
Not only social media, but also regular MSM web sites create a "dopamine loop" when the users
spend unordinary amount of time browsing for news.
Notable quotes:
"... Thanks to neuroscience, we're beginning to understand that achieving a goal or anticipating the reward of new content for completing a task can excite the neurons in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain, which releases the neurotransmitter dopamine into the brain's pleasure centers. ..."
"... Twitter is wonderful because a lot of journalists, writers, scientists, artists, and activists frequent it, so I get many fascinating links and insights from all over the world that I would never find otherwise. Twitter is horrible because it takes every aspect of American politics that is currently horrible, and amplifies it, and the short form may itself encourage more horribleness. ..."
"... Of course, neoliberalism produces plenty of desperation. "The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace" –Frank Herbert, Children of Dune . ..."
"... I think that if one honestly mined the user population, they would find that dopamine rushes apply to only a segment of users – the socially insecure, which accounts for most children and many young adults. There is also the cofactor of the smartphone, which for some has become the technological equivalent of Linus' blue blanket. ..."
"... I find social media to be most useful to keep up with old friends scattered all over the world because smartphones make their sharing spontaneous ..."
"... Addiction is rarely likely to be the case, because craving is only one part of addiction. The other part is getting physically ill when you stop. Being cranky or preoccupied when deprived of social media is not illness – it is just annoying to others. ..."
"... Regardless, getting users addicted to running in the dopamine hamster wheel is exactly what the social media engineers have been designing to achieve on purpose. Because every turn of the wheel generates more money for the social media platform owners who pay the social media engineers to do the engineering. Except for those founding social media engineers who founded the platforms themselves, like Zuckerberg. Their incentive to addict as many hamsters as possible to running in the dopamine wheel is even stronger. ..."
"... We live in a society where people are lonely, isolated and insecure, and where they are officially encouraged to fight each other for financial or social/identity advantage. ..."
"... But people don't actually like doing this, and would rather be members of communities than be good liberal autonomy maximizers. But if you haven't got a real community any more, you're much more likely to adopt, and even use to excess, something that has the outward trappings of one. ..."
"... "Dopamine" is just a trendy term for "reinforcement" or, before that, "pleasure." So an important reminder: we're always – ALWAYS – "manipulating human nervous tissue." That's what it means to be an obligate social animal. ..."
"... i am addicted to Naked Capitalism, and proud of it. Both articles and comments. ..."
"... Another industry that has been in this business a long time is the gambling and casino industry. Slot machines, video poker, etc., are also software constructions explicitly designed to engage users as strongly as possible and keep them engaged for as long as possible, in order to generate as much profit as possible. ..."
"... I have to say that many programmers are very young, and mostly male, and when in groups, for whatever reason, I've observed among them a distinct lack of empathy, a lack of worldly wisdom and questioning, and an inability to imagine any other kind of life experience than what the engineer has personally known, no matter how well intentioned the individual is (and they are sometimes rather the opposite). Meanwhile the much more experienced, worldly and wise managers stand over the coding team, giving direction and applause and monetary rewards for every bit of "cleverness" the team comes up with, no matter how deranged. Every incentive is in favor of sociopathic mindless greed. And who goes to prison when something goes wrong? The engineer. ..."
The existence of a "dopamine loop" created by social media likes and clicks is conventional
wisdom in Silicon Valley, but I haven't been able to find the original science behind it. (It
is possible that it's a phrase that is used because it sticks in the mind and makes the user
sound authoritative, like "kompromat .")
The Atlantic describes the dopamine loop as "neuroscience" (hmm) in 2012:
Thanks to neuroscience, we're beginning to understand that achieving a goal or
anticipating the reward of new content for completing a task can excite the neurons in the
ventral tegmental area of the midbrain, which releases the neurotransmitter dopamine into the
brain's pleasure centers. This in turn causes the experience to be perceived as pleasurable.
As a result, some people can
become obsessed with these pleasure-seeking experiences and engage in compulsive behavior
such as a need to keep playing a game, constantly check email, or compulsively gamble online.
A recent
Newsweek cover story described some of the harmful effects of being trapped in the
compulsion loop.
... ... ...
And so let me circle round to the programmer. Here's an example of
manipulating human nervous tissue at Instagram (owned by Facebook). From the
Toronto Globe and Mail :
The makers of smartphone apps rightly believe that part of the reason we're so curious
about those notifications is that people are desperately insecure and crave positive feedback
with a kneejerk desperation. Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine
Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by
strategically withholding "likes" from certain users . If the photo-sharing app
decides you need to use the service more often, it'll show only a fraction of the likes
you've received on a given post at first, hoping you'll be disappointed with your haul and
check back again in a minute or two. "They're tying in to your greatest insecurities," Mr.
Mayberry said.
NOTES
[1] I have a carefully curated list. Twitter is wonderful because a lot of journalists,
writers, scientists, artists, and activists frequent it, so I get many fascinating links and
insights from all over the world that I would never find otherwise. Twitter is horrible because
it takes every aspect of American politics that is currently horrible, and amplifies it, and
the short form may itself encourage more horribleness. On the whole, however, I prefer Twitter
because I curate my news feed -- I suppose it could be said that I titrate my dosage
-- and not Facebook's faceless engineers.
[2] Of course, neoliberalism produces plenty of desperation. "The good autocrat provides
many opportunities for failure in the populace" –Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
.
The fact that people can't stop staring at and interacting with their phone screens while
driving, walking, conversing, or even having sex, if news reports are to be believed, are
indicative of the addictive nature of the technology. Or would "format" as opposed to
"technology" be the more appropriate term? The "Technology" section on Google news page seems
to consist largely of infomercials for social media.
I think this story raises an interesting, albeit fictional, account of why people use
social media so much. I think that if one honestly mined the user population, they would find
that dopamine rushes apply to only a segment of users – the socially insecure, which
accounts for most children and many young adults. There is also the cofactor of the
smartphone, which for some has become the technological equivalent of Linus' blue
blanket.
You do see evidence from posts on FB that some people are seeking approval of their daily
lifestyle. "Here I am at this club, this restaurant, this event, with this person." If they
do not get many likes, do they patronize alternatives? Perhaps they seek reassurance that
they are tasteful, "in," cool, not overdoing, etc.
As an elderly FB user, I grew up with computers (DARPANet, BITNET, the Internet), PCs,
laptops, tablets, cellphones, palm pilots, smartphones, etc. These are tools for various
purposes. When working, I would not tolerate people putting their smartphones on the meeting
room table – it was/is a rude distraction. It was okay to use them for scheduling the
next meeting date, or making a note of a new task. It was/is handy to have my rolodex IN my
phone now, and a diary that vibrates to remind me of my next appointment – even in
retirement! None of those uses smack of abusive use, and the vibration in my pocket does not
produce a dopamine rush.
I find social media to be most useful to keep up with old friends scattered all over the
world because smartphones make their sharing spontaneous. "Likes" for my peers are often
ratifications that grandparenting is indeed gratifying, isn't it nice that we can travel, or
sharing in the glee of a new puppy. Passe email, is still a wonder because we can daily share
private ideas, experiences, new theories, or discuss world events just like when we were
teens or in college. Lastly, there is blogs. Like NC, I learn more and faster what is going
on in my world, and I can adjust the diversity of my input (which for me is quite high).
Lastl, from a neuroscience perspective, dopamine is often characterized as if it were an
addictive neurotoxin like heroin or cocaine. We hear rants about how people are addicted to
their iPhones (a metaphor of sorts for social media). Addiction is rarely likely to be the
case, because craving is only one part of addiction. The other part is getting physically ill
when you stop. Being cranky or preoccupied when deprived of social media is not illness
– it is just annoying to others.
""The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society
works," he said, referring to online interactions driven by "hearts, likes, thumbs-up." "No
civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth."
Likes makes right. Those posts with fewer likes become invisible compared to those with
more. Having a discussion might lead one or both sides to learn something and come to a place
of mutual understanding, if not agreement, but why bother with all that when it's a million
times easier to simply block out disagreeing voices? Hell, the apps do that for you.
If you want likes, keep it simplistic, feel-good and humorous. Posting anything
thought-provoking causes the dopamine machine gun to stutter, and that's poor form.
I remember reading/hearing that the "pleasure center" in the brain is supposed to be a
real bunch of neurons which really exists. Dopamine is supposed to be one of the
neurotransmitters secreted therein. Various other braincell fiber pathways are supposed to
connect to it such that when survival-necessary activities send related sensory-stimulus
impulses through those pathways, that some dopamine is secreted which makes the pleasure
center make the brain-at-large feel good. The brain will seek more such feel-good
dopamine-pellet rewards by driving the body to engage in more such survival-prolonging
activities such as eating food or having procreational sex.
It is so much easier to use and to hear the 3-word-phrase "dopamine feedback loop".
Perhaps "dopamine feedback loop" is a metaphorical word-model for the whole process alluded
to above, just as Niels Bohr's little solar system model was a metaphorical diagram-model for
an "atom".
Regardless, getting users addicted to running in the dopamine hamster wheel is exactly
what the social media engineers have been designing to achieve on purpose. Because every turn
of the wheel generates more money for the social media platform owners who pay the social
media engineers to do the engineering. Except for those founding social media engineers who
founded the platforms themselves, like Zuckerberg. Their incentive to addict as many hamsters
as possible to running in the dopamine wheel is even stronger.
Their statements of dismay are so much virtue signalling and mutual back patting. Their
actions all say: more hamsters, please. And spin the wheels faster.
( I don't have a cell phone because cell phones cause cancer. I don't do facebook because
facebook was never anything but a clever conspiracy to trick people into building dossiers on
themselves. I don't do twitter because I don't have the energy or the desire to be known and
followed. Reading and commenting on 3 or so blogs is the closest I come to running in the
dopamine hamster wheel).
I'm as anti these social media companies as anyone, and never use their products. But I
wonder if some of their success doesn't come from kicking into an open goal.
We live in a society where people are lonely, isolated and insecure, and where they are
officially encouraged to fight each other for financial or social/identity advantage.
But
people don't actually like doing this, and would rather be members of communities than be
good liberal autonomy maximizers. But if you haven't got a real community any more, you're
much more likely to adopt, and even use to excess, something that has the outward trappings
of one.
"Dopamine" is just a trendy term for "reinforcement" or, before that, "pleasure." So an important reminder: we're always – ALWAYS – "manipulating human nervous
tissue." That's what it means to be an obligate social animal.
However, I have only a "dumb" phone (a lot of us, here on NC), and minimize my involvement
with Facebook; not on Twitter at all.
Of course, with a recent rash of babies in my family (my siblings are suddenly
grandparents – long generations in my family), I've been introduced to "23snaps," a
picture-sharing platform. It's annoying, no matter how cute the babies are.
I read Jaron Lanier's books, You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future?, when they came
out. He has been skeptical of Facebook all along. He is also highly skeptical of EULA
agreements–the idea that software is licensed to you and that the licenser then has
access to your computer because you are not the owner. He also pointed out several years ago
that certain assumptions about software, for instance, that text should go into a "file,"
have frozen innovation. As a musician, he is definitely not keen on musical software (neither
the software for storing / playing music nor composition software).
The dopamine connection sounds like a bunch of quant majors searching for something from
their required bio course. The problem with Facebook is that it is Pavlovian–you get
approval and go back for more approval. Ding, ding, ding. The reason that the dopamine
connection is popular is that it reinforces some currently received ideas about the chemical
brain. Pavlov was about behavior: But criticizing behavior is so darn patriarchal and
judgmental and old fashioned. With chemicals, no one has to answer for behavior. It's the
fault of covalent bonding.
The brain either has chemicals in it or it doesn't. If it does, the people who understand
that fact and figure out how to study what those chemicals have to do with what will know
more than those people who don't understand that fact and don't study anything to do with
that fact or how it operates.
I made a conscious decision to not belong to Facebook, to cancel Twitter, and to not use a
cell-phone except for its communication as a phone-thing. If we human beings had used our
techno time to help solve some of earth's problems (pollution, climate change,
over-population, poverty, inequality, etc.) we would have been on the path of solving these
most important problems already. Technology of the type named basically keeps us from
confronting and resolving these most important problems. Another fear I have of the overuse
of technology (along with a world run by billionaires) is the weakening and finally the
breaking down of democracy itself.
I will just say thank you for not having any type of 'likes' on NC. I enjoy the fact that
here, people's words stand on their own and people can make up their own minds what to
think.
And these days, how many 'likes' or 'followers' or whatever are from real human beings as
opposed to bots? Seem to remember reading about a whole cottage industry where one could
purchase followers to make themselves seem more popular.
But what about the software engineers who also "did it anyway"? That horrid little piece
of manipulation -- "strategically withholding 'likes'" -- was implemented by a team. There
was a manager, there was a whiteboard, there were design sessions, there was testing, there
was coding, all for software engineered to treat humans like cattle.
Another industry that has been in this business a long time is the gambling and casino
industry. Slot machines, video poker, etc., are also software constructions explicitly
designed to engage users as strongly as possible and keep them engaged for as long as
possible, in order to generate as much profit as possible.
By Facebook standards, gaming machines are quite crude: perform some physical act, then
get monetary reimbursement (or not), repeat. It's straight variable-ratio reinforcement, as
the behaviorists used to say. But it seems to work quite well, and no one can say it isn't
intentional.
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to
write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to
write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
Also this post from
Clean Coder, about the VW diesel fraud and the engineer who's going to prison for "just
following orders":
Imagine the scene in that meeting room. What was said? What was agreed to? We may never
know all the details; but it's clear that the executives asked the engineers to find a way
to defeat the emission tests.
Now think of the engineers. What a cool problem to have to solve? No, really! Imagine
how much fun it would be to figure out some sneaky way to bypass the emission test.
[snip]
Imagine the brainstorming, the "good" ideas. The coolness of knowing that there's a
really nifty solution to this problem.
Imagine how pleased the executives would be with this really cool engineering solution.
Imagine how proud the engineers were.
I have to say that many programmers are very young, and mostly male, and when in groups,
for whatever reason, I've observed among them a distinct lack of empathy, a lack of worldly
wisdom and questioning, and an inability to imagine any other kind of life experience than
what the engineer has personally known, no matter how well intentioned the
individual is (and they are sometimes rather the opposite). Meanwhile the much more
experienced, worldly and wise managers stand over the coding team, giving direction and
applause and monetary rewards for every bit of "cleverness" the team comes up with, no matter
how deranged. Every incentive is in favor of sociopathic mindless greed. And who goes to
prison when something goes wrong? The engineer.
Robert Martin's speech "The Scribes' Oath" from GOTO 2017 also comes to mind. (The video
is very easy to find on Youtube, but the URL is blocked where I work so I'm not able to
provide it.) I've only read his "code of conduct" so I'm not certain whether his speech goes
into the ethics of certain programming decisions, as opposed to strictly technical decisions.
If there were some sort of "oath" required for the programming profession, I would
hope it placed ethical and moral considerations much more highly than merely technical ones
like requiring unit tests or not blocking other people's commits. While the scribes in
ancient Egypt were highly valued and technically skilled, they fundamentally served
autocratic power. And it is the same for us.
If we had a real profession, those programmers would be brought before that profession,
investigated, and if found guilty, drummed out of the profession in disgrace.
-- "VW" 14 October 2015
Of course, we don't have a real profession. Just some mystique stolen from actual
engineers.
Well if it was a profession there would be some kind of job protections as well maybe. But
haha. So maybe people just do it because if they don't some H1B will.
How actual weakening of peoples morality goes is: one may start out all idealistic and
moral, but in order to stay employed or get employment one gradually must compromise more and
more and one HAS TO deaden themselves to the effect of this compromising. So one may start
out idealistic at 20 but chances are one isn't going to be such an idealist by the time they
reach 50, oh heck one would sell their soul several times over just to get a job by the time
they reach 50
Nir Eyal wrote a whole book in this topic called Hooked.
There is a ton of skepticism here, but keeping people in anticipation of the next hit is
why there is endless scroll on the most time sucking applications
"... Old saying: A Recession is when your neighbor loses their Job. A Depression is when you lose your Job. ..."
"... A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business. ..."
"... There's a documentary about Wal-Mart that has the best title ever: The High Cost of Low Cost ..."
"... Globalism killed the American dream. We can buy cheap goods made somewhere else if we have a job here that pays us enough money. ..."
You can't just move to American cities to pursue opportunity; even the high wages paid in
New York are rendered unhelpful because the cost of housing is so high.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was vilified and ultimately murdered when he was helping organize
a Poor People's Campaign. Racial justice means economic justice.
A lot of mega wealthy people are cheats. They get insider info, they don't pay people and
do all they can to provide the least amount of value possible while tricking suckers into
buying their crap. Don't even get me started on trust fund brats who come out of the womb
thinking they are Warren buffet level genius in business.
Nailed it. As a millennial, I'm sick of being told to just "deal with it" when the cards
have always been stacked against me. Am I surviving? Yes. Am I thriving? No.
When the reserve status of the American dollar goes away, then it will become apparent how
poor the US really is. You cannot maintain a country without retention of the ability to
manufacture the articles you use on a daily basis. The military budget and all the jobs it
brings will have to shrink catastrophically.
...and sometimes you CAN'T afford to move. You can't find a decent job. You certainly
can't build a meaningful savings. You can't find an apartment. And if you have kids? That
makes it even harder. I've been trying to move for years, but the conditions have to be
perfect to do it responsibly. The American Dream died for me once I realized that no matter
the choices I made, my four years of college, my years of saving and working hard....I do NOT
have upward mobility. For me, the American Dream is dead. I've been finding a new dream. The
human dream.
This is a very truncated view. You need to expand your thinking. WHY has the system been
so overtly corrupted? It's globalism that has pushed all this economic pressure on the
millennials and the middle class. It was the elites, working with corrupt politicians, that
rigged the game so the law benefited them.
This is all reversible. History shows that capitalism can be properly regulated in a way
that benefits all. The answer to the problem is to bring back those rules, not implement
socialism.
Trump has:
- Ended the free trade deals
- Imposed Protective tarriffs to defend American jobs and workers
- Lowered corporate taxes to incentivize business to locate within us borders.
- Limited immigration to reduce the supply of low skilled labor within US borders.
The result? before COVID hit the average American worker saw the first inflation adjusted
wage increase in over 30 years!
This is why the fake news and hollywood continue to propagandize the masses into hating
Trump.
Trump is implementing economic policies good for the people and bad for the elites
Krystal Ball exposes the delusion of the American dream.
About Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts that breaks the mold of
morning TV by taking viewers inside the halls of Washington power like never before. The show
leans into the day's political cycle with cutting edge analysis from DC insiders who can
predict what is going to happen.
It also sets the day's political agenda by breaking exclusive
news with a team of scoop-driven reporters and demanding answers during interviews with the
country's most important political newsmakers.
Got my degree just as the great recession hit. Couldn't find real work for 3 years, not
using my degree... But it was work. now after 8 years, im laid off. I did everything "right".
do good in school, go to college, get a job...
I've never been fired in my life. its always,
"Your contract is up" "Sorry we cant afford to keep you", "You can make more money collecting!
but we'll give a recommendation if you find anything."
Now I'm back where i started... only
now I have new house and a family to support... no pressure.
"... The trap was set at least twenty-five years ago and the mice jumped at the smell of the cheese. I am referring to the introduction of the computer as a mass necessity and the Internet that followed. I was slow to enter the trap, "forced" finally in 2007 by the college where I was teaching. ..."
"... In 1960 the sociologist C. Wright Mills said that there was far too much information for people to assimilate and make sense of and that lucid summations were needed. He was echoing Thoreau who in 1854 said: ..."
"... If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?" ..."
"... The Internet is a double-bind because we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. News, writing, and information of all sorts is now often not available any other way. The era of paper newspapers is coming to an end. This was meant to be. ..."
"... To put you into a state of frenetic passivity while whispering in your ear that there is no escape, while allowing elements of truth to emerge to keep you addicted. ..."
The trap was set at least twenty-five years ago and the mice jumped at the smell of the
cheese. I am referring to the introduction of the computer as a mass necessity and the Internet
that followed. I was slow to enter the trap, "forced" finally in 2007 by the college where I
was teaching.
Up to that point, I was just a member of The Lead Pencil Club, whose motto was "a speed bump
on the information superhighway" and whose membership list numbered twenty-three and a half
people worldwide. When I slowly and reluctantly reached for the cheese the trap snapped, not on
my neck to finish me, but on my head that was half in and half out.
The out part kept thinking.
What follows are that half-head's musings on why I didn't follow my intuition, the whole
damn sorry situation we are all in, and what we might do to spring the trap and run free. I
don't like this trapped feeling. And, by the way, the cheese was American, which is not exactly
real cheese.
In 1960 the sociologist C. Wright Mills said that there was far too much information for
people to assimilate and make sense of and that lucid summations were needed. He was echoing
Thoreau who in 1854 said:
If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and
applications?"
Mills said people needed to develop what he called the sociological imagination that would
allow them to condense and simplify news and to connect personal and social matters within
historical and structural contexts.
That was the long-lost era of newspapers, long-form paper magazines, the reading of books,
and minimal television stations. To think that there was far too much information then can only
make one laugh, now that the digital revolution has buried us in data, information, and
"breaking news" at warp speed, usually contradictory and lacking context.
The internet has literally made people crazy, created schizoid or split personalities who
don't know whether they are coming or going or what world they are in, physical or virtual.
This is the era of social schizophrenia. It is also the era of Covid-19 lockdowns when a far
greater online life is promoted as the necessary future.
If people once felt that all the information was too confusing and they were ending up
thinking and doing things ass-backwards as a result, back then they might have understood it if
you told them that the only way you can do anything is ass-backwards. Today, many would
probably greet you with a look of bewilderment as they googled it to see if there was a way to
swivel their asses to the front to get adjusted to the way they feel while waiting online for
clear directions to emerge. Which way does an ass go?
They will be waiting for a long, long time.
The Internet is a double-bind because we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. News,
writing, and information of all sorts is now often not available any other way. The era of
paper newspapers is coming to an end. This was meant to be.
Other sources of fact and fiction have gradually been eliminated, while the content on the
Internet has been dramatically increased and progressively censored. The dream of an open
Internet is turning into a nightmare.
If you look at the Internet's creation and development by the US
military-intelligence-Silicon Valley network as a tool for social control, propaganda, and
total spying, if you grasp this nexus and their intentions, you will come away realizing that
the Internet and the total integrated digital world is a dystopian tool designed to make you
crazy. To sow confusion and endless contradictory information from minute to minute. To "flood
the zone" (see Event 201) with propaganda and disinformation. To give you a headache, keep you
agitated, destroy your genuine human experience in the physical world.
To put you into a state of frenetic passivity while whispering in your ear that there is no
escape, while allowing elements of truth to emerge to keep you addicted.
This is the double-bind. It is what Jacques Ellul in 1964 called the technological society
that is ruled by technique in every aspect of its life. Technique is a way of thinking that
emphasizes efficiency; it is a way of thinking that emphasizes order and standardized means to
a predetermined end. It is rational, deliberate, and focused on results. It is a way of
thinking that has penetrated deep into the psychic structures of society and opposes
spontaneity and unreflective action.
Machines grow out of technical thinking, and today the computer, the internet, and
artificial intelligence are the ideal manifestations of such thinking. They are the result, not
the cause.
As such, digital technology satisfies the technical mindsets that have been created over the
decades, which includes regular people who have been gradually softened up to believe these
machine dreams. Efficiency, results, practicality, and speed. The human body as a wonderful
machine.
We have all been so conditioned, even those of us old enough to have lived before the
computer era. Starting particularly in the early 1990s with the rat-a-tat electronic frenzy of
the U.S. televised aggressive war against Iraq, euphemistically called the Gulf War and
presented live with round-the-clock television coverage by ghoulish announcers more excited
than 13-year-old boys with a porn magazine, the speed of everyday life has increased.
If you lived through those years and were sensitive to the social drift, you could feel the
pace of life pick up year-to-year, as everyone was induced to get in the fast lane. On the
information superhighway, it is the only lane.
Paul Virilio, a French thinker, has focused on this issue of speed in his studies of
dromology, from dromos: a race, running. While his language is perhaps too academic, his
insights are profound, as with the following point:
The speed of the new optoelectronic and electroacoustic milieu becomes the final void (the
void of the quick), a vacuum that no longer depends on the interval between places or things
and so on the world's extension, but on the interface of an instantaneous transmission of
remote appearances, on a geographic and geometric retention in which all volume, all relief
vanishes.
This is the world of teleconferencing and the online life, existence shorn of physical space
and time and people. A world where shaking hands is a dissident act. A haunted world of
specters, words, and images that can appear and disappear in a nanosecond. A magic show. A
place where, in the words of Charles Manson, you can "get the fear," where fear is king. A
locus where, as we sit at home "sheltering in place," we are no longer there.
Ernest Hemingway sniffed the future when in The Sun Also Rises , he has the
protagonist Jake Barnes say no to Robert Cohn, who wants him to travel to South America with
him, with these words: "All countries look like the moving pictures."
That was 1926.
Things have changed a wee bit since then. But the essence of propaganda and social control
remains the same. "All those people who seek to control the behavior of large numbers of
other people work on the experiences of those other people," wrote R.D. Laing, in The
Politics of Experience . "Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a
similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways."
Mystification takes place when people can be convinced that a social construction –
e.g. the Internet and the digital life – is part of "the natural order of things," like
the air we breathe. And that life online is real life, better and more real than physical
existence.
I believe the digital revolution has gone a long way toward destroying our experience as
persons. It is the endless magical mystery tour that goes nowhere. It is the ultimate
psychodrama conjured by a satanic magician.
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. But how else explain the spell this medium has cast on billions of
people worldwide? Did the human race suddenly get smart? Or are many more people crazy?
I ask myself this question, and now I ask you. Has the Internet and the devices to access it
made your life better or worse? Has it made the life of humanity better or worse? Has its
essential role in globalization made for a better world?
Obviously, there are pluses to the Internet, just as there are pluses to almost everything.
I don't deny that. The plus side of death is that the thought of it reminds you that you are
alive. The plus side of television is you don't have to turn it on. Like you, I could rattle
off many good things about the Internet (not cell phones, sorry). But on the scale of good and
bad, where do you come down? Where do I?
Or is it possible we can't decide because we are too conflicted and caught in a
double-bind?
I am of two minds, or more accurately, two half-heads. The upper part, pinned in the trap
and dead to my situation, can only answer yes, sir, now that I am trapped, my life is
better.
I can debate endlessly the minutiae of every issue thrown out like pieces of meat for caged
lions. I can check the weather forecast for every hour of every day of the week, even though I
know they will probably be wrong. I can get directions even though I know you don't need a
director to know which way the roads go. I can research issues quickly and pontificate as if I
were an expert on every matter from a to z. I can feel I am informed while feeling deformed by
the contradictory information that appears and disappears every few minutes.
Essentially, I can feel in-touch and worthy of respect from friends and neighbors because I
can exchange empty words with them about nothing. I can feel so very normal and rejoice in
that. I can feel sane.
On the negative side, well, my lower half-head, the one that's still thinking lead-pencil
thoughts, the slow and easy stuff, the calm cool breeze oh what a lovely daydreams – you
don't really need to hear what it has to bitch about the Internet. You can probably guess.
In a fine article, Vicious Cycles: Theses on a philosophy of news , in Harper's
Magazine, Greg Jackson writes the following about our addiction to so-called "news" (the
Internet):
When we turn away from the news, we will confront a startling loneliness. It is
the loneliness of life. The loneliness of thinking, of having no one to think for us, and of
uncertainty.
It is a loneliness that was always there but that was obscured by an illusion, and we will
miss the illusion . And we will miss tuning in each day to hear that voice that cuts boredom
and loneliness in its solution of the present tense, that like Scheherazade assures us the
story is still unfolding and always will be.
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Doctortrinate ,
so the tech monster is taking over our lives .but who has control over it ? I think the
illusion is the belief that we control it, when in truth, we're being played, led deeper into
its web, trapped in its net and held under its power, restricted through dependence , slowly
vulgarized into ineffectual hollowness, deteriorated until so manipulated by it that folk
won't know of or care for a life in any other way but artificial – so where are the
calls restrict Its influence – to question those who built it and that would use it
against us .those who's continuation is reliant on it taking them to a managed repeat,
sustaining their control, and completing the apparatuses infinite circle of physical
dominion.
this thing, this game, this performance – even to my lesser intermediate self , all
is Insignificant.
TrueNorth ,
"The calm cool breeze" is exactly how it feels. It feels refreshing to be able to think
independently.
tonyopmoc ,
I have always liked Italians but Sara Cunial is Something Else
Che coraggio. Che coraggio !!!!
BRILLANTE!!!!!!!
"Italian MP,Sara Cunial,Blasts Bill Gates in the Italian Parliament"
I love that woman. I don't care if someone says she's right-wing or this or that blah blah
blah
tonyopmoc ,
"Hobbes said that absolute power does not come from an imposition from above but by the
choice of individuals who feel more protected renouncing to their own freedom and granting it
to a third party. With this, you are going on anesthetizing the minds with corrupted Mass
Media with Amuchina (a brand of disinfectant promoted by Mass Media) and NLP, with words like
"regime", "to allow" and "to permit", to the point of allowing you to regulate our emotional
ties and feelings and certify our affects.
So, in this way, Phase 2 is nothing else than the persecution/continuation of Phase 1
– you just changed the name, as you did with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). We
have understood people, for sure, don't die for the virus alone. So people will be allowed to
die and suffer, thanks to you and your laws, for misery and poverty. And, as in the "best"
regimes, the blame will be dropped only on citizens. You take away our freedom and say that
we looked for it. Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule).
It is our children who will lose more, who are 'raped souls', with the help of the
so-called "guarantor of their rights" and of CISMAI (Italian Coordination of Services against
Child Abuse). In this way, the right to school will be granted only with a bracelet to get
them used to probation, to get them used to slavery – involuntary treatment and to
virtual lager. All this in exchange for a push-scooter and a tablet. All to satisfy the
appetites of a financial capitalism whose driving force is the conflict of interest, conflict
well represented by the WHO, whose main financier is the well-known "philanthropist and
savior of the world" Bill Gates.
Hobbes said that absolute power does not come from an imposition from above but by the
choice of individuals who feel more protected renouncing to their own freedom and granting it
to a third party. With this, you are going on anesthetizing the minds with corrupted Mass
Media with Amuchina (a brand of disinfectant promoted by Mass Media) and NLP, with words like
"regime", "to allow" and "to permit", to the point of allowing you to regulate our emotional
ties and feelings and certify our affects.
So, in this way, Phase 2 is nothing else than the persecution/continuation of Phase 1
– you just changed the name, as you did with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). We
have understood people, for sure, don't die for the virus alone. So people will be allowed to
die and suffer, thanks to you and your laws, for misery and poverty. And, as in the "best"
regimes, the blame will be dropped only on citizens. You take away our freedom and say that
we looked for it. Divide et Impera (Divide and Rule).
It is our children who will lose more, who are 'raped souls', with the help of the
so-called "guarantor of their rights" and of CISMAI (Italian Coordination of Services against
Child Abuse). In this way, the right to school will be granted only with a bracelet to get
them used to probation, to get them used to slavery – involuntary treatment and to
virtual lager. All this in exchange for a push-scooter and a tablet. All to satisfy the
appetites of a financial capitalism whose driving force is the conflict of interest, conflict
well represented by the WHO, whose main financier is the well-known "philanthropist and
savior of the world" Bill Gates.
We all know it, now. Bill Gates, already in 2018, predicted a pandemic, simulated in
October 2019 at the "Event 201", together with Davos (Switzerland). For decades, Gates has
been working on Depopulation policy and dictatorial control plans on global politics, aiming
to obtain the primacy on agriculture, technology and energy.
Gates said, I quote exactly from his speech:
"If we do a good job on vaccines, health and reproduction, we can reduce the world
population by 10-15%. Only a genocide can save the world".
With his vaccines, Gates managed to sterilize millions of women in Africa. Gates caused a
polio epidemic that paralyzed 500,000 children in India and still today with DTP, Gates
causes more deaths than the disease itself. And he does the same with GMOs designed by
Monsanto and "generously donated" to needy populations. All this while he is already thinking
about distributing the quantum tattoo for vaccination recognition and mRNA vaccines as tools
for reprogramming our immune system. In addition, Gates also does business with several
multinationals that own 5G facilities in the USA.
On this table there is the entire Deep State in Italian sauce: Sanofi, together with
GlaxoSmithKline are friends of the Ranieri Guerra, Ricciardi, and of the well-known
virologist that we pay 2000 Euro every 10 minutes for the presentations on Rai (Italian state
TV. She's probably talking about Burioni). Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline sign agreements with
medical societies to indoctrinate future doctors, making fun of their autonomy of judgment
and their oath.
Hi-Tech multinationals, like the Roman Engineering which is friend of the noble Mantoan,
or Bending Spoons, of Pisano, which are there for control and manage our personal health
datas in agreement with the European Agenda ID2020 of electronic identification, which aims
to use mass vaccination to obtain a digital platform of digital ID. This is a continuation of
the transfer of data started by Renzi to IBM. Renzi, in 2016, gave a plus 30% to Gates Global
Fund.
On the Deep State table there are the people of Aspen, like the Saxon Colao, who with his
4-pages reports, paid 800 Euros/hour, with no scientific review, dictates its politics as a
Bilderberg general as he is, staying away from the battlefield. The list is long. Very long.
In the list there is also Mediatronic, by Arcuri and many more.
The Italian contribution to the International Alliance Against Coronavirus will be of 140
million Euros, of which 120 million Euros will be given to GAVI Alliance, the non-profit by
Gates Foundation. They are just a part of the 7.4 billion Euro fund by the EU to find a
vaccine against Coronavirus – vaccines which will be used as I said before.
No money, of course for serotherapy, which has the collateral effect of being super cheap.
No money for prevention, a real prevention, which includes our lifestyles, our food and our
relationship with the environment.
The real goal of all of this is total control. Absolute domination of human beings,
transformed into guinea pigs and slaves, violating sovereignty and free will. All this thanks
to tricks/hoax disguised as political compromises. While you rip up the Nuremberg code with
involuntary treatment, fines and deportation, facial recognition and intimidation, endorsed
by dogmatic scientism – protected by our "Multi-President" of the Republic who is real
cultural epidemic of this country.
We, with the people, will multiply the fires of resistance in a way that you won't be able
to repress all of us.
I ask you, President, to be the spokesperson and give an advice to our President Conte:
Dear Mr. President Conte, next time you receive a phone call from the philanthropist Bill
Gates forward it directly to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. If
you won't do this, tell us how we should define you, the "friend lawyer" who takes orders
from a criminal."
Thank you.
nondimenticare ,
The daily double-bind I face with the Internet, while I long for the days without it, lost to
me forever: I need it to find information – the "truth" – I am denied by mass
media, and was denied even in their better times. How much earlier I could have learned the
sordid background of the Vietnam War, JFK's assassination, 9/11 – even the origins of
World War I – without devoting most hours of my day to the task!
Yet all the truths I search for are only tentatively available to me, come with extraneous
negative baggage, and are in the process of being gradually withdrawn. Thus the trap is
sprung.
In relation to COVID, I know more than I could have hoped to know (thanks in great part to
OffG) owing to my digital link to others. But the irony is that the most frightful plans for
our futures, referenced by Curtin, would not be possible without that digital world.
Problem is, how much of the truth you have found about JFK at Al. is not just limited
hangout.
I know, I take what they give us and triangulate, and Intuit, and shake and bake, but the
fact is they litter the landscape with endless red herring.
I was at an ROTC school in N. Hollywood in my teens and though I never spoke to him, he
was a star student and asked to give a number of talks.
He's become a world expert on "true" JFK and as a publisher, or editor, is a major
gatekeeper for, wow, most of the anti-Warren Conspiracy Realists.
I remember making a note on him at 16 years old that I really didn't trust his vibe. He
edited our school mag, so I started an underground, very successful, til they kicked us both
out in June 1969. My dismiss was real, but
I often mused that they were crafting a legend for him, like LHO. I'm dammed if I can prove
he's real.
That was all fifty years ago, but he almost rules the roost of the Oliver Stone side of
things. He could all be smoke and mirrors. Our school was a hotbed, as a rich rich Army
school, of future CIA. How could he advance so well against the CIA without them putting more
of a drag.
Reminds me of most of these former spooks turned whistleblowers. None of them could be so
real. None.
He wrote "The Devil's Chessboard" about Allen Dulles being the party who killed JFK.
But he was only a puppet. I believe the Kennedy's were hit because they were putting down
solid wonderful diplomatic roots with the Vatican, and going through the Pope via the Kremlin
to walk the world back from Nuclear Holocaust.
But that alone is enough to put ANYONE on the Hit Parade if the Freemasons, who are sworn
to the death to destroy as much of Catholicism as they possibly can, just read the history of
the CRISTERO WAR in Mexico 95 years ago. The Mexican lodges of the Scottish Rite Freemasons
gave President Plutarco Called a shining medal for his "work against the Catholic Church" in
Mexico (work that got 100,000 people murdered in what Graham Greene called "the fiercest
persecution of religion since Elizabeth")
dil pickles ,
Shit eff and other expletives
Beautifully put.
We are so many of us terrified of aloneness.
Loneliness is the name we give to the feeling we have when we are scared of aloneness.
Aloneness, when apprehended and experienced with brave abandon, may yield a new person, or a
person where there was not one before?
Very brave women and a fantastic speech. She nailed it. Interesting that the bell chimed just
as she mentioned 'Bilderberg'. Coincidence?
when not if ,
10 years at the helm of Google and currently a chair of the US Department of Defense's
Defense Innovation Advisory Board, Eric Schimdt stated that Google does not cross the creepy
line in their use of our personal information. The Creepy Line is the point where people are
pushed into madness. While Schmidt is saying Google does not cross the creepy line, it is an
admission that Google, glaringly, is constantly placing people at the edge of a thin line
near insanity.
No wonder, people are feeling insane as they are indeed constantly driven into madness by
an ever creepy algorithm. An algorithm that is impossible to quit as many people's livelihood
depends on.
The news( propaganda) was on paper before the internet.
The internet has made the crazy louder as every mad bugger can get their ideas propagated.
The ideas desired by the occult mind controllers get made" viral" through monopoly search
engine + " social media"( internet news).
The internet did not make people mad, who was mad was crazy before internet they are just
making more noise the ego minds love creating false images of themselves and the internet is
the petri dish for a new fake identity.One that is better than others, one that totally
identifys with thoughts and fights to defend them as though it is their very selves they are
defending.
If we do not know who we are and so are run by the egomind (conditioned)we are skitzofr3nic
.
You don't have to give up the internet, you can use it to do what you need to do.
But in saying that most people are addicted to internet, computers and phones and are on
it to try to build their egos 24/7 twitters.
Screen free days are a good idea as are news/propaganda free days/weeks/years .
when not if ,
Exactly my thoughts, from the start [of the article] to finish. Thanks Edward Curtin!
Has the Internet and the devices to access it made your life better or worse?
Each device makes certain tasks better and easier However all the devices and tasks
combined are making life worse and much more difficult. It is negative synergy that in the
wrong hands can become destructive.
Insanity is not only becoming the new normal, it is fast becoming celebrated and
rewarded.
Dungroanin ,
But how can you leave out Marshall MacLuhan?
The Medium Is The Message.
I ask myself this question, and now I ask you. Has the Internet and the devices to
access it made your life better or worse? Has it made the life of humanity better or worse?
Has its essential role in globalization made for a better world?
Since Edward asks, my opinion is that it has made life of humanity better.
Now the message can be resisted.
From and by anyone willing to RESIST.
¡No Pasaran!
tonyopmoc ,
Dungroanin,
About time you woke up, and recognised, and maybe even began to understand, why hardly
anyone wants to go back to work, whilst I want to write again on Facebook
GET BACK TO WORK you lazy sods
As you can imagine, that did not go down too well, so I have kept quiet. I started off
with -well we were all still going down the pub, and hugging and kissing (like we do) –
and I looked at the numbers Far less people had died than normal. This would not go down too
well now, either. Not everyone shares my sense of humour, and reality, so I have banned
myself from social media. I do not yet know how to unbrainwash brainwashed people, but I am
working on a few ideas, and kind of testing them a bit, socially. No one has given me a hard
time yet. I always try to be helpful and friendly.
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Bring Out Your Dead"
Yeah don't think you've quite thought that through – you are using it!
As i say (or McLuhan did) "The Medium is the message'
The medium is the internet not any particular flavour of it.
But I don't need to tell you that surely?
tonyopmoc ,
Dungroanin,
Stop trying to be clever, whilst I do like you – I still don't know if you are a boy
or a girl. Dunno about you, but mine still works.
Tony
bob ,
what, thisMarshall MacLuhan?
https://player.vimeo.com/video/114022336
check out the Glasgow Media Group – their media work is exemplary
Dungroanin ,
Oi cant spellz 😉
Herbert Marshall McLuhan CC was a Canadian philosopher. His work is one of the
cornerstones of the study of media theory.
tonyopmoc ,
I am 66. I have kept the child alive inside my mind, by reading books – of all kinds.
We didn't have a lot of money, but my Mum gradually weaned me off The Beano and Dandy, by
every week, buying Mind Alive – it was a magazine, that you could compile into an
encyclopedia. (Still in my attic)
Even when thrown into the deep end many years later, and being introduced by my new boss,
who immediately went off on 2 weeks holiday – to my new team, I told them truth. I
couldn't bullshit this
They slung me a book
"UNIX 101 for Dummies"
We got on really well.
I learn from clever people. I do not tell them how to do it, when I have not got a clue,
or they won't tell me or show me anything, and we will not be a team.
Asking questions is good, even if you think, they might think, you didn't quite
understand.
Tony
Lost in a dark wood ,
Re: Mind Alive – it was a magazine, that you could compile into an encyclopedia. (Still
in my attic)
Try looking up words which have now become commonplace, such as "autism". You can do the
same with old dictionaries.
--
It's Erik Satie's birthday today. He said: "I came into this world very young.. at a very old
time" also.. "Although our information is incorrect, we do not vouch for it" that rings a few
bells.
Dennis Brown ,
This is a very thought provoking article by Mr. Curtin , which should be widely shared!!! And
once again a sterling example of the quality of the Off Guardian website.
I'd only add that we should pause to consider that technology–per se–is not
necessarily evil in itself. Rather it is the social relations that lurk behind the use of
technology that can pose a potential threat to human well being.
For those not frightened by the name of Karl Marx it is worth noting that he addressed
many of Mr. Curtin's concerns in Das Kapital 150 years ago.
In Vol One of Capital, in a fairly obscure footnote, Marx made a passing reference to how
he personally viewed his intellectual quest. It was , indeed,to write the social history of
the evolution of technology. He equated his goal to being similar to that of Sir Charles
Darwin's history of natural life, In the Origin of Species.
To wit, Marx observed that technology is an extension of all human activity and therefore
all human relationships. Technology shapes and conditions what we do , where we live ,how we
live , how we treat one another, how we treat the earth etc. It is those social relationships
that in turn determine whether technology can be judged either "good" or "bad" .
Societies and economies that are organized capitalistically–i.e. for the production
of commodities for exchange value and private profit, as opposed to use values and common
social well being -- are by definition based on exploitation , planetary destruction,social
domination and control.
The world is on the cusp of an unprecedented epochal paradigm shift, as so many of the
intelligent commentators on this site have already noted. We can respond to this fact and
relentlessly inquire as to why that might be so. Or we can accept the narrative of the
dominant elites that this is an unprecedented biological event and that are leaders, with
their superior wisdom are simply trying to protect us -- and that the suppression of basic
liberties, free speech and the destruction of the livelihoods of ordinary people is all
regrettable but unavoidably necessary.
Or we can do as Marx suggested and we can follow the money and see where it leads. We can
note that under the smokescreen of this "pandemic emergency" that trillions of dollars are
being transferred by the State to the One Percent. We can also note that large sections of
the global workforce will be permanently rendered redundant,and be ultimately replaced by
artificial intelligence and robotics in order to squeeze the last dregs of surplus value from
what remains of the working class . All predicted in Volume one of Capital, and awaiting
re-interpretation by those of us willing to take up the challenge in the contemporary
context.
But there is a structural contradiction in all of this. If billions of people are
marginalized from the workforce where will effective demand come from to buy all the junk the
Capitalists produce?This is an issue Marx wrestled with incompletely in Vol 2 of Capital.
Ironically,the elites need us as consumers , yet strive to eliminate us as workers in order
to reduce labour costs and enhance profits.
That seems to me to be the central dilemma of our age. And that big transformative
struggle is now being being played out under the convenient guise of the pandemic.
Their answer to the contradiction appears to be a form of cynical ,and ultimately
penurious, form of"universal basic income." Best administered through a cashless,
authoritarian cybernetic matrix. This prospect would be another example of Mr. Curtin's
metaphor of cheese in a mousetrap. Once we fall for it there will be no escape!
Seems to me our only hope, and sadly it is a distant one, is to keep our eyes wide open
and challenge in every way possible the Covid-19 pych-op. The truth in this regard is very
rapidly emerging!!!
Beyond that we need to use this traumatizing event to question what kind of a society we
wish to live in. One that is based on ever increasing exploitation, misery, and environmental
degradation to benefit the profit seeking gluttony of a tiny minority replete with an arsenal
of financial, technological, and military tools? Or one based on a sustainable economy
focused on human need , meaningful employment for all,and the production use values instead
of exchange value, within a democratic consensus .
(I know that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one!)
TrueNorth ,
Good comment. I like to analyze and understand the evolution of technology and how it is
shaping how we live. Technology has become an extension of ourselves. Currently,
technological advances are made by a small number of people who embue the products with their
own values and ideas born from their very narrow human experience. For example, people who
are submerged in the digital world might not appreciate the importance of diversity in the
natural environment or diversity of cultural heritage simply because they have never
experienced, and thus would not reflect any of it in their digital creations. Technological
advances are accelerating and are irreversible. The problem is that they are in the control
of the few and incomprehensible to majority of others who lack the tools to assess the
quality and value of these changes to the future of our civilization. In order to avoid the
technology replacing humans in the near future, majority of people need to get up to speed
with it and steer the direction of innovation toward the greater good that would benefit this
world.
wardropper ,
A marvellous article, which covers all the essential aspects of why actual human beings,
along with their irrefutable experiences, are suffering in today's world. It is the author's
broad, sweeping strokes which convince, and not the latest mainstream-media CoVid statistics
which prove beyond a shadow of doubt that I died two months ago, because, yes, the virus is
really THAT deadly
tonyopmoc ,
I know we are making progress. I even chatted to my next door neighbour today How big is your
shed? I said, well I can't remember the numbers, (but whilst cleaning out our rainwater water
barrel), I said I think I know where the plans are for my shed (built about 5 years ago
– the builders needed access to her garden, and she was really nice about it). I really
recommend them, and passed her the plans and final invoice )she must have looked and thought
bloody hell that was cheap whilst wearing her rubber gloves, also digging the back garden
– which I found very impressive. We did not talk politics, nor COVID, but when they
lock themselves out, they come round. Have you got our spare key and we haven't, I do my
best, cough cough, – to get them back in to their own home. They are lovely people too.
It is really easy to grow potatoes and tomatoes, but my wife's Spinach from last year,
never stopped, even in midwinter.
Most peoples minds, have been scrambled, by the incessant propaganda
It is not easy to unscramble an egg, but we are making progress.
Tony,
Another good year-rounder is Curly Kale. And it's dead easy to grow.
ame ,
BREAKING NEWS or is it
UK to invest up to 93 million pounds in new coronavirus vaccine center
By REUTERS MAY 17, 2020
The British government will invest up to 93 million pounds ($112 million) to accelerate
construction of a new vaccines center, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy said on Saturday.
The funding will ensure the new center opens in Summer 2021, a year ahead of schedule, the
department said.The Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC), which is currently
under construction, is a key component of the government's program to ensure that once a
coronavirus vaccine is available it can be rolled out quickly in mass quantities, the
department said.
https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/UK-to-invest-up-to-93-million-pounds-in-new-coronavirus-vaccine-center-628282
Grafter ,
Oh good Billy Gates will be pleased. I would expect him and his family along with the buffoon
Professor Ferguson to be front of the queue. As for myself you can gtf.
when not if ,
"UK to invest up to 93 million pounds in new coronavirus vaccine center"
The UK is also investing to train dogs to detect the new coronavirus in people. As the UK
is obsessed about austerity, they could do well in combining the two investments together and
train dogs to sniff the disease and deliver the vaccine at the same time. This fits the
obnoxious ruling elites' ideologies perfectly.
IANA ,
O/t but interesting article in the mail questioning just who is running the govt lockdown
policy.
Boris had to ask Sir Mark Sedwill about 'who is in charge' of the policy and re-iterated
what seemed apparent when Boris was forced to u-turn over govt's initial policy response.
From that moment on he unfortunately was 'removed' due to his having caught cv19 not
returning until well after the lockdown was in full swing. It seems from his question it is
clear he doesn't think he is in charge which is enlightening about who really runs the UK.
Very helpful of Sir Mark to defer in this situation that its he in fact who is in charge.
Just in time for any fallout that may result from all the questions being raised by another
guy who has fallen foul of the inner circle – Neil Ferguson.
The internet does one thing perhaps better than anything else – and far better than the
"real" world surrounding us: it shows us the fleetingness of permanence. In the old days, if
you saw a book or a record or anything else you wanted, your biggest worry was that it would
be gone by the time you were able to acquire it – that someone else will have beat you
to it. There is no such worry on the internet.
There's no danger, for instance, that someone else might beat me to this article and I
might miss the chance to read it. It is ensconced in a veneer of permanence. Yet it and every
single trace of it could completely vanish in a heartbeat should the internet itself suddenly
go off grid. We depend on the internet to be there; the corollary being that we exist in a
perpetual state of anxiety lest we lose everything we cherish.
It is us that have become good at ignorance and fear through practice.
We can't blame the internet for what we have done.
The internet would be neutral, could be used for " good or bad" ( if it weren't for the
censorship, privacy violations and monopoly search engine). Thats why agent Assange is MSM
hero celeb poster boy for our "internet freedom"( haha )and CIA's whisleblower damage control
trap "wikileaks".
tonyopmoc ,
Howard, Whilst I kind of agree with you, I am an old person, who likes old, well crafted,
beautiful original things. I was extremely upset, when my favourite coffee mug, which I had
loved, and which had served me well for many years lay broken on the ground. I have been
searching for an identical replacement for 18 months, and I am almost certain I have found
it. Yes, it was expensive, nearly £18 including delivery. Hopefully, it will turn up
this week in one piece, if it survives being mangled through the delivery machine. I may be a
sentimental old sod, but I really like my beautiful coffee mug. It really brightens things up
in the morning, especially after a heavy one the night before.
Learnt impermanence from the internet , thats something I have never considered.
What we truly cherish we can never loose.
Ort ,
I take your point, I think, but I also see a contradiction: it seems that you're actually
saying that the Internet is an exception, or antidote, to the "fleetingness of
permanence"– that it's like a vast, expanding, unbounded block of amber that traps all
of its content for eternity, just as ancient sap flows trapped prehistoric insects.
Also, the "permanence" depends on how one punctuates Internet experience. It's true that
virtual content is a "gift that keeps on giving", insofar as an infinite number of users can
access a given item without depleting or exhausting it.
But there are devils in these details: links famously "die", i.e. are broken and useless
when the target site becomes defunct; searching for elusive items can be labor-intensive,
frustrating, and fruitless. It's for the "web" to know, and the hapless user to find out.
And "improved" website bells and whistles exemplify Virilio's "void of the quick" cited in
the essay. I know I'm a dinosaur (age 65), but I became incensed and outraged when animated
features became standard web page "eyeball grabbers" several years ago. I don't know the
technical nomenclature, but I'm referring to, say, news sites that display a panel of "top
stories" that continuously change in rotating slide-show fashion.
This deliberate virtual buzzing, blooming confusion celebrates the ephemeral; if one is
not quick enough on the draw, an item of interest vanishes before one's eyes. The standard
logical rebuttal is to assert "Aha! But if the user is patient, that item of interest will
reappear momentarily– or alternatively, can easily be recovered."
But my experience says otherwise. I've often navigated away from a page, suddenly
reconsidered and returned to pursue a featured item within seconds or minutes, and discovered
that it is no longer there. Something new has replaced it.
FWIW, YouTube is particularly vexing in this regard; it stuffs my home page with unwanted
"recommendations"; if I leave the page and return, or even refresh it, the page is
involuntarily "updated" by the relentless YT algorithms. Worse yet, I have even done searches
for a video I'd just seen and "lost", but even using keywords fails to retrieve it.
And then there are "innovations" like infinite page scrolling, or whatever it's
called– pointlessly turning discrete pages into one "bottomless page" that is
overwhelming. I have no doubt that these innovations are all imposed for some nefarious
self-serving purpose, probably commercial– either variations of "clickbait" or making
the page more suitable to hand-held devices like smartphones.
So the Internet's "permanence", such as it is, exists within a maddening perpetual
kaleidoscopic flux.
All a frightful mistake, old boy. No-one thought to check Ferguson's numbers. The Daily
Telegraph and The Daily Mail are both railing against Ferguson's broken adding machine.
Mi6, oath/motto "Semper Occultus", employer of Alastair Crowley, public budget GBP 3
billion, black budget unknown simply didn't think to check Neil Ferguson's software or see
how he was calculating his projection of deaths by Covid-19.
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) which employs hundreds of software
development engineers, security and public safety specialists, IT operations specialists,
mathematicians, and even medical technicians with a declared budget of GBP 1.7 forgot to put
anyone on the case.
The BBC has a declared budget of GBP 3.7 billion (but that's just the license fee. Total
budget is closer to 5 billion) and has 22,000 staff. None of them thought to ask how Neil
Ferguson was arriving at his numbers.
The Mi5 Guardian has already seeded the Ether with the idea that Neil Ferguson's fate could
cross paths with that of Dr David Kelly, the weapons scientist found dead in suspicious
circumstances in 2003 . All to be blamed on "sceptics", of course.
"A similar ordeal apparently caused Dr David Kelly to take his own life after the
biological weapons expert was hounded for revealing that the threat posed by Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction had been exaggerated by Tony Blair's government.
[Scientists] are regularly attacked by many of the British media commentators who are
currently joining the pile-on to Ferguson ."
John Pretty ,
I just looked at the background of the author of the piece you linked:
"Bob Ward is policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the
Environment at the London School of Economics"
That's all I needed to know!
How is it that the average Guardian reader can't smell the bullshit?
wardropper ,
Because today's Guardian readers are not average people. The once-decent paper has lost the
plot, so, naturally, its readers are mentally at risk.
Waldorf ,
Are they below average or above average? They could be very clever but insane.
John Pretty ,
The software issue is relevant to a degree, but it's still a case of "garbage in", "garbage
out".
And it's still guessing
Lost in a dark wood ,
Due diligence is a well established concept. The incompetent failure to do due diligence may
be a criminal offence (e.g. manslaughter). The calculated failure to do due diligence is
complicity (e.g. treason, crimes against humanity, etc).
Hear ye, hear ye! And let it be known. I posted upstream, with time.stamps abundant, that as
the news broke that Professor Lockdown had caught his projection in the wringer, it was the
first domino that would bring down all the others, of this pathetic planetarylockdown.
As it begins to throb more and more and stick out like a sore, well, you know, that grim
sight will be noticed by more and more outlets around the globe, no matter the CYA.
WWW is great for access to information. Of course NOT ALL BRAINS are equipped to navigate
the WWW Ocean. Most just use it to publish selfies and moronic comments.
Even for those who navigate with greatest dexterity, the triple W's are fraught with
unparalleled peril, which I believe was Mr. Curtin's main point: the double bind.
Intrinsic to the medium, as eyestrain was to Gutenberg's first customers.
"... a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are a sign of loneliness. ..."
"... And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the WWW all by themselves. ..."
"... The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to practice it is galling. ..."
"... Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation. ..."
"... So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church. ..."
George Monbiot on human loneliness and its toll. I agree with his observations. I have been cataloguing them in my head for
years, especially after a friend of mine, born in Venice and a long-time resident of Rome, pointed out to me that dogs are
a sign of loneliness.
A couple of recent trips to Rome have made that point ever more obvious to me: Compared to my North Side neighborhood in Chicago,
where every other person seems to have a dog, and on weekends Clark Street is awash in dogs (on their way to the dog boutiques
and the dog food truck), Rome has few dogs. Rome is much more densely populated, and the Italians still have each other, for good
or for ill. And Americans use the dog as an odd means of making human contact, at least with other dog owners.
But Americanization advances: I was surprised to see people bring dogs into the dining room of a fairly upscale restaurant
in Turin. I haven't seen that before. (Most Italian cafes and restaurants are just too small to accommodate a dog, and the owners
don't have much patience for disruptions.) The dogs barked at each other for while–violating a cardinal rule in Italy that mealtime
is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.
And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicago–chockfull of people, each on his or her own Powerbook, surfing the
WWW all by themselves.
That's why the comments about March on Everywhere in Harper's, recommended by Lambert, fascinated me. Maybe, to be less lonely,
you just have to attend the occasional march, no matter how disorganized (and the Chicago Women's March organizers made a few
big logistical mistakes), no matter how incoherent. Safety in numbers? (And as Monbiot points out, overeating at home alone is
a sign of loneliness: Another argument for a walk with a placard.)
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct
us to stand on our own two feet.
With different imagery, the same is true in this country. The preaching of self-reliance by those who have never had to
practice it is galling.
Katherine: Agreed. It is also one of the reasons why I am skeptical of various evangelical / fundi pastors, who are living
at the expense of their churches, preaching about individual salvation.
So you have the upper crust (often with inheritances and trust funds) preaching economic self-reliances, and you have divines
preaching individual salvation as they go back to the house provided by the members of the church.
We're told that getting ahead at work and reorienting our lives around our jobs will make us
happy. So why hasn't it? Many of those who work in the corporate world are constantly peppered
with questions about their " career progression ." The Internet is
saturated with
articles providing tips and tricks on how to develop a never-fail game plan for
professional development. Millions of Americans are engaged in a never-ending cycle of
résumé-padding that mimics the accumulation of Boy Scout merit badges or A's on
report cards except we never seem to get our Eagle Scout certificates or academic diplomas.
We're told to just keep going until we run out of gas or reach retirement, at which point we
fade into the peripheral oblivion of retirement communities, morning tee-times, and long
midweek lunches at beach restaurants.
The idealistic Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer's bestselling book Into the Wild
defiantly declares, "I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one." Anyone
who has spent enough time in the career hamster wheel can relate to this sentiment. Is
21st-century careerism -- with its promotion cycles, yearly feedback, and little wooden plaques
commemorating our accomplishments -- really the summit of human existence, the paramount
paradigm of human flourishing?
Michael J. Noughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St.
Thomas, Minnesota, and board chair for Reel Precision Manufacturing, doesn't think so. In his
Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World , Noughton provides a
sobering statistic: approximately two thirds of employees in the United States are "either
indifferent or hostile to their work." That's not just an indicator of professional
dissatisfaction; it's economically disastrous. The same survey estimates that employee
disengagement is costing the U.S. economy "somewhere between 450-550 billion dollars
annually."
The origin of this problem, says Naughton, is an error in how Americans conceive of work and
leisure. We seem to err in one of two ways. One is to label our work as strictly a job, a
nine-to-five that pays the bills. In this paradigm, leisure is an amusement, an escape from the
drudgery of boring, purposeless labor. The other way is that we label our work as a career that
provides the essential fulfillment in our lives. Through this lens, leisure is a utility,
simply another means to serve our work. Outside of work, we exercise to maintain our health in
order to work harder and longer. We read books that help maximize our utility at work and get
ahead of our competitors. We "continue our education" largely to further our careers.
Whichever error we fall into, we inevitably end up dissatisfied. The more we view work as a
painful, boring chore, the less effective we are at it, and the more complacent and
discouraged. Our leisure activities, in turn, no matter how distracting, only compound our
sadness, because no amount of games can ever satisfy our souls. Or, if we see our meaning in
our work and leisure as only another means of increasing productivity, we inevitably burn out,
wondering, perhaps too late in life, what exactly we were working for . As Augustine
of Hippo noted, our hearts are restless for God. More recently, C.S. Lewis noted that we yearn
to be fulfilled by something that nothing in this world can satisfy. We need both our work and
our leisure to be oriented to the transcendent in order to give our lives meaning and
purpose.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that much of the labor Americans perform
isn't actually good . There are "bad goods" that are detrimental to society and human
flourishing. Naughton suggests some examples: violent video games, pornography, adultery dating
sites, cigarettes, high-octane alcohol, abortifacients, gambling, usury, certain types of
weapons, cheat sheet websites, "gentlemen's clubs," and so on. Though not as clear-cut as the
above, one might also add working for the kinds of businesses that contribute to the
impoverishment or destruction of our communities,
as Tucker Carlson has recently argued .
Why does this matter for professional satisfaction? Because if our work doesn't offer goods
and services that contribute to our communities and the common good -- and especially if we are
unable to perceive how our labor plays into that common good -- then it will fundamentally
undermine our happiness. We will perceive our work primarily in a utilitarian sense, shrugging
our shoulders and saying, "it's just a paycheck," ignoring or disregarding the fact that as
rational animals we need to feel like our efforts matter.
Economic liberalism -- at least in its purest free-market expression -- is based on a
paradigm with nominalist and utilitarian origins that promote "freedom of indifference." In
rudimentary terms, this means that we need not be interested in the moral quality of our
economic output. If we produce goods that satisfy people's wants, increasing their "utils," as
my Econ 101 professor used to say, then we are achieving business success. In this paradigm, we
desire an economy that maximizes access to free choice regardless of the content of that
choice, because the more choices we have, the more we can maximize our utils, or sensory
satisfaction.
The freedom of indifference paradigm is in contrast to a more ancient understanding of
economic and civic engagement: a freedom for excellence. In this worldview, "we are made
for something," and participation in public acts of virtue is essential both to our
own well-being and that of our society. By creating goods and services that objectively benefit
others and contributing to an order beyond the maximization of profit, we bless both ourselves
and the polis . Alternatively, goods that increase "utils" but undermine the common
good are rejected.
Returning to Naughton's distinction between work and leisure, we need to perceive the latter
not as an escape from work or a means of enhancing our work, but as a true time of rest. This
means uniting ourselves with the transcendent reality from which we originate and to which we
will return, through prayer, meditation, and worship. By practicing this kind of true leisure,
well
treated in a book by Josef Pieper , we find ourselves refreshed, and discover renewed
motivation and inspiration to contribute to the common good.
Americans are increasingly aware of the problems with Wall Street conservatism and globalist
economics. We perceive that our post-Cold War policies are hurting our nation. Naughton's
treatise on work and leisure offers the beginnings of a game plan for what might replace
them.
Casey Chalk covers religion and other issues for The American Conservative and is a
senior writer for Crisis Magazine. He has degrees in history and teaching from the University
of Virginia, and a masters in theology from Christendom College.
"... "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." ..."
"... Recently I read Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his thoughts about dying from cancer. ..."
For the longest time, I believed that there's only one purpose of life: And that is to be happy. Right? Why else go through all
the pain and hardship? It's to achieve happiness in some way. And I'm not the only person who believed that. In fact, if you look
around you, most people are pursuing happiness in their lives.
That's why we collectively buy shit we don't need, go to bed with people we don't love, and try to work hard to get approval of
people we don't like.
Why do we do these things? To be honest, I don't care what the exact reason is. I'm not a scientist. All I know is that it has
something to do with history, culture, media, economy, psychology, politics, the information era, and you name it. The list is endless.
Just a few short years ago, I did everything to chase happiness.
You buy something, and you think that makes you happy.
You hook up with people, and think that makes you happy.
You get a well-paying job you don't like, and think that makes you happy.
You go on holiday, and you think that makes you happy.
But at the end of the day, you're lying in your bed (alone or next to your spouse), and you think: "What's next in this endless
pursuit of happiness?"
Well, I can tell you what's next: You, chasing something random that you believe makes you happy.
It's all a façade. A hoax. A story that's been made up.
Did Aristotle lie to us when he said:
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence."
I think we have to look at that quote from a different angle. Because when you read it, you think that happiness is the main goal.
And that's kind of what the quote says as well.
But here's the thing: How do you achieve happiness?
Happiness can't be a goal in itself. Therefore, it's not something that's achievable. I believe that happiness is merely a byproduct
of usefulness. When I talk about this concept with friends, family, and colleagues, I always find it difficult to put this into words.
But I'll give it a try here. Most things we do in life are just activities and experiences.
You go on holiday.
You go to work.
You go shopping.
You have drinks.
You have dinner.
You buy a car.
Those things should make you happy, right? But they are not useful. You're not creating anything. You're just consuming or doing
something. And that's great.
Don't get me wrong. I love to go on holiday, or go shopping sometimes. But to be honest, it's not what gives meaning to life.
What really makes me happy is when I'm useful. When I create something that others can use. Or even when I create something I
can use.
For the longest time I foud it difficult to explain the concept of usefulness and happiness. But when I recently ran into a quote
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the dots connected.
Emerson says:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some
difference that you have lived and lived well."
And I didn't get that before I became more conscious of what I'm doing with my life. And that always sounds heavy and all. But
it's actually really simple.
It comes down to this: What are you DOING that's making a difference?
Did you do useful things in your lifetime? You don't have to change the world or anything. Just make it a little bit better than
you were born.
If you don't know how, here are some ideas.
Help your boss with something that's not your responsibility.
Take your mother to a spa.
Create a collage with pictures (not a digital one) for your spouse.
Write an article about the stuff you learned in life.
Help the pregnant lady who also has a 2-year old with her stroller.
Call your friend and ask if you can help with something.
Build a standing desk.
Start a business and hire an employee and treat them well.
That's just some stuff I like to do. You can make up your own useful activities.
You see? It's not anything big. But when you do little useful things every day, it adds up to a life that is well lived. A life
that mattered.
The last thing I want is to be on my deathbed and realize there's zero evidence that I ever existed.
Recently I read
Not Fade Away by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton. It's about Peter Barton, the founder of Liberty Media, who shares his
thoughts about dying from cancer.
It's a very powerful book and it will definitely bring tears to your eyes. In the book, he writes about how he lived his life
and how he found his calling. He also went to business school, and this is what he thought of his fellow MBA candidates:
"Bottom line: they were extremely bright people who would never really anything, would never add much to society, would leave
no legacy behind. I found this terribly sad, in the way that wasted potential is always sad."
You can say that about all of us. And after he realized that in his thirties, he founded a company that turned him into a multi-millionaire.
Another person who always makes himself useful is Casey Neistat
. I've been following him for a year and a half now, and every time I watch his
YouTube show , he's doing something.
He also talks about how he always wants to do and create something. He even has a tattoo on his forearm that says "Do More."
Most people would say, "why would you work more?" And then they turn on Netflix and watch back to back episodes of Daredevil.
A different mindset.
Being useful is a mindset. And like with any mindset, it starts with a decision. One day I woke up and thought to myself: What
am I doing for this world? The answer was nothing.
And that same day I started writing. For you it can be painting, creating a product, helping elderly, or anything you feel like
doing.
Don't take it too seriously. Don't overthink it. Just DO something that's useful. Anything.
Darius Foroux writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance. His ideas and work have been featured
in TIME, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Observer, and many more publications. Join
his free weekly newsletter.
This article was originally published on October 3, 2016, by Darius Foroux, and is republished here with permission. Darius Foroux
writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance.
Even Economists' seem to agree that the decline of labor power, the decimation of Unionism in
the US, has had a devastating effect on the existing quality of life, the opportunity for
economic mobility, and even longevity in the US. The society has been wringing it's hands
over how to bring back the salad days of the strong middle class afforded by representative
labor in the 50's and 60's.
Bernie Sanders platform represents all that was lost. There really is no difference
between Sanders proposals and the union contracts of yore. The election of Sanders along with
a unified Congress to enact his labor friendly proposals will restore the American middle
class.
The Trojan horse of neo-liberal economics, and the defenestration of an independent press
into an oligopoly of lies, was able sell labor arbitrage as beneficial. Underselling American
production by Capitalists employing a Communist monopoly supplier of labor, at substandard
income, health, safety, and environmental conditions, against American workers, was sold as
benefit.
Forty years later, America is unrecognizable. Reduced to platitudes, paying homage to a
long lost civilization.
Yep, but before we could get there we first had to believe that corporate mergers were
necessary and good to achieve economies of scale rather than merely to bestow unbridled
monopoly power, monopsony power, and political power upon the biggest sharks in the tank.
Mergers were about owning Boardwalk and Park Place and globalization was about collecting
rents. Mergers crippled unions and globalization put them out of their misery with a final
death blow.
Vero Beach is awesome, as is most of the FL coasts when there are no hurricanes in town. I
checked Google Map and you are halfway between Daytona Beach and Ft Lauderdale and well away
from that Miami place. If I lived there then I would be fishing for tuna, cobia, wahoo, and
king mackerel every day.
2020 Democratic Candidates Wage Escalating Fight
(on the Merits of Fighting) https://nyti.ms/2Ds4OIC
NYT - Mark Leibovich - Nov. 30
For all the emphasis placed on the various divides
among the candidates, the question of "to fight or
not to fight" might represent the most meaningful contrast.
WALPOLE, N.H. -- Pete Buttigieg has a nifty politician's knack for coming off as a
soothing, healing figure who projects high-mindedness -- even while he's plainly kicking his
opponents in the teeth.
"There is a lot to be angry about," he was saying, cheerfully. Mr. Buttigieg, the
37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., was seated aboard his campaign bus outside a New
Hampshire middle school before a recent Sunday afternoon rally. He was sipping a canned
espresso beverage and his eyes bulged as he spoke, as if he was trying to pass off as
revelatory something he had in fact said countless times before.
"But fighting is not enough and it's a problem if fighting is all you have," he said. "We
fight when we need to fight. But we're never going to say fighting is the point."
In fact, these were fighting words: barely disguised and directed at certain Democratic
rivals. As Mr. Buttigieg enjoys a polling surge in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is trying to
prevent a rebound by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has leveled off in the polls after a
strong summer, and contain Senator Bernie Sanders, whose support has proved durable.
Both are explicit fighters, while Mr. Buttigieg, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
and some others warn that Democrats risk scaring off voters by relying too heavily on
pugnacious oratory, and by emphasizing the need to transform America rather than focusing
simply on ending the Trump presidency and restoring the country to some semblance of
normalcy.
As Mr. Buttigieg has sharpened this critique, however, he has adopted a more aggressive
tone himself -- a sly bit of needle-threading that has coincided with his rise. Mr. Biden,
too, has combined cantankerous language about beating Mr. Trump "like a drum" with more
uplifting rhetoric about "restoring the soul of America."
As Mr. Buttigieg spoke, Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders were holding rallies in which they
could scarcely utter two sentences without dropping in some formulation of the word "fight."
They spoke of the various "fights" they had led and the powerful moneyed interests they had
"fought" and how they would "keep fighting" all the way to the White House.
Mr. Sanders touted himself as the candidate who would "fight to raise wages" and was
"leading the fight to guarantee health care" and "fight against corporate greed." Ms. Warren
(fighting a cold) explained "why I got into this fight, will stay in this fight and why I am
asking others to join the fight."
Every politician wants to be known as a "fighter," even the placid young mayor who has
promised to "change the channel" on Mr. Trump's reality show presidency and all the rancor
that has accompanied it. But Mr. Buttigieg is also fighting against what he sees as the
political trope of fighting per se. He is presenting himself as an antidote to the
politics-as-brawl predilection that has become so central to the messaging of both parties
and, he believes, has sapped the electorate of any hope for an alternative. "The whole
country is exhausted by everyone being at each other's throats," Mr. Buttigieg said.
At a basic level, this is a debate over word choice. Candidates have been selling
themselves as "fighters" for centuries, ostensibly on behalf of the proverbial "you." It goes
back at least to 1828, when Andrew Jackson bludgeoned John Quincy Adams, his erudite
opponent, with the slogan "Adams can write but Jackson can fight." Populists of various
stripes have been claiming for decades to "fight for you," "fight the power," "fight the good
fight" and whatnot, all in the name of framing their enterprises as some cause that
transcends their mere career advancement.
In a broader sense, though, it goes to a stylistic divide that has been playing out for
nearly a year in the battle for the Democratic nomination. The split is most acute among the
top four polling candidates: you could classify Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders as the pugilists
in the field, whereas Mr. Buttigieg, he of the earnest manner and Midwestern zest for
consensus, fashions himself a peacemaker. Mr. Biden would also sit in the latter camp, with
his constant promises to "unite the country" and continued insistence -- oft-derided -- that
his old Republican friends would be so chastened by Mr. Trump's defeat that they would
suddenly want to work in sweet bipartisan harmony with President Joe.
For all the emphasis placed on the identity and generational partitions between the
candidates, the question of "to fight or not to fight" might represent a more meaningful
contrast. "This has been a longstanding intramural debate," said David Axelrod, the
Democratic media and message strategist, who served as a top campaign and White House aide to
former President Barack Obama. "It's what Elizabeth Warren would call 'big structural change'
versus what critics would call 'incremental change.'"
He believes the energy and size of the former camp has been exaggerated by the attention
it receives. "I think sometimes the populist left is overrepresented in places where
reporters sometimes spend a lot of time," Mr. Axelrod said. "Like on Twitter." ...
Apparently what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire stays in Iowa and New Hampshire. Here in
VA, which does not primary for the Democratic Party until Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020) the
only message coming through from Dems is Dump Trump. Since VA went for Hillary in 2016, then
it is unlikely that voters here will hold for Trump now, but not for lack of trying among
staunch Republican Party financial backers.
Fortunately enough for me though is that my happy life does not hinge on national
politics. VA will be a better place to live now that Republicans no longer control the
state's legislature nor executive branches. Sorry about the country, but it must live with
its own unique history of bad choices.
Here in MA, we pay particular attention to
our cranky neighbor NH because we know how
votes will go here at home, but not there.
NH is endlessly fascinating, and remote-ish.
With four electoral votes, it has one-third
more than Vermont. That's why it's important-ish.
Overall, the six New England states have an extra
twelve electoral votes, disproportionate to our
total population. Lately all Dem, except for a
stubborn pocket in Maine.
MA is also joined at the hip with NY,
sharing about a hundred miles of border,
and much political sensibility. It wasn't
always this way (except for the border part.)
I was growing up in western NY when Robert Kennedy
was foisted upon us as a Senator, mainly from NYC.
He with considerable NYC roots, but that god-awful
'Bahston' accent. In those days, western NY was
a GOP bastion, and still is to a lesser extent.
None the less, we are still joined at the hip.
Just not over the Yankees & the Red Sox.
Thanks. My wife is from CT. Is CT even more true blue than MA. A quandary for me as she was
raised devout Republican although her mother was a public school teacher.
All of New England is blue these days, except
for a portion of Maine. Only one GOPerson in
Congress these days, that being Susan Collins
of Maine, soon to be up for re-election.
'Sen. Susan Collins faces a potentially
difficult reelection campaign in 2020. ... J
Although (she does not yet have a primary challenger), Collins could be especially
vulnerable if she breaks with Trump -- she's the most moderate Republican in the Senate and
has had lukewarm intraparty support in the past, though it improved markedly after she voted
to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year.' ...
Primary Challenges Might Keep These Republican Senators
From Voting To Remove Trump https://53eig.ht/36mLHgu
New Housing and household durables
In as much as they increase
The labor productivity
of
Domestic production...
Are a worthy investment
Best financed with credit
The combo of productivity increases
and substitution of market products combined cut domestic labor time dramatically
Last century
He is protecting this text book, it is in the parenthesis (if you must).
His text book is a fraud, it explains very little about what is happening, contains
nothing about irregular gains to scale, nothing about value added network effect, assumes the
senate is a proportional democracy, never considers the regularity of generation default. The
text should be shunned, it is ten years behind the mathematicians.
Tax the Rich? Here's How to Do
It (Sensibly) https://nyti.ms/2NsILFP
NYT - Andrew Ross Sorkin - Feb. 25, 2019
Everyone, it seems, has ideas about new tax strategies, some more realistic than others.
The list of tax revolutionaries is long. ...
Whatever your politics, there is a bipartisan acknowledgment that the tax system is
broken. Whether you believe the system should be fixed to generate more revenue or employed
as a tool to limit inequality -- and let's be honest for a moment, those ideas are not always
consistent -- there is a justifiable sense the public doesn't trust the tax system to be
fair.
In truth, how could it when a wealthy person like Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the
president, reportedly paid almost no federal taxes for years? Or when Gary Cohn, the former
president of Goldman Sachs who once led President Trump's National Economic Council, says
aloud what most wealthy people already know: "Only morons pay the estate tax."
If you pay taxes, it's hard not to feel like a patsy.
A New York Times poll found that support for higher taxes on the rich cuts across party
lines, and Democratic presidential hopefuls are offering plans to do it. But the current
occupant of the Oval Office signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut into law, so the political hurdles
are high.
Over the past month, I've consulted with tax accountants, lawyers, executives, political
leaders and yes, billionaires, and specific ideas have come up about plugging the gaps in the
tax code, without blowing it apart. ...
Patch the estate tax
None of the suggestions in this column -- or anywhere else -- can work unless the estate
tax is rid of the loopholes that allow wealthy Americans to blatantly (and legally) skirt
taxes.
Without addressing whether the $11.2 million exemption is too high -- and it is -- the
estate tax is riddled with problems. Chief among them: Wealthy Americans can pass much of
their riches to their heirs without paying taxes on capital gains -- ever. According to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, unrealized capital gains account for "as much as
about 55 percent for estates worth more than $100 million." ...
The Congressional Budget Office estimates simply closing this loophole would raise more
than $650 billion over a decade.
As central as this idea is to the other suggestions, it is not an easy sell. Three
Republican senators introduced a plan this year to repeal the estate tax.
But this and other changes -- eliminating the hodgepodge of generation-skipping trusts
that also bypass estate taxes -- are obvious fixes that would introduce a basic fairness to
the system and curb the vast inequality that arises from dynastic wealth.
Increase capital gains rates for the wealthy
Our income tax rates are progressive, but taxes on capital gains are less so. There are
only two brackets, and they top out at 20 percent.
By contrast, someone making $40,000 a year by working 40 hours a week is in the 22 percent
bracket. That's why Warren Buffett says his secretary pays a higher tax rate.
So why not increase capital gains rates on the wealthiest among us?
One chief argument for low capital gains rates is to incentivize investment. But if we
embraced two additional brackets -- say, a marginal 30 percent bracket for earners over $5
million and a 35 percent bracket for earners over $15 million -- it is hard to see how it
would fundamentally change investment plans. ...
['Incentivizing investment'
leads to more income inequality.]
End the perverse real estate loopholes
One reason there are so many real estate billionaires is the law allows the industry to
perpetually defer capital gains on properties by trading one for another. In tax parlance, it
is known as a 1031 exchange.
In addition, real estate industry executives can depreciate the value of their investment
for tax purposes even when the actual value of the property appreciates. (This partly
explains Mr. Kushner's low tax bill.)
These are glaring loopholes that are illogical unless you are a beneficiary of them.
Several real estate veterans I spoke to privately acknowledged the tax breaks are
unconscionable.
Fix carried interest
This is far and away the most obvious loophole that goes to Americans' basic sense of
fairness.
For reasons that remain inexplicable -- unless you count lobbying money -- the private
equity, venture capital, real estate and hedge fund industries have kept this one intact.
Current tax law allows executives in those industries to have the bonuses they earn investing
for clients taxed as capital gains, not ordinary income.
Even President Trump opposed the loophole. In a 2015 interview, he said hedge fund
managers were "getting away with murder."
This idea and the others would not swell the government's coffers to overflowing, but they
would help restore a sense of fairness to a system that feels so easily gamed by the
wealthiest among us.
There are a couple of other things worth considering.
Let's talk about philanthropy
Nobody wants to dissuade charitable giving. But average taxpayers are often subsidizing
wealthy philanthropists whose charitable deductions significantly reduce their bills.
These people deserve credit for giving money to noble causes (though some nonprofits are
lobbying organizations masquerading as do-gooders) but their wealth, in many cases, isn't
paying for the basics of health care, defense, education and everything else that taxes pay
for.
Philanthropic giving is laudable, but it can also be a tax-avoidance strategy. Is there a
point at which charitable giving should be taxed?
I'm not sure what the right answer is. But consider this question posed by several
philanthropic billionaires: Should the rich be able to gift stock or other assets to charity
before paying capital gains taxes? ...
Finally, fund the Internal Revenue Service
The agency is so underfunded that the chance an individual gets audited is minuscule --
one person in 161 was audited in 2017, according to the I.R.S. And individuals with more than
$1 million in income, the people with the most complicated tax situations, were audited just
4.4 percent of the time. It was more than 12 percent in 2011, the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities reported.
The laws in place hardly matter: Those willing to take a chance can gamble that they won't
get caught. That wouldn't be the case if the agency weren't having its budget cut and losing
personnel. ...
'If you pay taxes, it's hard not to feel like a patsy.'
[I heartily disagree.]
'In 1927 in the court case of Compañía General de
Tabacos de Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue
a dissenting opinion was written by Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr. that included the following phrase ... :
One can at least imagine that,
back in the day (long ago?),
wealth would have been taxed,
but then with the rise of the
middle-class, taxes were extended
to those who had *income* if not
much wealth. Perhaps just as the
wealthy were hiring lawyers and
accountants, and making generous
political 'contributions' to
avoid taxes generally.
It really comes down to priorities. Are we a democracy, or not. Health care, education, etc.
for the citizens, or corporate welfare for the aristocracy.
This New York Times article on rising mortality had me thinking about regional
disparities. It's true that rising mortality is widespread, but the article also acknowledges
that mortality in coastal metros has improved 1/
It's Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy
A new study shows that death rates increased for middle-aged people of all racial and ethnic
groups.
The State of US Health, 1990-2016
Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Among US States
What we see is another red-blue divide. Compare population-weighted averages for states
that supported Clinton and Trump in 2016, and you see very different trends 3/
This is NOT simply a matter of declining regions voting for Trump. Look at the 4 biggest
states: in 1990 FL and TX both had higher life expectancy than NY, now they're well behind
4/
I'm not sure what lies behind this. Medicaid expansion probably plays a role in the past
few years, and general harshness of social policies in red states may matter more over time.
Divergence in education levels may also play a role 5/
What's clear, however, is that the US life-expectancy problem is pretty much a red-state
problem. In terms of mortality, blue states look like the rest of the advanced world 6/
I was struck by one line in this article: "Life expectancy in the coastal metro areas --
both east and west -- has improved at roughly the same rate as in Canada." Indeed, the
American death trip has been driven by only part of the country 1/
It's Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy
A new study shows that death rates increased for middle-aged people of all racial and ethnic
groups.
7:58 AM - 27 Nov 2019
And while the divergence is surely linked to growing regional economic disparities,
there's a pretty clear red-blue divide reflecting state policies. Consider NY v. TX 2/
In 1990 Texas actually had higher life expectancy, but now NY is far ahead. Surely this
has something to do with expanding health coverage, maybe also to do with environmental
policies. 3/
In general, progressive US states have experienced falling mortality along with the rest
of the advanced world. Red America is where things are different 4/
The NYT article has a graphical map
'Falling Life Expectancy' - that shows
death rate (age 25-64) declines in only
two states (CA & WY) with small increases
in 11 other states (OR, WA, AR, UT, TX, OK,
SC, GA, FL, IL & NY). Increases in all other
states. Hence, shorter life expectancies
in most states, regardless of region.
How does "death rate 25-64" relate to life expectancy?
[ Similarly, by dramatically improving the care of young children China dramatically
improved life expectancy. This was and remains a failing for India, even though India had a
far higher per capita GDP level than China before 1980. Amartya Sen has written about
this:
Anne is correct. Death rate 25-64 is throwing out the disease susceptible childhood years,
the suicides and automobile accidents of early adulthood, and also access to medical care for
the increased disease risks of advanced ages. What is left tells a story of alcoholism,
smoking, and fentanyl mostly along with healthcare access. Employment security matters in
both healthcare access and incidence of depression including adult suicide and drug use along
with a tendency to engage in risky activities just to pay the bills.
JAMA (& others who have done similar studies)
are just looking at data. Draw your own
conclusions? The media will draw theirs.
Fair to say, these are people dying NOT of old-age.
Americans' Life Expectancy Drops For Third Year In Row, Signaling There's 'Something
Terribly Wrong' Going On https://khn.org/MTAyNTQ4Mw via @khnews (Kaiser Health
News)
Americans' Life Expectancy Drops For Third Year In Row, Signaling There's 'Something
Terribly Wrong' Going On
Researchers say the grim new reality isn't just limited to rural deaths of despair, but
rather the numbers reflect that many different people living in all areas of the U.S. are
struggling. "We need to look at root causes," said Dr. Steven Woolf, the author's lead study.
"Something changed in the 1980s, which is when the growth in our life expectancy began to
slow down compared to other wealthy nations."
The New York Times: It's Not Just Poor White People Driving A Decline In Life
Expectancy
As the life expectancy of Americans has declined over a period of three years -- a drop
driven by higher death rates among people in the prime of life -- the focus has been on the
plight of white Americans in rural areas who were dying from so-called deaths of despair:
drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide. But a new analysis of more than a half-century of
federal mortality data, published on Tuesday in JAMA, found that the increased death rates
among people in midlife extended to all racial and ethnic groups, and to suburbs and cities.
(Kolata and Tavernise, 11/26)
The Washington Post: U.S. Life Expectancy: Americans Are Dying Young At Alarming Rates
Despite spending more on health care than any other country, the United States has seen
increasing mortality and falling life expectancy for people age 25 to 64, who should be in
the prime of their lives. In contrast, other wealthy nations have generally experienced
continued progress in extending longevity. Although earlier research emphasized rising
mortality among non-Hispanic whites in the United States, the broad trend detailed in this
study cuts across gender, racial and ethnic lines. By age group, the highest relative jump in
death rates from 2010 to 2017 -- 29 percent -- has been among people age 25 to 34.
(Achenbach, 11/26)
Los Angeles Times: Suicides, Overdoses, Other 'Deaths Of Despair' Fuel Drop In U.S. Life
Expectancy
In an editorial accompanying the new report, a trio of public health leaders said the study's
insight into years of cumulative threats to the nation's health "represents a call to
action." If medical professionals and public health experts fail to forge partnerships with
social, political, religious and economic leaders to reverse the current trends, "the nation
risks life expectancy continuing downward in future years to become a troubling new norm,"
wrote Harvard public health professors Dr. Howard K. Koh, John J. Park and Dr. Anand K.
Parekh of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. (Healy, 11/26)
---
Changes in midlife death rates across racial and ethnic
groups in the United States: systematic analysis of vital statistics https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3096
British Medical Journal - August 15, 2018
'Men 65 years and older today have an average
life expectancy of 84.3 years. Life expectancy
outcomes get even better among younger men and
women according to the CDC's data. For instance,
one in 20 women who are 40 today will live to
celebrate their 100th birthday.'
American Academy of Family Physicians - December 10, 2018
"The latest CDC data show that the U.S. life expectancy has declined over the past few
years," said CDC Director Robert Redfield, M.D., in a Nov. 29 statement. "Tragically, this
troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide.
Three new reports from the CDC indicate that the average life expectancy in the United
States has declined for the second time in three years.
Deaths from drug overdose and suicide were responsible for much of the decline, with more
than 70,000 drug overdose deaths reported in 2017.
As a result of overall increases in mortality rates, average life expectancy decreased
from 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 years in 2017.
"Life expectancy gives us a snapshot of the nation's overall health, and these sobering
statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often,
to conditions that are preventable." ...
More than 2.8 million deaths occurred in the United States in 2017, an increase of about
70,000 from the previous year. Death rates rose significantly in three age groups during that
period (i.e., in those 25-34, 35-44, and 85 and older) and dropped in 45- to 54-year-olds,
yielding an overall age-adjusted increase of 0.4 percent. That percentage represents a rise
from 728.8 deaths per 100,000 standard population to 731.9 per 100,000.
The 10 leading causes of death remained the same from 2016 to 2017: heart disease, cancer,
unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's disease,
diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease, and suicide. Age-adjusted death rates
increased significantly for seven of the 10 causes, led by influenza and pneumonia (5.9
percent), unintentional injuries (4.2 percent) and suicide (3.7 percent). Death rates for
cancer actually decreased by 2.1 percent, while heart disease and kidney disease rates did
not change significantly. ...
Drug overdose death rates increased across all age groups, with the highest rate occurring
in adults ages 35-44 (39 per 100,000) and the lowest in adults 65 and older (6.9 per
100,000). ...
Free Market Drugs: A Key Part of Elizabeth Warren's Transition to Medicare for All
By Dean Baker
Earlier this month, Senator Warren put out a set of steps that she would put forward as
president as part of a transition to Medicare for All. The items that got the most attention
were including everyone over age 50 and under age 18 in Medicare, and providing people of all
ages with the option to buy into the program. This buy-in would include large subsidies, and
people with incomes of less than 200 percent of the poverty level would be able to enter the
Medicare program at no cost.
These measures would be enormous steps toward Medicare for All, bringing tens of millions
of people into the program, including most of those (people over age 50) with serious medical
issues. It would certainly be more than halfway to a universal Medicare program.
While these measures captured most of the attention given to Warren's transition plan,
another part of the plan is probably at least as important. Warren proposed to use the
government's authority to compel the licensing of drug patents so that multiple companies can
produce a patented drug, in effect allowing them to be sold at generic prices.
The government can do this both because it has general authority to compel licensing of
patents (with reasonable compensation) and because it has explicit authority under the 1980
Bayh-Dole Act to require licensing of any drug developed in part with government-funded
research. The overwhelming majority of drugs required some amount of government-supported
research in their development, so there would be few drugs that would be exempted if Warren
decided to use this mechanism.
These measures are noteworthy because they can be done on the president's own authority.
While the pharmaceutical industry will surely contest in court a president's use of the
government's authority to weaken their patent rights, these actions would not require
Congressional approval.
The other reason that these steps would be so important is that there is a huge amount of
money involved. The United States is projected to spend over $6.6 trillion on prescription
drugs over the next decade, more than 2.5 percent of GDP. This comes to almost $20,000 per
person over the next decade.
This is an enormous amount of money. We spend more than twice as much per person on drugs
as people in other wealthy countries.
This is not an accident. The grant of a patent monopoly allows drug companies to charge as
much as they want for drugs that are necessary for people's health or even their life,
without having to worry about a competitor undercutting them.
Other countries also grant patent monopolies, but they limit the ability of drug companies
to exploit these monopolies with negotiations or price controls. This is why prices in these
countries are so much lower than in the United States.
But even these negotiated prices are far above what drug prices would be in a free market.
The price of drugs in a free market, without patent monopolies or related protections, will
typically be less than 10 percent of the US price and in some cases, less than one
percent.
This is because drugs are almost invariably cheap to manufacture and distribute. They are
expensive because government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive. We have this
perverse situation where the government deliberately makes drugs expensive, then we struggle
with how to pay for them.
The rationale for patent monopolies is to give companies an incentive to research and
develop drugs. This process is expensive, and if newly developed drugs were sold in a free
market, companies would not be able to recover these expenses.
To make up for the loss of research funding supported by patent monopolies, Warren
proposes an increase in public funding for research. This would be an important move towards
an increased reliance on publicly funded biomedical research.
There are enormous advantages to publicly-funded research over patent monopoly-supported
research. First, if the government is funding the research it can require that all results be
fully public as soon as possible so that all researchers can quickly benefit from them.
By contrast, under the patent system, drug companies have an incentive to keep results
secret. They have no desire to share results that could benefit competitors.
In most other contexts we quite explicitly value the benefits of open research. Science is
inherently a collaborative process where researchers build upon the successes and failures of
their peers. For some reason, this obvious truth is largely absent from discussions of
biomedical research where the merits of patent financing go largely unquestioned.
In addition to allowing research results to be spread more quickly, public funding would
also radically reduce the incentive to develop copycat drugs. Under the current system, drug
companies will often devote substantial sums to developing drugs that are intended to
duplicate the function of drugs already on the market. This allows them to get a share of an
innovator drug's patent rents. While there is generally an advantage to having more options
to treat a specific condition, most often research dollars would be better spent trying to
develop drugs for conditions where no effective treatment currently exists.
Under the patent system, a company that has invested a substantial sum in developing a
drug, where a superior alternative already exists, may decide to invest an additional amount
to carry it through the final phases of testing and the FDA approval process. From their
vantage point, if they hope that a successful marketing effort will allow them to recover its
additional investment costs, they would come out ahead.
On the other hand, in a system without patent monopolies, it would be difficult for a
company to justify additional spending after it was already clear that the drug it was
developing offered few health benefits. This could save a considerable amount of money on
what would be largely pointless tests.
Also, as some researchers have noted, the number of potential test subjects (people with
specific conditions) is also a limiting factor in research. It would be best if these people
were available for testing genuinely innovative drugs rather than ones with little or no
incremental value.
Ending patent monopoly pricing would also take away the incentive for drug companies to
conceal evidence that their drugs may not be as safe or effective as claimed. Patent
monopolies give drug companies an incentive to push their drugs as widely as possible.
That is literally the point of patent monopoly pricing. If a drug company can sell a drug
for $30,000 that costs them $300 to manufacture and distribute, then they have a huge
incentive to market it as widely as possible. If this means being somewhat misleading about
the safety and effectiveness of their drug, that is what many drug companies will do.
The opioid crisis provides a dramatic example of the dangers of this system. Opioid
manufacturers would not have had the same incentive to push their drugs, concealing evidence
of their addictive properties, if they were not making huge profits on them.
Unfortunately, this is far from the only case where drug companies have not accurately
presented their research findings when marketing their drugs. The mismarketing of the
arthritis drug Vioxx, which increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes, is another
famous example.
We can try to have the FDA police marketing, but where there is so much money at stake in
putting out wrong information, we can hardly expect it to be 100 percent successful in
overcoming the incentives from the large profits available. There is little reason to think
that the FDA will be better able to combat the mismarketing of drugs, than law enforcement
agencies have been in stopping the sale of heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs. Where
you have large potential profits, and willing buyers, government enforcement is at a serious
disadvantage.
It is also worth mentioning that the whole story of medical care is radically altered if
we end patent monopolies on drugs and medical equipment, an area that also involves trillions
of dollars over the next decade. We face tough choices on allocating medical care when these
items are selling at patent protected prices, whether under the current system of private
insurance or a Medicare for All system.
Doctors and other health care professionals have to decide whether the marginal benefits
of a new drug or higher quality scan is worth the additional price. But if the new drug costs
roughly the same price as the old drug and the highest quality scan costs just a few hundred
dollars (the cost of the electricity and the time of the professionals operating the machine
and reading the scan), then there is little reason not to prescribe the best available
treatment. Patent monopoly pricing in these areas creates large and needless problems.
In short, Senator Warren's plans on drugs are a really huge deal. How far and how quickly
she will be able to get to Medicare for All will depend on what she can get through Congress.
But her proposal for prescription drugs is something she would be able to do as president,
and it will make an enormous difference in both the cost and the quality of our health
care.
NAFTA Was About Redistributing Upward
By Dean Baker
The Washington Post gave readers the official story about the North American Free Trade
Agreement, diverging seriously from reality, in a piece * on the status of negotiations on
the new NAFTA. The piece tells readers:
"NAFTA was meant to expand trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico by removing
tariffs and other barriers on products as they were shipped between countries. The pact did
open up trade, but it also proved disruptive in terms of creating new manufacturing supply
chains and relocating businesses and jobs."
This implies that the disruption in terms of shifting jobs to Mexico to take advantage of
low wage labor was an accidental outcome. In fact, this was a main point of the deal, as was
widely noted by economists at the time. Proponents of the deal argued that it was necessary
for U.S. manufacturers to have access to low cost labor in Mexico to remain competitive
internationally. No one who followed the debate at the time should have been in the last
surprised by the loss of high paying union manufacturing jobs to Mexico, that is exactly the
result that NAFTA was designed for.
NAFTA also did nothing to facilitate trade in highly paid professional services, such as
those provided by doctors and dentists. This is because doctors and dentists are far more
powerful politically than autoworkers.
It is also wrong to say that NAFTA was about expanding trade by removing barriers. A major
feature of NAFTA was the requirement that Mexico strengthen and lengthen its patent and
copyright protections. These barriers are 180 degrees at odds with expanding trade and
removing barriers.
It is noteworthy that the new deal expands these barriers further. The Trump
administration likely intends these provisions to be a model for other trade pacts, just as
the rules on patents and copyrights were later put into other trade deals.
The new NAFTA will also make it more difficult for the member countries to regulate
Facebook and other Internet giants. This is likely to make it easier for Mark Zuckerberg to
spread fake news.
We have no public industrial policy
Because we have a private corporate industrial policy that wants full reign
Even toy block models like
ole pro grass liberal brandishes
Warn what heppens to trade good producing wage rates when
Proximate borders open
to potential products
Built with zero rent earning
raw fingered foreign wage slaves
Re: The 'crisis of capitalism' is not the one Europeans think it is.
The article is basically correct but I also think that the author downplays how
devastating these changes have been. It seems like he is arguing that the changes wrought by
capitalism are merely a cultural problem. I think our problems are much worse than just
people being uncomfortable with capitalism invading spheres of life previously left outside
of the market, as important as that issue is.
I think this period is similar to the early modern period where once prosperous peasant
societies were destroyed by policies like the enclosure movement. A recent article in The
Guardian discussed this process.
With subsistence economies destroyed, people had no choice but to work for pennies
simply in order to survive. According to the Oxford economists Henry Phelps Brown and
Sheila Hopkins, real wages declined by up to 70% from the end of the 15th century all the
way through the 17th century. Famines became commonplace and nutrition deteriorated. In
England, average life expectancy fell from 43 years in the 1500s to the low 30s in the
1700s.
The author was discussing Europe so perhaps that explains why he seems to see this as a
cultural issue, but I believe that the United Kingdom is also seeing a rise in deaths of
despair and this trend might spread to the Continent in the future if things get bad
enough.
My point is that the crisis of capitalism is worse than Branko Milanović makes it out
to be. I worry that focusing on things like changing family structure falls into the hands of
left-neoliberals who will say that people just need to be more "progressive" and accept
changes to family life, which is hypocritical given that affluent people are actually
doubling down on the nuclear family model (divorce rates have been dropping among the
well-educated) and the advantages it brings when it comes to life outcomes. It is galling to
hear liberals talk about dysfunction among working-class people as if it were progressive
while they enjoy dual income "power marriages" and make sure their children are given massive
advantages in upbringing.
More generally, the biggest problem is that most people never asked for these changes,
they were forced on ordinary people by elites. It is ridiculous that in the 21st century
humans have to just accept massive and often devastating changes to their lives without
having any voice in the decision to make those changes.
A sense of powerlessness is also driving the widespread populist anger across many
countries. At one time there were powerful labor unions and left-wing political parties that
spoke for ordinary people but these have either declined or disappeared altogether so people
are left looking for allies and populists like Trump and Salvini are happy to benefit from
their anger and desperation.
""Mathematical models demonstrate that far from wealth trickling down to the poor, the
natural inclination of wealth is to flow upward, so that the 'natural' wealth distribution in
a free-market economy is one of complete oligarchy".
I think he's confusing the commercialisation of everyday life with capitalism. The second
is a result of the first looking for new ways of making money out of us, as traditional
options like making things now seem less attractive. So the very fabric of life itself has
now become an endless series of financial calculations, where we are all "customers" instead
of citizens. Even the state now adopts the practices and the vocabulary of the private
sector. But there's no reason why regulated capitalism can't coexist with traditional social
patterns: it's a political choice to allow it to get its greasy fingers on some of the most
important parts of our existence and turn them into financial opportunities.
The real story here is the decline of the extended family, which only really began after
WW2. Previously (and in my experience up until at least the 1960s) different generations
would do different things: grandparents would look after children, grandparents in turn would
be looked after by younger members of the family, uncles would play football with the boys,
aunties would take groups of children to the cinema. There wasn't any other way, really, in
which the basic functions of life could be managed. Members of the family would often live
within walking or cycling distance of each other. Much of this has now been monetised for
profit, but of course only if you have the money to pay for it in the first place. We need to
remember that the "nuclear family" is a very recent development and frankly, only works if
you can somehow buy in the services the extended family used to provide (and people resent
having to do that). And as much as anything else the rise of the nuclear family is the result
of the financialisation of housing, and the destruction of public housing stocks, which
together with the parallel destruction of traditional forms of community employment have
frequently led to families being scattered all over the country, anywhere they can find jobs
and accommodation.
I don't think globalisation has much to do with this, except as an alibi for the
destruction of communities. And I do think it is relatively new, except in the sense that
capitalism has always destroyed everything it touches. For example, clothing was often made
within the family because ready to wear clothing didn't really arrive for ordinary people
until about a century ago. Even then, unless you were wealthy, clothes would be altered to
fit younger children, or modified to suit the latest fashions for adults. Likewise, well
after WW2, many families grew vegetables in their back garden; and cars, washing machines and
even valve radios could be repaired at home if you were reasonably handy.
Its an interesting feature of Asian capitalism in that its been able to 'free ride' on
tight family bonds – extended families have allowed it to avoid the need to provide the
sort of social safety net that even capitalists acknowledged was necessary in Europe to
prevent social unrest (hence Christian Democracy). As Asian countries follow the west in
gradually loosening family bonds (especially in China, where they seem far more delicate than
in Japan/South Korea), etc, I'm curious to see how they'll deal with it.
"(especially in China, where they seem far more delicate than in Japan/South Korea)"
I confess to not knowing as much about China as I should, or at least, not knowing much
about family life there. Why do you suggest the bonds there are weaker? Some sort of systemic
issue?
"There?" Experience as a child in San Francisco witnessing classmates first of generation
Chinese immigrant parents reflects the strength of patience and delayed gratification. Fifty
pound three dollars sack of white rice per month, handful of wilted vegetables bought for
pennies. Meat as a condiment, if at all, working jobs as waiters, busboys, or the real plum,
boring job as warehouseman for government, the entire family living in one basement
apartment. Clothing handed down, no car, nothing new bought. Social services and Great
Society welfare provided by race or language based non-profits, or government, taken full
advantage of for older parents with no reported income.
People from same village in China, possibly related, often not, pool their money, get down
payment on apartment house, entire family moves into bigger apartment, basement rented to
other newly arrived immigrants.
Meanwhile, affluent fourth generation American kids get high and do their own thing,
pursuing a music or art career.
Fast forward fifty years. 70%+ percent of property in city owned by Chinese surnamed
people. Children of original family now sitting on tens of millions of dollars of apartments,
collecting huge rents out of starry eyed techbros and 'bras from Kansas.
Artists and musicians living in cars, if lucky enough to have one, or in a tent on the
street.
Real fundamental reason for the stunning rise of Asia: their values. Hard work, savings,
family, education, and current pleasures foregone in favor of future gains.
The U.S. had a really cushy time, protected by two oceans, with highly navigable rivers,
lots of arable land in a temperate climate zone, and legal structures in place that fostered
industrialization. That enabled us to win WW II and then write the rules afterwards:
everybody else had to work hard, earn a profit, then buy dollars before they could then buy a
barrel of oil. Whereas we could just print oil. Such a tailwind! Kept us ahead for decades.
But alas all good things must end.
'Hard work, savings, family, education, and current pleasures foregone in favor of future
gains.'
Yep, they use to be western values which you could find in the UK, the US, Australia, etc.
In a mostly free economy they were winning values and helped people work their way up the
social ladder.
In the rigged economy that we have these days, they do not work so well so a lot of people
have given up on them. Of course if the economy goes south in a big way, they may once again
become good traits to practice.
400,000 GM-made trucks didn't hurt. A massive and inhospitable, marshy terrain. A
willingness to apply human cannon fodder. A military philosophy that said "quantity has a
quality all its own". Willingness to scorch earth. Willingness to move more than 100,000
factories past the Urals. Dogged courage of the people.
In my experience China has become a much more atomised society since it embarked on its
great experiment with high growth capitalism – exacerbated by the one child policy. Its
a very difficult thing to measure I think, but while there certainly are very tight Chinese
families, I think there are a lot of individual Chinese cast adrift in those huge cities
without the cultural adaption to individualism which is normal in the west.
This system is breaking quickly in Korea. The burden of caring for elders falls on the
oldest son, and there's a lot of chafing at these responsibilities, especially now that women
are equally represented in Korean academic and office spaces. Throw in the increasing age of
marriage and childbearing and you get people aging faster than their offspring can build up a
nest egg.
It's quite common to see elderly people doing bottom-of-the-barrel manual labor to survive
in Seoul. In my neighborhood, an old couple living next door worked from sun-up to sun-down
collecting cardboard with their moped-pulled cart. Collecting trash for recyling is almost
entirely the domain of the over-50 set. Others sell vegetables on sidewalks, and some resort
to Korea's various forms of sex work (I say only half-jokingly that prostitution is the
bedrock of Korea's economy)
I came across this recently, sorry if it was via NC! I found it very interesting, and it's
pertnent to this family stuff.
Western Individualism Arose from Incest Taboo – Researchers link a Catholic Church ban
on cousins marrying in the Middle Ages to the emergence of a way of life that made the West
an outlier https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/western-individualism-arose-from-incest-taboo/
the church's obsession with incest and its determination to wipe out the marriages
between cousins that those societies were built on. The result, the paper says, was the rise
of "small, nuclear households, weak family ties, and residential mobility," along with less
conformity, more individuality, and, ultimately, a set of values and a psychological outlook
that characterize the Western world. The impact of this change was clear: the longer a
society's exposure to the church, the greater the effect.
The West itself is not uniform in kinship intensity. Working with cousin-marriage data from
92 provinces in Italy (derived from church records of requests for dispensations to allow the
marriages), the researchers write, they found that "Italians from provinces with higher rates
of cousin marriage take more loans from family and friends (instead of from banks), use fewer
checks (preferring cash), and keep more of their wealth in cash instead of in banks, stocks,
or other financial assets." They were also observed to make fewer voluntary, unpaid blood
donations.
The Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies of Western
Europe and what the authors call "their cultural descendants in North America and Australia"
have long been recognized as outliers among the world's populations for their independence of
thought and other traits, such as a willingness to trust strangers.
(- I'm definitely not sure about that very last bit!)
Contrast with this:
"When brothers dwell together and one of them dies and leaves no son, the wife of the
deceased shall not be married to a stranger, outside the family. Her husband's brother shall
unite with her: he shall take her as his wife and perform the levir's duty. The first son
that she bears shall be accounted to the dead brother.."
Keeping it in the family. Bet that led to a lot of fratricides
Multiple Husbands | National Geographic (the husbands are brothers) https://youtu.be/d4yjrDSvze0
4 minutes – fascinating. A viable birth rate control.
I've also heard of other groups where women marry brothers in regions where the men go off
tending sheep and yaks etc for extended periods.
Polyandry is usually practice in places where it is **very** difficult to make a living;
having multiple brothers marry one woman was sometimes the only to get the resources to have
children. Otherwise, no children for anyone.
I know of two cases where the husband died and the wife married the brother very quickly:
one of these cases was my maternal grandmother, who had children already, and needed the
support. This situation only seems unusual in the modern American cultural bubble.
I'd say the real crisis of capitalism, or the world economic system, isn't the rise of
inequality or the commodification of life (didn't Marx claim that capitalism tears up all
pre-existing social relations?).
It's the climate emergency and environmental collapse, undermining the foundations on which
the entire world economy rests. Without a planet to support us, we can't do much except die,
and the economy is, in a way, the sum of what we do. Death of us, or at any rate our
civilisation, means death of the economy.
My thoughts too, there are several crises converging.
One is what Milanovic is onto, which I would name the commodification of cultural
reproduction, which won't end well, on top of the exhaustion of fossil fuels based
industrialization cubed by climate change.
It's easy to get preoccupied by one, another or the other, but in the end they are all an
integrated reaction to humanity letting it's collective Ego remake the world according to the
dictates of its' collective Id. But we do now have the collective knowledge and wisdom to
confront this reality through a communicative infrastructure finally broad enough to address
the scope of the challenge, if we can act quickly enough.
Ugh, another amp-infested link, this one sneaky, rather than a readily-visible trailing
/amp, we have 'amp' sneaked in in place of the usual 'www' at start of the URL. Thanks, evil
f*ckers at Google! Here is the original uncorrupted link the Guardian article:
That clip of AOC is amazing. She's got a serious talent in public speaking and not just
sounding good. She shows an ability to communicate important ideas and concepts that can
change minds.
It's been very visible at her events for bernie, too.
Maybe young and inexperienced in some cases.
Maybe pushed to go along in some cases in order to get a few crumbs from pelosi AOC base in
congress remains small.
A little like complaints of Bernie maybe he's picking his fights, and maybe he's not perfect.
But they're both way better than a lesser evil, and who else?
She demonstrates her ignorance and political extremism yet again.
From the abstract of "
The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital ," Costanza et al., 1996
– a paper which I've heard sort of started the field of ecological economics: For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to
be in the range of US$16–54 trillion per year, with an average of US$33 trillion per
year.
Thus we humans, being a part of the biosphere, are collectively worth less than
US$16–54 trillion per year. And Costanza's a professor and vice chancellor, with a PhD.
AOC's got a measly BA, so what does she know about the value of life?
xkeys: You forget the /s sign? What has a "measly BA" got to do with not "know(ing) about
the value of life?" Having a PhD does not necessarily mean a person knows more than a
non-PhD.
I would rather hear about AOC's "ignorance and political extremism" than your take on this
or any subject.
I had been wondering what this /s thing was, but I probably wouldn't have used it if I'd
known. It seemed unnecessary.
Sorry if you took me seriously. I think she not only understands, but promotes the value of
life. Unlike so many critters. It's great she's in there doing what she does. We need more
like her – lots more, fast.
(I would like to hear from NC commenters if I've misunderstood Costanza. Does the paper
really claim that humanity is worth less than $X trillion/year, as the abstract appears to
imply? I've skimmed it for any unusual definitions of biosphere, but noticed none.)
Don't feel bad, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to tell when people are being sarcastic on the
internet because there are no verbal or gesticular cues to it the way there is in person to
person contact. Thats why we use the /sarc tag to indicate sarcasm, because otherwise people
may take the comment at face value. Its not required, of course, but not using it runs the
risk of people taking the comment at face value, which is very easy to do because text
doesn't convey context the way speech does.
Yes, I'm going to use it in future!
I thought "a measly BA" would give the game away, but as you say, it's hard to tell on the
net. It so happens I'm no respecter at all of academic qualifications in and of themselves.
I've known too many idiots with degrees spouting patent nonsense for that. Eg most economists
(NC's economists definitely excepted!)? And vice-versa.
It doesn't have to be Yves, Lambert or an economist. Just someone whose read enough of
this stuff to have a handle on it. I just think it sounds utterly preposterous.
It makes some sort of sense to say that destroying 1% of the biosphere will result in $X/year
loss. Could be a way of evaluating our options, for example.
That does not mean destroying 10% will result in $10 times X/year economic loss; probably
more like $100 times X, whichever way you measure it.
Long before 90%, the only living things left would probably be the deep subterranean bacteria
and archaea, which are relatively insulated from whatever we do to the air, land and oceans.
I doubt if they'd have much room in their economy for dollars or GDP.
At 100% biosphere destruction, the earth is a lifeless planet by definition. Surely the real
cost is infinite? And what conceivable meaning would a financial cost, price or value have by
that stage?
Any offers?
Aaron is no longer with DemocracyNow. He now has a show "PushBack" on The Gray Zone.
https://thegrayzone.com/pushback/ He also disagreed
with DN about their coverage of the RussiaRussiaRussia hoax. IMHO I think DN just wants to be
more about nostalgic and being more mainstream. I no longer rely on it for my news daily.
By "Aaron on DN" I meant, Aaron on the subject of DN.
I know this has the potential to be ageist, but I can't help wondering if this is yet
another case of individuals and entire organizations "evolving" over time in a more
conservative direction based on whatever pressures. The fact that The Intercept has totally
eclipsed them, and in fact the entire left media, when it comes to major stories, should be a
wakeup.
To add to that, I'd also recommend Taibbi and Katie Halper's new podcost "Useful Idiots".
They've had some good guests so far, and lead the show off with some light-hearted
commentary, but from a perspective outside of the acceptable range in most media.
I think Krystal and Saagar are doing the best political commentary anywhere. Her post
yesterday about the long knives coming for Bernie from the Obama and Hilary camps is just
stellar stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfRT7rs2Ea4
I think that you may have a point. If I just followed the main news outlets, I would have
a totally distorted view of what was going on in the world and being led to support causes
that by rights I should be totally against. I too listen to NC, Jimmy Dore, Krystal &
Saager, Katie Halper, Aaron Maté, Caitlin Johnstone and a bunch of others – all
of them prophets without honour.
"... I'm a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but -- at the risk of sounding grandiose -- I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement; it presupposes that we have overcome the exigencies of brute survival. Yet here in the United States, the wealthiest country in history, we seem to have forgotten the importance of doing things solely because we enjoy them. ..."
"... But there's a deeper reason, I've come to think, that so many people don't have hobbies: We're afraid of being bad at them. Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation -- itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age -- that we must actually be skilled at what we do in our free time. Our "hobbies," if that's even the word for them anymore, have become too serious, too demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be. ..."
"... If you're a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you're training for the next marathon. If you're a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby -- you're a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber -- you'd better be good at it, or else who are you? ..."
"... Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it. Hobbies, let me remind you, are supposed to be something different from work. But alien values like "the pursuit of excellence" have crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur. The population of our country now seems divided between the semipro hobbyists (some as devoted as Olympic athletes) and those who retreat into the passive, screeny leisure that is the signature of our technological moment. ..."
"... Liberty and equality are supposed to make possible the pursuit of happiness. It would be unfortunate if we were to protect the means only to neglect the end. ..."
"... Lest this sound suspiciously like an elaborate plea for people to take more time off from work -- well, yes. Though I'd like to put the suggestion more grandly: The promise of our civilization, the point of all our labor and technological progress, is to free us from the struggle for survival and to make room for higher pursuits. ..."
I'm a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but -- at the risk of sounding
grandiose -- I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement; it presupposes
that we have overcome the exigencies of brute survival. Yet here in the United States, the wealthiest country in history, we seem
to have forgotten the importance of doing things solely because we enjoy them.
Yes, I know: We are all so very busy. Between work and family and social obligations, where are we supposed to find the time?
But there's a deeper reason, I've come to think, that so many people don't have hobbies: We're afraid of being bad at them.
Or rather, we are intimidated by the expectation -- itself a hallmark of our intensely public, performative age -- that we must actually
be skilled at what we do in our free time. Our "hobbies," if that's even the word for them anymore, have become too serious, too
demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be.
If you're a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you're training for the next marathon. If you're a
painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land
a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following. When your identity is linked to your hobby -- you're a yogi,
a surfer, a rock climber -- you'd better be good at it, or else who are you?
Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you
are good at it. Hobbies, let me remind you, are supposed to be something different from work. But alien values like "the pursuit
of excellence" have crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur. The population
of our country now seems divided between the semipro hobbyists (some as devoted as Olympic athletes) and those who retreat into the
passive, screeny leisure that is the signature of our technological moment.
I don't deny that you can derive a lot of meaning from pursuing an activity at the highest level. I would never begrudge someone
a lifetime devotion to a passion or an inborn talent. There are depths of experience that come with mastery. But there is also a
real and pure joy, a sweet, childlike delight, that comes from just learning and trying to get better. Looking back, you will find
that the best years of, say, scuba-diving or doing carpentry were those you spent on the learning curve, when there was exaltation
in the mere act of doing.
In a way that we rarely appreciate, the demands of excellence are at war with what we call freedom. For to permit yourself to
do only that which you are good at is to be trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment. Especially when it comes
to physical pursuits, but also with many other endeavors, most of us will be truly excellent only at whatever we started doing in
our teens. What if you decide in your 40s, as I have, that you want to learn to surf? What if you decide in your 60s that you want
to learn to speak Italian? The expectation of excellence can be stultifying.
Liberty and equality are supposed to make possible the pursuit of happiness. It would be unfortunate if we were to protect the
means only to neglect the end. A democracy, when it is working correctly, allows men and women to develop into free people; but it
falls to us as individuals to use that opportunity to find purpose, joy and contentment.
Lest this sound suspiciously like an elaborate plea for people to take more time off from work -- well, yes. Though I'd like to
put the suggestion more grandly: The promise of our civilization, the point of all our labor and technological progress, is to free
us from the struggle for survival and to make room for higher pursuits. But demanding excellence in all that we do can undermine
that; it can threaten and even destroy freedom. It steals from us one of life's greatest rewards -- the simple pleasure of doing
something you merely, but truly, enjoy.
Tim Wu ( @superwuster ) is a law professor at Columbia, the author
of "The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads" and a contributing opinion writer. A version of this article
appears in print on Sept. 30, 2018 , on Page SR 6 of the New York edition with the headline: In Praise of Mediocrity.
"... Both neoliberal-driven governments and authoritarian societies share one important factor: They care more about consolidating power in the hands of the political, corporate and financial elite than they do about investing in the future of young people and expanding the benefits of the social contract and common good. ..."
"... Michael Yates (economist) points out throughout his book 'The Great Inequality', capitalism is devoid of any sense of social responsibility and is driven by an unchecked desire to accumulate capital at all costs. As power becomes global and politics remains local, ruling elites no longer make political concessions to workers or any other group that they either exploit or consider disposable. ..."
"... At bottom, neoliberals believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology which all boils down to the cheap labor they depend on to make their fortunes. ..."
"... The ugly truth is that cheap-labour conservatives just don't like working people. They don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. "Corporate lords" have a harder time kicking them around. ..."
Both neoliberal-driven governments and authoritarian societies share one important factor:
They care more about consolidating power in the hands of the political, corporate and
financial elite than they do about investing in the future of young people and expanding the
benefits of the social contract and common good.
Michael Yates (economist) points out throughout his book 'The Great Inequality', capitalism
is devoid of any sense of social responsibility and is driven by an unchecked desire to
accumulate capital at all costs. As power becomes global and politics remains local, ruling
elites no longer make political concessions to workers or any other group that they either
exploit or consider disposable.
At bottom, neoliberals believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots". They have
taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology
which all boils down to the cheap labor they depend on to make their fortunes.
The ugly truth is that cheap-labour conservatives just don't like working people. They
don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. "Corporate lords"
have a harder time kicking them around.
Once you understand this about the cheap-labor
conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense. Remember,
cheap-labour conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity
they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits those who
work for an hourly wage.
You also need to remember that voting the coalition out, which you need to do, will not
necessarily give you a neoliberal free zone; Labor needs to shed some the dogma as well.
The issue of Millennial 'burnout' has been an especially hot topic in recent years - and not
just because the election of President Trump ushered in an epidemic of co-occurring TDS (Trump
Derangement Syndrome) that sent millions of American twenty somethings on a never-ending quest
for a post-grad 'safe space'.
For those who aren't familiar with the subject, the World Health Organization recently
described burnout as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that
has not been successfully managed." As birth rates plunge and so-called deaths from despair
(suicides and overdoses) climb, sending the US left expectancy lower for multiple consecutive
years for the first time since the 1960s, many researchers see solving the problem of burnout
as critical to fixing many of our societal issues.
To try and dig deeper into the causes and impact of millennial burnout, Yellowbrick
, a national psychiatric organization, surveyed 2,000 millennials to identify what exactly is
making a staggering 96% of the generation comprising the largest cohort of the American labor
force say they feel "burned out" on a daily basis.
The answer is, unsurprisingly, finances and debt: These are
the leading causes of burnout (and one reason why Bernie Sanders latest proposal to wipe
out all $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt might be more popular with millennial voters
than many other Americans realize).
At 6% interest with a 6-year amortization, that works out to monthly payments of $497 --
about what many of these folks spend on eating at restaurants or on tattoos or on drugs per
month.
It's a matter or priority -- and repaying the student loans isn't a priority for them
which is why a report in '17 showed that at 7 years after graduation, more than 45% of them
hadn't paid even one dollar of principle on their student loans.
This is becoming exhausting. The boomers and the like simply don't want to admit that it
is much harder today making ends meet than it was when they were younger. That is a fact,
inflation and asset inflation has made the value of a dollar half of what is was 40 years
ago. Meaning, you would have to work 80 hours in today's money to match 40 hours in money
from the late 70's. Now, millenials don't get off easy either because they think they deserve
that same standard and since it does not and cannot exist in our monetary system, they try to
usurp personal responsibility, at any level, by finger pointing and apathy. Our society is
slowly collapsing.
You can imagine them rubbing their hands with glee as they quote statistics such as: the 53
metropolitan areas in the U.S. with populations of 1 million or more accounted for two-thirds of
the GDP growth and three-quarters of the job growth. A staggering 93% of the population growth in
the U.S. in the past decade occurred in these urban centers.
And this asymmetry is even greater
if we separate the top 10 metropolitan areas from the rest: super-cities with super-charged
economies, fueled by enormous influxes of capital and people, which just so happen to make life
unbearable as overcrowded, aging infrastructure breaks down and costs for housing, rent, taxes,
utilities, fees etc. skyrocket out of reach of the bottom 95%.
The well-paid pundits viewing glowing statistics of growth never get around to examining
the human costs of this lopsided "recovery":
the "winners" in increasingly unlivable urban
centers are cracking under the pressure-cooker stress, burning out, flaming out, crashing.
The residents of all the regions sucked dry of capital and talent--the "losers" of neoliberal
globalization's concentrations of mobile capital and talent in a few favored megalopolises--are
also cracking under the weight of a loss of dignity and secure livelihood, the two being intimately
bound, much to the dismay of the supporters of "just pay them to go away and not bother us"
Universal Basic Income (UBI).
In other words, the "winners" are losing, too.
They're losing their sanity in
3-hour daily commutes on jammed freeways and equally jammed streets as thousands of other commuters
seek a work-around to the endless congestion.
They're losing their dreams of a better life, as all the average-wage worker can afford to rent
is a bed in a cramped living room that has been converted into sleeping quarters for two workers
who don't make six-figure salaries and who don't have stock options in a Unicorn tech company.
They're fixated on FIRE--financial independence, retire early--because they hate their job,
their career and the sector they toil in, and they count the days until they're free, free, free of
the pressure, the stress, the BS work, and the insanity of daily life in a teeming rat-cage.
No wonder the FIRE movement is spreading like (ahem) wildfire. Nobody in their right mind wants
to do their job for another 10 years, much less 20 or 25 years. Everybody is bailing out the moment
they can, or if they burn out and crash, when they're forced to.
Let's say you want to start a business in a super-progressive city that fulfills all
your most cherished ideals:
paying your employees good wages, providing customers with
value, and paying all your taxes and fees, of course, as a responsible progressive citizen.
Where do we start? How about the reality that virtually no one employed in the restaurant sector
can afford to live in San Francisco unless they inherited a rent-controlled flat or scored one of
the few subsidized housing openings?
The city's solution--mandating a $15/hour minimum wage--doesn't magically make healthcare or
rent affordable; all it does is increase the burden on small businesses that are hanging on by a
thread.
Working 100 hours a week couldn't compensate for the crushing rent.
Even the well-paid are burning out.
Astronomical household incomes (say,
$300,000 annually) aren't enough to buy a decayed bungalow for $1.3 million and pay for childcare,
private-school tuition, healthcare, an aging parent and all the services the overworked
wage-earners don't have the time or energy to do themselves. Oh, and don't forget the taxes. You're
rich, people, so pay up.
No wonder people who can afford to retire are bailing at 55 or 60, on the first day they
qualify. Life's too short to put up with the insane pressure and stress a day longer than you have
to.
Not everybody feels it, of course.
People who bought their modest house for
$100,000 30 years ago can hug themselves silly that it's now worth $1,000,000 (but with a
still-modest property tax), and if they're retired with a plump pension and gold-plated medical
benefits, their biggest concern is finding ways to blow all the cash that's piling up.
These lucky retirees wonder what all the fuss is about. "We worked hard for what we have," etc.
It's easy to overlook being a lucky winner of the housing-bubble lottery and the equally
bubblicious pension lottery, and easy not to ask yourself how you'd manage if you arrived in NYC,
San Francisco, et al. now rather than 35 years ago.
The asymmetries are piling up and we're cracking under the weight.
When do we
recover from the "recovery"? The answer appears to be "never."
"To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond
whether it's useful," says Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, a neuroeconomist. "And just as our brains
like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but
may not be useful -- what some may call idle curiosity."
The paper, "Common neural code for
reward and information value," was published this month by the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. Authored by Hsu and graduate student Kenji Kobayashi, now a post-doctoral
researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, it demonstrates that the
brain converts information into the same common scale as it does for money .
It also lays
the groundwork for unraveling the neuroscience behind how we consume information -- and perhaps
even digital addiction.
This explains Wikipedia. You start by looking up "just one article." After that hit, you
click on a link to one more. And then another and another. Before you know it, ten hours have
passed and you're sprawled out half-reading an article about cat foot fungus. You realize you
should stop, but there's a link there about nails and your hand goes to click it without you
telling it to.
"... A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every 12 minutes . What's more, after decades of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do homicides , even though the murder rate gets so much more attention. ..."
"... In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%). ..."
"... Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Globally , it ranks 27th. ..."
"... The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all such acts in this country. ..."
"... Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among people in higher-income brackets. ..."
"... Evidence from the United States , Brazil , Japan , and Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. ..."
"... One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly higher . ..."
"... The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have labeled " deaths of despair " -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter. ..."
"... Trump has neglected his base on pretty much every issue; this one's no exception. ..."
Yves here. This post describes how the forces driving the US suicide surge started well before the Trump era, but explains how
Trump has not only refused to acknowledge the problem, but has made matters worse.
However, it's not as if the Democrats are embracing this issue either.
BY Rajan Menon, the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New
York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention
Originally published at
TomDispatch .
We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like
Anthony Bourdain and
Kate Spade die by their own hand.
Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That's odd given the magnitude of the problem.
In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves.
In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly
seven times greater than the number
of American soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.
A suicide occurs in the United States roughly once every
12 minutes . What's more, after decades
of decline, the rate of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has been increasing sharply since
the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half times as many lives in this country as do
homicides , even
though the murder rate gets so much more attention.
In other words, we're talking about a national
epidemic of self-inflicted
deaths.
Worrisome Numbers
Anyone who has lost a close relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have) knows that statistics
transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the mysterious aspects of that violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why in
this manner? -- into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.
According to a 2018 Centers for Disease Control study , between
1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high rate. In
30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third. Nationally, it increased
33% . In some states the upsurge was far
higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).
Alas, the news only gets grimmer.
Since 2008 , suicide has ranked 10th
among the causes of death in this country. For Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those between
35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest
rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Globally , it ranks 27th.
More importantly, the trend in the United States doesn't align with what's happening elsewhere in the developed world. The World
Health Organization, for instance, reports
that Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the U.S.,
as do all but
six countries in the European Union. (Japan's is only slightly lower.)
World Bank statistics show that, worldwide,
the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016. It's been falling in
China ,
Japan
(where it has declined steadily for nearly a
decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most of Europe, and even countries like
South Korea and
Russia that
have a significantly higher suicide rate than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26% from a
high point of 42 per 100,000 in
1994 to 31 in 2019.
We know a fair amount about the patterns
of suicide in the United States. In 2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per 100,000) and those 75
and older (39.7 per 100,000).
The rates in rural counties are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like Idaho, Kansas, New
Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list. Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own
guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a
higher rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half
of all such acts in this country.
There are gender-based differences as well.
From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of
those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.
Education is also a factor. The suicide rate is
lowest among individuals with college degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as likely to kill
themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower
among people in higher-income brackets.
The Economics of Stress
This surge in the suicide rate has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater economic hardship
and psychological stress. Increased competition from abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job
loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining that had long been mainstays of employment for such
workers. The jobs still available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.
Technological change, including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence, has similarly begun to displace
labor in significant ways, leaving Americans without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in
far more difficult straits when it comes to
finding new jobs that pay
well. The lack of anything resembling an
industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe
has made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp decline in private-sector union membership
-- down
from nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.
Furthermore, the inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged
over the last four decades (even as
CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in worker productivity doesn't explain it: between 1973 and 2017 productivity
increased by 77%, while a worker's average hourly wage only
rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it
harder for working-class
Americans to get by, let alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.
The gap in earnings between those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot. Since 1979, the
wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by a pitiful
1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of 6%. By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by
34.3% and those near the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the rarefied 0.1% -- made far more
substantial
gains.
And mind you, we're just talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends, expensive homes, or eyepopping
inheritances. The share of net national wealth held by the richest 0.1%
increased from 10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016.
By contrast, the share of the bottom 90% shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for the top 1%, by 2016 its share
had increased to almost 39% .
The precise relationship between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide certainly can't simply be
reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress. Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are noticeably
lower and have been declining in
Western
European countries where income inequalities are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not
demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive, and
apprenticeships and worker
retraining programs more widespread.
Evidence from the United States
, Brazil ,
Japan , and
Sweden does indicate that, as income inequality increases,
so does the suicide rate. If so, the good news is that progressive economic policies -- should Democrats ever retake the White
House and the Senate -- could make a positive difference. A study
based on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10%
appreciably reduces the suicide rate among people without college degrees.
The Race Enigma
One aspect of the suicide epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically (and in many other ways)
than African Americans, their suicide rate is significantly
higher . It increased from 11.3 per 100,000
in 2000 to 15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were 5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000.
Black men are
10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.
The higher suicide rate among whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights suicide's disproportionate
effect on working-class whites. This segment of the population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne
Case and Angus Deaton have labeled "
deaths of despair
" -- those caused by suicides plus
opioid overdoses
and liver diseases linked to alcohol abuse. Though it's hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic hardship and
its ripple effects do appear to matter.
According to a study by the
St. Louis Federal Reserve , the white working class accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but
only 27% in 2016. In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted, from 45% to 22%. And as inflation-adjusted wages have
decreased for
men without college degrees, many white workers seem to have
lost hope of success of
any sort. Paradoxically, the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white workers precisely because they
traditionally were much
better off economically than their African American and Hispanic counterparts.
In addition, the fraying of communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has increased
social isolation
among them, and the evidence that it -- along with
opioid addiction and
alcohol abuse -- increases the risk of suicide
is strong . On top of that,
a significantly higher proportion of
whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun
ownership is more widespread.
Trump's Faux Populism
The large increase in suicide within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump's election. Still,
it's reasonable to ask what he's tried to do about it, particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White
House. In 2016, he received
64% of the votes of whites without college degrees; Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in
counties where deaths of despair rose significantly between 2000 and 2015.
White workers will remain crucial to Trump's chances of winning in 2020. Yet while he has spoken about, and initiated steps aimed
at reducing, the high suicide rate among
veterans , his speeches and tweets have never highlighted the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers.
More importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high suicide rate, his policies will only make matters
worse.
The real benefits from the December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and congressional Republicans flowed
to those on the top steps of the economic ladder. By 2027, when the Act's provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans are expected
to have captured
81.8% of the gains. And that's not counting the windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and
the GOP
doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes -- wealth bequeathed to heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual
to $11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this act of generosity? Not workers, that's for sure,
but every household with an estate worth $22 million or more will.
As for job retraining provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president
proposed
cutting that program by 40% in his 2019 budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the cards as
long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget Office
projects that his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget
deficits in the years to come. (The shortfall last year was
$779 billion and it is expected to
reach $1 trillion by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then demand additional reductions in spending
for social programs.
This is all the more likely because Trump and those Republicans also
slashed corporate taxes
from 35% to 21% -- an estimated
$1.4
trillion in savings for corporations over the next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has
no end
date . The president assured his base that the big bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce
a wave of job creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens, however, most of that repatriated cash has been used
for corporate stock buy-backs, which totaled more than
$800 billion last year. That, in turn, boosted share prices, but didn't exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of course,
since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least
84% of all stocks and the bottom
60% have less than
2% of them.
And the president's corporate tax cut hasn't produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted either. Indeed, in
its aftermath, more than 80% of American
companies stated that their plans for investment and hiring hadn't changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs has proven
unremarkable compared to President Obama's
second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow
2.3%
in 2017 and
2.9% in 2018 (though not
3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn't, however, any "unprecedented economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before"
as he insisted in this year's State of the Union
Address .
Anyway, what matters for workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there's nothing to celebrate on that front:
between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually
declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And though
Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers, they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the
working class and other low-income Americans
the most .
Then there are the obstacles those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health care. If you're a
white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low,
is too high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven't done anything for you. Never mind the president's
tweet proclaiming that "the Republican Party Will Become 'The Party of Healthcare!'"
Let me amend that: actually, they have done something. It's just not what you'd call helpful. The
percentage of uninsured
adults, which fell from 18% in 2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to
Obamacare , had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.
The bottom line? On a problem that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his base, Trump has been
AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are
only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic proportions.
Trump is running on the claim that he's turned the economy around; addressing suicide undermines this (false) claim. To state
the obvious, NC readers know that Trump is incapable of caring about anyone or anything beyond his in-the-moment interpretation
of his self-interest.
Not just Trump. Most of the Republican Party and much too many Democrats have also abandoned this base, otherwise known as
working class Americans.
The economic facts are near staggering and this article has done a nice job of summarizing these numbers that are spread out
across a lot of different sites.
I've experienced this rise within my own family and probably because of that fact I'm well aware that Trump is only a symptom
of an entire political system that has all but abandoned it's core constituency, the American Working Class.
Yep It's not just Trump. The author mentions this, but still focuses on him for some reason. Maybe accurately attributing the
problems to a failed system makes people feel more hopeless. Current nihilists in Congress make it their duty to destroy once
helpful institutions in the name of "fiscal responsibility," i.e., tax cuts for corporate elites.
I'd assumed, the "working class" had dissappeared, back during Reagan's Miracle? We'd still see each other, sitting dazed on
porches & stoops of rented old places they'd previously; trying to garden, fix their car while smoking, drinking or dazed on something?
Those able to morph into "middle class" lives, might've earned substantially less, especially benefits and retirement package
wise. But, a couple decades later, it was their turn, as machines and foreigners improved productivity. You could lease a truck
to haul imported stuff your kids could sell to each other, or help robots in some warehouse, but those 80s burger flipping, rent-a-cop
& repo-man gigs dried up. Your middle class pals unemployable, everybody in PayDay Loan debt (without any pay day in sight?) SHTF
Bug-out bags® & EZ Credit Bushmasters began showing up at yard sales, even up North. Opioids became the religion of the proletariat
Whites simply had much farther to fall, more equity for our betters to steal. And it was damned near impossible to get the cops
to shoot you?
Man, this just ain't turning out as I'd hoped. Need coffee!
We especially love the euphemism "Deaths O' Despair." since it works so well on a Chyron, especially supered over obese crackers
waddling in crusty MossyOak™ Snuggies®
This is a very good article, but I have a comment about the section titled, "The Race Enigma." I think the key to understanding
why African Americans have a lower suicide rate lies in understanding the sociological notion of community, and the related concept
Emil Durkheim called social solidarity. This sense of solidarity and community among African Americans stands in contrast to the
"There is no such thing as society" neoliberal zeitgeist that in fact produces feelings of extreme isolation, failure, and self-recriminations.
An aside: as a white boy growing up in 1950s-60s Detroit I learned that if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had
to do was to hang out with black people.
" if you yearned for solidarity and community what you had to do was to hang out with black people."
amen, to that. in my case rural black people.
and I'll add Hispanics to that.
My wife's extended Familia is so very different from mine.
Solidarity/Belonging is cool.
I recommend it.
on the article we keep the scanner on("local news").we had a 3-4 year rash of suicides and attempted suicides(determined by chisme,
or deduction) out here.
all of them were despair related more than half correlated with meth addiction itself a despair related thing.
ours were equally male/female, and across both our color spectrum.
that leaves economics/opportunity/just being able to get by as the likely cause.
Actually, in the article it states:
"There are gender-based differences as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for women -- almost
four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years, slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last."
which in some sense makes despair the wrong word, as females are actually quite a bit more likely to be depressed for instance,
but much less likely to "do the deed". Despair if we mean a certain social context maybe, but not just a psychological state.
Suicide deaths are a function of the suicide attempt rate and the efficacy of the method used. A unique aspect of the US is
the prevalence of guns in the society and therefore the greatly increased usage of them in suicide attempts compared to other
countries. Guns are a very efficient way of committing suicide with a very high "success" rate. As of 2010, half of US suicides
were using a gun as opposed to other countries with much lower percentages. So if the US comes even close to other countries in
suicide rates then the US will surpass them in deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods#Firearms
Now we can add in opiates, especially fentanyl, that can be quite effective as well.
The economic crisis hitting middle America over the past 30 years has been quite focused on the states and populations that
also tend to have high gun ownership rates. So suicide attempts in those populations have a high probability of "success".
I would just take this opportunity to add that the police end up getting called in to prevent on lot of suicide attempts, and
just about every successful one.
In the face of so much blanket demonization of the police, along with justified criticism, it's important to remember that.
As someone who works in the mental health treatment system, acute inpatient psychiatry to be specific, I can say that of the
25 inpatients currently here, 11 have been here before, multiple times. And this is because of several issues, in my experience:
inadequate inpatient resources, staff burnout, inadequate support once they leave the hospital, and the nature of their illnesses.
It's a grim picture here and it's been this way for YEARS. Until MAJOR money is spent on this issue it's not going to get better.
This includes opening more facilities for people to live in long term, instead of closing them, which has been the trend I've
seen.
One last thing the CEO wants "asses in beds", aka census, which is the money maker. There's less profit if people get better
and don't return. And I guess I wouldn't have a job either. Hmmmm: sickness generates wealth.
The economic and financial stresses will exceed the workforce's carrying capacity in the next recession.
A number of recent surveys reflect a widespread sense of financial stress and symptoms of poor health in America's workers,
particularly the younger generations. There's no real mystery as to the cause of this economic anxiety:
competition for secure, well-paid jobs that were once considered the birthright of the middle class is increasingly fierce;
the pay and predictability of the jobs that are available are low;
high-paying jobs are extraordinarily demanding, forcing workers to sacrifice everything else to keep the big-bucks position;
the much-lauded gig economy is tracking the Pareto Distribution, as 80% of the income accrues to the top 20%, and those trying
to earn a lower-middle class income in the gig economy are working long hours to do so;
housing costs are unaffordable in hot job markets;
commutes to jobs from lower-cost areas are brutal;
student loan debt taken on to earn low-value diplomas is crushing.
These are just the highlights, not an exhaustive list of the common stresses experienced by American workers of all ages.
The inevitable result of these pressures over time is burnout , which anecdotally is reaching epidemic proportions in the
U.S. and other nations.
While many of these stresses are unique to private-sector precariats in the gig economy or insecure positions in Corporate
America, many public-sector workers in public safety and healthcare are also prone to burnout due to increasing workloads and understaffing.
... .. ...
But why should workers tolerate high levels of chronic stress? The alternative--quitting the source of the stress and finding
a lower wage, lower pressure livelihood is an increasingly compelling alternative.
The New York Times has an
illuminating article today summarizing recent research on the gender effects of
mandatory overwork in professional jobs. Lawyers, people in finance and other
client-centered occupations are increasingly required to be available round-the-clock, with
50-60 or more hours of work per week the norm. Among other costs, the impact on wage inequality
between men and women is severe. Since women are largely saddled with primary responsibility
for child care, even when couples ostensibly embrace equality on a theoretical level, the
workaholic jobs are allocated to men. This shows up in dramatic differences between typical
male and female career paths. The article doesn't discuss comparable issues in working class
employment, but availability for last-minute changes in work schedules and similar demands are
likely to impact men and women differentially as well.
What the article doesn't point out is that the situation it describes is a classic prisoners
dilemma.* Consider law firms. They compete for clients, and clients prefer attorneys who are
available on call, always prepared and willing to adjust to whatever schedule the client throws
at them. Assume that most lawyers want sane, predictable work hours if they are offered without
a severe penalty in pay. If law firms care about the well-being of their employees but also
about profits, we have all the ingredients to construct a standard PD payoff matrix:
There is a penalty to unilateral cooperation, cutting work hours back to a work-life balance
level. If your firm does it and the others don't, you lose clients to them.
There is a benefit to unilateral defection. If everyone else is cutting hours but you don't,
you scoop up the lion's share of the clients.
Mutual cooperation is preferred to mutual defection. Law firms, we are assuming, would
prefer a world in which overwork was removed from the contest for competitive advantage. They
would compete for clients as before, but none would require their staff to put in soul-crushing
hours. The alternative equilibrium, in which competition is still on the basis of the quality
of work but everyone is on call 24/7 is inferior.
If the game is played once, mutual defection dominates. If it is played repeatedly there is
a possibility for mutual cooperation to establish itself, but only under favorable conditions
(which apparently don't exist in the world of NY law firms). The logical solution is some
form of binding regulation.
The reason for bringing this up is that it strengthens the case for collective action rather
than placing all the responsibility on individuals caught in the system, including for that
matter individual law firms. Or, the responsibility is political, to demand constraints on the
entire industry. One place to start would be something like France's
right-to-disconnect law .
*I haven't read the studies by economists and sociologists cited in the article, but I
suspect many of them make the same point I'm making here.
Well lets see. Ive been in Finance of all kinds and sales. Each day i scratch my head how
we can possibly still function as a society
and im referring to just my tiny micro life. Lets see, People who dont respond to texts or
emails, liars, angry, People who call me from out of nowhere like they are my best friend and
go on for an hour about nothing. Business owners who are inept. Con men galore, People who
are totally inept running businesses. Time wasters, losers, I could tell stories you wouldnt
believe. I just dont get it.
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services?
Notable quotes:
"... Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? ..."
"... "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." ..."
"... Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. ..."
"... The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. ..."
"... As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career". ..."
"... Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance. ..."
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? The following extracts are from
an article at the excellent Medialens
And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference...
I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services: While it might be difficult to identify precisely
the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources)
on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.
As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented:
"Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5."
Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished
journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll.
And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct
Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret
state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed
forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants.
As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of
the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood
at the end of their career".
Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent
is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.
A brief history
Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer - probably as a
cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest
Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them.
Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf
of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance.
The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the
Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body - which even Orwell aided
by sending them a list of "crypto-communists". Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it "ran" dozens of Fleet Street journalists
and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.
According to John Pilger in the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism
served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour
of the British intelligence agencies was hidden.
And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret
service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today.
In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representatives'
Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists.
And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll.
David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media
and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: "We have somebody
in every office in Fleet Street"
Leaker King
And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing
companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming "embarrassing publications".
Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, "was a longstanding agent of ours" who "made it clear
he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction".
Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet
Street journalists. Wright comments: "No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot". King was also closely
involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten.
Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according
to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper.
David Walker, the Mirror's foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security
scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament.
Maxwell and Mossad
According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners' strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the
1970s MI5's F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success.
In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6
were equally as strong.
Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that
he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks
were fascinating.
For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: "Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse
during the Cold War."
The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster
Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked
to lunch by the head of MI6. "It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted
to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms
of first-hand knowledge."
And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph
and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to
handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain.
Lawson strongly denied the allegations.
Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan
McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from "dodgy security
services". She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland
Human Rights Commission: "We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not
being used." (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)
Growing power of secret state
Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US.
But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official
Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into
the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.
Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats.
According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by
the Rockingham cell within the MoD.
A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant
attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.
Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists.
Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: "Saddam Hussein
has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of
the United Nations inspectors." The source of these "revelations" was said to be "intelligence picked up from within Iraq". Early
in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies
about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group,
the Iraqi National Congress.
Sexed up – and missed out
During the controversy that erupted following the end of the "war" and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the
ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government
(in collusion with the intelligence services) had "sexed up" a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq.
The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that
drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition?
But those facts will be forever secret.
Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists' links with the intelligence services was
ignored by the inquiry.
Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of
WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US
President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times' dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.
Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up" devised to foster the
propaganda case for war. "In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published
stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam's regime." And he concluded: "The information fog is thicker
than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures,
especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor."
Let's not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence
services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.
~
Richard Keeble's publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John
Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International
Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.
"... General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children. ..."
"... Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War". ..."
"... The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war. ..."
"... the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces. ..."
"... The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening ..."
"... In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing. ..."
"... The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. ..."
"... Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet. ..."
"... But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day. ..."
The American Public has gotten exactly what it deserved. They have been dumbed-down in our poor-by-intention school systems. The
moronic nonsense that passes for news in this country gets more sensational with each passing day. Over on Fox, they are making
the claim that ISIS fighters are bringing Ebola over the Mexican Border, which prompted a reply by the Mexican Embassy that won't
be reported on Fox.
We continue to hear and it was even reported in this very fine article by Ms. Benjamin that the American
People now support this new war. Really? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen that support anywhere but on the news and I just don't
believe it any more.
There is also the little problem of infiltration into key media slots by paid CIA Assets (Scarborough and brainless Mika are
two of these double dippers). Others are intermarried. Right-wing Neocon War Criminal Dan Senor is married to "respected" newsperson
Campbell Brown who is now involved in privatizing our school system. Victoria Nuland, the slimey State Department Official who
was overheard appointing the members of the future Ukrainian Government prior to the Maidan Coup is married to another Neo-Con--Larry
Kagan. Even sweet little Andrea Mitchell is actually Mrs. Alan Greenspan.
General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC.
MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market.
Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being
CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli
Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women
and Children.
Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is
connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option
discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to
a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior
put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War".
Yesterday there was a coordinated action by all of the networks, which was clearly designed to support the idea that the generals
want Obama to act and he just won't. The not-so-subtle message was that the generals were right and that the President's "inaction"
was somehow out of line-since, after all, the generals have recommended more war. It was as if these people don't remember that
the President, sleazy War Criminal that he is, is still the Commander in Chief.
The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our
various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that
they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war.
Finally, this Sunday every NFL Game will begin with some Patriotic "Honor America" Display, which will include a missing man
flyover, flags and fireworks, plenty of uniforms, wounded Vets and soon-to-be-wounded Vets. A giant American Flag will, once again,
cover the fields and hundreds of stupid young kids will rush down to their "Military Career Center" right after the game. These
are the ones that I pity most.
Let's be frank: powerful interests want war and subsequent puppet regimes in the half dozen nations that the neo-cons have been
eyeing (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). These interests surely include industries like banking, arms and oil-all of
whom make a killing on any war, and would stand to do well with friendly governments who could finance more arms purchases and
will never nationalize the oil.
So, the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come
back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact
that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark
forces.
IanB52, 10 October 2014 6:57pm
The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening. When I'm down at the gym they always have CNN on (I can
only imagine what FOX is like) which is a pretty much dyed in the wool yellow jingoist station at this point. With all the segments
they dedicate to ISIS, a new war, the "imminent" terrorist threat, they seem to favor talking heads who support a full ground
war and I have never, not once, heard anyone even speak about the mere possibility of peace. Not ever.
In media universe there
is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing.
I'd imagine that these media companies have a lot stock in and a cozy relationship with the defense contractors.
Damiano Iocovozzi, 10 October 2014 7:04pm
The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. The media doesn't report on anything but
relies on repeating manufactured crises, creating manufactured consent & discussing manufactured solutions. Follow the oil, the
pipelines & the money. Both R's & D's are left & right cheeks of the same buttock. Thanks to Citizens United & even Hobby Lobby,
a compliant Supreme Court, also owned by United States of Corporations, it's a done deal.
Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer
have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department
to your favorite media outlet.
Let me give you one clear example. A year ago Barack Obama came very close to bombing Syria to
kingdom come, the justification used was "Assad gassed his own people", referring to a sarin gas attack near Damascus. Well, it
turns out that Assad did not initiate that attack, discovered by research from many sources including the prestigious MIT, it
was a false flag attack planned by Turkey and carried out by some of Obama's own "moderate rebels".
But all that research from
MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written
still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and
distorts and misrepresents the news every day.
There will always be an endless list of chores to complete and work to do, and a culture of
relentless productivity tells us to get to it right away and feel terribly guilty about any
time wasted. But the truth is, a life spent dutifully responding to emails is a dull one
indeed. And "wasted" time is, in fact, highly fulfilling and necessary.
Don't believe me? Take it from the creator of "Inbox Zero." As Oliver Burkeman reports
in
The Guardian , Merlin Mann was commissioned to write a book about his streamlined email
system. Two years later, he abandoned the project and instead posted a (since deleted) blog
post on how he'd spent so long focusing on how to spend time well, he'd ended up missing
valuable moments with his daughter.
The problem comes when we spend so long frantically chasing productivity, we refuse to take
real breaks. We put off sleeping in, or going for a long walk, or reading by the window -- and,
even if we do manage time away from the grind, it comes with a looming awareness of the things
we should be doing, and so the experience is weighed down by guilt.
Instead, there's a tendency to turn to the least fulfilling tendency of them all: Sitting at
our desk, in front of our computer, browsing websites and contributing to neither our happiness
nor our productivity.
"There's an idea we must always be available, work all the time," says Michael Guttridge, a
psychologist who focuses on workplace behavior. "It's hard to break out of that and go to the
park." But the downsides are obvious: We end up zoning out while at the computer -- looking for
distraction on social media, telling ourselves
we're "multitasking" while really spending far longer than necessary on the most basic
tasks.
Plus, says Guttridge, we're missing out on the mental and physical benefits of time spent
focused on ourselves. "People eat at the desk and get food on the computer -- it's disgusting.
They should go for a walk, to the coffee shop, just get away," he says. "Even Victorian
factories had some kind of rest breaks."
I think the Internet and the infotech revolution in general have been largely negative in their impact on the world. Ian Welsh
has a blog post that largely sums up my views on the issue.
Contrary to what many people say I think large organizations like governments and corporations have significantly more power
now than before and ordinary people have less power. The Internet has made it easier to get information but you have to sift through
tons of junk to get to anything decent. For every website like Naked Capitalism there are thousands pushing nonsense or trying
to sell you stuff.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use what good is it? At best it makes
you more well-rounded, interesting and harder to fool but in political terms knowing a lot of stuff doesn't make you more effective.
In the past people didn't have access to nearly as much information but they were more willing and able to organize and fight
against the powerful because it was easier to avoid detection/punishment (that is where stuff like widespread surveillance tech
comes in) and because they still had a vibrant civic life and culture.
I actually think people are more atomized now than in the past and the Internet and other technologies have probably fueled
this process. Despite rising populism, the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Yellow Jackets in France, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and the DSA this is all a drop in the bucket compared to just the massive social movements of the 1960s much less earlier periods.
Robert Putnam argued that television, the Internet and other technologies likely helped to produce the collapse of civic life
in the United States by "individualizing" people's leisure time and personally I think Putnam is right. Civic life today is very
weak and I think the Internet is partially to blame.
And even if you are more knowledgeable, so what? If you cannot put that knowledge to use what good is it?
Agreed. If anything these more knowledgeable people had a greater audience prior to the internet. Whether you were a journalist,
a great economist, a great author, or a great orator you need to persist and show intellect and talent to have your message heard
wide and broad.
(This is probably a little idealistic, but I think there is truth there.)
Now you need very little of this. If your most famous asset is your attractive body you can attract a greater audience than
great scholars and politicians.
I can't speak much on authoritarianism since whatever form it takes on today is wildly different from what it was in the past.
Unfortunately, it is hard to convince many people living in western societies that they are living in an authoritarian system
because their metal images are goose-stepping soldiers and Fraktur print posters.
I suppose the way I can assure myself that we are living in an authoritarian society is by analyzing the endless propaganda
spewed from countless, high-viewership media and entertainment outlets. It is quite simple, if the media and entertainment narratives
are within a very narrow intellectual window (with lots of 600 lb. gorillas sitting in corners) than the culture and politics
are being defined by powerful people with a narrow range of interests. This is not to say that forming public opinion or preferring
particular political views is a new thing in Western media and entertainment, just that its application, IMO, is far more effective
and subtle (and becoming more-so by the day) than it ever was in, say, NAZI Germany or the Soviet Union.
I'd put my money down that most educated Germans during NAZI rule were well aware that propaganda was being utilized to "manufacture
consent" but they participated and accepted this despite the content for pragmatic/selfish reasons. Much of the NAZI propaganda
played on existing German/European cultural narratives and prejudices. Leaveraging existing ideology allowed the party to necessitate
their existence by framing the German as juxtaposed against the impure and unworthy. Again, ideologies that existed independent
of the party not within it. Goebbels and company were just good at utilizing the technology of the time to amplify these monstrosities.
I question that being the case today. It is far more complicated. Technology is again the primary tool for manipulation, but
it is possible that current technology is allowing for even greater leaps in reason and analysis. The windows for reflection and
critical thought close as soon as they are opened. Seems more like the ideology is manufactured on the fly. For example, the anti-Russia
narrative has some resonance with baby boomers, but how the hell is it effective with my generation (millennial) and younger?
The offhand references to Putin and Russian operatives from my peers are completely from left field when considering our life
experience. People in my age group had little to say about Russia three years ago. It says volumes on the subtle effectiveness
of Western media machines if you can re-create the cold war within two years for an entire generation.
In addition and related to above, the West's understanding of "Freedom of Speech" is dated by about 100 years. Governments
are no longer the sole source of speech suppression (more like filtering and manipulation), and the supremacy of the free-market
coupled with the erroneously perceived black-and-white division between public and private have convinced the public (with nearly
religious conviction) that gigantic media and entertainment organizations do not have to protect the free speech of citizens because
they are not government. Public/Private is now an enormous blob. With overlapping interests mixed in with any antagonisms. It
is ultimately dictated by capital and its power within both government and business. Cracking this nut will be a nightmare.
Yes, this is an authoritarian world, if measured by the distance between the populace and its governing powers, but it is an
authoritarianism operating in ways that we have never seen before and using tools that are terribly effective.
"... Try working construction for minimum wage and not knowing where your next job will come from. Then have your blood pressure tested. ..."
"... I've watched it drive many people out. My own mentor told me when I first started "I'll tell you the first thing my Mentor told me, 'Get out now'". A bit much for a new engineer to take in, but now I know why he said it. Right before he left the company, he started telling me he wasn't sure how much longer he could handle the pressure. ..."
"... I find most of the stress in this industry is self induced by clueless fucks being in charge. ..."
"... I work with people who proudly complain about "working until 2 am" or willingly take on all kinds of client work at ridiculous times because it burnishes their reputation. ..."
"... My understanding would be Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. although I've only really heard from people that have worked at Amazon. They hire new young and eager workers who they can work and fire them when they burn out. However, just as many leave before that. It's all part of an understood system where new workers agree to be overworked while padding their resume and looking for a new job. This lasts for an average of 18 months before they have found a new job or get laid off. ..."
"... The no vacation thing pisses me off. My entire adult life, I've only had one "real" vacation if you define it as a whole week off. ..."
An anonymous reader writes: A survey conducted among the tech workers, including many
employees of Silicon Valley's elite tech companies, has revealed that
over 57% of respondents are suffering from job burnout . The survey was carried out by the
makers of an app that allows employees to review workplaces and have anonymous conversations at
work, behind their employers' backs. Over 11K employees answered one question -- if they suffer
from job burnout, and 57.16% said "Yes."
The company with the highest employee burnout rate was Credit Karma, with a whopping
70.73%, followed by Twitch (68.75%), Nvidia (65.38%), Expedia (65.00%), and Oath (63.03% --
Oath being the former Yahoo company Verizon bought in July 2017). On the other end of the
spectrum, Netflix ranked with the lowest burnout rate of only 38.89%, followed by PayPal
(41.82%), Twitter (43.90%), Facebook (48.97%), and Uber (49.52%).
This is usually the type of thing I tell myself to keep perspective. But the truth is that
tech jobs can be stressful too. I imagine people in blue collar jobs believe we are living
high on the hog with not a care in the world, but it's not really that way. But I also have
two brothers that work jobs requiring much more manual labor. It absolutely takes a toll on
your body.
We've recently had a few people come over to hardware management (I am a hardware
developer). Both my manager and I told them, hardware projects change EVERY DAY. Every day
its, "so and so (big customer) just had issues with this", or "The market is way behind on
these parts and we are short", or "The product you just designed is failing ____ test right
now, what are we doing to fix it".
I've watched it drive many people out. My own mentor told me when I first started "I'll
tell you the first thing my Mentor told me, 'Get out now'". A bit much for a new engineer to
take in, but now I know why he said it. Right before he left the company, he started telling
me he wasn't sure how much longer he could handle the pressure.
Honestly, I don't care as much about the pay, the fancy benefits, or any of the fluff.
What has nearly drove me out is when I feel like every day is just another barrage of
unbounded problems. Like you're the guy on the track, your problem is the chains holding you
there, and management is driving the train and they aren't slowing it down. You better get
those chains undone.
I've been an auto mechanic, welder, machinist, and now EE. My back-up plan / exit strategy
is machining. I enjoy it, it is so much more bounded (in my opinion), and still presents good
challenges to keep me engaged. I already have a colleague in another company on his way.
We've talked at length about it.
I worked for a large company that made networking equipment. My job was to run a sanity
test framework for their operating system. Developers load the images in a queue, the system
pulls them, loads them on real hardware, and executes a body of tests.
The problem was that a bad image would hose the system to where it couldn't reboot, and
then it would not be able to correct itself. Every image after that would fail. My job was to
come in, clean up the mess, and apologize to each developer. It was actually stressful.
I repeatedly told the manager how I could fix it, and he always said we didn't have time.
I waited for him to travel for a week, I shut down the system, and fixed it so that the
system got completely initialized between every run. From that point on, every failure was a
real failure cause by that developer's changes.
My job became a cake walk. I find most of the stress in this industry is self induced by
clueless fucks being in charge.
But the truth is that tech jobs can be stressful too. I imagine people in blue collar
jobs believe we are living high on the hog with not a care in the world, but it's not
really that way.
I was pulling long hours one week to try and finish a software update in time. The
deadline was fast approaching and the outlook was grim. As usual, the cleaning lady came by
to collect the trash that evening and we got to chit-chatting like we usually did (I arrived
late and stayed late back then, so my being there when she did her rounds was perfectly
normal). Part way through the conversation she paused for a moment, then said something to
the effect of, "You know, before I started working here I used to think that you guys all had
it easy with your cushy jobs and nice offices. But then I see people here with the look that
you have in your eyes right now and I realize I was wrong. It's just as tough. Different, but
just as tough, if not tougher."
I think I mustered a tired "Thanks?" in response.
I don't make any claim to having it tougher than anyone else (I have a MASSIVE
appreciation for manual workers, among many other fields, since I couldn't do that work), but
the only people I find suggesting that tech work is easy are those who either aren't in the
field and have no awareness of what it entails, or those who are a burden on everyone else
around them in the field.
Yes, but the stress that tech people experience is completely fake. It REALLY doesn't
matter if your work is done on time.
It does if you want to remain employed with your current company. If that doesn't matter
to you then you probably aren't stressed to begin with. If anyone who worked for me expressed
that attitude they would be "succeeding elsewhere" in short order.
No one is going to die if your software or network doesn't work.
I'd like to introduce you to some folks who work in medical IT who will disagree with you
rather strongly. Same thing with software that controls/drives cars or airplanes or manned
rockets or traffic signals or ocean navigation or food safety or electrical grids or nuclear
reactor controls or.... The list is very long for things that actually do matter. Yeah,
nobody probably cares if your word processor crashes but more than a few of us do things that
have serious consequences.
Amazingly humans survived for thousands of years without IT or computers.
Ok we're done here. Claiming people shouldn't have stress because computers didn't exist
200 years ago is irrelevant and stupid.
Tech work culture is seriously broken when 80 hour weeks and never going on vacation for
any reason is encouraged and celebrated. Burnout under such conditions is inevitable .
I work with people who proudly complain about "working until 2 am" or willingly take on
all kinds of client work at ridiculous times because it burnishes their reputation.
Some after hours work is unavoidable in IT, but I just refuse to work those kinds of hours
regularly without added compensation of some kind (added vacation days without strings and/or
more money).
As a more skilled/experienced/older worker, I think I can get away with it but I'm not
gonna lie, the people who do it seem to have more street cred in the organization because
they are willing to bend over.
I think it's highly organization dependent and sometimes individually dependent (ie, can
you get done what needs doing in normal work hours). And I think there are definitely orgs
where if you're not doing that, you might as well resign now because you will get shuffled to
the shit work.
I worked 55-60 hours a week for most of a year, mainly due to two senior people leaving
with a month's difference and a third knocked his head pretty bad leaving me and a few
juniors to sort it out. That was as an IT consultant job though so I had a billing bonus that
gave me pretty good kickback. If I recall correctly it kicked in at about 2/3rd = 67%
billable time and the company average was 75-80% somewhere, so your average consultant would
get bonus for like 10% while I could hit 50%+. Normally they wouldn't'
I hear this all the time but WTH actually does this? Anyone here at slashdot? Even when
I was younger I did an all nighter just once or twice. I've been working 8 hour days the
last 15 years.
My understanding would be Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. although I've only really
heard from people that have worked at Amazon. They hire new young and eager workers who they
can work and fire them when they burn out. However, just as many leave before that. It's all
part of an understood system where new workers agree to be overworked while padding their
resume and looking for a new job. This lasts for an average of 18 months before they have
found a new job or get laid off. They hopefully hop to
The no vacation thing pisses me off. My entire adult life, I've only had one "real"
vacation if you define it as a whole week off.
One reason there's such a lack of vacation time here in Seattle is that in Washington
state, the law only requires less than 2/3 be paid out. In CA, we have to pay out 100%.
That's why in CA we require employees to take PTO to get it off of the books, but in WA we
basically don't allow vacation time. No company I've ever worked for let programmers take
even a fifth (as a guess)
I worked for a companies where IT people used to look for places to go on vacation that
had no phones or pager service. For one co-worker's rafting trip on the Colorado River
through the Grand Canyon started a trend among the IT staff: where can I go where the
phone/pager coverage is really poor or non-existent? Far, far North Canadian fishing trips
started getting considered. Can't have people actually having an outside-of-work life so the
companies bought satellite phones. No more vacations for you withou
If you work under such conditions by choice then it is on your shoulders alone.
No, you're wrong. Those working conditions are spreading everywhere. Companies have
figured out that instead of hiring more people, they can force others to work more for the
same pay.
It is very nice to be independently wealthy and not have to worry about getting a
paycheck, but for the rest of us we have to do it for a paycheck or face homelessness and
possibly starvation.
If all available work is under such conditions, is that really a choice?
It is very nice to be independently wealthy and not have to worry about getting a
paycheck, but for the rest of us we have to do it for a paycheck or face homelessness and
possibly starvation.
You don't have to be independently wealthy to make a living doing something that you don't
enjoy. If you hate IT work then go find something else to do. It's a big world with lots of
opportunity.
If all available work is under such conditions, is that really a choice?
Are you seriously claiming that someone who is bright enough to find work in the tech
sector will find it impossible to do something else if they put their mind to it? Possibly
even something they actually enjoy doing with reasonable hours and adequate pay. Point is
very few people are forced to work in IT. Arg
Old timer, this is no longer the case. It may have been true when you were young, but
these days it is IT, gigs, or unemployment. Too many people in a globally connected world
competing for the same few jobs.
That's hilarious. Do you have any idea how many jobs there are available in academia? Not
many. The issue is that if you do what you love, what's the incentive to stop? There's a
reason that the average age of professors always hovers in the 50s and 60s. It's not uncommon
to find semi-retired professors still kicking around well into their 70s teaching one or two
classes they love.
Do I really have to explain that some people don't really give a shit about what they are
doing? Sure everyone works to get paid but some people actually try to enjoy what they are
doing along the way so that the job is more than just a means to get money.
I've taken 4 weeks of vacation in 30 years. One week when my dad died. One week for a
camping trip, and the remaining two weeks were for things like my children being born.
Then you've been suckered, or have different priorities. One year, I took 6 weeks off to
travel around the country. Another year, I took 4 weeks off and went to Australia. Another
year, I took 6
Long on call hours. Declining inflation adjusted wages. Having to spend hours and hours of
your own time training because companies don't train anymore. Constant threats of outsourcing
or being replaced by an H1-B applicant (despite the fact that that is explicitly
illegal).
Does this result argue for wider adoption of Netflix's H.R. model, as expressed in the
manifesto
[slideshare.net] that went viral a few years back? Namely:
1. Hire "A" players, because the competence of one's coworkers is a large contributor to
employee satisfaction.
2. Don't use golden handcuffs as a means of mitigating hiring churn; you want employees to
stay at the company because they want to be there. Employees choose how much stock they want
vs. cash.
3. Don't use performance based bonuses; high performance is the base level expectation, not
something to be singled out and rewarded.
4. "We're a team, not a family." You don't "cut" people from a family; you do "cut" people
from a pro sports team.
5. "Hard work - Not Relevant". They care about productivity, not how hard you worked to be
productive.
6. Low tolerance for "brilliant jerks".
7. Pay "top of market" wages. "One outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than
two 'adequate' employees." "Employees should feel they are being paid well relative to other
options in the market."
A single data point is statistically meaningless "woe is us" wanking UNLESS other
industries are surveyed.
If the "burnout" rate for tech workers is 57%, but for medical workers is 75%, factory
line workers is 62%, and teachers is 60%, then the rate for tech workers is really not
bad.
If OTOH other industries scale at 20-30%, then the tech sector really is dire.
In short: I suspect that everyone feels like they are underappreciated, underpaid, and is
"fed up with all the bullshit at work"...like everyone else.
The office (
Score: 4 , Interesting) by Anonymous Coward writes: on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @10:50AM
( #56847616 )
I've done a lot of Peopleware like consulting, mostly for software development teams. The
IT office space is in general the enemy of these teams. They are noisy and destroy your
concentration. You can only break someones concentration for a finite number per day,
certainly with introverts, after that the dev is just excausted. As a rule of thumb, the
correlation is more people wearing headphones -> more burnout. It's fucked up that people
need to wear headphones to attempt to do their work, and a clear sign the environment is
poison to their jobs. Of course they put all these people in the same space, to save money.
Hardly ever do they do the math, and contemplate how much it costs them in burnout and
turnover.
Does this result argue for wider adoption of Netflix's H.R. model, as expressed in the
manifesto
[slideshare.net] that went viral a few years back? Namely:
1. Hire "A" players, because the competence of one's coworkers is a large contributor to
employee satisfaction.
2. Don't use golden handcuffs as a means of mitigating hiring churn; you want employees to
stay at the company because they want to be there. Employees choose how much stock they want
vs. cash.
3. Don't use performance based bonuses; high performance is the base level expectation, not
something to be singled out and rewarded.
4. "We're a team, not a family." You don't "cut" people from a family; you do "cut" people
from a pro sports team.
5. "Hard work - Not Relevant". They care about productivity, not how hard you worked to be
productive.
6. Low tolerance for "brilliant jerks".
7. Pay "top of market" wages. "One outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than
two 'adequate' employees." "Employees should feel they are being paid well relative to other
options in the market."
Yep, so many folks LOOOVVVVEEE 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, and having to respond to the boss
24x7x365.25. Who needs a life?
UNIONS are why we have benefits, weekends, holidays and vacations. No company did that out
of the alleged kindness of their hearts.
But none of you here need them, they're *so* "ancient", never mind they could get you a 40
hour week and no being bothered off hours, no, enjoy your (non-) life.
What's wrong with not being promoted -- just do your job well, take your pay and vacation
time. Work to live, don't live to work. A snazzy job title isn't the pinnacle of human
achievement.
Because US's annual raises rarely meet the US's annual inflation rates. So you are forced
to move up the salary chain or effectively get a pay cut ever year.
What's wrong with not being promoted -- just do your job well, take your pay and
vacation time. Work to live, don't live to work. A snazzy job title isn't the pinnacle of
human achievement.
While I agree with the sentiment that most people shouldn't feel pressured into living to
work, the pinnacle of human achievement in any discipline is nearly always achieved through
an insane devotion to the task. The people responsible for this level of excellence generally
live to work.
There is nothing wrong with working to live, but there often is nothing wrong with living
to work as long as it is a decision made freely.
Or at least raise the wage floor where overtime == time and a half. Obama tried this,
Trump unfortunately rolled it back. Also, sometimes you need to work overtime two weeks in a
row, crunch time to finish a project. I'd change that requirement to get the time back to
something like a 2-3 month period.
I'd support having all such things (including scheduled days off, vacation, overtime/comp
time, etc.) kept indefinitely, with maximum caps for each kind. If an employee leaves for any
reason, including being fired, they get paid out whatever they haven't used.
I'm quite happy to help my team meet their goals and go the extra mile to deliver a
quality product to our customer..... but I certainly expect that once that's done, I'll get
to go spend time with my family.
40 hour work weeks, enforced. 30 days paid vacation per year, plus holidays and
weekends.
Par for the course in the UK.
If you work overtime one week, you get those hours back the next week.
Not par for the course, but it's pretty common the you will get it back sometime. A busy
period coming up to a deadline could cover a few weeks.
Everyone gets two days off in a row every week.
.. usually happens
If you give up those days for some special reason, you get comp vacation time to be used
within the next month.
You would usually get this, but may have to wait until the peak is over before taking the
time back. Alternatively you could be paid - time and a half is quite common
Everyone takes all their vacation, every year.
In the UK it's exceptional for anyone not to take all their time. A company I worked for
switched the "holiday year" from a fixed January-December to a ye
$250k/yr if you have no time to enjoy it is worthless unless you plan to work for a few
years, live like a miser, and invest enough of it in rental property so you never have to
work again.
I work with several devs making nearly that much, and they most certainly are burned out.
When you work constant death marches with Seattle Hundreds (16 hours a day Mon-Thu and 12
hours a day Fri-Sun) that almost always happens. I work almost that much, and I moved over a
year ago and still haven't even unpacked yet. High pay helps, but you still have a breaking
point. There just aren't enough programmers to meet demand.
How does the company even end up with 100 hours of work per week for everyone? Is that all
essential work, or just busywork? If burnout rate is super high, wouldn't you end up with
even more work and fewer people to do it?
...end up with even more work and fewer people to do it?
The part I find fascinating about that is that the junior/recent college grads stick with
jobs despite the long hours for the experience and the most experienced people stick with
jobs because they know it's the same most everywhere else. I guess it's the devil you know.
The guys in the middle with five to fifteen years experience are the ones that keep jumping
ship to try to find somewhere better.
My company has about eighty people with less than three years experience and around twenty
with more than tw
I work with several devs making nearly that much, and they most certainly are burned
out. When you work constant death marches with Seattle Hundreds (16 hours a day Mon-Thu and
12 hours a day Fri-Sun) that almost always happens. I work almost that much, and I moved
over a year ago and still haven't even unpacked yet. High pay helps, but you still have a
breaking point. There just aren't enough programmers to meet demand.
I've never worked anywhere with that kind of schedule....or known anyone who has. Then
again, I have never lived in shit holes like Seattle or California.
I simply wouldn't work like that. If it were that, or go on welfare, I'd say fuck it and
go on welfare, or just rob houses for a living - leaving that kind of schedule to the
suckers.
If my employer required me to work more than 50 hours per week on anything other than a
rare occasion, I'd find a new employer. ASAP.
Too many tech jobs are just cleaning up after Indian disaster after Indian disaster. And
not in any sort of permanent way, just putting out the same fires over and over.
There are two kinds of IT people. Those who create. And those who fix creations. If you're
tired of doing one, then figure out how to get paid doing the other, and feel good knowing
you'll be working to fix
"... The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. ..."
"... The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many? ..."
"... With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences, Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media. For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests possible treason. ..."
"... For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing "perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture. ..."
"... The Know Nothing movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target. ..."
"... The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere ..."
"... The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. ..."
"... David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] ; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com . ..."
Now a year-and-a-half into the Trump presidency, it's become a truism that the president's
support is anchored in a deep sense of social and political powerlessness felt by many
Americans, especially older, white men. An early 2016
Rand poll comparing Donald Trump and Ted Cruz supporters found that those who agreed with
the statement "people like me don't have any say about what the government does" preferred
Trump -- and by a whopping 86.5 percent majority.
This sense of powerlessness turned out to be a more reliable predictor of Trump support than
all the other issues that dogged the 2016 campaign, including immigration, income, education,
the economy and his abusive sexual exploits. And it still does.
In 1941, the then-radical psycho-theorist, Erich Fromm, published Escape from
Freedom . In it, he warned:
The annihilation of the individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable
feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is
the attempt to become part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to
submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation,
conscience, or a psychic compulsion.
Like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, Fromm was then worried about the growing threat of
totalitarianism. In particular, these thinkers, among others, were concerned about how the
deepening sense of powerlessness among what was then referred to as "the masses" had
contributed to the enormous increase in the power of the leader, whether Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco or Stalin.
The peculiar dialectic between power and powerlessness is shadowed by a necessary third
component, the perfect target. These are the people who are identified as the threat that the
powerful and the powerless must come together to defeat. In pre-WW-II Germany, the perfect
target were the Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies, people that Nazi's claimed were
different, thus threatening the purity of ordinary Germans' "Saxon heritage." The threat can
come in any form, be it class, race, nationality, religion or political ideology -- or whatever
is a distinguishing characteristic of those targeted.
Pres. Trump has up to now played the perfect-target dance with great success. As a candidate
and now in the Oval Office, he's ranted successfully against "illegal" immigrants, whether
long-time residents, married to a citizen and with American children, have a criminal record,
served in the military or recent arrivals. In one Tweet, he opined: "They [Democrats] don't
care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and
infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win on their terrible policies, so they view them as
potential voters!"
Democrats are the problem. They don't care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no
matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can't win
on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!
The Trump administration may have recently overplayed its perfect-target hand with the
forceful separation of seized immigrant parents from their children, no matter at what age.
From purely bureaucratic and media-relations perspectives, it's been a mess. No matter whether
the immigrants might be "illegal," they are still people, parent and child, and -- in Christian
America -- family still matters. Equally revealing, the Congress has yet to underwrite building
a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico.
The U.S. is not in a pre-fascist period. Globalization is forcing fundamental structural
changes on American society, affecting the economy as well as personal life. One key question
involves a president's vision and the practices of his administration. Do fundamental social
changes foster greater efforts to protect (and increase) the wealth and social power of the
privileged or does it signal a sea change -- like the post-WW-II consumer revolution -- that
enhances the quality and longevity of the lives of the many?
Trump is effectively exploiting the power/powerless minuet to maximize his own wealth and
that among others of the 1 percent. His -- and his administration's -- efforts are designed to
(moderately) upset the post-WW-II alliance between the federal government and private corporate
interests. The alliance has long been a revolving door for both Democrats and Republicans --
and the Trump Team is spinning the door.
The Trump apparatus is pushing the revolving door further to the right. Every federal
department and agency, including the Supreme Court, appears to include, if not run by, someone
drawn from the military, a corporation or bank, an industry association, a lobbying firm, a
religious group or a conservative thinktank.
Trump and his administration, ably assisted by a get-what-you-can Republican-controlled
Congress and Senate, seem more like that of Herbert Hoover and the great denial of what
everyone knew was coming rather than that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the making of a modern
super-state. With hollow bravado, one with apparently little thought about consequences,
Trump Tweets new federal policies, offers false apologies and ceaselessly attacks on the media.
For Trump and his administration, all information questioning a Trump Team statement suggests
possible treason.
***
For two-plus centuries, the U.S. has been a battleground between power and
powerlessness. Through each era of contestation, a perfect target has been identified and
exploited to help assure the position of those contesting for power. Four of the most revealing
"perfect targets" are the Native People, African-American slaves and free people, Catholics and
Communists. Each illuminates the social struggle between the powerful and powerless, thus
providing a valuable snapshot into America's evolving culture.
No clearer or more honest statement as to the social role of the perfect target was made by
Pres. Andrew Jackson on December 6, 1830, in his Message to Congress, "On Indian Removal." It
was issued seven months after he signed the removal law that authorized to grant unsettled
lands west of the Mississippi to Anglos or white people in exchange for Indian lands within
existing state borders. He stated, in part
:
It [the act] will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites;
free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and
under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening
their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and
through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an
interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
Four European states -- Netherlands, Great Britain and France as well Spain -- invaded and
conquered parts of what was once the vast North America territory and was then home to
innumerable tribes of Native Peoples.
The first African slaves arrived in North America in 1619 in Jamestown. Over the following
four centuries many Americans believed that Africans -- and their descendants,
African-Americans -- were not fully human, but rather subhuman. It was long an essential belief
among colonial revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson as well as Confederate secessionists and
those of the today's alt-right. As Jefferson wrote
:
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the
endowments both of body and mind. This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of
faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.
The U.S. Constitution embodied this racism in granting African and African-American males
3/5 th voting rights compared to white citizens.
The Know Nothing
movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became
the American Party that flourished during the late-40s and early-50s. It got its name when
members where asked the party's positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together
Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most
especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. Catholics became the perfect target.
Know-Nothing adherents felt that Catholics, as followers of the Pope, were not loyal
Americans and were going to take over the country. It had strong support in the North that
witnessed large-scale Irish immigration after 1848. The American Party captured the
Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and, in 1856, backed Millard Fillmore for president, who
secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast.
And then there were
communists . It's nearly impossible to image just how awful it was for those who challenged
the nation's official belief system during the post-WW-II era of 1945 to 1960. Alleged
"communists" included Soviet Union agents, non-party trade unionists as well as professors,
teachers, publishers and nonviolent civil-rights activists. And then there were the
pornographers, homosexual and other alleged deviants who challenged the status quo.
The post-WW-II period was the age of Sen. Joe McCarthy, of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
and New York's Archbishop Francis Spellman -- and Roy Cohn, Trump's consigliere . It
saw hundreds lose their jobs, dozens arrested and jailed. And the powerful found their perfect
target in two innocent New Yorkers, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who they arrested, convicted
and executed -- they were prosecuted by Cohn.
***
The dance of power/powerlessness shadowed by the perfect target is being exploited by
Trump and his followers. Trump knows how to play this dialect given his narcissistic
personality and likely compensation for learning disabilities. Since the campaign, his
perfect perfect target has been non-documented immigrants. He's also targeted
Democrats, the news media and NATO.
Trump needs a perfect enemy. In this way he is very much like other authoritarian leaders,
whether all-powerful rulers like Hitler, Stalin or Mao or merely a failed petty tyrant like
Nixon or -- pick your favorite Latin American, African or Asian dictator.
So, keep your eyes on Trump's ever-changing perfect target for it signals where the pin-ball
bouncing around in his brain lands. And where it lands sets national policy by targeting those
he thinks can distract Americans from understanding his profound failings. Who's next?
Join
the debate on Facebook More articles by: David Rosen
David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New
York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected]
; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com .
Psychologists today use the term alienation to refer to an extraordinary variety of psychological
disorders, including loss of self, anxiety states, anomie, despair, depersonalization, rootlessness,
apathy, loneliness, atomization, powerlessness, isolation, pessimism and the loss of beliefs or values.
That psychological perspective, however, is limited from a theoretical point of view. In the process of
human history, society has gradually becomes more and more complex and extensive. As a result of this
extension, development and complexity one finds several consequences, one of which is alienation.
Primitive society was simple and small. Its members were linked with a common bond and a community life.
Each for all and all for each was their social principle. They were united by the bond of religion,
custom and tradition with no scope for separation and alienation.
As the size of society grew and population increased, however, the patterns of life multiplied and social
organization became more complex, social relationships became impersonalized and human life became
alienated. So, the analysis of alienation demands more than a simple psychological description about
individual behavior.
Alienation as a social phenomenon
Alienation is the process in which the personal and primary relationships become loose. Therefore, the
individual finds him or herself isolated and feels that the society or group of which he or she is the
member is not so much his or her own. The individual comes to believe that the group can no longer
fulfill expectations and ambitions. As a social phenomenon, alienation is constituted by characteristics
like powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation and self-estrangement. These characteristics are
responsible for the loss of autonomy of the individual, according to the following approaches by
well-known theorists of alienation.
Powerlessness may be defined as the expectancy or probability that an individual's own behavior cannot
determine the outcomes, or reinforcement, he or she seeks. Powerlessness is the main symptom of
alienation among workers in capitalist societies. In the capitalist economy, the capitalists have
absolute control over means of production. On the other hand, the working class has to sell its labor to
the capitalists. Therefore the workers have no means and power in the field of production. Though they
are themselves responsible for all progress of the mills, factories and industries and enterprises, they
cannot call them their own. The capitalists monopolize the right to decide in every case. Their decisions
stand as law for the workers. In this context, alienation rises. As Marx puts it, alienation appears not
merely in the result but also in the process of production, within productive activity itself. If the
product of labor is alienation, production itself must be active alienation. The alienation of the object
of labor merely summarizes the alienation in the work activity itself.
About meaninglessness, like Adorno argues, it is a consequence of the increase of functional rationality
and of the decrease of substantial rationality. As the society succeeds in fulfilling most of the needs
of the members by means of better technology, functional rationality increases in society and the skill
is no more required for the fulfillment of various needs. This decreases the capacity of actual
substantial rationality of the individuals. In other words, with the increase of complexity of social
organization, the rationality of the individual becomes meaningless from the functional viewpoint. Thus
the individual becomes a stranger in the society. In fact, humans are a social animal and have many
social needs. In a less developed society they have to utilize reason, skill and understanding to fulfill
their needs, of course through the available means. But as the society develops so does the means of
fulfillment of human needs until a stage is arrived at where these means themselves become so much
organized and powerful that they fulfill the needs of individuals without any occasions for the use of
their wisdom, reason or understanding. This leads to the feeling that the individual's decision,
understanding or the reason, have no relevance in the social system.
Isolation is the aspect of alienation in which the individual feels separated from society or culture.
The feeling of meaninglessness reduces man's attachment to society since whatever is meaningless is also
powerless. Isolation signifies powerlessness of the individual in the social context. He looses the power
to select among the alternatives. For some people, life itself becomes meaningless. As this feeling of
meaninglessness becomes deep rooted, one becomes isolated from the group, the society and life itself,
and may even commit suicide.
Last but not least, self-estrangement is a mode of experience in which the person experiences him or
herself as alien. Self-estrangement may be measured by the degree of dependence of the given behavior
upon anticipated future reward. For instance, the worker labors not for the love of her labor, but for
the salary, since she does not have control over the product of labor, process of production and
managerial activities. So she becomes estranged from herself.
Capitalist economy and alienation
As we have seen above, alienation is a social phenomenon. Hence it is a wrong to describe it as a mere
psychological manifestation.
Basically the cause of alienation is the capitalist economy. It rises in that field and then dominates
every institutional sphere. Human beings are devalued in direct proportion to the increase of production.
Humans become a commodity.
As Marx puts it, this fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor's product –
confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor,
labor which has been congealed in an object, which has come material, it is the objectification of labor.
Labor's realization is its objectification. In the conditions dealt with the political economy this
realization of labor appears as loss of reality for the workers; objectification as loss of the object
and object bondage: appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.
The alienation of the worker in the product means not only that labor becomes an object, and external
existence, but that it exists outside of the worker, independently, as something alien, and that it
becomes a power on its own confronting the worker. It means that the life which the worker has conferred
on the object confronts the individual worker as something hostile and alien. So while the worker puts
his or her life into the object, the object becomes an instrument of alienation and the worker becomes a
slave to it. In fact the worker does not create for him or herself but for capitalist or the economic
system. While the worker labors for beauty, luxury and intelligence, he or she gets deformity, misery and
idiocy in return.
We can summarize the alienation of labor, according to Marx, in the following way: First, under
conditions of alienation, the fact of labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his or
her essential being; that in the work, therefore, the worker does not affirm his or her identity, does
not feel content, does not develop freely physical and mental energy but mortifies his or her body and
ruins his or her mind. The worker therefore only feels outside of the work, and in this feels outside him
or herself. The worker is at home when not working, and when working he or she is not at home. Labor is
therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need;
it is merely a means to satisfy external needs. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as
soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor
in which humans alienates themselves, is a labor of self-service, of mortification. Lastly, the external
character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that is not his or her own, but someone else's that
it does not belong to the worker, that in it he or she belongs, not to themselves, but to another. Just
as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart,
operates independently of the individual, that is, operates on the individual as an alien, divine or
diabolic activity in the same way the worker's activity is not one's spontaneous activity. It belongs to
another; it is the loss of self.
There are two hostile powers leading to alienation of the workers. These are the capitalist and the
economic system or the market situation. While the former is a human power, the later is an inhuman
power. The capitalist decides what the worker will make and how it will be made. An individual worker's
labor is not the expression of one's personality, interest or creative power. In fact, it is an alien
product produced at a cost to the worker and against his or her will. After the commodity is created, it
belongs no more to the creator but to the capitalist to be disposed of in the manner the capitalist sees
fit. Consequently, the product is an alien, hostile, powerful and independent object, an instrument of
the exploitation of the workers at hands of the capitalist who is lord of this object. Besides the human
power, another hostile power is the inhuman power of market place by which the worker becomes dependent
upon fluctuations in market prices and the movement of capital.
Alienation and anomie
It is necessary to distinguish between anomie and alienation, since the former is sometimes understood as
being the later. It is in this perspective that alienation is described as a mere psychological
manifestation.
Historically speaking, the term anomie was used for the first time by French sociologist Emile Durkheim.
According to him, anomie is an abnormal social condition. It results from a failure of the collective
moral order in restraining overweening ambitions, greed and aspirations. According to Durkheim, the
social structure becomes pathological when it adversely influences the individual development making him
or her abnormal, narrow, egoist, selfish and adverse to prevalent social norms and values. He attributes
anomie to the breakdown of regulatory norms.
The concept of anomie, discussed by Durkehiem, has been further elaborated by Robert Merton. In his view,
when the unbalanced condition of social structure puts pressure upon the individual and he or she behaves
contrary to social expectations, this is anomie. Thus anomie is the condition results from conflict
between cultural aims and institutional means resulting in anti-social behavior.
Although Durkheim and Merton have treated anomie as a structural phenomenon, it remains, for them, a
psychological concept. As Robert McIver affirms, anomie signifies the state of mind of one who has been
pulled up by his or her moral roots, who no longer has any standards but only disconnected urges, who no
longer has any sense of continuity, of folk, of obligation. The anomic human has become spiritually
sterile, responsive only to him or herself, responsible to no one. This individual denies the values of
others. His or her only faith is the philosophy of denial, living on the thin of sensation between no
future and no past.
Conclusion
Economic exploitation and the inhuman working conditions lead to alienation of men and women. In the
workplace the feeling of alienation means that the individual has lost control over the process of
production. This is particularly due to extreme specialization and bureaucratization. Works is no more a
creative activity in which the worker feels self expression but a mechanical function.
The commodity produced by the labor of a worker is no more expression of individual craftsmanship, since
in mass production it has become impersonal. It is intended for remote markets and the worker understands
that he or she has lost control over it.
Due to alienation the human being becomes one-sided. Within the capitalist system, all methods for
raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual worker; all
means for the development of production transform themselves into modes of domination over and
exploitation of the producers. They mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human, degrade him or her to
the level of an appendage of a machine. In this context, political power properly so called is merely the
organized power of one class for oppressing another. Political power is embodied in the state. Therefore,
in capitalist society the state is an instrument of economic exploitation and the consolidation of the
interest of the capitalist. This is the identification of economic and political power.
Alienation takes the form of dehumanization. The individual no more feels that he or she is fully human,
free to act and live.
--Dr. Ivonaldo Leite teaches at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE)/Brazil.
Pity the poor blogger's lot: there are more interesting papers being published every week
than any essayist, however diligent, can possibly cope with. And there will be more, as the
vast genetic databases give up their secrets. No sooner does one team scoop the others with a
savage novelty than their rivals counter-attack with their own surprising findings. If you are
curious about mankind, it is the best time to be alive. We are likely to learn more about
ourselves in the next few decades than was possible in the last few centuries.
...he decline of marriage is upon us. Or, at least, that's what the zeitgeist would have us
believe.
In 2010, when Time magazine and the Pew Research Center famously
asked Americans whether they thought marriage was becoming obsolete, 39 percent said yes.
That was up from 28 percent when Time asked the question in 1978.
Also, since 2010,
the Census Bureau has reported
that married couples have made up less than half of all households; in 1950 they made up 78
percent.
Data such as these have led to much collective handwringing about the fate of the
embattled institution.
GENERAL PSYOPS:
PSYOPS control U.S. Citizens who have nothing to lose; yet, U.S. Citizens deeply
believe they have everything to lose when the only "objects" they truly own in
this world is debt.
Look Around - Which Class were you birthed?
Which Class shall you and your family of relatives die?
Labor - Lower Class - Working Class - Get Paycheck / Job Class
Lower Lower Class - Retail / wholesale workers / laborers
Lower Middle Class - engineers, computer workers, doctors
Lower Upper Class - C-Level Managerial workers, sports celebrities,
High-Net-Worth workers, etc.
Trading - Middle Class - Business Class - Get a Deal Class
Lower Middle Class - Owns business in an industry
Middle Middle Class - Operates 1 or more business in an industry
Upper Middle Class - Operates 1 or more businesses in 1 or more industries
Leisure - Upper Class - Investor Class - Let's Go Have Fun! Class
Lower Upper Class - New Billionaires.
Middle Upper Class - Multi-Billionaires invested in or own vast businesses in 1
or more vast industries
Upper Upper Class - Kings / Queens, Owners of Vast Tracts of Land on The Planet,
Wealthy Post-Empire Families,
Goals of Working Class: Job, House and Car - loans, credit, debt for basics:
food, shelter, clothing, transportation.
Goals of Trading Class expansion of business.
Goals of Leisure Class Enjoy Human Life. "Let's take the personal jets out for
a spin today. Meet you at [Insert place on planet]."
Middle Classes (Business) and Upper Classes (Leisure) give "Vacations" and
Time Off to Lower Labor Classes.
Working Classes do not have the money to associate, travel, and dine with the
Trading Class (Middle).
Trading Classes do not have the money to Empire Trot with the Leisure Classes.
Income has co-relation neither to wealth, power, nor prestige. The vast
majority of wealthy have little or zero income.
Common in debt U.S. Citizens stand back gawking at the great
great-great-great-great-grand children of the Middle Class and Upper Class
Families who have re-bequeathed and re-inherited family wealth through the
centuries enjoying a life of leisure that for each generation the Common U.S.
Citizens have never moved up in family wealth. General PSYOPS.
SIMPLE PSYOPS:
2005, prior to O elections all U.S. governments were directed by federal law to
disclose their health insurance payments, fees, etc. to the U.S. Federal
Government. U.S. governments Employees were also given a copy stating exactly how
much the State, County, Town, City is paying for the employee. O is elected. Look
at the amount spent. Nationalized Health Insurance. Simple PSYOPS.
SOPHISTICATED PSYOPS:
Key: Any criticism moving this Political Operative Donna Brazille around is
considered racist.
PBS and NBC, ABC, SeeBS (CBS), etc. studios featured Donna Brazille doing the
political-talk show circuit.
Donna Brazille, Editor of Atlanta newspaper was shown, based on after show
retakes, cameo's, script tweeking, etc., to be clear minded, fair, and
articulate.
Donna Brazille had a Social Debt and Final Payment Due.
The Clintons collected Final Payment during the Presidential Elections from
Donna Brazille who made payment by smuggling U.S. Presidential Debate Questions
to The Clintons.
PSYOPS is interesting and work especially well with a small group of wealthy
who can hire and pay for PSYOPS either in the immediate term or longer term as
with Donna Brazille.
Marketing is PSYOPS all day.
United States President Trump is Not:
an ex-bureaucrat
an ex-lawyer
An ex-government employee
Not Poor <- Very Important as Big Cash is involved.
United States President Trump has a marked distain for both Factions of the
State Political Party – republicans and democrats – and wonder if any other U.S.
Citizens have the same feelings and thoughts.
Trump came forward as an American United States Citizen.
Democrats gave all the Benefits the Labor Unions fought for during the 1930's
and 1940's to Illegal Aliens.
Republicans gave all the industry and jobs to foreign countries and imported
pre-trained foreigners into American Jobs.
When Trump threatened to watch every polling station in the United States, if
he had to, to make sure no voter fraud, at least during the one and only election
he participated, State Political Party faction's democrats and republicans
laughed.
The State Political Party Factions colluded to Stop Trump while running the
usual rigged fake fraudulent election.
The usual United States Media Channels using the United States National
Emergency Broadcast System entrusted to individual caretaker / quasi-owners to
manage and maintain premises, power level, and towers, began the usual selling
broadcast time to the highest bidder. The usual war over the airwaves time and
again. The Hearts and Minds Meme is the warring struggle between republicans and
democrats to control United States Media Channels broadcasts before, during, and
after a United States Election. The usual.
24/7 PSYOPS using the owners of ABC, BBC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Reuters,
U.K. Guardian, Associated Press, etc. broadcast State Party PSYOPS obfuscating
Trump is winning, announced No Path to 270, and broadcast Common Citizens
Protesting.
The Clintons had the White Females and the new meme: People of Color.
United States Media Channels using the United States National Emergency
Broadcast System (EBS) showed White males violently protesting TRUMP one day and
Black Males shown violently protesting TRUMP another day to PSYOPS Cobble Black
and White Males as kin, long shot, similar voters. Don't say it, show it,
persuasively.
Republicans all signed Pledges declaring in Media Channels they shall not vote
for Trump and encouraged everyone to do the same. Democrats against Trump is a
given. PSYOPS. Political PSYOPS.
After the election, United States President Trump asked to examine the voting
rolls. The State Political Party (r&d) denied the request threatening using
courts to tie up the matter and cause great usd expense through the Corrupt U.S.
Judicial. SOPHISTICATED PSYOPS.
The Entire United States is Corrupt.
1. The Lawyer Amended Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of
Independence - the originals of which are all now in the dustbin of history -
have successfully created these Criminal Enterprises according to the Founders:
the Corrupt House of Representatives,
the Corrupt U.S. Senate,
the Corrupt U.S. Judicial,
the Corrupt U.S. Military and its Corrupt 17 Intelligence Agencies,
the Corrupt U.S. Media (except for the 5 Independent newspapers that did support
U.S. President Trump),
the Corrupt For Sale Ivy League "there is a tailored study FOR SALE PROVING
[insert desire outcome here]. . . " Universities,
the Corrupt States, the Corrupt Counties, and the Corrupt Cities,
the Corrupt Republican Political Party, and
the Corrupt Democrat Political Party.
U.S. Political Government "Investigations" show the Perp Walk: Perjury after
Perjured Testimony in U.S. Supreme Courts, U.S. House of Representatives, Senate
Testimony. Fraud all. Only the most frightened horrified have cognitive
dissonance belief remaining in U.S. Federal Government(s).
Overthrowing Governments is not done by those who work, commoners posting on
internet websites, walking the streets with Pitchforks, Fire and Ropes,
Protesting, carrying Placards, placing Posters, and Marching with Banners; those
people in Life Long Debt Servitude (hovel&cart/house&car) usually come to gawk at
the result.
Overthrowing Governments is done by extremely wealthy for differing reasons as
in the Overthrowing the Government of Britain/ England / U.K. in the New World -
the Free World - during the late 1700's Early 1800's with Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson knew Representative Government eventually becomes corrupt; a
New Lawyered Governed Tyranny is formed.
Lawyered Representative Government Corrupts; Absolute Lawyered Representative
Governments Corrupts Absolutely.
When Citizens are indebted to, fearful of, dependent on, lied to, [INSERT
YOURS HERE], with government guns pointed at U.S. Citizens and Surveillance by
their "elected" Representatives for each AOR using U.S. Militarized Collusive
State, County, and City First Responders Type Government Patrolling Enforcement,
a New Type of Governed Tyranny is formed (see 1 afore)
All U.S. Citizens are given a Legal Right and a Legal Duty.
When Lawyered Representative Governments do not do the will of the people
(hint: U.S.).
". . . it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 2nd paragraph
The world is very different than ZH Heavy and MSM disclose.
Recent and periodic school shootings are the work of the two U.S. Political
Factions democrats and republicans PSYOPS in the U.S. Political Party System.
Disclosing the real story could be considered Top Secret National Intelligence
information especially with the fake social media account: Zhaupka.
I have a brother in law who is 26, a part time musician, living at home with my mother in
law. Spending time with him, I get the same sense of deep, despairing loneliness and a quiet,
sad frustration. A life in paralysis, as the social rules and systems he observed growing up
have dissolved before his eyes, in what feels like just a couple of years. These brave mens'
posts have made me realize I need to pray hard and often for him.
The underbelly of this problem is the general refusal to be "tied down" by relationships or
mutual obligation.
Social ties are "naive" or "creepy" these days -- nobody wants to have them. Everyone is
independent, everyone is "free." Even when you do have friends, you aren't able to rely on
them; participation is optional and you have no right to expect a thing.
This is the endgame of liberalism that Deneen lays out. The last frontier in "freedom" is
the dissolution of social bonds. Because "bonds" are, of course, the antithesis of freedom.
The others have been swept away; the most personal of them remain but are being fought
against on all sides.
There are no true relationships to be had. Even within the confines of marriage, partners
now eye their counterpart with suspicion -- as someone who is a perpetual threat to their
"freedom." Hence divorce -- the smallest issues (nevermind the larger ones that life can
bring) are enough to confirm suspicions that this other person is attempting to confine and
limit freedom. They "expect" too much.
It is taken for granted amongst the youth that monogamy is a myth and "unnatural,"
something we "didn't evolve for," that having a substantive relationship with one's parents
past the age of majority is "sick" and "maladjusted," and so on.
Ironically -- and sadly -- the same young people who are so quick to defend their own
"freedom and autonomy" are also hunched over drinks every weekend bemoaning the fact that
they are lonely and without people to depend on.
Until the liberal ideology of the protean, autonomous self goes by the wayside, this
problem will continue. It is a cultural value these days to be unencumbered by strong social
ties. There is no awareness (and in fact quite the opposite, due to much ideological work)
that human nature prefers them.
"I would never become a member of any group that would accept me as a member". –
Groucho Marx. If you don't have as much community as you like, look in the mirror. A
community will accept you on THEIR terms, not yours.
I've heard a lot of similar sentiments from many folks, some from surprising backgrounds.
You are, perhaps ironically, not alone in feeling this way. I'm a little older than you and
our demographic seems to be ground-zero for this psychic malaise.
I think your pain is real. You feel you did everything right, yet your future seems far
from bright. You yearn for meaningful connections, for friends and family who will have your
back. A wife who both stands on her own two feet and stands by her man when you need her. You
want people you can count on. And, maybe more importantly, you want to be counted on by
others. I think that these are natural desires. People want purpose. You have a need to be
needed. And this is perfectly natural and understandable.
I have good news for you. You are needed. Writer #2 touches on this when he talks about
the struggle our generation is facing regarding aimlessness and lack of purpose. As much of a
pain as it may be, my opinion is that we all have to saddle up to fix this. And I think
national politics is one avenue to approach these issues, but not the only one and, honestly,
probably not the best one.
I think the solution starts with grassroots action at a local level, tending and caring
for our respective communities, cultivating the very bonds we all understandably seek. The
soup kitchens, the homeless shelters, local clean-up and sanitation programs, local
government and chambers of commerce, small businesses, churches or other houses of worship,
and local non-profits. They need consistent engagement, support and funding from young women
and men. You probably don't even realize just what an outsize impact you could make at the
cost of some earnest effort and a few hours a week (if not more). Rod might call this
'crunchy-con,' and the great news is that there are many progressives who would also want to
engage their communities this way. Perhaps our common ground is in the commons.
And liberals aren't bad people. Really, they're not. I know many who are very close
friends and family and feel greatly blessed to have them in my life. We have some quite
different views on policy, but we also have much in common. We're parents. We try to raise
our kids with a sense of morals (yes, there's quite a bit in common between cons and libs
when it comes to basic concepts of right and wrong among children). We drink together. We
joke together. Some go to my church. We like beer, ice cream, pizza, Humphrey Bogart movies,
Star Wars, and Stranger Things.
So, please don't let the crazies of the 'Ctrl-Left' push you to the 'Alt-Right.' My
friend, the alt-right is poison. I know that they make the extremists on the Left angry, and
that seems like a small victory. But it isn't. You're better than this. Their ideas don't
deserve your attention, much less your respect. The alt-right will merely sell you a map to
the edge of an abyss, where an extreme Leftist will be waiting to kick you over that
edge.
You probably played games as a kid where you were Indiana Jones or maybe the soldiers on
D-Day fighting against the Nazis. Once you're in the abyss though, you may very well become
the enemy your 8-year-old self always swore to fight against.
I share Writer #2's cautious optimism that we can fix this. But it's going to take all of
us. A lot of folks out there need you. This country needs you. And I'm honestly more than
happy to lend an ear if you need someone to talk to.
I feel like I was given a preview of what normal was supposed to be while growing up and
it has steadily been taken away.
Yes. Except I feel that it has been stolen away and I'd like to be able to identify and
deal with the thieves but aren't quite sure who they are and have no way to get at them.
"The difference, he said (again, citing studies) is that back then we had much stronger
social networks. Real social networks, not social media."
Rod, do you think it is possible to ever regain the benefits of these real social networks
without their negative aspects (racial and gender discrimination being the most notable)?
[NFR: I don't see why not, at least in theory. But you know what definitely won't work?
This left-wing-on-campus way of demanding that groups must rigidly conform to a particular
left-wing model of community, or be expelled. So, if there must be ideological rigidity in
the formation of social networks, then no, I don't think it can work. For example, I think
men and women might well find a lot of social capital in single-sex organizations, for
various reasons. I don't see why those should be off the table in every circumstance, because
of discrimination. IOW, I think some forms of discrimination are normal and harmless. A
feminist art collective that restricted membership only to females, for example. --
RD]
I do agree with these two in many ways, but I have a message for your first commentator.
If you want community in these times – perhaps in any time, but especially and
specifically in these times – you have to build it yourself. Among all the weaknesses
of how men in this culture are raised, I think this is one of the greatest. Again and again I
see men in my life sort of "floating" through dumbly, eternally baffled that social relations
of all types (romantic, sure, but especially *friendship*) aren't just falling into place. My
husband, my brother, my father and father-in-law have all been guilty of this at some point
– of them all, only my father has 'pulled himself up by the bootstraps' and created a
friendship community without the specific help of a woman. The learned helplessness is really
astounding.
Currently, I keep communication going between my family members – and I mean *all*
of them – and most of our friend group. I can see that I am going to be the one going
forward that keeps community ties intact for the Millenial generation, and maintain that
vibrant community for my son to grow up in. I suppose a lot of men think this just happens
because of my genitals or something. It does not. There is a checklist anyone can follow, no
matter what's between the legs (or ears).
1) The lack of community and friendship will destroy you – physically, mentally,
emotionally. Acknowledge this for the threat to you that it is. Accept the reality of your
biology. (Being an "introvert" is NOT an excuse. Your introversion will not save you.)
2) Know that every social tie you do not personally maintain will be lost to you.
Acknowledge your responsibility for your part of the equation.
3) Be ruthless with your time and effort – you cannot be everything to everybody.
Decide your priorities, *and dedicate your time there*. I strongly suggest choosing people
who you actively enjoy spending time with, who fulfill rather than drain you, and who add to
your life. Don't overdedicate time for "duty" relationships. However, having said that
4) Social relations aren't all or nothing. I have "tiers" of relations, which I divide up
by how much time I have to spend on them. For example:
a) Immediate family – I live with them, or nearly so.
b) Close friends – I personally make time to meet them at least once or twice a
month, usually sharing a meal.
b-2) Coworkers – a different type of social relation, but I spend 8 hours a day with
them, so this must also be cultivated carefully.
c) Temporarily distant friends – these people have the ability to be a close friend
at any time, but due to circumstances are unable to meet frequently right now. Meeting is
NECESSARY to maintain friendships. NO MEET, NO TALK, NO FRIEND. To keep these people in
orbit, I host parties roughly once a month to which I invite anyone who can come, and provide
free food. I also attend as many events hosted by them as I can. The judicious use of
Facebook can assist. Semi-distant family (meet on holidays) is in this group.
d) Associates – I like most of them well enough, but we've never hung out long
enough to establish a friendship connection. Distant family is in this group. Facebook is how
I would know anything about what is going on in their lives, but honestly, there's
diminishing returns here. I keep in contact by writing a yearly Christmas letter – I
add new acquaintances every year, and am currently at 250 people for the circulation.
e) Potential new people who can be part of one of the tiers – I'm always keeping an
eye out, especially for the bottom two.
5) Drop all resentment now about what others "should be doing." It's going to lock you in
a torturous citadel of self-satisfied loneliness. You're going to take up the majority of
work, or at least it's going to feel that way, and you need to accept that, because in the
end it's all for your own benefit. However, those who do not respond in kind sooner rather
than later need to be dropped a tier.
6) Mentioned above, but NEVER let things stagnate. If you don't stir the pool, the social
circle rots away. Always be open to new connections, and when you see a chance, make one,
even if at just the acquaintance level (which is mostly what I do nowadays).
7) Toxic people must be eliminated from your life without hesitation or reserve. Family
ties should not stay your hand for even a millisecond. Having said that, if there's
significant positive history there, see first if it's possible to drop them a tier or two
instead. I put my parents at arms length – quietly – while they were in the thick
of their divorce, but now that they've stabilized and are friendly to each other, they've
come back in the top two tiers. Situations can change 🙂
8) And finally, the technique itself think carefully about what YOU can do that helps THE
OTHER PERSON. Sometimes that's providing a sympathetic listening ear. Sometimes that's going
hiking with someone. Sometimes that's showing up with beer and a video game. Sometimes you
host a party with a really nice meal and invite a bunch of people. If something doesn't work,
think harder! Clearly what you were providing wasn't helping THEM. As a parent myself, with
my baby son sleeping on me as I write, perhaps you could offer to watch the children and let
your friends sleep? Or at least buy them a meal when they can't leave the house. Or or look,
you know these people, but try to be creative here.
9) You cannot ask anything of other people that you have not already provided to them. To
bve clear: YOU CANNOT ASK ANYTHING OF OTHER PEOPLE THAT YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY PROVIDED TO
THEM. No one will help you move if you didn't shift some boxes for them when they moved. No
one will come over to take care of you when you are sick if you didn't at least send a meal
for them when they were sick. Someone has to start the chain going – let it be you.
Because who else will?
10) Last but not least – have empathy. Sometimes people just can't do it right now.
Sometimes your friends' lives change, or your family member moves away for a job. Sometimes a
relationship fails, sometimes the other person just lets things end. While you should
certainly check in to make sure they're OK, often times it is the kind thing to step back a
pace – while leaving the door open – and just let them do what they have to do in
their lives. Aside from family that you live with, YOU need to be strong enough to let this
happen to friends from time to time, and not to be angry or resentful about it. If it's meant
to be, they'll come back to you and your friendship will revive.
There's more to the technique but this comment is long enough. Having the right psychology
is 90% of the battle, anyway. Everything else you can learn from trial and error.
But–young man #1– you have to DO. Complain, sure, but then turn your energy to
DOING! Get those email addresses for your cousins, and from friends who have moved away!
Write a holiday letter if nothing else! Or perhaps offer to babysit for your friends with
kids or or look, you have to do the work here, you know these people. DO. Society sucks, yes
I agree, now stop making excuses right the heck now and – DO.
Remember that from the standpoint of the liberal readers of this blog we're living in the
best of times in history on a cultural level, a true utopia on Earth.
There are no golden ages in the past. The past has nothing to teach us. Diversity is a
strength. Pornhub is booming. Kids are being taught transgenderisnm. Men can give birth. The
religious liberty bigots are being quashed. The gun nuts are next. The blacks are better off.
Whites, by deliberate design, are being made into a minority. And the white working class,
and the white lower middle class, are at long last getting what they deserve. Utopia!
Never forget that the liberal commenters here are typical of the wider educated liberal
community. No matter how polite, eloquent and historically informed they may seem, they're
glib and superficial. Never forget that you're interacting with people who like to get on a
moral high horse but believe grade school kids should be taught to pick their gender.
And, never lose sight of the most defining trait of them all of the contemporary liberal
mind. They have a complete lack of empathy for anyone white who doesn't share their moral
views. Black Christians and Muslims get a waiver. They're people of color. For the rest of
us, they are increasingly open about not even acknowledging our basic humanity. They mean us
harm.
Most of the liberal readers of this blog pay threadbare lip service to the
inequality-creating and atomizing effects of capitalism as major contributors to the various
problems. Nevertheless, it's hollow. They invariably side with the globalist and the
neo-liberal system the exact second anyone suggests doing something about the negative
effects of capitalism, such as introducing tariffs or, especially, limiting immigration to
help boost wages.
All the data is there. We are about to experience some of the worst times in history, with
the tip of the knife hanging over the white working and lower middle class. The alt right at
least offers whites a theoretical possibility of organizing for self-defense. It's a
framework for a foundation for a white Benedict option, which, however one feels about it, is
clearly necessary.
OK, now that I've screamed in their ear with a megaphone I get it. I really do. It's true
that a Millennial's life can be crushingly lonely. At times, my own life has been that way. I
moved away immediately after college to start a shiny, prestigious international career
– and crashed, and burned *hard*. The shame and the stress nearly overwhelmed me. I had
no friends, no family, no one to talk to. At one point I had an powerful urge to leave my
apartment, get on a train, go to the end point of the train, and just walk until I collapsed
seeing as it was February in the equivalent of Siberia, this could have been dangerous to my
own life. I wrestled with what I should do – the feeling of failure making me think
maybe I should just disappear – and then of all the things I suddenly remembered the
funeral of my childhood pet the previous year, when my stoic father had suddenly wept and
said he hoped he would never have to bury me. At the time I'd thought this was a bit
histronic (pet was old, not very well, pets die forchrissakes), but it swayed my hand. I
called a suicide helpline and was able to calm down.
Later, I was shocked by how close to the edge I had come – me, with no previous
health challenges or mental illness! I resolved right there to 'fix' my situation and never
to let it happen again. And it never has. But make no mistake, it has been an uphill battle
that I've had to start from scratch at least twice. Most of my free time is involved in
friendship creation and maintenance, and I expect I will be doing that until I die.
I've realized and accepted for ten years or so that my generation is the one that will
lose things – that we will have less than the ones who came before. But I don't despair
about it – quite frankly our society has such a preposterous amount of wealth that we
could lose 50% of it and still live decent lives by historical standards. Of course, the
transition could be extremely rough, but I'm betting on a gradual-ish collapse. Trump may
possibly be the beginning of the slide. Or not! Comparing ourselves to Rome, I take away that
there have been a lot of peaks before the final collapse, and that even that collapse wasn't
as fast as it seems with historical hindsight.
Also, I personally suspect that a lot of "progress" can go in the dustbin and our lives
might even get BETTER. Losing the 3,000 mile Caesar salad will prioritize fresh local food.
Expensive driving will lead to more walking, which will increase health. Less internet = more
community. Who will be buying and trading heroin if we no longer have stocked shelves in the
grocery store? The black market will turn itself to healthier ends ASAP. Crises will shatter
bureaucracy, and leave the door open to better solutions. And cynical though this thought is,
an actual war that genuinely threatens us would do more to knit this country back together
than anything else
Is this optimistic? Extremely. But I take some solace in the fact that most of our
society's problems come from having Too Much. Too Much food. Too Much stuff. Too Much
national news. Too Much technology. Too Much cheap energy, which we waste at a shocking rate.
Too Much independence, past the point where it's physically healthy. And yes, Too Much
capitalism. I'm no Marxist but there needs to be some counterbalance. So if the excess
vanishes isn't there a chance that we can put something together that better respects our own
limits and that of society? I'd rather put my energy there, to be honest. I hope more
Millennials join me – but I say that knowing that circumstances will likely compel them
to. I'll meet them on the way down 🙂
At the risk of being trite, to make a friend you have to be a friend. I have been blessed
with a gift for friendship beginning with the fact that my parents (Dad, Mom and Step-mom)
were all fairly sociable people so I had a good example set for friendliness at a young age.
I am a bit diffident at first, but once the ice is broken I'm all in. I've pulled up stakes
and moved four times and had to start over socially each time. First place to seek friends,
IMO, is church, if you can find a church where the doctrine and worship styles are congenial.
One of my best friends here in Baltimore is a elderly guy at St Andrews who just turned 80;
he and his wife (she's home bound and ailing now alas) were the unofficial befrienders at our
church; if you showed up at least twice they did not let you get out the door without an
invitation to coffee and donuts with them afterward. Old Fred has helped me in several ways,
such as when I was having serious car trouble and could not find anyone who could properly
fix it– he knew a little hole in the wall shop that could and he ferried me back and
forth to it. I repaid the favor the next year when he had open heart surgery and I took the
day off so I could sit with him and his wife until they wheeled him away to the OR, and
stayed with his wife until their son got off work and could join her. (oh and I HATE
hospitals). Next suggestion: go out for a drink at a place that seems congenial to your
tastes in people, assuming of course there's no reason you shouldn't drink. Bars may be a bad
place to meet a significant other, but that's not true of meeting friends. I met a whole
circle of people here that way (ditto in Akron). I had become a familiar face there on
Fridays and one of them invited me to their Halloween party the first fall I was here.
Third suggestion: Try not to lose touch with people, including family. This is where social
media can actually help, if you use it right. Don't rant about politics or anything that
might turn off a lot of people, just post news about your life, interesting things that
happen, hobbies etc. And if you can afford to, go visit people in parts distant, especially
family. I see my Michigan people twice a year, my Florida kin once a year, and family in
Minnesota and Arizona every two or three years.
As an aside the guy who said "burn it all down" had my sympathy only that. Spite is not a
valid foundation for politics, and yes, we all have sad and depressing times, but remember
that that's local to you– it doesn't define the world. And like all else, it too shall
pass.
I want to push back a little on the implicit assertion that the loneliness these people are
experiencing is a new phenomenon -- and more specifically, that this phenomenon is a direct
result of the collapse of American Christianity (which I actually don't disagree with you is
taking place).
Back in the 1950's, there was a wide swath of American literature, buttressed by the
reporting of the national media at the time, that there was a giant amount of loneliness and
anomie that was overtaking the country. The writings of the "beat" generation, Charles
Schulz's Peanuts all these were founded on the profound disconnection people were feeling in
American life.
And this was before the sexual revolution, the upheaval of the 1960's, and when the
American church was quite strong!
I don't want to descend into the easy cynicism of "we've all been there before, done that"
-- but loneliness does seem pretty baked into our culture. At least, as long as there was no
longer a frontier wilderness to tame, where simple survival outweighed any consideration of
loneliness.
I am a senior born of the greatest generation. Still communicate with a number of my high
school classmates. We grew up in a small community northwest of Chicago. Corny as it sounds
all our neighbors remained our neighbors never moving. Our small town had 16 or so taverns as
a large farming community surrounded the town. Everyone visited at their favorite tavern.
Nothing else to do but work.
My heart went out to you. I am a 69 year old woman who grew up in a very unhappy home. My
inherited personality is introspective but outgoing, but my upbringing left me with a very
low opinion of myself, anxious,etc. etc. It took me a long time to become the self God made
me. One of the major things I will share. At age 59, we returned to an East Asian country we
had lived in before. I knew how difficult adjusting to the culture (which I love very much)
is and I wanted to make it easier for other women. I started giving tours at my churches.
Twice a month I took them to festivals, museums, temples, sightseeing. I started a knitting
club (I can't knit and never did learn well!) and we made thousands of hats for victims of
earthquakes, the homeless, Operation Christmas Child. I initiated a prison ministry (I was
terribly nervous doing this) to visit and write to foreign prisoners that was the first of
its kind.I blossomed! I am not special. I'm an average person and leader.
What am I saying? Look outward! Find a need! People will become your friend when you share a
passion for giving to others with them. Stop thinking of yourself. When you sit next to
someone at an event, don't think of yourself ask them about themselves. 2. Do something to
make yourself feel manly. Having children made me overjoyed to be a woman. Help others with
your God-given manly virtues. God bless and help you, Mr. Lonely.
Sadly, I do not have anything else to say than this: good material for a future book of
yours! Bleak, but so, so central to our lives (and will continue to be so). Sometimes I think
the only institute that is capable of stemming the tide of atomization is the parish (I speak
in Catholic terms).
" a herd of sheep that have been abandoned by their shepherd, just led to the slaughter."
This line resonates deeply with me, as it first occurred to me in a grace-filled moment as
a student on the campus of Georgetown University back in the 1980s, as I considered myself
and my peers. It forms the core of my outrage towards the institutional Catholic Church, not
the line priests so much as the bishops and leaders of the Church (I say this as a devout
Catholic, imperfect though I be). I have myself experienced a good deal of what these readers
describe in emotional terms. There is no doubt that the Holy Catholic Faith has provided me
with a rock of stability and a sure foundation for the conduct of my life, because Jesus
Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and he founded a Church, not a collection of
atomized individuals pursuing their own private interpretations of Scripture (or a motley
collection of fragmented splinter- groups, each imposing its own brand of biblical
interpretation). So the very first thing I would say is "get to know Jesus Christ" in the
Church that he founded and you will find a sure friend and the Good Shepherd who will be with
you all throughout your life to spiritually guide you. But in addition to this spiritual
reality, there is also the emotional reality of the social vacuum in which many of us live
nowadays, and this defies a ready response. I am quite fortunate at the moment, in that I
have an elderly parent to care for who really needs it, and it very much nourishes me to
provide this care, in both spiritual and emotional terms. But without such deep family ties,
where is one to turn for emotional nourishment? One can think of volunteer work focused on
those in need, e.g., visiting the elderly who are being so neglected in nursing homes, the
prisoners in prisons, etc. Above all, one needs to start from humble prayer to God for
guidance in these matters. Young people need to wake up and realize that there's nothing more
precious than building a faith and family life, and worshipping the Living God, so that we
may be happy in this life (in so far as that is possible amid the inevitable crosses of
life), and inherit eternal life in Heaven after we pass on, which is the ultimate goal.
Something worth mentioning – everyone on earth has felt disillusionment at various
times. That is the most normal thing in the world. What I hear in these letters is that those
who raised you left you woefully unprepared to cope with that reality.
The world and the people in it do not follow our expectations for them. They never have.
No matter how perfectly one has executed a plan, navigaing a life has never been A to B to C
to everlasting stability and material bliss. Your parents, even if unintentionally, gave you
a great many misconceptions about the world and yourself.
In the simplest of terms – happiness is an inside job. I see at least three
generations that are operating under the opposite principal at this point. How can you expect
others your age to behave any differently when they were raised with the same formula for
failure?
The good news is, it's never to late, and that it has nothing to do with ideology. Try
*being* the friend you wish you had. Extend the hand of kindness you feel you yourself lack.
Bring the light of consciousness and fairness you feel you see being extinguished in the
world, have the courage and daring to find joy in the act of living, even through struggle.
Understand that every other person is evolving and learning just like you, that no person
enters the world fully formed and flawless, and that success, prosperity, and companionship
are a process and a journey, not an event that can be marked on a calendar.
No one that has ever lived has had life 'handled' by the time they are 30, let alone in
their teen years. You are at the very beginning of the adventure known as your life, and as
impossible as it may be to fathom right now, your future self would likely barely recognize
the person you are today.
@ kijunshi – your first comment is good advice for all of us.
I sometimes think our world suffers from a dearth of "if it's meant to be, it'll
happen"-type thinking. True, you can't force a square peg in to a round hole, but there is a
lot one can and should DO to improve on'es own circumstances.
Very interesting reading these comments. I'm in my 50's and can relate to how it has become
increasingly hard in our society to stay really connected. I can especially relate to the
comments how you can find yourself making all the effort to maintain a relationship.
I'm a trained engineer who has spent more than 30 years in the Nation's space program, so
appreciate our technological progress, but I worry that reductionist thinking it breeds has
lead us to lose something. If we don't know how to integrate our life and work, it leads to
dis-integration. I've started trying to apply some system integration learning I've had in my
work and see if it can help in new ways. You can read it here, if you're interested.
When you post to social media to maintain a sense of community, you're creating marketing
information harvested and used to manipulate you and whomever interacts with it. The more you
tell, the more they have to gain control of you, making merchandise of you.
I'm thankful I have God as a friend. He gives out a version of tough love when needed, but
He'll never betray me. And I don't need a smartphone, tablet or computer using Twitter or
Facebook to make contact. It would be lonelier than bearable to be alienated from God, who
truly does care and cares to give me the truth, at least as much as I can handle at a time.
His message through Jesus in the New Testament is the most wonderful gift of friendship in
the world.
When we are alienated from God, we end up alienated from nature, others and ultimately
from ourselves.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language
writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the
anxiety, alienation , and powerlessness of
the individual in the 20th century. Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in
which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word
Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where
the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.
Portside article about NAFTA, unions, and Canadian unions: Here is a paragraph from the
underlying article at New York Magazine about the three sponsors:
On Wednesday, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Kirsten Gillibrand
announced their agreement -- and introduced legislation to ban "right-to-work" laws
throughout the United States.
[NY Mag article is dated 20 Sept 2017]
The sooner we collectively kill off the feudal idea of "right to work," the better. Right
now, though, we're only what -- sixty, seventy–years too late?
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
It was one of the few policies that I could think of what would actually, you know, help
the win elections. But then I realized the the purpose of the DNC isn't actually to win
elections, it's to raise money from Wall Street, Hollywood and Silcon Valley to pay for
consultants.
Why didn't Democrats pass legislation in 2009 to eliminate it?
Yeah, Captain Hope'N-Change failed to deliver labor any meaningful legislation during his
eight years in office.
Labor was essentially told "We put some friendly faces on the NLRB and in the judiciary.
Be thankful, and forget about card check or right to work preemption."
And it's a bad look anyway. With the basically insurmountable barriers to organizing under
the Wagner Act these days, a focus on making sure the money keeps flowing, much of it ending
up in the Ds campaign coffers. How about repealing Taft-Hartley?
Maybe unions would be better off with less bureaucracy and more member participation. Do
it like the Wobs: you come to the meeting, you pay your dues, you voice your opinion and you
vote.
The Closed Shop
Jurisdictional Strikes
Secondary Boycotts
Common Situs Picketing
A Ban on Right-to-Work
A Ban on presidential interventions in strikes
Supervisor's Unions
Employer Nuetrality
Hopefully this happens before I die. I would absolutely love to see the yacht and learjet
owning class in tears!
They not only write themselves they've already been written and burned into the brain.
True or not, there they are. So what are you risking?
The thing is the D-time is well past the point (no House, no Senate, no Pres, vanishing
amount of Govs, vanishing amount of State leges..) where saying "That's not true!!" can be
considered a winning strategy, even if you could show me what you've won by saying it.
How about "hell yeah that's how we feel, America rocked (when we had strong labor)". Stand
up to the bully for once, again whaddya got to lose now. I often wonder what Steve Gilliard
would say at this point, he always made sure that us white people realized that something was
better than nothing when you were looking at absolutely nothing at all . but things have sunk
so low would he still feel that what has become nothing more than an orderly, but continuous
retreat should be sustained? Or is it time to dig in and really declare full throated
opposition?
(like the rest of your post, just think the time to avoid things is past)
Henry Moon Pie: So? Let's repeal the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley. And let's not pre-defeat
ourselves.
Just as Lambert keeps reminding us, Who would have though five years ago that the momentum
is now toward single-payer health insurance even if the current couple of bills don't pass?
For years, John Conyers carried on the fight almost single-handedly. And now we have
influential physicians stumping for single-payer.
So, what draws people to these phones? Surely, it is not just the groundbreaking design or
the connection with a community. As a minister, psychotherapist and scholar studying our
relationship with hand-held devices, I believe there is much more going on.
Our sense of self is shaped while we are still in the womb. The development of the self,
however,
accelerates after birth . A newborn, first and foremost, attaches herself to the primary
caregiver and later to things – acquiring what has been called an "extended
self."
The leading 20th-century American psychologist William James was among the first to
argue for an extended self. In his "Principles of Psychology," James
defined the self as "the sum total of all that a man can call his, not only his body and his
psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children." Losing any of this
extended self, which could include money or another prized object, as he explained, could lead
to a sense of great loss. In early childhood, for example, babies and toddlers cry if they
suddenly lose their pacifier or favorite soft toy, objects that become part of their extended
selves.
Phones, I argue, play a similar role. It is not uncommon for me to feel a sudden onset of
anxiety should I drop my phone or am unable to find it. In my experience, many individuals feel
the same way. It is also reflected in how often many of us check our devices.
Psychologist Larry Rosen and
his colleagues at California State University found that 51 percent of individuals born in the
1980s and 1990s experienced moderate to high levels of anxiety when they were kept from
checking in with their devices for more than 15
minutes . Interestingly, the percentage drops slightly – to 42 percent – for
those born between 1965 and 1979.
This is primarily because they came into being during a time where hand-held technologies
were only beginning to make their entry. For this group, phones became part of their extended
self only as late teens or as young adults.
"... It's fine to acknowledge a misstep. But spin the answer to focus on why this new situation is such an ideal match of your abilities to the employer's needs. ..."
I have been in my present position for over 25 years. Five years ago, I was assigned
a new boss, who has a reputation in my industry for harassing people in positions such as mine
until they quit. I have managed to survive, but it's clear that it's time for me to move along.
How should I answer the inevitable interview question: Why would I want to leave after so long?
I've heard that speaking badly of a boss is an interview no-no, but it really is the only reason
I'm looking to find something new. BROOKLYN
I am unemployed and interviewing for a new job. I have read that when answering interview
questions, it's best to keep everything you say about previous work experiences or managers positive.
But what if you've made one or two bad choices in the past: taking jobs because you
needed them, figuring you could make it work - then realizing the culture was a bad fit, or you
had an arrogant, narcissistic boss?
Nearly everyone has had a bad work situation or boss. I find it refreshing when I read
stories about successful people who mention that they were fired at some point, or didn't get
along with a past manager. So why is it verboten to discuss this in an interview? How can the
subject be addressed without sounding like a complainer, or a bad employee? CHICAGO
As these queries illustrate, the temptation to discuss a negative work situation can be strong
among job applicants. But in both of these situations, and in general, criticizing a current or past
employer is a risky move. You don't have to paint a fictitiously rosy picture of the past, but
dwelling on the negative can backfire. Really, you don't want to get into a detailed explanation
of why you have or might quit at all. Instead, you want to talk about why you're such a perfect fit
for the gig you're applying for.
So, for instance, a question about leaving a long-held job could be answered by suggesting that
the new position offers a chance to contribute more and learn new skills by working with a stronger
team. This principle applies in responding to curiosity about jobs that you held for only a short
time.
It's fine to acknowledge a misstep. But spin the answer to focus on why this new situation
is such an ideal match of your abilities to the employer's needs.
The truth is, even if you're completely right about the past, a prospective employer doesn't really
want to hear about the workplace injustices you've suffered, or the failings of your previous employer.
A manager may even become concerned that you will one day add his or her name to the list of people
who treated you badly. Save your cathartic outpourings for your spouse, your therapist, or, perhaps,
the future adoring profile writer canonizing your indisputable success.
Send your workplace conundrums to [email protected], including your name and contact
information (even if you want it withheld for publication). The Workologist is a guy with well-intentioned
opinions, not a professional career adviser. Letters may be edited.
"... To my generation computer games seem crazy but incredible amounts of money are spent developing each new game. Man's ingenuity has been turned against himself as mental addiction takes its place next to chemical addiction. ..."
"... You need to use AdBlock and NoScript (or the equivalent for whatever OS and browser you're using.) I don't see ads hardly anywhere. The main reason for using these tools is not only to get rid of ads, it's to enhance the security of your computer. ..."
Death of education by smartphones is a recent meme worrying educators. The ads, news bites, and
apps are crafted specifically to attract attention. They are the end result of marrying Madison
Avenue with Silicon Valley and only the most effective/annoying/distracting survive to become
the template for the next generation.
To my generation computer games seem crazy but incredible amounts of money are spent developing
each new game. Man's ingenuity has been turned against himself as mental addiction takes its place
next to chemical addiction.
"If I look up a news article on the Web, swarms of ads descend to interrupt, and we spend
precious time trying to delete them and move on as even as more continue to appear. The volume
of ads are so asphyxiating these days that it isn't worth the effort to get rid of them, and
so I turn them off., annoyed and exasperated."
You need to use AdBlock and NoScript (or the equivalent for whatever OS and browser you're
using.) I don't see ads hardly anywhere. The main reason for using these tools is not only to
get rid of ads, it's to enhance the security of your computer.
"... Today, we learn in snatches or in brief bites. We don't settle down to learn comprehensively. We can't concentrate. Our life is one of incessant interruptions. If I look up a news article on the Web, swarms of ads descend to interrupt, and we spend precious time trying to delete them and move on as even as more continue to appear. The volume of ads are so asphyxiating these days that it isn't worth the effort to get rid of them, and so I turn them off., annoyed and exasperated. ..."
"... News items are intruders. Their origin is external to our thought. If outside events are always being dumped on our brains, it is hard to take the time to grade them in terms of our general knowledge. We do we really know? It takes a lot of reflection to answer that. Only by looking at our own knowledge from all sides, do we get a grasp of the insights that come from experience rather than the knowledge that come from foreign impressions. Schopenhauer once said that real thinking means "comparing truth with truth." To me that means deciding which truth had more meaning and priority in my own mental life? ..."
"... The ability to focus on a subject for a long time without fatigue was one of Napoleon's mottos. Who today can do that? What benefit to we get from blotting out distractions and learning to reason carefully for a long time without getting tired? It becomes harder for us to do everyday. Topics flock to our brains. The Middle East, President Trump, North Korea. Are these things really interesting? If we buckle down and concentrate on them, what will be the reward? To me, the rewards are always meager. There is a lot of competition when it comes to current affairs. If we fall behind, we suffer a pang of regret – some neighbor knows more about current affairs than I do. But so what? I want to ponder things that are unique to my own temper and mental capacity. I don't want to become a replica of my neighbor. There are few worse fates than that. I want to ponder things that are appropriate to my nature and experience. I want to encourage thoughts that have truth and life in them that occur naturally, not from without. ..."
"... Let's face it. Today we are all the junkies of daily news. "The Daily Fix" phrase is perhaps the most appropriate. ..."
"... One of the main villains of modern life is opinion. Popular opinion has replaced thought and reflection. Opinions are the product of ignorant hearsay. All of us see or view something and, without considering what it means, we rush to bray our reactions to anyone who can hear it. But is our reaction valid? Insightful? Useful? Enlightening? Opinions are unstable; they become outmoded, lacking in pertinence or validity and over time, are discarded. An opinion is the prisoner of the moment, a prisoner of the thoughtless and automatic the commonplace. For every thousand people cry a thing up only a pitiable few cry it down and their voices are drowned out. ..."
"... New York Times' ..."
"... You need to use AdBlock and NoScript (or the equivalent for whatever OS and browser you're using.) I don't see ads hardly anywhere. The main reason for using these tools is not only to get rid of ads, it's to enhance the security of your computer. ..."
"... Most people (68%) have an IQ that is within 1 standard deviation of average. These people are mediocre; functional, but mediocre. Of the remaining 32% we have 16% on the far left side of the bell curve. These people are truly stupid. That leaves only 16% (16 out of every hundred people you meet) that have some spark of intelligence above mediocrity. Of those, only 2% are truly bright. ..."
"... This, I think, is the root of the problems you discuss. Most people simply do not have the ability to do more than absorb and rote repeat the shallow informational garbage that is tossed at them. Their stunted intellectual capacities don't permit them to gain satisfaction from deep meditations. Rather, they prefer the gross pleasures of food, drink, slapstick and gossip. ..."
"... I think much of what is "modern life" is soul stifling. There are many ways to sidestep or repudiate the crassness and incivility of the world today, but for me, it has been to exit the metropolitan life. Going to my farm, where there is no cell service, no big highways and people still ride their horses down the roadways - I feel a palpable release and relief just driving into the area. ..."
"... The key to things, as has been taught throughout time, is to do things in moderation - and the internet and smartphones are no exception. However, the addictive appeal of instant everything is apparent to us here commenting, and is to be understood and moderated. In that vein, I want to thank the Colonel for giving us the opportunity to enjoy this little nook of cyberspace - thank you! ..."
Today, we learn in snatches or in brief bites. We don't settle down to learn comprehensively.
We can't concentrate. Our life is one of incessant interruptions. If I look up a news article on
the Web, swarms of ads descend to interrupt, and we spend precious time trying to delete them and
move on as even as more continue to appear. The volume of ads are so asphyxiating these days that
it isn't worth the effort to get rid of them, and so I turn them off., annoyed and exasperated.
The chief point is that we cannot sit and think and read or reflect in peace any more. Everything
calls to us, tempts us, distracts us, befuddles and annoys us. Our brains are not what they once
were, not because of age, but because our culture works differently on them and hinders their further
development.
News items are intruders. Their origin is external to our thought. If outside events are always
being dumped on our brains, it is hard to take the time to grade them in terms of our general knowledge.
We do we really know? It takes a lot of reflection to answer that. Only by looking at our own knowledge
from all sides, do we get a grasp of the insights that come from experience rather than the knowledge
that come from foreign impressions. Schopenhauer once said that real thinking means "comparing truth
with truth." To me that means deciding which truth had more meaning and priority in my own mental
life?
The ability to focus on a subject for a long time without fatigue was one of Napoleon's mottos.
Who today can do that? What benefit to we get from blotting out distractions and learning to reason
carefully for a long time without getting tired? It becomes harder for us to do everyday. Topics
flock to our brains. The Middle East, President Trump, North Korea. Are these things really interesting?
If we buckle down and concentrate on them, what will be the reward? To me, the rewards are always
meager. There is a lot of competition when it comes to current affairs. If we fall behind, we suffer
a pang of regret – some neighbor knows more about current affairs than I do. But so what? I want
to ponder things that are unique to my own temper and mental capacity. I don't want to become a replica
of my neighbor. There are few worse fates than that. I want to ponder things that are appropriate
to my nature and experience. I want to encourage thoughts that have truth and life in them that occur
naturally, not from without.
I do not understand why so many people strive so hard to be up to date. They are always in a race
to try and announce headlines before their neighbors. They rarely study or master the stories the
headlines advertize. They evade the labor of memorizing. All they can recapitulate are the headlines.
If you ask about the stories, they hesitate then falter out, "I only saw the headlines." I am sometimes
eager to have them summarize what they've read, but there is no there, there as Gertrude Stein said
about Oakland, CA.
Let's face it. Today we are all the junkies of daily news. "The Daily Fix" phrase is perhaps
the most appropriate. It is really shameful if you think about it, but no one does, or if you
protest about the meaningless deluge of daily news, you are labeled over-sensitive or nit-picking.
Most of us awake to news headlines. There is a hurricane, an accident that kills sailors, a helicopter
crashes, a new threat of annihilation from an Asian punk regime.
But do we learn anything from these? We are like those toy birds that dip their beaks into a dish
of water. They look as if they're drinking, but they don't. They are not built to absorb anything.
Their dipping looks like activity, but it is all counterfeit. Unfortunately the breathless topics
of today are not of permanent interest nor do they enrich the mind. They are transitory, destined
not to last. They keep us floating on the surface of life, preventing us from diving deep and discovering
something new and valuable and priceless.
We see lists of notable books on the Civil War, the downfall of the Soviet Union, the Fall of
the Bastille. We see new books on the French Revolution or the fall of Paris in 1870. We see histories
of the Balkans or the Ottoman Empire. We see books about the nature of power, religious or corporate
or military. Do we read them, study them?
As we get older, our minds get more introspective. We want to seize the enduring truths that reside
in our nature or our close friends. Such things sharpen the mind; help expand the range of our inner
insight. Worthless Opinions
One of the main villains of modern life is opinion. Popular opinion has replaced thought and
reflection. Opinions are the product of ignorant hearsay. All of us see or view something and, without
considering what it means, we rush to bray our reactions to anyone who can hear it. But is our reaction
valid? Insightful? Useful? Enlightening? Opinions are unstable; they become outmoded, lacking in
pertinence or validity and over time, are discarded. An opinion is the prisoner of the moment, a
prisoner of the thoughtless and automatic the commonplace. For every thousand people cry a thing
up only a pitiable few cry it down and their voices are drowned out.
We suffer from an increasingly lack of sound judgment.
... ... ...
Isolation
Isolation plays a large part in retarding study. The pleasure of learning is a noble pleasure,
and like all good things, sharing what we learn with others increases its value. We are social creatures,
and it is part of our nature to share the excellent. But most of the time we lack people to share
the joy of our discoveries with. We are victims of the addicts of the mental lightweights who confine
their reading to New York Times' bestsellers, people who lack the means to judge the merit
of what they're reading, who lack the talent to articulate its virtues. They lack the standards of
taste and the critical spirit required to evaluate them correctly.
Isolation has killed a lot of thinkers. I remember How Hume's book on Reelections on Human Nature
fell absolutely flat after it was published yet, over time, became a classic. But popularity can
kill as well. We think of how Mozart's amazing genius wowed and fascinated his audiences and followers
and yet his fame resulted in him buried in an unmarked grave for the poor. Crowds are dismayingly
fickle. Their interest lacks stamina.
Apparently it is the task of modern culture is to herd all of us on well traveled roads, never
taking the road less traveled. Few of us explore and the few who do are not met with enthusiasm or
praise or appreciation but by polite indifference mainly because your knowledge is not current or
popular.
Popularity is a trap. It retains a viselike grip on the ignorant. It is sinister because it is
addictive. If something is popular and makes money, then it must be successful, and if successful,
it must be superior. No one asks the fans of the popular why they admire as they do. Because they
assume that everyone else thinks just as they do and everyone else suffers from the same mediocre
qualities of taste and narrowness of mind.
It is a hard truth that people of more talented intellectual capacity seek out people with similar
temperaments and natures. That is the key to all friendship. With the right people, they come alive.
They speak freely and honestly, relating facts that stimulate their listeners who then come forward
with their own treasured items of memory and knowledge that stimulate and reinforce the conversation.
Both sides leave the discussion strengthed and invigorated. Both are eager to hear more, learn more.
Both return feeling less isolated from the ephemeral l thing tat matter so much in the world.
Divas
The purpose is to learn and share our knowledge for its own sake not because we want to not to
become the center of attention. A neighbor's kid came to visit his parents. He was obsessed with
learning about Rubik Cube. One the night of his arrival, there was a dinner in progress, but no sooner
had the guests entered in the hallway, than this kid was putting on an exhibition, wresting with
his cube, blocking the entering hallway, of course earning automatic applause from his audience.
A short time later, he then went down to Miami to attend an international competition, and after
all his self display his scores were mediocre, resting stolidity in the middle of the pack. I wondered
if his interest was merely a desire to attract cheap applause, or whether he was serious student
determined to become an expert, putting in those long hours of concentrated focus to improve his
skill. Of course, my hopes were mislaid. He moved onto so something else where he would be the center
of attention and hog the spotlight.
How We Die
Am reading an excellent book, How We Die ? The author, Sherwin Nuland, is a doctor, a
surgeon, who is a well educated and deeply cultured man. He writes with eloquence. His prose is not
for the squeamish. He retails very grisly details about how we lose our lives. Each chapter documents
the chief causes of death in America, heart disease, Alzheimer's, accidents, suicides, "Murder and
Serenity", etc.
One death he documents was that of James McCarty who died of a heart attack. He was a successful
construction executive who led a "suicidal" life. He smoked, ate rich food, consumed a lot of red
meat, and grew flabby and overweight and never exercised. He arrived at the emergency room at 8 p.m.,
on a hot and humid Sept. evening. He complained of "a constrictive pressure behind the breastbone"
that radiated up into his throat and down his left arm. The pressure had begun after his usual heavy
dinner. His face was ashen and sweaty. His heartbeat was irregular but improved after initial treatment.
At 11:00 p.m., Nuland arrived. McCarty wasn't pleased to see him. McCarty greeted him with a thin,
forced smile. Nuland was 22 years of age at the time and this was one of his first cases. As Nuland
sat down, McCarty suddenly threw his head back and "bellowed a wordless roar that came out of his
throat from somewhere deep in his stricken heart." He hit his balled fists with surprising force
up against his chest as his face became swollen and purple.
Nuland explains how he opened up the chest cavity to massage the man's heart. The heart felt like
"an uncoordinated squirming, a jellylike bagful of hyperactive worms." The heart was wriggling under
his fingers, and he began a series of firm, syncopated compressions.
Then Nuland writes "Suddenly a something stupefying in its horror took place." (Excellent sentence.)
McCarty "threw back his head once more, and staring at the ceiling with his glassy, unseeing gaze
of open, dead eyes, roared at the distant heavens a hoarse, rasping whoop that sounded as if the
hounds of hell were barking." (Pat described this as McCarty's "last hurrah." McCarty, of course,
was already dead when this happened.
The book is written in this effective pictorial style. It spares the reader nothing.
Of course, we all die from lack of oxygen. We cease breathing and our esophagus muscles can constrict
and make us bark as we die or there can be seen great heaving as our lungs fail. The myths that our
nails or hair grow after our death are simply myths. After we die, nothing grows. The lively energetic
spirit that was one our deepest being had fled, leafing a pathetic shell behind that is not pleasant
to look at. The eyes, at first unfocused and glassy, soon become covered ay a gray film that has
no expression at all. The body beings to shrink. We have become mere luggage. What will survive of
us has already been done. There is nothing else to look forward to.
I learned enough of New Testament Greek to read St. Paul's letters, which were outstandingly articulate
in every way. But when I came to the Resurrection, I became skeptical. It was a lovely wish – to
be restored to your parents, your wife, and your friends. But St. Paul's belief had its antecedents
Zoroaster, the great Persian religious leader, was said to have been torn to pieces by his followers,
but rose after three days. I don't like coincides. Of course, Jesus appeared to his followers but
there was little to record of him after that. Was he resurrected a second time? There is little information.
You are spot on. The biggest problem we face is our own self and the delusion in search of non-existing
knowledge out side of us. As you say if we sit comfortably and contemplate our own experiences
both good and bad, there will be a greater awakening to the world outside of us. But as we search
for knowledge outside of us be it internet or other mediums we are bombarded with irrivelent information
such as the pop us ads etc. I have to plead guilty of the later but sometimes I do practice the
former!
In my early years I marched along the trail knowing that in the mist dimly seen was "The Wall".
Now at 81 "The Wall" is clear, spotlighted in bright sunlight.
I am overwhelmed by this gift of your constant thinking. I agree with you about not wanting to
live if my wits are gone, but I fear that it will be impossible for me to tell what that moment
might be. I am I guess still afraid of death even though I strive to overcome this feeling. We
would all like to die peacefully in our sleep one night but I think this rarely happens.
Death of education by smartphones is a recent meme worrying educators. The ads, news bites, and
apps are crafted specifically to attract attention. They are the end result of marrying Madison
Avenue with Silicon Valley and only the most effective/annoying/distracting survive to become
the template for the next generation. To my generation computer games seem crazy but incredible
amounts of money are spent developing each new game. Man's ingenuity has been turned against himself
as mental addiction takes its place next to chemical addiction.
"If I look up a news article on the Web, swarms of ads descend to interrupt, and we spend
precious time trying to delete them and move on as even as more continue to appear. The volume
of ads are so asphyxiating these days that it isn't worth the effort to get rid of them, and
so I turn them off., annoyed and exasperated."
You need to use AdBlock and NoScript (or the equivalent for whatever OS and browser you're
using.) I don't see ads hardly anywhere. The main reason for using these tools is not only to
get rid of ads, it's to enhance the security of your computer.
Having watched my father pass away in recent months, after several years confined to a wheelchair
and in the care of gifted, compassionate immigrants, I sincerely appreciate this post.
In those last weeks, the most help that I could offer was to play him any opera, musical, jazz,
or orchestral piece that he requested -- all via a quick search on my iTunes account. In the last
hours, when he could no longer speak, Indian Chakra music (also via iTunes) helped his breathing
and was a balm beyond what words could ever express.
What he taught me is that it is not how we die -- in his case, stoic, uncomplaining, loved,
and treasured -- but how we live, that matters.
His life, like so many of his generation, was shaped by several years spent in the US Army
between 1943 - 45, much of it in the South Pacific, then Japan. The catastrophic destruction that
he witnessed, which he did not share with me until he was well into his 80s, shaped the way that
he lived his life, and sharpened his priorities, his beliefs, his politics, his ethics, and his
capacity for friendship. Also, his capacity for making a decision, then sticking to it.
He once told me that after watching 'so many bodies stacked up like cordwood' in the cleanup
of Yokohoma after it had been firebombed, he promised himself that he would never, ever remain
in any job if he was miserable after 72 hours. He kept that promise to himself, and helped countless
others also try to find meaningful work, be productive, and laugh through job losses, down cycles,
and lawsuits.
In other words, his military experiences in WWII seemed to liberate him in a sense to live
his life as fully as he possibly could, and he always felt grateful to have had a solid education,
a superb local library, and -- much later -- The Internet to help him reconnect with friends strewn
across the country.
Today, he would be called 'resilient'. Many of the traits that helped him be successful in
a long career were sharpened in the US Army, and he felt that 'kids today' would have enormous
benefits from some kind of national service. That generation knew how to pull together. Whether
today's kids can figure it out remains to be seen.
I'm in my 40's. I had a heart attack (MI) 3 years ago and a stroke 2 weeks ago. The MI felt like
1000-lbs of compressed air was shot into my lungs. When I had the stroke I was typing a report
at my desk around 7 pm. My wife was still at work. My right arm went completely numb and the right
side of my face felt partially numb. I was rushed to the ER at a local hospital outside Boston.
No major long-term effects. In both cases (MI and stroke) I was a bit freaked out because I
was conscious and knew that what was happening was grave. In both cases my overwhelming thought
(fear) was that I was about to enter eternity and I wondered if I had lead a good enough life
to avoid eternal isolation from God. During the stroke they were ready to use a very aggressive
treatment called TPA, which, the ER doctor told me, could result in bleeding in the brain and
fatality. I was frightened of death for the first time in my life. Because it was real. I asked
my wife if we might need to call a priest. She said I would be ok. The decision to not go forward
with TPA was made by a brother and sister-in-law (one a Harvard Med cardiologist and the other
a professor of medicine) who talked with the ER doctor by phone as this was going down (I'm sure
a first for him).
Anyway, crazy stuff. I will be changing my lifestyle in many ways-- body, mind, and spirt.
I'm practicing my faith more diligently and plan to go to confession at least once per month and
say the rosary daily. A view these events as a wake up call for my health and a severe mercy for
my eternal soul.
I was undergoing some sort of medical test and the technician noticed I was reading a book, one
of the Patrick O'Brian series which includes Master and Commander which was such a good
movie. I told him I was reading the series for what I thought was the sixth time and he was stunned.
He could not believe that anyone would read a book twice, let alone a series of twenty books six
times. I think Richard Sale understands why I'm reading it yet again.
I volunteer at a hospice home in my community. It's a nice place and people in the community
can spend their final days there, for free, well taken care of, with their families and friends,
in a clean, peaceful, respectful environment. The goal of the home is provide as much dignity
in death as possible. I've seem a lot of people go through the dying process and have been there
at the final moment for some of them.
You'd be surprised at how many residents pass their last week and day and even moment with
some banal game show blaring away on the television. You might be surprised at how few conversations
there are about spiritual matters, how few reflections on what was learned during life, how few
conversations regarding great adventures, joys, loves, sorrows.
For most, death comes painlessly. There is a sigh and, perhaps, a brief rattle and then the
resident is gone. Quite uneventful. Quite mundane.
Most people (68%) have an IQ that is within 1 standard deviation of average. These people
are mediocre; functional, but mediocre. Of the remaining 32% we have 16% on the far left side
of the bell curve. These people are truly stupid. That leaves only 16% (16 out of every hundred
people you meet) that have some spark of intelligence above mediocrity. Of those, only 2% are
truly bright.
This, I think, is the root of the problems you discuss. Most people simply do not have
the ability to do more than absorb and rote repeat the shallow informational garbage that is tossed
at them. Their stunted intellectual capacities don't permit them to gain satisfaction from deep
meditations. Rather, they prefer the gross pleasures of food, drink, slapstick and gossip.
Sorry Eric but I don't buy your assumptions at all. I think if you were to look carefully and
without bias, you will find that the mediocrity you have perceived is almost entirely the result
of a very poor national (at least in the USA) public education system.
"Are these things really interesting? If we buckle down and concentrate on them, what will
be the reward? To me, the rewards are always meager. There is a lot of competition when it
comes to current affairs. If we fall behind, we suffer a pang of regret – some neighbor knows
more about current affairs than I do. But so what? I want to ponder things that are unique
to my own temper and mental capacity."
Dear sir, thank you for your essay. You are very right in your principles. One should meditate
and think deeply. One should not be distracted by passing fads and foolish fancies. I am a foolish
fellow. I fritter my time away on distractions. I know that I should say "no" to exciting projects
and focus on just one useful enterprise, but in general I fail.
One thing that I do focus on is putting together aggregated news of police misconduct, government
corruption, and conspiracy theories. Up through 2016, I thought it was just another foolish habit.
I had perhaps two dozen readers every day - I got no money for keeping them abreast of the headlines.
And then, in 2016, John Podesta was accused of human trafficking. If the allegations - known
as Pizzagate - are even close to true, then the entire USA government will be shaken when the
truth comes out. I reported on Pizzagate when it was news, just like I report on every other report
of government misconduct. And instead of two dozen visitors, I got thousands. For just one day,
or just one month, there were thousands of people who wanted to read the allegations, and I played
a very small role in delivering the truth that had been exposed by much braver and abler men.
I hope the corruption will be exposed, and then everyone will wake up, and my blogging efforts
will be obsolete. I would very much like to feel that I can ignore the news in good conscience.
I think much of what is "modern life" is soul stifling. There are many ways to sidestep or
repudiate the crassness and incivility of the world today, but for me, it has been to exit the
metropolitan life. Going to my farm, where there is no cell service, no big highways and people
still ride their horses down the roadways - I feel a palpable release and relief just driving
into the area.
My recommendation is simply to limit your drinking. Nobody gets drunk every day except alcoholics,
who have a sickness. My sense of things on the internet and in smartfone-land is similar - it's
like a drunk who needs to drink. If you have a little, it is fine, although you don't always need
it. If you have a lot, then you are like a drunk - because knowing things does not mean you can
affect them, and worrying over things you cannot affect is a recipe for many ills.
The craziness of the world will recede in the future - so much of what is considered 'normal'
now is not so, when viewed from the lens of history. Things go in cycles, and the current world
is the most technologically complex one in known history - and thus it has more innate vulnerabilities
than any other previous human existence. Simplification will come, and is likely on its way in
our children's or grandchildren's times here on Earth.
Concurrently, my focus has been on building the farm so that my children and possibly their
own, have a place to go that is not the city, that is simpler, that is closer to the Earth and
provides them with things impalpable. This has and is a great source of happiness in this life
for me.
I haven't subscribed to the Judeo-Christian faith since I was originally indoctrinated in my
early teens via catechism. I never grokked a God that delivers binary choice - this world would
be anathema to that type of being. I believe reliving the wheel of life a far more likely and
positive possibility for souls. Polishing ones soul in repeated attempts has an appeal much greater
than burning in hell eternally or playing a harp among identically blissful angels - the binaries
offered by many religions are not reflective of what humanity is, IMHO. I guess in the next years
I will discover what the truth of things is, and take comfort in my offspring moving through time
beyond my own.
The key to things, as has been taught throughout time, is to do things in moderation -
and the internet and smartphones are no exception. However, the addictive appeal of instant everything
is apparent to us here commenting, and is to be understood and moderated. In that vein, I want
to thank the Colonel for giving us the opportunity to enjoy this little nook of cyberspace - thank
you!
And for this essay - thank you. I surely needed to be written, as it is something we all should
acknowledge. Death is something natural, normal and inevitable. Easing the burden of loss to your
loved ones is an important responsibility as we pass through the veil.
At a cabin in the Washington state woods, the reSTART center helps residents withdraw from technology
that has consumed their lives in Redmond, Washington.
By the time Marshall Carpenter's father broke down the barricaded door of his son's apartment
and physically ripped him away from his electronic devices, the 25-year-old was in a bad way. He
could not bear to live a life that didn't involve hours upon hours of uninterrupted screen time.
"I was playing video games 14 or 15 hours a day, I had Netflix on a loop in the background, and
any time there was the tiniest break in any of that, I would be playing a game on my phone or sending
lonely texts to ex-girlfriends," Carpenter says.
We are sitting in a small, plain apartment in a nondescript condo complex in Redmond, Washington,
on the outskirts of Seattle. Marshall shares the apartment with other men in their 20s, all of whom
have recently emerged from a unique internet addiction rehab program called reSTART Life.
"I was basically living on Dr Pepper, which is packed with caffeine and sugar. I would get weak
from not eating but I would only notice it when I got so shaky I stopped being able to think and
play well," he adds. By then, he'd already had to drop out of university in Michigan and had lost
his sports scholarship.
His new friends Charlie and Peter nod sagely. Charlie Bracke, 28, was suicidal and had lost his
job when he realized his online gaming was totally out of control. He can't remember a time in his
life before he was not playing video games of some kind: he reckons he began when he was about four
and was addicted by the age of nine.
Marshall and Charlie at reSTART, an internet addiction center.
Marshall and Charlie at reSTART, with Charlie's dog, Minerva. Photograph: Rafael Soldi for the
Guardian
For Peter, 31, who preferred to withhold his last name, the low came when he had been homeless
for six months and was living in his car.
"I would stay in church parking lots and put sunshades up on the windows and spend all day in
my car on my tablet device," he says.
He was addicted to internet porn, masturbating six to 10 times a day, to the point where he was
bleeding but would continue.
When he wasn't doing that, he was so immersed in the fantasy battle game World of Warcraft that
in his mind, he was no longer a person sitting at a screen, but an avatar: the bold dwarvish hero
Tarokalas, "shooting guns and assassinating the enemy" as he ran through a Tolkien-esque virtual
realm.
And when he wasn't doing that, he would read online news reports obsessively and exercise his
political opinions and a hair-trigger temper in the comment section of The Economist, projecting
himself pseudonymously as a swaggering blogger-cum-troll.
"I was a virgin until I was 29. Then I had sex with a lap dancer at a strip club. That's something
I never thought I would do," he says.
After completing the initial $25,000, 45-day residential stage at the main "campus" a few miles
away, clients move into the cheaper, off-site secondary phase. Here they get to share a normal apartment,
on the condition that they continue with psychotherapy, attend Alcoholics Anonymous-style 12-step
meetings, search for work and avoid the internet for a minimum of six months.
Marshall, Charlie and Peter successfully completed the second phase and have graduated from the
reSTART program, but they have chosen to stay in the same apartment complex and rent with other recovering
gamers as they continue to reboot their lives.
Mostly they carry only flip phones and have to go to the library when they want to check email.
"I'm taking my life in six-month chunks at this stage. So far I haven't relapsed into gaming and
I'm feeling optimistic," says Bracke.
An addiction overwhelmingly afflicting men
A climbing wall at the main ReStart campus, deep in the woods.
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A climbing wall at the main reSTART campus, deep in the woods. Photograph: Rafael Soldi for the
Guardian
Nine miles east, down a dirt track off a country road that winds through forests, six young men
are sitting in a wooden cabin amid a cluster of moss-draped trees – the reSTART campus.
Spring sunshine is flooding through the windows and the only sounds are birds singing and the
men cracking their knuckles as they stare at the floor.
They have recently arrived at rehab.
Hilarie Cash, a psychotherapist and the chief clinical officer at reSTART, asks the guys to begin
a communication exercise.
Philip, 22, steps into the middle of the group. He's been here for three weeks and is on a year's
medical leave from Duke University after getting hooked on Dota 2, the sequel to the fantasy battle
game Defense of the Ancients. He asks Adam, who only arrived four days ago and is fidgeting awkwardly,
to stand up and face him. (The real names of those currently in the residential program have been
withheld.)
Kevin, who has been here for four weeks, coaches them through an exercise known in counseling
circles as the "listening cycle", designed to facilitate emotional conversations in relationships.
It's a basic introduction for the new guy.
Fears grow for children addicted to online games
Read more
Philip, who was underweight when he arrived, says to Adam, who is overweight: "I'm worried that
you're not eating healthily. I noticed you've been skipping dinner."
Adam is meant to repeat back to Philip what he heard him say the problem is. He mumbles, barely
audible, and can't seem to remember what he's just been told.
He's unable to focus, and the air is thick with reluctance and embarrassment.
Stephen, another newbie, is gazing at the ceiling, yawning, sighing, then looking mildly irritated.
Alex, 20, comes to the rescue. He arrived at rehab in January but has popped back to visit the
group and explains: "It's so hard at the beginning. Day one here, I was a wreck, and the first two
weeks I was backsliding."
His games of choice were The Legend of Zelda, a solo action adventure series, where "instead of
being the depressed piece of shit I was in real life" he could exist as a swashbuckling hero.
Adapting to a tech-free world structured around rural communal living and social skills was a
nightmare, he says. "I wouldn't join in at first and I got called out for it by the others."
The problem is that you can't learn IT well working 40 hours a week. This is too complex
specilaty and it does rtequre long hours. So only people who can put long hours can survive in IT.
Notable quotes:
"... There's been a flurry of recent coverage praising Sheryl Sandberg , the chief operating officer of Facebook, for leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids. Apparently she's been doing this for years, but only recently "came out of the closet," as it were. ..."
"... They discovered that the "sweet spot" is 40 hours a week – and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a minor increase in productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and then turns negative. ..."
"... Anyone who's spent time in a corporate environment knows that what was true of factory workers a hundred years ago is true of office workers today. People who put in a solid 40 hours a week get more done than those who regularly work 60 or more hours. ..."
"... However, the facts don't bear this out. In six of the top 10 most competitive countries in the world (Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom), it's illegal to demand more than a 48-hour work week . You simply don't see the 50-, 60-, and 70-hour work weeks that have become de rigeur in some parts of the U.S. business world. ..."
"... In other words, nobody should be apologizing for leaving at work at a reasonable hour like 5:30 p.m. In fact, people should be apologizing if they're working too long each week–because it's probably making the team less effective overall. ..."
You may think you're getting more accomplished by working longer hours. You're probably wrong.
There's been a flurry of recent coverage
praising Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, for
leaving the office every day at 5:30 p.m. to be with her kids. Apparently she's been doing this
for years, but only recently "came out of the closet," as it were.
What's insane is that Sandberg
felt the need to hide the fact, since there's a century of research establishing the undeniable fact
that working more than 40 hours per week actually decreases productivity.
In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ran dozens of tests to discover the optimum work hours for worker
productivity. They discovered that
the "sweet
spot" is 40 hours a week – and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a minor increase in
productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and then turns negative.
Anyone who's spent time in a corporate environment knows that what was true of factory workers
a hundred years ago is true of office workers today. People who put in a solid 40 hours a week get
more done than those who regularly work 60 or more hours.
The workaholics (and their profoundly misguided management) may think they're accomplishing more
than the less fanatical worker, but in every case that I've personally observed, the long hours result
in work that must be scrapped or redone.
Accounting for Burnout What's more, people who consistently work long
work weeks get burned out and inevitably start having personal problems that get in the way of getting
things done.
I remember a guy in one company I worked for who used the number of divorces in his group as a
measure of its productivity. Believe it or not, his top management reportedly considered this a valid
metric. What's ironic (but not surprising) is that the group itself accomplished next to nothing.
In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he had to trot out such an absurd (and,
let's face it, evil) metric.
Proponents of long work weeks often point to the even longer average work weeks in countries like
Thailand, Korea, and Pakistan–with the implication that the longer work weeks are creating a competitive
advantage.
If U.S.
managers were smart, they'd end this "if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming to
work on Sunday" idiocy. If you want employees (salaried or hourly) to get the most done–in the shortest
amount of time and on a consistent basis–40 hours a week is just about right.
In other words, nobody should be apologizing for leaving at work at a reasonable hour like
5:30 p.m. In fact, people should be apologizing if they're working too long each week–because it's
probably making the team less effective overall.
Isolation plays a large part in retarding study. The pleasure of learning is a noble
pleasure, and like all good things, sharing what we learn with others increases its value. We
are social creatures, and it is part of our nature to share the excellent. But most of the
time we lack people to share the joy of our discoveries with. We are victims of the addicts
of the mental lightweights who confine their reading to New York Times' bestsellers,
people who lack the means to judge the merit of what they're reading, who lack the talent to
articulate its virtues. They lack the standards of taste and the critical spirit required to
evaluate them correctly.
Isolation has killed a lot of thinkers. I remember How Hume's book on Reelections on Human
Nature fell absolutely flat after it was published yet, over time, became a classic. But
popularity can kill as well. We think of how Mozart's amazing genius wowed and fascinated his
audiences and followers and yet his fame resulted in him buried in an unmarked grave for the
poor. Crowds are dismayingly fickle. Their interest lacks stamina.
Apparently it is the task of modern culture is to herd all of us on well traveled roads,
never taking the road less traveled. Few of us explore and the few who do are not met with
enthusiasm or praise or appreciation but by polite indifference mainly because your knowledge
is not current or popular.
Popularity is a trap. It retains a viselike grip on the ignorant. It is sinister because
it is addictive. If something is popular and makes money, then it must be successful, and if
successful, it must be superior. No one asks the fans of the popular why they admire as they
do. Because they assume that everyone else thinks just as they do and everyone else suffers
from the same mediocre qualities of taste and narrowness of mind.
It is a hard truth that people of more talented intellectual capacity seek out people with
similar temperaments and natures. That is the key to all friendship. With the right people,
they come alive. They speak freely and honestly, relating facts that stimulate their
listeners who then come forward with their own treasured items of memory and knowledge that
stimulate and reinforce the conversation. Both sides leave the discussion strengthed and
invigorated. Both are eager to hear more, learn more. Both return feeling less isolated from
the ephemeral l thing tat matter so much in the world.
New submitter
mirandakatz writes: Katie Hafner
has spent the last 23 days in rehab. Not for alcoholism or gambling, but for a
self-inflicted case of episodic partial attention thanks to her iPhone . On Backchannel, Hafner
writes about the detrimental effect the constant stream of pings has had on her, and how her life
has come to resemble a computer screen. "I sense a constant agitation when I'm doing something,"
she says, "as if there is something else out there, beckoning -- demanding -- my attention. And nothing
needs to be deferred."
"I blame electronics for my affliction," writes Hafner, who says the devices in her life
"teem with squirrels." "If I pick up my iPhone to send a text, damned if I don't get knocked off
task within a couple of seconds by an alert about Trump's latest tweet. And my guess is that if you
have allowed your mind to be as tyrannized by the demands of your devices as I have, you too suffer
to some degree from this condition." Hafner goes on to describe her symptoms of "episodic partial
attention" and provide potential fixes for it: "There are the obvious fixes. Address the electronics
first: Silence the phone as well as all alerts on your computer, and you automatically banish two
squirrels. But how do you shut down the micro-distractions that dangle everywhere in your physical
world, their bushy gray tails twitching seductively? My therapy, of my own devising, consists of
serial mono-tasking with a big dose of mindful intent, or intentional mindfulness -- which is really
just good, old-fashioned paying attention. At first, I took the tiniest of steps.
I celebrated the
buttoning of a blouse without stopping to apply the hand cream I spotted on the dresser as if I had
gotten into Harvard. Each task I took on -- however mundane -- I had to first announce, quietly,
to myself. I made myself vow that I would work on that task and only that task until it was finished.
Like a stroke patient relearning how to move an arm, I told myself not that I was making the entire
bed (too overwhelming), but that I had a series of steps to perform: first the top sheet, then the
blankets, then the comforter, then the pillows. Emptying the dishwasher became my Waterloo. Putting
dishes away takes time, and it's tedious. Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in the fact that the
job requires repeated kitchen crossings. There are squirrels everywhere, none more treacherous than
the siren song that is my iPhone."
(newscientist.com)
102 Posted by BeauHD on Thursday
September 07, 2017 @09:00AM from the creative-juices dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from
New Scientist: Need inspiration? Happy background music can help get the creative juices flowing.
Simone Ritter, at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Sam Ferguson, at the University of Technology
in Sydney, Australia, have been studying the effect of silence and different types of music on how
we think. They put 155 volunteers into five groups. Four of these were each given a type of music
to listen to while undergoing a series of tests, while the fifth group did the tests in silence.
The tests were designed to gage two types of thinking: divergent thinking, which describes the process
of generating new ideas, and convergent thinking, which is how we find the best solutions for a problem.
Ritter and Ferguson found that people were
more creative when listening to music they thought was positive , coming up with more unique
ideas than the people who worked in silence. However, happy music -- in this instance,
Antonio Vivaldi's Spring
-- only boosted divergent thinking. No type of music helped convergent thinking, suggesting that
it's better to solve problems in silence. The study was
published in the journal PLoS One .
"... Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do. ..."
"... A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like. ..."
"... Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction. ..."
"... Children who experience emotional neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement. ..."
"... It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks in favour of market competition ..."
"... In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments) and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity ..."
"... All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs. That's where this very paper comes in ..."
"... The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned living in village communities ..."
"... Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy. ..."
"... My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices. We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1% very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too many ideas with each other. ..."
"... According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose. ..."
"... multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism. The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor. ..."
"... I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our fair share of resources. ..."
"... Has it occurred to you that the collapse in societal values has allowed 'neo-liberalism' to take hold? ..."
"... No. It has been the concentrated propaganda of the "free" press. Rupert Murdoch in particular, but many other well-funded organisations working in the background over 50 years. They are winning. ..."
"... We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy". Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down from stress, and giving up on a family life. ..."
"... You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial one. ..."
"... As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places, riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems of violence, crime and suicide. ..."
"... The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old or dead. We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher, Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand. Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Criticism of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon, yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced neo liberalism. ..."
"... We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes, have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods. At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything that goes wrong will always be someone else fault. ..."
"... We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment, but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our birthday! ..."
"... Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system we are subject to. ..."
"... We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe the insecurity we feel plays a part in this. ..."
"... We have become so disconnected from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life. I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on my table so everything else was totally neglected. ..."
"... We need a radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British comedy is on the decline. ..."
"... Quality of life is far more important than GDP I agree but it is also far more important than inequality. ..."
"... Thatcher was only responsible for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing ahead around the world. ..."
"... Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly, life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives. ..."
"... Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution, but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because that explains what is going on. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get in their way. ..."
"... . Data suggests that inequality has widened massively over the last 30 years ( https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/infographic-income-inequality-uk ) - as has social mobility ( https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-mobility-data-charts ). Homelessness has risen substantially since 1979. ..."
"... As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their colleagues socially . ..."
"... A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick ..."
"... Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed. This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the same ie human suffering. ..."
"... "Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use, obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty of the people would require. And so on. ..."
"... There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart. It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976) may have been influential in creating that climate. ..."
"... I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. ..."
"... The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. ..."
"... Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes from the things you do. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization. The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology is one of the tools. No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed a quasi existence. ..."
"... Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive of everyone else. ..."
"... There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest' is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies, state involvement, militias. ..."
"... Furthermore, a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something to aspire to? ..."
"... Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth protecting. ..."
"... Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a company'. ..."
What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental
illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders,
self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest,
catastrophic figures for children's mental health in England reflect a global
crisis.
There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to
me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial
mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled
apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology.
Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere
we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme
individualism.
In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school,
at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two
feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment
is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing
ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to
economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations
as real opportunities contract.
Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of
isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed
all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and
drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and
to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.
As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women
routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer.
Some phones, using their "beauty" settings, do it for you without asking; now
you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia:
a war of everyone against themselves.
Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely
to quantify our social standing
Is it any wonder, in these lonely inner worlds, in which touching has been
replaced by retouching, that young women are drowning in mental distress?
A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and
24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect
26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like.
If social rupture is not treated as seriously as broken limbs, it is because
we cannot see it. But neuroscientists can. A series of fascinating papers suggest
that social pain and physical pain are processed by the same neural circuits.
This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact
of breaking social bonds without the words we use to denote physical pain and
injury. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical
pain. This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is
a powerful analgesic. Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress
of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug
addiction.
Experiments summarised in the journal Physiology & Behaviour last month suggest
that, given a choice of physical pain or isolation, social mammals will choose
the former. Capuchin monkeys starved of both food and contact for 22 hours will
rejoin their companions before eating. Children who experience emotional
neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences
than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as
it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an
attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not
as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the
most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement.
It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might
be. Survival among social mammals is greatly enhanced when they are strongly
bonded with the rest of the pack. It is the isolated and marginalised animals
that are most likely to be picked off by predators, or to starve. Just as physical
pain protects us from physical injury, emotional pain protects us from social
injury. It drives us to reconnect. But many people find this almost impossible.
It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression,
suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It's more surprising
to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has
a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears
to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances
production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.
Studies in both animals and humans suggest a reason for comfort eating: isolation
reduces impulse control, leading to obesity. As those at the bottom of the socioeconomic
ladder are the most likely to suffer from loneliness, might this provide one
of the explanations for the strong link between low economic status and obesity?
Anyone can see that something far more important than most of the issues
we fret about has gone wrong. So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming
frenzy of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain? Should this question not burn the lips of everyone in public
life?
There are some wonderful charities doing what they can to fight this tide,
some of which I am going to be working with as part of my loneliness project.
But for every person they reach, several others are swept past.
This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger:
the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain,
the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous.
We stand together or we fall apart.
Well its a bit of a stretch blaming neoliberalism for creating loneliness.
Yet it seems to be the fashion today to imagine that the world we live in
is new...only created just years ago. And all the suffering that we see
now never existed before. Plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social
phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness never happened in
the past, because everything was bright and shiny and world was good.
Regrettably history teaches us that suffering and deprivation have dogged
mankind for centuries, if not tens of thousands of years. That's what we
do; survive, persist...endure. Blaming 'neoliberalism' is a bit of cop-out.
It's the human condition man, just deal with it.
Some of the connections here are a bit tenuous, to say the least, including
the link to political ideology. Economic liberalism is usually accompanied
with social conservatism, and vice versa. Right wing ideologues are more
likely to emphasize the values of marriage and family stability, while left
wing ones are more likely to favor extremes of personal freedom and reject
those traditional structures that used to bind us together.
You're a little confused there in your connections between policies, intentions
and outcomes. Nevertheless, Neoliberalism is a project that explicitly
aims, and has achieved, the undermining and elimination of social networks
in favour of market competition.
In practice, loosening social and legal institutions has reduced
social security (in the general sense rather than simply welfare payments)
and encouraged the limitation of social interaction to money based activity.
That holds true when you're talking about demographics/voters.
Economic and social liberalism go hand in hand in the West. No matter
who's in power, the establishment pushes both but will do one or the other
covertly.
All powerful institutions have a vested interest in keeping us atomized
and individualistic. The gangs at the top don't want competition. They're
afraid of us. In particular, they're afraid of men organising into gangs.
That's where this very paper comes in.
The alienation genie was out of the bottle with the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution and mass migration to cities began and we abandoned
living in village communities. Over the ensuing approx 250 years we
abandoned geographically close relationships with extended families, especially
post WW2. Underlying economic structures both capitalist and marxist dissolved
relationships that we as communal primates evolved within. Then accelerate
this mess with (anti-) social media the last 20 years along with economic
instability and now dissolution of even the nuclear family (which couldn't
work in the first place, we never evolved to live with just two parents
looking after children) and here we have it: Mass mental illness. Solution?
None. Just form the best type of extended community both within and outside
of family, be engaged and generours with your community hope for the best.
Indeed, Industrialisation of our pre-prescribed lifestyle is a huge factor.
In particular, our food, it's low quality, it's 24 hour avaliability, it's
cardboard box ambivalence, has caused a myriad of health problems. Industrialisation
is about profit for those that own the 'production-line' & much less about
the needs of the recipient.
It's unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated
with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception
of threat.
Yes, although there is some question of which order things go in. A supportive
social network is clearly helpful, but it's hardly a simple cause and effect.
Levels of different mental health problems appear to differ widely across
societies just in Europe, and it isn't particularly the case that more capitalist
countries have greater incidence than less capitalist ones.
You could just as well blame atheism. Since the rise of neo-liberalism
and drop in church attendance track each other pretty well, and since for
all their ills churches did provide a social support group, why not blame
that?
While attending a church is likely to alleviate loneliness, atheism doesn't
expressly encourage limiting social interactions and selfishness. And of
course, reduced church attendance isn't exactly the same as atheism.
Neoliberalism expressly encourages 'atomisation'- it is all about
reducing human interaction to markets. And so this is just one of the reasons
that neoliberalism is such a bunk philosophy.
So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?
My stab at an answer would first question the notion that we
are engaging in anything. That presupposes we are making the
choices. Those who set out the options are the ones that make the choices.
We are being engaged by the grotesquely privileged and the pathologically
greedy in an enterprise that profits them still further. It suits the 1%
very well strategically, for obvious reasons, that the 99% don't swap too
many ideas with each other.
We as individuals are offered the 'choice' of consumption as an alternative
to the devastating ennui engendered by powerlessness. It's no choice at
all of course, because consumption merely enriches the 1% and exacerbates
our powerlessness. That was the whole point of my post.
The 'choice' to consume is never collectively exercised as you suggest.
Sadly. If it was, 'we' might be able to organise ourselves into doing something
about it.
According to Robert Putnam, as societies become more ethnically diverse
they lose social capital, contributing to the type of isolation and loneliness
which George describes. Doesn't sound as evil as neoliberalism I suppose.
Disagree. Im British but have had more foreign friends than British. The
UK middle class tend to be boring insular social status obsessed drones.other
nationalities have this too, but far less so
Well, yes, but multiculturalism is a direct result of Neoliberalism.
The market rules and people are secondary. Everything must be done for business
owners, and that everything means access to cheap labor.
Multiculturalism isn't the only thing destroying social cohesion, too.
It was being destroyed long before the recent surges of immigrants. It was
reported many times in the 1980's in communities made up of only one culture.
In many ways, it is being used as the obvious distraction from all the other
ways Fundamentalist Free Marketers wreck live for many.
This post perhaps ranges too widely to the point of being vague and general,
and leading Monbiot to make some huge mental leaps, linking loneliness to
a range of mental and physical problems without being able to explain, for
example, the link between loneliness and obesity and all the steps in-between
without risking derailment into a side issue.
I'd have thought what he really wants to say is that loneliness as
a phenomenon in modern Western society arises out of an intent on the part
of our political and social elites to divide us all into competing against
one another, as individuals and as members of groups, all the better to
keep us under control and prevent us from working together to claim our
fair share of resources.
Are you familiar with the term 'Laughter is the best medicine'? Well, it's
true. When you laugh, your brain releases endorphins, yeah? Your stress
hormones are reduced and the oxygen supply to your blood is increased, so...
I try to laugh several times a day just because... it makes you feel
good! Let's try that, eh? Ohohoo... Hahaha... Just, just... Hahahaha...
Come on, trust me.. you'll feel.. HahaHAhaha! O-o-o-o-a-hahahahaa... Share
No. It has been the concentrated propaganda of the "free" press. Rupert
Murdoch in particular, but many other well-funded organisations working
in the background over 50 years. They are winning.
We're fixated on a magical, abstract concept called "the economy".
Everything must be done to help "the economy", even if this means adults
working through their weekends, neglecting their children, neglecting their
elderly parents, eating at their desks, getting diabetes, breaking down
from stress, and giving up on a family life.
Impertinent managers ban their staff from office relationships, as company
policy, because the company is more important than its staff's wellbeing.
Companies hand out "free" phones that allow managers to harrass staff
for work out of hours, on the understanding that they will be sidelined
if thy don't respond.
And the wellbeing of "the economy" is of course far more important than
whether the British people actually want to merge into a European superstate.
What they want is irrelevant.
That nasty little scumbag George Osborne was the apotheosis of this ideology,
but he was abetted by journalists who report any rise in GDP as "good" -
no matter how it was obtained - and any "recession" to be the equivalent
of a major natural disaster.
If we go on this way, the people who suffer the most will be the rich,
because it will be them swinging from the lamp-posts, or cowering in gated
communities that they dare not leave (Venezuela, South Africa). Those riots
in London five years ago were a warning. History is littered with them.
You can make a reasonable case that 'Neoliberalism' expects that every
interaction, including between individuals, can be reduced to a financial
one. If this results in loneliness then that's certainly a downside
- but the upside is that billions have been lifted out of absolute poverty
worldwide by 'Neoliberalism'.
Mr Monbiot creates a compelling argument that we should end 'Neoliberalism'
but he is very vague about what should replace it other than a 'different
worldview'. Destruction is easy, but creation is far harder.
As a retired teacher it grieves me greatly to see the way our education
service has become obsessed by testing and assessment. Sadly the results
are used not so much to help children learn and develop, but rather as a
club to beat schools and teachers with. Pressurised schools produce pressurised
children. Compare and contrast with education in Finland where young people
are not formally assessed until they are 17 years old. We now assess toddlers
in nursery schools.
SATs in Primary schools had children concentrating on obscure grammatical
terms and usage which they will never ever use again. Pointless and counter-productive.
Gradgrind values driving out the joy of learning.
And promoting anxiety and mental health problems.
It is all the things you describe, Mr Monbiot, and then some. This dystopian
hell, when anything that did work is broken and all things that have never
worked are lined up for a little tinkering around the edges until the camouflage
is good enough to kid people it is something new. It isn't just neoliberal
madness that has created this, it is selfish human nature that has made
it possible, corporate fascism that has hammered it into shape. and an army
of mercenaries who prefer the take home pay to morality. Crime has always
paid especially when governments are the crooks exercising the law.
The value of life has long been forgotten as now the only thing that
matters is how much you can be screwed for either dead or alive. And yet
the Trumps, the Clintons, the Camerons, the Johnsons, the Merkels, the Mays,
the news media, the banks, the whole crooked lot of them, all seem to believe
there is something worth fighting for in what they have created, when painfully
there is not. We need revolution and we need it to be lead by those who
still believe all humanity must be humble, sincere, selfless and most of
all morally sincere. Freedom, justice, and equality for all, because the
alternative is nothing at all.
Ive long considered neo-liberalism as the cause of many of our problems,
particularly the rise in mental health problems, alienation and loneliness.
As can be seen from many of the posts, neo-liberalism depends on, and
fosters, ignorance, an inability to see things from historical and different
perspectives and social and intellectual disciplines. On a sociological
level how other societies are arranged throws up interesting comparisons. Scandanavian countries, which have mostly avoided neo-liberalism by and
large, are happier, healthier places to live. America and eastern countries
arranged around neo-liberal, market driven individualism, are unhappy places,
riven with mental and physical health problems and many more social problems
of violence, crime and suicide.
The worst thing is that the evidence shows it doesn't work. Not one of
the privatisations in this country have worked. All have been worse than
what they've replaced, all have cost more, depleted the treasury and led
to massive homelessness, increased mental health problems with the inevitable
financial and social costs, costs which are never acknowledged by its adherents.
Put crudely, the more " I'm alright, fuck you " attitude is fostered,
the worse societies are. Empires have crashed and burned under similar attitudes.
The people who fosted this this system onto us, are now either very old
or dead.
We're living in the shadow of their revolutionary transformation of our
more equitable post-war society. Hayek, Friedman, Keith Joseph, Thatcher,
Greenspan and tangentially but very influentially Ayn Rand.
Although a remainder (I love the wit of the term 'Remoaner') , Brexit can
be better understood in the context of the death-knell of neoliberalism.
I never understood how the collapse of world finance, resulted in a right
wing resurgence in the UK and the US. The Tea Party in the US made the absurd
claim that the failure of global finance was not due to markets being fallible,
but because free markets had not been enforced citing Fanny Mae and Freddie
Mac as their evidence and of Bill Clinton insisting on more poor and black
people being given mortgages.
I have a terrible sense that it will not go quietly, there will be massive
global upheavals as governments struggle deal with its collapse.
I have never really agreed with GM - but this article hits the nail on the
head.
I think there are a number of aspects to this:
The internet. The being in constant contact, our lives mapped and
our thoughts analysed - we can comment on anything (whether informed or
total drivel) and we've been fed the lie that our opinion is is right and
that it matters) Ive removed fscebook and twitter from my phone, i have
never been happier
Rolling 24 hour news. That is obsessed with the now, and consistently
squeezes very complex issues into bite sized simple dichotomies. Obsessed
with results and critical in turn of everyone who fails to feed the machine
The increasing slicing of work into tighter and slimmer specialisms,
with no holistic view of the whole, this forces a box ticking culture. "Ive
stamped my stamp, my work is done" this leads to a lack of ownership of
the whole. PIP assessments are an almost perfect example of this - a box
ticking exercise, designed by someone who'll never have to go through it,
with no flexibility to put the answers into a holistic context.
Our education system is designed to pass exams and not prepare for
the future or the world of work - the only important aspect being the compilation
of next years league tables and the schools standings. This culture is neither
healthy no helpful, as students are schooled on exam technique in order
to squeeze out the marks - without putting the knowledge into a meaningful
and understandable narrative.
Apologies for the long post - I normally limit myself to a trite insulting
comment :) but felt more was required in this instance.
Overall, I agree with your points. Monbiot here adopts a blunderbuss approach
(competitive self-interest and extreme individualism; "brutal" education,
employment social security; consumerism, social media and vanity). Criticism
of his hypotheses on this thread (where articualted at all) focus on the
existence of solitude and loneliness prior to neo liberalism, which seems
to me to be to deliberately miss his point: this was formerly a minor phenomenon,
yet is now writ on an incredible scale - and it is a social phenomenon particular
to those western economies whose elites have most enthusiastically embraced
neo liberalism. So, when Monbiot's rhetoric rises:
"So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy
of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces
is unbearable pain?"
the answer is, of course, 'western capitalist elites'.
We stand together or we fall apart.
Hackneyed and unoriginal but still true for all that.
the answer is, of course, 'western capitalist elites'.
because of the lies that are being sold.
We all want is to: (and feel we have the right to) wear the best clothes,
have the foreign holidays, own the latest tech and eat the finest foods.
At the same time our rights have increased and awareness of our responsibilities
have minimized. The execution of common sense and an awareness that everything
that goes wrong will always be someone else fault.
We are not all special snowflakes, princesses or worthy of special treatment,
but we act like self absorbed, entitled individuals. Whether that's entitled
to benefits, the front of the queue or bumped into first because its our
birthday!
I share Monbiots pain here. But rather than get a sense of perspective
- the answer is often "More public money and counseling"
George Monbiot has struck a nerve.
They are there every day in my small town local park: people, young and
old, gender and ethnically diverse, siting on benches for a couple of hours
at a time.
They have at least one thing in common.
They each sit alone, isolated in their own thoughts..
But many share another bond: they usually respond to dogs, unconditional
in their behaviour patterns towards humankind.
Trite as it may seem, this temporary thread of canine affection breaks the
taboo of strangers
passing by on the other side.
Conversations, sometimes stilted, sometimes deeper and more meaningful,
ensue as dog walkers become a brief daily healing force in a fractured world
of loneliness.
It's not much credit in the bank of sociability.
But it helps.
Trite as it may seem from the outside, their interaction with the myriad
pooches regularly walk
Unhealthy social interaction, yes. You can never judge what is natural to
humans based on contemporary Britain. Anthropologists repeatedly find that
what we think natural is merely a social construct created by the system
we are subject to.
If you don't work hard, you will be a loser, don't look out of the window
day dreaming you lazy slacker. Get productive, Mr Burns millions need you
to work like a machine or be replaced by one.
Good article. You´re absoluately right. And the deeper casue is this: separation
from God. If we don´t fight our way back to God, individually and collectively,
things are going to get a lot worse. With God, loneliness doesn´t exist.
I encourage anyone and everyone to start talking to Him today and invite
Him into your heart and watch what starts to happen.
Religion divides not brings people together. Only when you embrace all humanity
and ignore all gods will you find true happiness. The world and the people
in it are far more inspiring when you contemplate the lack of any gods.
The fact people do amazing things without needing the promise of heaven
or the threat of hell - that is truly moving.
I see what you're saying but I read 'love' instead of God. God is too religious
which separates and divides ("I'm this religion and my god is better than
yours" etc etc). I believe that George is right in many ways in that money
is very powerful on it's impact on our behavior (stress, lack etc) and
therefore our lives. We are becoming fearful of each other and I believe
the insecurity we feel plays a part in this.
We have become so disconnected
from ourselves and focused on battling to stay afloat. Having experienced
periods of severe stress due to lack of money I couldn't even begin to think
about how I felt, how happy I was, what I really wanted to do with my life.
I just had to pay my landlord, pay the bills and try and put some food on
my table so everything else was totally neglected.
When I moved house to
move in with family and wasn't expected to pay rent, though I offered, all
that dissatisfaction and undealt with stuff came spilling out and I realised
I'd had no time for any real safe care above the very basics and that was
not a good place to be. I put myself into therapy for a while and started
to look after myself and things started to change. I hope to never go back
to that kind of position but things are precarious financially and the field
I work in isn't well paid but it makes me very happy which I realise now
is more important.
Neo-liberalism has a lot to answer for in bringing misery to our lives and
accelerating the demise of the planet but I find it not guilty on this one. The current trends as to how people perceive themselves (what you've
got rather than who you are) and the increasing isolation in our cities
started way before the neo-liberals. It is getting worse though and on balance social media is making us more
connected but less social. Share
The way that the left keeps banging on about neoliberalism is half of what
makes them such a tough sell electorally. Just about nobody knows what neoliberalism
is, and literally nobody self identifies as a neoliberal. So all this moaning
and wailing about neoliberalism comes across as a self absorbed, abstract
and irrelevant. I expect there is the germ of an idea in there, but until
the left can find away to present that idea without the baffling layer of
jargon and over-analysis, they're going to remain at a disadvantage to the
easy populism of the right.
Interesting article. We have heard so much about the size of our economy
but less about our quality of life. The UK quality of life is way below
the size of our economy i.e. economy size 6th largest in the world but quality
of life 15th. If we were the 10th largest economy but were 10th for quality
of life we would be better off than we are now in real terms.
We need a
radical change of political thinking to focus on quality of life rather
than obsession with the size of our economy. High levels of immigration
of people who don't really integrate into their local communities has fractured
our country along with the widening gap between rich and poor. Governments
only see people in terms of their "economic value" - hence mothers being
driven out to work, children driven into daycare and the elderly driven
into care homes. Britain is becoming a soulless place - even our great British
comedy is on the decline.
Interesting. 'It is the isolated and marginalised animals that are most
likely to be picked off by predators....' so perhaps the species is developing
its own predators to fill a vacated niche.
(Not questioning the comparison to other mammals at all as I think it
is valid but you would have to consider the whole rather than cherry pick
bits)
Generation snowflake. "I'll do myself in if you take away my tablet and
mobile phone for half an hour".
They don't want to go out and meet people anymore. Nightclubs for instance,
are closing because the younger generation 'don't see the point' of going
out to meet people they would otherwise never meet, because they can meet
people on the internet. Leave them to it and the repercussions of it.....
Socialism is dying on its feet in the UK, hence the Tory's 17 point lead
at the mo. The lefties are clinging to whatever influence they have to sway
the masses instead of the ballot box. Good riddance to them.
17 point lead? Dying on it's feet? The neo-liberals are showing their disconnect
from reality. If anything, neo-liberalism is driving a people to the left
in search of a fairer and more equal society.
George Moniot's articles are better thought out, researched and written
than the vast majority of the usual clickbait opinion pieces found on the
Guardian these days. One of the last journalists, rather than liberal arts
blogger vying for attention.
Neoliberalism's rap sheet is long and dangerous but this toxic philosophy
will continue unabated because most people can't join the dots and work
out how detrimental it has proven to be for most of us.
It dangles a carrot in order to create certain economic illusions but
the simple fact is neoliberal societies become more unequal the longer they
persist.
Neoliberal economies allow people to build huge global businesses very quickly
and will continue to give the winners more but they also can guve everyone
else more too but just at a slower rate. Socialism on the other hand mires
everyone in stagnant poverty. Question is do you want to be absolutely or
relatively better off.
You have no idea. Do not confuse capitalism with neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
is a political ideology based on a mythical version of capitalism that doesn't
actually exist, but is a nice way to get the deluded to vote for something
that doesn't work in their interest at all.
And things will get worse as society falls apart due to globalisation, uberization,
lack of respect for authority, lacks of a fair tax and justice system, crime,
immorality, loss of trust of politicians and financial and corporate sectors,
uncontrolled immigration bringing with it insecurity and the risk of terrorism
and a dumbing down of society with increasing inequality. All this is in
a new book " The World at a Crossroads" which deals with the major issues
facing the planet.
What, like endless war, unaffordable property, monstrous university fees,
zero hours contracts and a food bank on every corner, and that's before
we even get to the explosion in mental distress.
There's nothing spurious or obscure about Neoliberalism. It is simply the
political ideology of the rich, which has been our uninterrupted governing
ideology since Reagan and Thatcher: Privatisation, deregulation, 'liberalisation'
of housing, labour, etc, trickledown / low-tax-on-the-rich economics, de-unionization.
You only don't see it if you don't want to see it.
I'm just thinking what is wonderful about societies that are big of social
unity. And conformity.
Those societies for example where you "belong" to your family. Where
teenage girls can be married off to elderly uncles to cement that belonging.
Or those societies where the belonging comes through religious centres.
Where the ostracism for "deviant" behaviour like being gay or for women
not submitting to their husbands can be brutal. And I'm not just talking
about muslims here.
Or those societies that are big on patriotism. Yep they are usually good
for mental health as the young men are given lessons in how to kill as many
other men as possible efficiently.
And then I have to think how our years of "neo-liberal" governments have
taken ideas of social liberalisation and enshrined them in law. It may be
coincidence but thirty years after Thatcher and Reagan we are far more tolerant
of homosexuality and willing to give it space to live, conversely we are
far less tolerant of racism and are willing to prosecute racist violence.
Feminists may still moan about equality but the position of women in society
has never been better, rape inside marriage has (finally) been outlawed,
sexual violence generally is no longer condoned except by a few, work opportunities
have been widened and the woman's role is no longer just home and family.
At least that is the case in "neo-liberal" societies, it isn't necessarily
the case in other societies.
So unless you think loneliness is some weird Stockholm Syndrome thing
where your sense of belonging comes from your acceptance of a stifling role
in a structured soiety, then I think blaming the heightened respect for
the individual that liberal societies have for loneliness is way off the
mark.
What strikes me about the cases you cite above, George, is not an over-respect
for the individual but another example of individuals being shoe-horned
into a structure. It strikes me it is not individualism but competition
that is causing the unhappiness. Competition to achieve an impossible ideal.
I fear George, that you are not approaching this with a properly open
mind dedicated to investigation. I think you have your conclusion and you
are going to bend the evidence to fit. That is wrong and I for one will
not support that. In recent weeks and months we have had the "woe, woe and
thrice woe" writings. Now we need to take a hard look at our findings. We
need to take out the biases resulting from greater awareness of mental health
and better and fuller diagnosis of mental health issues. We need to balance
the bias resulting from the fact we really only have hard data for modern
Western societies. And above all we need to scotch any bias resulting from
the political worldview of the researchers.
It sounded to me that he was telling us of farm labouring and factory fodder
stock that if we'd 'known our place' and kept to it ,all would be well because
in his ideal society there WILL be or end up having a hierarchy, its inevitable.
Wasn't all this started by someone who said, "There is no such thing as
Society"? The ultimate irony is that the ideology that championed the individual
and did so much to dismantle the industrial and social fabric of the Country
has resulted in a system which is almost totalitarian in its disregard for
its ideological consequences.
Thatcher said it in the sense that society is not abstract it is just other
people so when you say society needs to change then people need to change
as society is not some independent concept it is an aggregation of all us.
The left mis quote this all the time and either they don't get it or they
are doing on purpose.
No, Neoliberalism has been around since 1938.... Thatcher was only responsible
for "letting it go" in Britain in 1980, but actually it was already racing
ahead around the world.
Furthermore, it could easily be argued that the Beatles helped create
loneliness - what do you think all those girls were screaming for? And also
it could be argued that the Beatles were bringing in neoliberalism in the
1960s, via America thanks to Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis etc.. Share
Great article, although surely you could've extended the blame to capitalism
has a whole?
In what, then, consists the alienation of labor? First, in the fact
that labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong
to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work,
that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but
rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental
energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker,
therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he
feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and
when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor, therefore, is
not voluntary, but forced--forced labor. It is not the gratification
of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien
nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the
plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists.
Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
We have created a society with both flaws and highlights- and we have unwittingly
allowed the economic system to extend into our lives in negative ways.
On of the things being modern brings is movement- we move away from communities,
breaking friendships and losing support networks, and the support networks
are the ones that allow us to cope with issues, problems and anxiety.
Isolation among the youth is disturbing, it is also un natural, perhaps
it is social media, or fear of parents, or the fall in extra school activities
or parents simply not having a network of friends because they have had
to move for work or housing.
There is some upsides, I talk and get support from different international
communities through the social media that can also be so harmful- I chat
on xbox games, exchange information on green building forums, arts forums,
share on youtube as well as be part of online communities that hold events
in the real world.
Increasingly we seem to need to document our lives on social media to somehow
prove we 'exist'. We seem far more narcissistic these days, which tends
to create a particular type of unhappiness, or at least desire that can
never be fulfilled. Maybe that's the secret of modern consumer-based capitalism.
To be happy today, it probably helps to be shallow, or avoid things like
Twitter and Facebook!
Eric Fromm made similar arguments to Monbiot about the psychological
impact of modern capitalism (Fear of Freedom and The Sane Society) - although
the Freudian element is a tad outdated. However, for all the faults of modern
society, I'd rather be unhappy now than in say, Victorian England. Similarly,
life in the West is preferable to the obvious alternatives.
Thanks George for commenting in such a public way on the unsayable: consume,
consume, consume seems to be the order of the day in our modern world and
the points you have highlighted should be part of public policy everywhere.
I'm old enough to remember when we had more time for each other; when
mothers could be full-time housewives; when evenings existed (evenings now
seem to be spent working or getting home from work). We are undoubtedly
more materialistic, which leads to more time spent working, although our
modern problems are probably not due to increasing materialism alone.
Regarding divorce and separation, I notice people in my wider circle
who are very open to affairs. They seem to lack the self-discipline to concentrate
on problems in their marriage and to give their full-time partner a high
level of devotion. Terrible problems come up in marriages but if you are
completely and unconditionally committed to your partner and your marriage
then you can get through the majority of them.
Aggressive self interest is turning in on itself. Unfortunately the powerful
who have realised their 'Will to Power' are corrupted by their own inflated
sense of self and thus blinded. Does this all predict a global violent revolution?
However, what is most interesting is how nearly all modern politicians
who peddle neoliberal doctrine or policy, refuse to use the name, or even
to openly state what ideology they are in fact following.
I suppose it is just a complete coincidence that the policy so many governments
are now following so closely follow known neoliberal doctrine. But of course
the clever and unpleasant strategy of those like yourself is to cry conspiracy
theory if this ideology, which dare not speak its name is mentioned.
Your style is tiresome. You make no specific supported criticisms again,
and again. You just make false assertions and engage in unpleasant ad homs
and attempted character assassination. You do not address the evidence for
what George Monbiot states at all.
An excellent article. One wonders exactly what one needs to say in order
to penetrate the reptilian skulls of those who run the system.
As an addition to Mr Monbiot's points, I would like to point out that
it is not only competitive self-interest and extreme individualism that
drives loneliness. Any system that has strict hierarchies and mechanisms
of social inclusion also drives it, because such systems inhibit strongly
spontaneous social interaction, in which people simply strike up conversation.
Thailand has such a system. Despite her promoting herself as the land of
smiles, I have found the people here to be deeply segregated and unfriendly.
I have lived here for 17 years. The last time I had a satisfactory face-to-face
conversation, one that went beyond saying hello to cashiers at checkout
counters or conducting official business, was in 1999. I have survived by
convincing myself that I have dialogues with my books; as I delve more deeply
into the texts, the authors say something different to me, to which I can
then respond in my mind.
Epidemics of mental illness are crushing the minds and bodies of
millions. It's time to ask where we are heading and why
I want to quote the sub headline, because "It's time to ask where we are
heading and why", is the important bit. George's excellent and scathing
evidence based criticism of the consequences of neoliberalism is on the
nail. However, we need to ask how we got to this stage. Despite it's name
neoliberalism doesn't really seem to contain any new ideas, and in some
way it's more about Thatcher's beloved return to Victorian values. Most
of what George Monbiot highlights encapsulatec Victorian thinking, the sort
of workhouse mentality.
Whilst it's very important to understand how neoliberalism, the ideology
that dare not speak it's name, derailed the general progress in the developed
world. It's also necessary to understand that the roots this problem go
much further back. Not merely to the start of the industrial revolution,
but way beyond that. It actually began with the first civilizations when
our societies were taken over by powerful rulers, and they essentially started
to farm the people they ruled like cattle. On the one hand they declared
themselves protector of their people, whilst ruthlessly exploiting them
for their own political gain. I use the livestock farming analogy, because
that explains what is going on.
To domesticate livestock, and to make them pliable and easy to work with
the farmer must make himself appear to these herd animals as if they are
their protector, the person who cares for them, nourishes and feeds them.
They become reliant on their apparent benefactor. Except of course this
is a deceitful relationship, because the farmer is just fattening them up
to be eaten.
For the powerful to exploit the rest of people in society for their own
benefit they had to learn how to conceal what they were really doing, and
to wrap it in justifications to bamboozle the people they were exploiting
for their own benefit. They did this by altering our language and inserting
ideas in our culture which justified their rule, and the positions of the
rest of us.
Before state religions, generally what was revered was the Earth, the
natural world. It was on a personal level, and not controlled by the powerful.
So the powerful needed to remove that personal meaningfulness from people's
lives, and said the only thing which was really meaningful, was the religion,
which of course they controlled and were usually the head of. Over generations
people were indoctrinated in a completely new way of thinking, and a language
manipulated so all people could see was the supposed divine right of kings
to rule. Through this language people were detached from what was personally
meaningful to them, and could only find meaningfulness by pleasing their
rulers, and being indoctrinated in their religion.
If you control the language people use, you can control how perceive
the world, and can express themselves.
By stripping language of meaningful terms which people can express themselves,
and filling it full of dubious concepts such as god, the right of kings
completely altered how people saw the world, how they thought. This is why
over the ages, and in different forms the powerful have always attempted
to have full control of our language through at first religion and their
proclamations, and then eventually by them controlling our education system
and the media.
The idea of language being used to control how people see the world,
and how they think is of course not my idea. George Orwell's Newspeak idea
explored in "1984" is very much about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
This control of language is well known throughout history. Often conquerors
would abolish languages of those they conquered. In the so called New World
the colonists eventually tried to control how indigenous people thought
by forcibly sending their children to boarding school, to be stripped of
their culture, their native language, and to be inculcated in the language
and ideas of their colonists. In Britain various attempts were made to banish
the Welsh language, the native language of the Britons, before the Anglo-Saxons
and the Normans took over.
However, what Orwell did not deal with properly is the origin of language
style. To Orwell, and to critics of neoliberalism, the problems can be traced
back to the rise of what they criticised. To a sort of mythical golden age.
Except all the roots of what is being criticised can be found in the period
before the invention of these doctrines. So you have to go right back to
the beginning, to understand how it all began.
Neoliberalism would never have been possible without this long control
of our language and ideas by the powerful. It prevents us thinking outside
the box, about what the problem really is, and how it all began.
All very well but you are talking about ruthlessness of western elites,
mostly British, not all.
It was not like that everywhere. Take Poland for example, and around
there..
New research is emerging - and I'd recommend reading of prof Frost from
St Andrew's Uni - that lower classes were actually treated with respect
by elites there, mainly land owners and aristocracy who more looked after
them and employed and cases of such ruthlessness as you describe were unknown
of.
So that 'truth' about attitudes to lower classes is not universal!
It's spouted by many on here as the root of all evil.
I'd be interested to see how many different definitions I get in
response...
The reason I call neoliberalism the ideology which dare not speak it's name
is that in public you will rarely hear it mentioned by it's proponents.
However, it was a very important part of Thatcherism, Blairism, and so on.
What is most definite is that these politicians and others are most definitely
following some doctrine. Their ideas about what we must do and how we must
do it are arbitrary, but they make it sound as if it's the only way to do
things.
However, as I hint, the main problem in dealing with neoliberalism is
that none of the proponents of this doctrine admit to what ideology they
are actually following. Yet very clearly around the world leaders in many
countries are clearly singing from the same hymn sheet because the policy
they implement is so similar. Something has definitely changed. All the
attempts to roll back welfare, benefits, and public services is most definitely
new, or they wouldn't be having to reverse policy of the past if nothing
had change. But as all these politicians implementing this policy all seem
to refuse to explain what doctrine they are following, it makes it difficult
to pin down what is happening. Yet we can most definitely say that there
is a clear doctrine at work, because why else would so many political leaders
around the world be trying to implement such similar policy.
Neo-liberalism doesn't really exist except in the minds of the far
left and perhaps a few academics.
Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that
transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public
sector. ... Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire approach to economic
development.
I believe the term 'Neo liberalism' was coined by those well known 'Lefties'The
Chicago School .
If you don't believe that any of the above has been happening ,it does beg
the question as to where you have been for the past decade.
The ironies of modern civilization - we have never been more 'connected'
to other people on global level and less 'connected' on personal level.
We have never had access to such a wide range of information and opinions,
but also for a long time been so divided into conflicting groups, reading
and accessing in fact only that which reinforces what we already think.
Sir Harry Burns, ex-Chief Medical Officer in Scotland talks very powerfully
about the impact of loneliness and isolation on physical and mental health
- here is a video of a recent talk by him -
http://www.befs.org.uk/calendar/48/164-BEFS-Annual-Lecture
These issues have been a long time coming, just think of the appeals of
the 60's to chill out and love everyone. Globalisation and neo-liberalism
has simply made society even more broken.
The way these problems have been ignored and made worse over the last few
decades make me think that the solution will only happen after a massive
catastrophe and society has to be rebuilt. Unless we make the same mistakes
again.
A shame really, you would think intelligence would be useful but it seems
not.
I would argue that it creates a bubble of existence for those who pursue
a path of "success" that instead turns to isolation . The amount of people
that I have met who have moved to London because to them it represents the
main location for everything . I get to see so many walking cliches of people
trying to fit in or stand out but also fitting in just the same .
The real disconnect that software is providing us with is truly staggering
. I have spoken to people from all over the World who seem to feel more
at home being alone and playing a game with strangers . The ones who are
most happy are those who seem to be living all aloe and the ones who try
and play while a girlfriend or family are present always seemed to be the
ones most agitated by them .
We are humans relying on simplistic algorithms that reduce us ,apps like
Tinder which turns us into a misogynist at the click of a button .
Facebook which highlights our connections with the other people and assumes
that everyone you know or have met is of the same relevance .
We also have Twitter which is the equivalent of screaming at a television
when you are drunk or angry .
We have Instagram where people revel in their own isolation and send
updates of it . All those products that are instantly updated and yet we
are ageing and always feeling like we are grouped together by simple algorithms
.
Television has been the main destroyer of social bonds since the 1950s and
yet it is only mentioned once and in relation to the number of competitions
on it, which completely misses the point. That's when I stopped taking this
article seriously.
I actually blame Marx for neoliberalism. He framed society purely in terms
economic, and persuaded that ideology is valuable in as much as it is actionable.
For a dialectician he was incredibly short sighted and superficial, not
realising he was creating a narrative inimical to personal expression and
simple thoughtfulness (although he was warned). To be fair, he can't have
appreciated how profoundly he would change the way we concieve societies.
Neoliberalism is simply the dark side of Marxism and subsumes the personal
just as comprehensively as communism.
We're picked apart by quantification and live as particulars, suffering
the ubiquitous consequences of connectivity alone . . .
Unless, of course, you get out there and meet great people!
Neo-liberalism allows psychopaths to flourish, and it has been argued by
Robert Hare that they are disproportionately represented in the highest
echelons of society. So people who lack empathy and emotional attachment
are probably weilding a significant amount of influence over the way our
economy and society is organised. Is it any wonder that they advocate an
economic model which is most conducive to their success? Things like job
security, rigged markets, unions, and higher taxes on the rich simply get
in their way.
That fine illustration by Andrzej Krauze up there is exactly what I see
whenever I walk into an upscale mall or any Temple of Consumerism.
You can hear the Temple calling out: "Feel bad, atomized individuals?
Have a hole inside? Feel lonely? That's all right: buy some shit you don't
need and I guarantee you'll feel better."
And then it says: "So you bought it and you felt better for five minutes,
and now you feel bad again? Well, that's not rocket science...you should
buy MORE shit you don't need! I mean, it's not rocket science, you should
have figured this out on your own."
And then it says: "Still feel bad and you have run out of money? Well,
that's okay, just get it on credit, or take out a loan, or mortgage your
house. I mean, it's not rocket science. Really, you should have figured
this out on your own already...I thought you were a modern, go-get-'em,
independent, initiative-seizing citizen of the world?"
And then it says: "Took out too many loans, can't pay the bills and
the repossession has begun? Honestly, that's not my problem. You're just
a bad little consumer, and a bad little liberal, and everything is your
own fault. You go sit in a dark corner now where you don't bother the other
shoppers. Honestly, you're just being a burden on other consumers now. I'm
not saying you should kill yourself, but I can't say that we would mind
either."
And that's how the worms turn at the Temples of Consumerism and Neoliberalism.
I kept my sanity by not becoming a spineless obedient middle class pleaser
of a sociopathic greedy tribe pretending neoliberalism is the future.
The result is a great clarity about the game, and an intact empathy for
all beings.
The middle class treated each conscious "outsider" like a lowlife,
and now they play the helpless victims of circumstances.
I know why I renounced to my privileges.
They sleepwalk into their self created disorder.
And yes, I am very angry at those who wasted decades with their social stupidity,
those who crawled back after a start of change into their petit bourgeois
niche.
I knew that each therapist has to take a stand and that the most choose
petty careers.
Do not expect much sanity from them for your disorientated kids.
Get insightful yourself and share your leftover love to them.
Try honesty and having guts...that might help both of you.
Alternatively, neo-liberalism has enabled us to afford to live alone (entire
families were forced to live together for economic reasons), and technology
enables us to work remotely, with no need for interaction with other people.
This may make some people feel lonely, but for many others its utopia.
Some of the things that characterise Globalisation and Neoliberalism are
open borders and free movement. How can that contribute to isolation? That
is more likely to be fostered by Protectionism.
And there aren't fewer jobs. Employment is at record highs here and in many
other countries. There are different jobs, not fewer, and to be sure there
are some demographics that have lost out. But overall there are not fewer
jobs. That falls for the old "lump of labour" fallacy.
The corrosive state of mass television indoctrination sums it up: Apprentice,
Big Brother, Dragon's Den. By degrees, the standard keeps lowering. It is
no longer unusual for a licence funded TV programme to consist of a group
of the mentally deranged competing to be the biggest asshole in the room.
Anomie is a by-product of cultural decline as much as economics.
Our whole culture is more stressful. Jobs are more precarious; employment
rights more stacked in favor of the employer; workforces are deunionised;
leisure time is on the decrease; rents are unaffordable; a house is no longer
a realistic expectation for millions of young people. Overall, citizens
are more socially immobile and working harder for poorer real wages than
they were in the late 70's.
Unfortunately, sexual abuse has always been a feature of human societies.
However there is no evidence to suggest it was any worse in the past. Then
sexual abuse largely took place in institutional settings were at least
it could be potentially addressed. Now much of it has migrated to the great
neoliberal experiment of the internet, where child exploitation is at endemic
levels and completely beyond the control of law enforcement agencies. There
are now more women and children being sexually trafficked than there were
slaves at the height of the slave trade. Moreover, we should not forget
that Jimmy Saville was abusing prolifically right into the noughties.
My parents were both born in 1948. They say it was great. They bought
a South London house for next to nothing and never had to worry about getting
a job. When they did get a job it was one with rights, a promise of a generous
pension, a humane workplace environment, lunch breaks and an ethos of public
service. My mum says that the way women are talked about now is worse.
Sounds fine to me. That's not to say everything was great: racism was
acceptable (though surely the vile views pumped out onto social media are
as bad or worse than anything that existed then), homosexuality was illegal
and capital punishment enforced until the 1960's. However, the fact that
these things were reformed showed society was moving in the right direction.
Now we are going backwards, back to 1930's levels or inequality and a reactionary,
small-minded political culture fueled by loneliness, rage and misery.
And there is little evidence to suggest that anyone has expanded their mind
with the internet. A lot of people use it to look at porn, post racist tirades
on Facebook, send rape threats, distributes sexual images of partners with
their permission, take endless photographs of themselves and whip up support
for demagogues. In my view it would much better if people went to a library
than lurked in corporate echo chambers pumping out the like of 'why dont
theese imagrantz go back home and all those lezbo fems can fuckk off too
ha ha megalolz ;). Seriously mind expanding stuff. Share
As a director and CEO of an organisation employing several hundred people
I became aware that 40% of the staff lived alone and that the workplace
was important to them not only for work but also for interacting with their
colleagues socially . This was encouraged and the organisation achieved
an excellent record in retaining staff at a time when recruitment was difficult.
Performance levels were also extremely high . I particulalry remember with
gratitude the solidarity of staff when one of our colleagues - a haemophiliac
- contracted aids through an infected blood transfusion and died bravely
but painfully - the staff all supported him in every way possible through
his ordeal and it was a privilege for me to work with such kind and caring
people .
Indeed. Those communities are often undervalued. However, the problem is,
as George says, lots of people are excluded from them.
They are also highly self-selecting (e.g. you need certain trains of
inclusivity, social adeptness, empathy, communication, education etc to
get the job that allows you to join that community).
Certainly I make it a priority in my life. I do create communities. I
do make an effort to stand by people who live like me. I can be a leader
there.
Sometimes I wish more people would be. It is a sustained, long-term effort.
Share
To add to this discussion, we might consider the strongest need and conflict
each of us experiences as a teenager, the need to be part of a tribe vs
the the conflict inherent in recognising one's uniqueness. In a child's
life from about 7 or 8 until adolescence, friends matter the most. Then
the young person realises his or her difference from everyone else and has
to grasp what this means.
Those of us who enjoyed a reasonably healthy upbringing will get through
the peer group / individuation stage with happiness possible either way
- alone or in friendship. Our parents and teachers will have fostered a
pride in our own talents and our choice of where to socialise will be flexible
and non-destructive.
Those of us who at some stage missed that kind of warmth and acceptance
in childhood can easily stagnate. Possibly this is the most awkward of personal
developmental leaps. The person neither knows nor feels comfortable with
themselves, all that faces them is an abyss.
Where creative purpose and strength of spirit are lacking, other humans
can instinctively sense it and some recoil from it, hardly knowing what
it's about. Vulnerabilities attendant on this state include relationships
holding out some kind of ersatz rescue, including those offered by superficial
therapists, religions, and drugs, legal and illegal.
Experience taught that apart from the work we might do with someone deeply
compassionate helping us where our parents failed, the natural world
is a reliable healer. A kind of self-acceptance and individuation is
possible away from human bustle. One effect of the seasons and of being
outdoors amongst other life forms is to challenge us physically, into present
time, where our senses start to work acutely and our observational skills
get honed, becoming more vibrant than they could at any educational establishment.
This is one reason we have to look after the Earth, whether it's in a
city context or a rural one. Our mental, emotional and physical health is
known to be directly affected by it.
A thoughtful article. But the rich and powerful will ignore it; their doing
very well out of neo liberalism thank you. Meanwhile many of those whose
lives are affected by it don't want to know - they're happy with their bigger
TV screen. Which of course is what the neoliberals want, 'keep the people
happy and in the dark'. An old Roman tactic - when things weren't
going too well for citizens and they were grumbling the leaders just
extended the 'games'. Evidently it did the trick
The rich and powerful can be just as lonely as you and me. However, some
of them will be lonely after having royally forked the rest of us over...and
that is another thing
- Fight Club
People need a tribe to feel purpose. We need conflict, it's essential for
our species... psychological health improved in New York after 9/11.
Totally agree with the last sentences. Human civilisation is a team effort.
Individual humans cant survive, our language evolved to aid cooperation.
Neo-liberalism is really only an Anglo-American project. Yet we are so
indoctrinated in it, It seems natural to us, but not to hardly any other
cultures.
As for those "secondary factors. Look to advertising and the loss of
real jobs forcing more of us to sell services dependent on fake needs. Share
It's importance for social cohesion -- yes inspite of the problems , can
not be overestimated .Don't let the rich drive it out , people who don't
understand ,or care what it's for .The poorer boroughs cannot afford it
.K&C have easily 1/2billion in Capital Reserves ,so yes they must continue
. Here I can assure you ,one often sees the old and lonely get a hug .If
drug gangs are hitting each other or their rich boy customers with violence
- that is a different matter . And yes of course if we don't do something
to help boys from ethnic minorities ,with education and housing -of course
it only becomes more expensive in the long run.
Boris Johnson has idiotically mouthed off about trying to mobilise people
to stand outside the Russian Embassy , as if one can mobilise youth by telling
them to tidy their bedroom .Because that's all it amounts to - because you
have to FEEL protest and dissent . Well here at Carnival - there it is ,protest
and dissent . Now listen to it . And of course it will be far easier than
getting any response from sticking your tongue out at the Putin monster --
He has his bombs , just as Kensington and Chelsea have their money.
(and anyway it's only another Boris diversion ,like building some fucking
stupid bridge ,instead of doing anything useful)
"Society" or at least organized society is the enemy of corporate power.
The idea of Neoliberal capitalism is to replace civil society with corporate
law and rule. The same was true of the less extreme forms of capitalism.
Society is the enemy of capital because it put restrictions on it and threatens
its power.
When society organizes itself and makes laws to protect society from
the harmful effects of capitalism, for example demands on testing drugs
to be sure they are safe, this is a big expense to Pfizer, there are many
examples - just now in the news banning sugary drinks. If so much as a small
group of parents forming a day care co-op decide to ban coca cola from their
group that is a loss of profit.
That is really what is going on, loneliness is a big part of human life,
everyone feels it sometimes, under Neoliberal capitalism it is simply more
exaggerated due to the out and out assault on society itself.
Well the prevailing Global Capitalist world view is still a combination
1. homocentric Cartesian Dualism i.e. seeing humans as most important and
sod all other living beings, and seeing humans as separate from all other
living beings and other humans and 2. Darwinian "survival of the fittest"
seeing everything as a competition and people as "winners and losers, weak
or strong with winners and the strong being most important". From these
2 combined views all kinds of "games" arise. The main one being the game
of "victim, rescuer, persecutor" (Transactional Analysis). The Guardian
engages in this most of the time and although I welcome the truth in this
article to some degree, surprisingly, as George is environmentally friendly,
it kinda still is talking as if humans are most important and as if those
in control (the winners) need to change their world view to save the victims.
I think the world view needs to zoom out to a perspective that recognises
that everything is interdependent and that the apparent winners and the
strong are as much victims of their limited world view as those who are
manifesting the effects of it more obviously.
Here in America, we have reached the point at which police routinely dispatch
the mentally ill, while complaining that "we don't have the time for this"
(N. Carolina). When a policeman refuses to kill a troubled citizen, he or
she can and will be fired from his job (West Virginia). This has become
not merely commonplace, but actually a part of the social function of the
work of the police -- to remove from society the burden of caring for the
mentally ill by killing them. In the state where I live, a state trooper
shot dead a mentally ill man who was not only unarmed, but sitting on the
toilet in his own home. The resulting "investigation" exculpated the trooper,
of course; in fact, young people are constantly told to look up to the police.
Sounds like the inevitable logical outcome of a society where the predator
sociopathic and their scared prey are all that is allowed.
This dynamic dualistic tautology, the slavish terrorised to sleep and bullying
narcissistic individual, will always join together to protect their sick
worldview by pathologising anything that will threaten their hegemony of
power abuse: compassion, sensitivity, moral conscience, altruism and the
immediate effects of the ruthless social effacement or punishment of the
same ie human suffering.
The impact of increasing alienation on individual mental health has been
known about and discussed for a long time.
When looking at a way forward, the following article is interesting:
"Alienation, in all areas, has reached unprecedented heights; the social
machinery for deluding consciousnesses in the interest of the ruling class
has been perfected as never before. The media are loaded with upscale advertising
identifying sophistication with speciousness. Television, in constant use,
obliterates the concept under the image and permanently feeds a baseless
credulity for events and history. Against the will of many students, school
doesn't develop the highly cultivated critical capacities that a real sovereignty
of the people would require. And so on.
The ordinary citizen thus lives
in an incredibly deceiving reality. Perhaps this explains the tremendous
and persistent gap between the burgeoning of motives to struggle, and the
paucity of actual combatants. The contrary would be a miracle. Thus the
considerable importance of what I call the struggle for representation:
at every moment, in every area, to expose the deception and bring to light,
in the simplicity of form which only real theoretical penetration makes
possible, the processes in which the false-appearances, real and imagined,
originate, and this way, to form the vigilant consciousness, placing our
image of reality back on its feet and reopening paths to action."
For the global epidemic of abusive, effacing homogenisation of human intellectual
exchange and violent hyper-sexualisation of all culture, I blame the US
Freudian PR guru Edward Bernays and his puritan forebears - alot.
Thanks for proving that Anomie is a far more sensible theory than Dialectical
Materialistic claptrap that was used back in the 80s to terrorize the millions
of serfs living under the Jack boot of Leninist Iron curtain.
There's no question - neoliberalism has been wrenching society apart.
It's not as if the prime movers of this ideology were unaware of the likely
outcome viz. "there is no such thing as society" (Thatcher). Actually in
retrospect the whole zeitgeist from the late 70s emphasised the atomised
individual separated from the whole. Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" (1976)
may have been influential in creating that climate.
Anyway, the wheel has turned thank goodness. We are becoming wiser and
understanding that "ecology" doesn't just refer to our relationship with
the natural world but also, closer to home, our relationship with each other.
The Communist manifesto makes the same complaint in 1848. The wheel has
not turned, it is still grinding down workers after 150 years. We are none
the wiser.
"The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will."
R Hunter
What is loneliness? I love my own company and I love walking in nature and
listening to relaxation music off you tube and reading books from the library.
That is all free. When I fancied a change of scene, I volunteered at my
local art gallery.
Mental health issues are not all down to loneliness. Indeed, other people
can be a massive stress factor, whether it is a narcissistic parent, a bullying
spouse or sibling, or an unreasonable boss at work.
I'm on the internet far too much and often feel the need to detox from
it and get back to a more natural life, away from technology. The 24/7 news
culture and selfie obsessed society is a lot to blame for social disconnect.
The current economic climate is also to blame, if housing and job security
are a problem for individuals as money worries are a huge factor of stress.
The idea of not having any goal for the future can trigger depressive thoughts.
I have to say, I've been happier since I don't have such unrealistic
expectations of what 'success is'. I rarely get that foreign holiday or
new wardrobe of clothes and my mobile phone is archaic. The pressure that
society puts on us to have all these things- and get in debt for them is
not good. The obsession with economic growth at all costs is also stupid,
as the numbers don't necessarily mean better wealth, health or happiness.
Very fine article, as usual from George, until right at the end he says:
This does not require a policy response.
But it does. It requires abandonment of neoliberalism as the means used
to run the world. People talk about the dangers of man made computers usurping
their makers but mankind has, it seems, already allowed itself to become
enslaved. This has not been achieved by physical dependence upon machines
but by intellectual enslavement to an ideology.
A very good "Opinion" by George Monbiot one of the best I have seen on this
Guardian blog page.
I would add that the basic concepts of the Neoliberal New world order are
fundamentally Evil, from the control of world population through supporting
of strife starvation and war to financial inducements of persons in positions
of power. Let us not forget the training of our younger members of our society
who have been induced to a slavish love of technology. Many other areas
of human life are also under attack from the Neoliberal, even the very air
we breathe, and the earth we stand upon.
The Amish have understood for 300 years that technology could have a negative
effect on society and decided to limit its effects. I greatly admire their
approach. Neal Stephenson's recent novel Seveneves coined the term Amistics
for the practice of assessing and limiting the impact of tech. We need a
Minister for Amistics in the government. Wired magazine did two features
on the Amish use of telephones which are quite insightful.
If we go back to 1848, we also find Marx and Engels, in the Communist
Manifesto, complaining about the way that the first free-market capitalism
(the original liberalism) was destroying communities and families by forcing
workers to move to where the factories were being built, and by forcing
women and children into (very) low paid work. 150 years later, after many
generations of this, combined with the destruction of work in the North,
the result is widespread mental illness. But a few people are really rich
now, so that's all right, eh?
Social media is ersatz community. It's like eating grass: filling, but
not nourishing.
Young people are greatly harmed by not being able to see a clear path forward
in the world. For most people, our basic needs are a secure job, somewhere
secure and affordable to live, and a decent social environment in terms
of public services and facilities. Unfortunately, all these things are sliding
further out of reach for young people in the UK, and they know this. Many
already live with insecure housing where their family could have to move
at a month or two's notice.
Our whole economic system needs to be built around providing these basic
securities for people. Neoliberalism = insecure jobs, insecure housing and
poor public services, because these are the end result of its extreme free
market ideology.
I agree with this 100%. Social isolation makes us unhappy. We have a false
sense of what makes us unhappy - that success or wealth will enlighten or
liberate us. What makes us happy is social connection. Good friendships,
good relationships, being part of community that you contribute to. Go to
some of the poorest countries in the world and you may meet happy people
there, tell them about life in rich countries, and say that some people
there are unhappy. They won't believe you. We do need to change our worldview,
because misery is a real problem in many countries.
It is tempting to see the world before Thatcherism, which is what most English
writers mean when they talk about neo-liberalism, as an idyll, but it simply
wasn't.
The great difficulty with capitalism is that while it is in many ways
an amoral doctrine, it goes hand in hand with personal freedom. Socialism
is moral in its concern for the poorest, but then it places limits on personal
freedom and choice. That's the price people pay for the emphasis on community,
rather than the individual.
Close communities can be a bar on personal freedom and have little tolerance
for people who deviate from the norm. In doing that, they can entrench loneliness.
This happened, and to some extent is still happening, in the working
class communities which we typically describe as 'being destroyed by Thatcher'.
It's happening in close-knit Muslim communities now.
I'm not attempting to vindicate Thatcherism, I'm just saying there's
a pay-off with any model of society. George Monbiot's concerns are actually
part of a long tradition - Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village (1770) chimes
with his thinking, as does DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The kind of personal freedom that you say goes hand in hand with capitalism
is an illusion for the majority of people. It holds up the prospect of that
kind of freedom, but only a minority get access to it. For most, it is necessary
to submit yourself to a form of being yoked, in terms of the daily grind
which places limits on what you can then do, as the latter depends hugely
on money. The idea that most people are "free" to buy the house they want,
private education, etc., not to mention whether they can afford the many
other things they are told will make them happy, is a very bad joke. Hunter-gatherers
have more real freedom than we do. Share
According to Wiki: 'Neoliberalism refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence
of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.
These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization,
fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government
spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.'
We grow into fear - the stress of exams and their certain meanings; the
lower wages, longer hours, and fewer rights at work; the certainty of debt
with ever greater mortgages; the terror of benefit cuts combined with rent
increases.
If we're forever afraid, we'll cling to whatever life raft presents.
It's a demeaning way to live, but it serves the Market better than having
a free, reasonably paid, secure workforce, broadly educated and properly
housed, with rights.
Insightful analysis... George quite rightly pinpoints the isolating effects of modern society
and technology and the impact on the quality of our relationships. The obvious question is how can we offset these trends and does the government
care enough to do anything about them?
It strikes me that one of the major problems is that [young] people have
been left to their own devices in terms of their consumption of messages
from Social and Mass online Media - analogous to leaving your kids in front
of a video in lieu of a parental care or a babysitter. In traditional society
- the messages provided by Society were filtered by family contact and real
peer interaction - and a clear picture of the limited value of the media
was propogated by teachers and clerics. Now young and older people alike
are left to make their own judgments and we cannot be surprised when they
extract negative messages around body image, wealth and social expectations
and social and sexual norms from these channels. It's inevitable that this
will create a boundary free landscape where insecurity, self-loathing and
ultimately mental illness will prosper.
I'm not a traditionalist in any way but there has to be a role for teachers
and parents in mediating these messages and presenting the context for analysing
what is being said in a healthy way. I think this kind of Personal Esteem
and Life Skills education should be part of the core curriculum in all schools.
Our continued focus on basic academic skills just does not prepare young
people for the real world of judgementalism, superficiality and cliques
and if anything dealing with these issues are core life skills.
We can't reverse the fact that media and modern society is changing but
we can prepare people for the impact which it can have on their lives.
A politician's answer.
X is a problem. Someone else, in your comment it will be teachers that have
to sort it out. Problems in society are not solved by having a one hour
a week class on "self esteem". In fact self-esteem and self-worth comes
from the things you do. Taking kids away from their academic/cultural studies
reduces this. This is a problem in society. What can society as a
whole do to solve it and what are YOU prepared to contribute.
Rather difficult to do when their parents are Thatchers children and buy
into the whole celebrity, you are what you own lifestyle too....and teachers
are far too busy filling out all the paperwork that shows they've met their
targets to find time to teach a person centred course on self-esteem to
a class of 30 teenagers.
I think we should just continue to be selfish and self-serving, sneering
and despising anyone less fortunate than ourselves, look up to and try to
emulate the shallow, vacuous lifestyle of the non-entity celebrity, consume
the Earth's natural resources whilst poisoning the planet and the people,
destroy any non-contributing indigenous peoples and finally set off all
our nuclear arsenals in a smug-faced global firework display to demonstrate
our high level of intelligence and humanity. Surely, that's what we all
want? Who cares? So let's just carry on with business as usual!
Neoliberalism is the bastard child of globalization which in effect is Americanization.
The basic premise is the individual is totally reliant on the corporate
world state aided by a process of fear inducing mechanisms, pharmacology
is one of the tools.
No community no creativity no free thinking. Poded sealed and cling filmed
a quasi existence.
Having grown up during the Thatcher years, I entirely agree that neoliberalism
has divided society by promoting individual self-optimisation at the expensive
of everyone else.
What's the solution? Well if neoliberalism is the root cause, we need
a systematic change, which is a problem considering there is no alternative
right now. We can however, get active in rebuilding communities and I am
encouraged by George Monbiot's work here.
My approach is to get out and join organizations working toward system
change. 350.org is a good example. Get involved.
we live in a narcissistic and ego driven world that dehumanises everyone.
we have an individual and collective crisis of the soul. it is our false
perception of ourselves that creates a disconnection from who we really
are that causes loneliness.
I agree. This article explains why it is a perfectly normal reaction to
the world we are currently living in. It goes as far as to suggest that
if you do not feel depressed at the state of our world there's something
wrong with you ;-) http://upliftconnect.com/mutiny-of-the-soul/
Surely there is a more straightforward possible explanation for increasing
incidence of "unhapiness"?
Quite simply, a century of gradually increasing general living standards
in the West have lifted the masses up Maslows higiene hierarchy of needs,
to where the masses now have largely only the unfulfilled self esteem needs
that used to be the preserve of a small, middle class minority (rather than
the unfulfilled survival, security and social needs of previous generations)
If so - this is good. This is progress. We just need to get them up another
rung to self fulfillment (the current concern of the flourishing upper middle
classes).
Maslow's hierarchy of needs was not about material goods. One could be poor
and still fulfill all his criteria and be fully realised. You have missed
the point entirely.
Error.... Who mentioned material goods? I think you have not so much "missed
the point" as "made your own one up" .
And while agreed that you could, in theory, be poor and meet all of your
needs (in fact the very point of the analysis is that money, of itself,
isn't what people "need") the reality of the structure of a western capitalist
society means that a certain level of affluence is almost certainly a prerequisite
for meeting most of those needs simply because food and shelter at the bottom
end and, say, education and training at the top end of self fulfillment
all have to be purchased. Share
Also note that just because a majority of people are now so far up the
hierarchy
does in no way negate an argument that corporations haven't also noticed
this and target advertising appropriately to exploit it (and maybe we need
to talk about that)
It just means that it's lazy thinking to presume we are in some way "sliding
backwards" socially, rather than needing to just keep pushing through this
adversity through to the summit.
I have to admit it does really stick in my craw a bit hearing millenials
moan about how they may never get to *own* a really *nice* house while their
grandparents are still alive who didn't even get the right to finish school
and had to share a bed with their siblings.
There is no such thing as a free-market society. Your society of 'self-interest'
is really a state supported oligarchy. If you really want to live in a society
where there is literally no state and a more or less open market try Somalia
or a Latin American city run by drug lords - but even then there are hierarchies,
state involvement, militias.
What you are arguing for is a system (for that is what it is) that demands
everyone compete with one another. It is not free, or liberal, or democratic,
or libertarian. It is designed to oppress, control, exploit and degrade
human beings. This kind of corporatism in which everyone is supposed to
serve the God of the market is, ironically, quite Stalinist. Furthermore,
a society in which people are encouraged to be narrowly selfish is just
plain uncivilized. Since when have sociopathy and barbarism been something
to aspire to?
George, you are right, of course. The burning question, however, is not
'Is our current social set-up making us ill' (it certainly is), but 'Is
there a healthier alternative?' What form of society would make us less
ill? Socialism and egalatarianism, wherever they are tried, tend to lead
to their own set of mental-illness-inducing problems, chiefly to do with
thwarted opportunity, inability to thrive, and constraints on individual
freedom. The sharing, caring society is no more the answer than the brutally
individualistic one. You may argue that what is needed is a balance between
the two, but that is broadly what we have already. It ain't perfect, but
it's a lot better than any of the alternatives.
We certainly do NOT at present have a balance between the two societies...Have
you not read the article? Corporations and big business have far too much
power and control over our lives and our Gov't. The gov't does not legislate
for a real living minimum wage and expects the taxpayer to fund corporations
low wage businesses. The Minimum wage and benefit payments are sucked in
to ever increasing basic living costs leaving nothing for the human soul
aside from more work to keep body and soul together, and all the while the
underlying message being pumped at us is that we are failures if we do not
have wealth and all the accoutrements that go with it....How does that create
a healthy society?
Neoliberalism. A simple word but it does a great deal of work for people
like Monbiot.
The simple statistical data on quality of life differences between generations
is absolutely nowhere to be found in this article, nor are self-reported
findings on whether people today are happier, just as happy or less happy
than people thirty years ago. In reality quality of life and happiness indices
have generally been increasing ever since they were introduced.
It's more difficult to know if things like suicide, depression and mental
illness are actually increasing or whether it's more to do with the fact
that the number of people who are prepared to report them is increasing:
at least some of the rise in their numbers will be down to greater awareness
of said mental illness, government campaigns and a decline in associated
social stigma.
Either way, what evidence there is here isn't even sufficient to establish
that we are going through some vast mental health crisis in the first place,
never mind that said crisis is inextricably bound up with 'neoliberalism'.
Furthermore, I'm inherently suspicious of articles that manage to connect
every modern ill to the author's own political bugbear, especially if they
cherry-pick statistical findings to support their point. I'd be just as,
if not more, suspicious if it was a conservative author trying to link the
same ills to the decline in Christianity or similar. In fact, this article
reminds me very much of the sweeping claims made by right-wingers about
the allegedly destructive effects of secularism/atheism/homosexuality/video
games/South Park/The Great British Bake Off/etc...
If you're an author and you have a pet theory, and upon researching an
article you believe you see a pattern in the evidence that points towards
further confirmation of that theory, then you should step back and think
about whether said pattern is just a bit too psychologically convenient
and ideologically simple to be true. This is why people like Steven Pinker
- properly rigorous, scientifically versed writer-researchers - do the work
they do in systematically sifting through the sociological and historical
data: because your mind is often actively trying to convince you to believe
that neoliberalism causes suicide and depression, or, if you're a similarly
intellectually lazy right-winger, homosexuality leads to gang violence and
the flooding of(bafflingly, overwhelmingly heterosexual) parts of America.
I see no sign that Monbiot is interested in testing his belief in his
central claim and as a result this article is essentially worthless except
as an example of a certain kind of political rhetoric.
social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide,
anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat .... Dementia,
high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses,
even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people.
Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking
15 cigarettes a day:
it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%
Why don't we explore some of the benefits?.. Following the long
list of some the diseases, loneliness can inflict on individuals, there
must be a surge in demand for all sort of medications; anti-depressants
must be topping the list. There is a host many other anti-stress treatments
available of which Big Pharma must be carving the lion's share. Examine
the micro-economic impact immediately following a split or divorce. There
is an instant doubling on the demand for accommodation, instant doubling
on the demand for electrical and household items among many other products
and services. But the icing on the cake and what is really most critical
for Neoliberalism must be this: With the morale barometer hitting
the bottom, people will be less likely to think of a better future, and
therefore, less likely to protest. In fact, there is nothing left worth
protecting.
Your freedom has been curtailed. Your rights are evaporating in front
of your eyes. And Best of all, from the authorities' perspective, there
is no relationship to defend and there is no family to protect. If you have
a job, you want to keep, you must prove your worthiness every day to 'a
company'.
What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! -- is
countervailing power. 6% labor union density in private business is equivalent
to 20/10 blood pressure in the human body: it starves every other healthy
process.
It is not just labor market bargaining power that has gone missing, it
is not only the lost political muscle for the average person (equal campaign
financing, almost all the votes), it is also the lack of machinery to deal
with day-to-day outrages on a day-to-day basis (that's called lobbying).
Late dean of the Washington press corps David Broder told a young reporter
that when he came to DC fifty years ago (then), all the lobbyists were union.
Big pharma's biggest rip-offs, for profit school scams, all the stuff you
hear about for one day on the news but no action is ever taken -- that's
because there is no (LABOR UNION) mechanism to stay on top of all (or any)
of it (LOBBYISTS).
It is a chicken and egg problem. Before large scale automation and globalization,
unions "negotiated" themselves their power, which was based on employers
having much fewer other choices. Any union power that was ever legislated
was legislated as a *result* of union leverage, not to enable the latter
(and most of what was legislated amounts to limiting employer interference
with unions).
It is a basic feature of human individual and group relations that when
you are needed you will be treated well, and when you are not needed you
will be treated badly (or at best you will be ignored if that's less effort
overall). And by needed I mean needed as a specific individual or narrowly
described group.
What automation and globalization have done is created a glut of labor
- specifically an oversupply of most skill sets relative to all the work
that has to be done according to socially mediated decision processes (a
different set of work than what "everybody" would like to happen as long
as they don't have to pay for it, taking away from other necessary or desired
expenditure of money, effort, or other resources).
Maybe when the boomers age out and become physically too old to work,
the balance will tip again.
Same thing with the internet - it has been hailed as a democratizing force,
but instead it has mostly (though not wholly) amplified the existing power
differentials and motivation structures.
Anecdotally, a lot of companies and institutions are either restricting
internal internet access or disconnecting parts of their organizations from
the internet altogether, and disabling I/O channels like USB sticks, encrypting
disks, locking out "untrusted" boot methods, etc. The official narrative
is security and preventing leaks of confidential information, but the latter
is clearly also aimed in part at whistleblowers disclosing illegal or unethical
practices. Of course that a number of employees illegitimately "steal" data
for personal and not to uncover injustices doesn't really help.
Surely there is a huge difference between the labor market here and the
labor market in continental Europe -- though labor there faces the same
squeezing forces it faces here. Think of German auto assembly line workers
making $60 an hour counting benefits.
Think Teamster Union UPS drivers -- and pity the poor, lately hired (if
they are even hired) Amazon drivers -- maybe renting vans.
The Teamsters have the only example here of what is standard in continental
Europe: centralized bargaining (aka sector wide labor agreements): the Master
National Freight Agreement: wherein everybody doing the same job in the
same locale (entire nation for long distance truckers) works under one common
contract (in French Canada too).
Imagine centralized bargaining for airlines. A few years ago Northwest
squeezed a billion dollars in give backs out of its pilots -- next year
gave a billion dollars in bonuses to a thousand execs. Couldn't happen under
centralized bargaining -- wouldn't even give the company any competitive
advantage.
"What's missing in each and every case above -- at least in the USA! --
is countervailing power."
It was deliberately destroyed. Neoliberalism needs to "atomize" work
force to function properly and destroys any solidarity among workers. Unions
are anathema for neoliberalism, because they prevent isolation and suppression
of workers.
Amazon and Uber are good examples. Both should be prosecuted under RICO
act. Wall-Mart in nor far from them.
Rising fatalities from heart disease and stroke, diabetes, drug overdoses,
accidents and other conditions caused the lower life expectancy revealed
in a report by the National Center for Health Statistics .
== quote ==
Anne Case and Angus Deaton garnered national headlines in 2015 when they
reported that the death rate of midlife non-Hispanic white Americans had
risen steadily since 1999 in contrast with the death rates of blacks, Hispanics
and Europeans. Their new study extends the data by two years and shows that
whatever is driving the mortality spike is not easing up.
... ... ..
Offering what they call a tentative but "plausible" explanation, they
write that less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market
in early adulthood are likely to experience a "cumulative disadvantage"
over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses,
alcohol-related liver disease and suicide.
== end of quote ==
Greed is toxic. As anger tends to accumulate, and then explode, at some
point neoliberals might be up to a huge surprise. Trump was the first swan.
"... We must, however, distinguish between capitalism and neoliberalism. One of the examples John Kay gives of how excellence can be profitable was ICI. When it was a chemicals company, it became great. But when it tried to maximize profits, it soon failed. The old ICI was a capitalist firm. The later ICI was a neoliberal one. ..."
"... neoliberalism , in the sense of chasing money and (managerialist) power is more totalitarian. For this reason, among others, we should distinguish between the two. ..."
So, for me it is unclear how far capitalism facilitates the pursuit of excellence. We
must, however, distinguish between capitalism and neoliberalism. One of the examples John Kay gives
of how excellence can be profitable was ICI. When it was a chemicals company, it became great. But
when it tried to maximize profits, it soon failed. The old ICI was a capitalist firm. The later ICI
was a neoliberal one.
The point perhaps generalizes. Capitalism gave us Citizen Kane and Ella Fitzgerald. But neoliberalism
gives us Simon Cowell and mindless sequels.
Free markets might well provide some space for the pursuit of different ends and of excellence
– especially if accompanied by some judicious state interventions. But
neoliberalism, in the sense of chasing money and (managerialist) power is more totalitarian.
For this reason, among others, we should distinguish between the two.
>* Here's a brief explanation
of alienation by Gillian Anderson. I'm in love.
** Or has it? The old USSR also produced many great athletes, albeit perhaps through less than
laudable methods. Perhaps any system that produces a surplus facilitates excellence.
"... At the dawning of the Cold War, a worried Arthur Schlesinger Jr. looked out on a bleak horizon. The Soviet Union was a threat, but Schlesinger concluded that the roots of the crisis ran much deeper. "Our lives are empty of belief," he wrote in his 1949 book, The Vital Center. "They are lives of quiet desperation." ..."
"... So too would the concerns he dwelled upon: loss of community, feelings of powerlessness, a sense that politics had been drained of meaning. Even the poem he selected for his book's epigraph became a touchstone in the turbulent years to come: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." ..."
"... "loss of community, feelings of powerlessness, a sense that politics had been drained of meaning. " That's called alienation. ..."
"... The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with White Collar in 1951, describing how modern consumption-capitalism has shaped a society where you have to sell your personality in addition to your work. Melvin Seeman was part of a surge in alienation research during the mid-20th century when he published his paper, "On the Meaning of Alienation", in 1959 (Senekal, 2010b: 7-8). Seeman used the insights of Marx, Emile Durkheim and others to construct what is often considered a model to recognize the five prominent features of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation and self-estrangement (Seeman, 1959).[19] Seeman later added a sixth element (cultural estrangement), although this element does not feature prominently in later discussions of his work. ..."
Jonathan Chait's new book shows the failure of "grown up" liberalism.
BY TIMOTHY SHENK
January 10, 2017
At the dawning of the Cold War, a worried Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
looked out on a bleak horizon. The Soviet Union was a threat, but Schlesinger
concluded that the roots of the crisis ran much deeper. "Our lives are empty
of belief," he wrote in his 1949 book, The Vital Center. "They are lives
of quiet desperation." Figures he looked to for guidance-Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Camus-would become staples in the rhetoric of student protesters
a generation later.
So too would the concerns he dwelled upon: loss of community, feelings
of powerlessness, a sense that politics had been drained of meaning. Even
the poem he selected for his book's epigraph became a touchstone in the
turbulent years to come: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world."
...
Any book published in the last month of a president's tenure is forced
to reckon with the political scene that will form in his wake. While Chait
was prescient on Trumpism in 2012, he underestimated its force in 2016,
and was similarly blindsided by the success of Bernie Sanders's campaign.
According to Chait, "The case for democratic, pluralistic, incremental,
market-friendly governance rooted in empiricism-i.e., liberalism-has never
been stronger than now." It is an odd claim to make in a season of populist
upheavals. As the most bloodless technocrat should have long ago recognized,
no policy achievement is complete without political legitimacy.
Deference to the status quo has always been a consequence of vital centrism.
So is a propensity for self-important monologues on pragmatism. Schlesinger
described his politics as "less gratifying perhaps than the emotional orgasm
of passing resolutions against Franco, monopoly, or sin, but probably more
likely to bring about actual results." But sentimental realists are never
more utopian than when they try to banish idealism from politics. Democratic
leadership does not consist of lecturing voters on what they should want.
The intersection of politics and policy, briefing books and ideology, is
where transformative candidates stake their claims.
Obama understood that in 2008, and it made him president. The passions
inspired by his first run for the White House long ago slipped out of his
control. A right-wing version of that democratic spirit gave Trump the presidency,
but it could not have happened without Clinton's antiseptic liberalism-Obamaism
minus Obama. Now Republicans are poised to eviscerate the achievements Chait
celebrates. Reality has broken the realists.
...German sociologists Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies wrote critical
works on individualization and urbanization. Simmel's The Philosophy
of Money describes how relationships become more and more mediated by
money. Tönnies' Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Community and Society)
is about the loss of primary relationships such as familial bonds in
favour of goal-oriented, secondary relationships. This idea of alienation
can be observed in some other contexts, although the term may not be
as frequently used. In the context of an individual's relationships
within society, alienation can mean the unresponsiveness of society
as a whole to the individuality of each member of the society. When
collective decisions are made, it is usually impossible for the unique
needs of each person to be taken into account.
The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study
of alienation in modern society with White Collar in 1951, describing
how modern consumption-capitalism has shaped a society where you have
to sell your personality in addition to your work. Melvin Seeman was
part of a surge in alienation research during the mid-20th century when
he published his paper, "On the Meaning of Alienation", in 1959 (Senekal,
2010b: 7-8). Seeman used the insights of Marx, Emile Durkheim and others
to construct what is often considered a model to recognize the five
prominent features of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness,
isolation and self-estrangement (Seeman, 1959).[19] Seeman later added
a sixth element (cultural estrangement), although this element does
not feature prominently in later discussions of his work.
"... Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it. ..."
"... Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur. ..."
"... But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points, too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm with it.) ..."
"... American Psycho ..."
"... The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers or, even more grandly, what success means in America. ..."
"... unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do. ..."
"... our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population of individualists who can't see the big picture. ..."
"... That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel that our governments are working for us. ..."
"... Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional, to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal. ..."
"... "Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing, just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability. ..."
"... Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best that can be achieved? ..."
"... JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The "remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which has never existed. ..."
"... Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit. Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets. ..."
"... Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile, Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away. ..."
"... My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. ..."
"... The class war continues, and the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity? No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of the Obama administration and the Trump administration. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens if any, are kept meticulously clean. ..."
"... The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the public space/environment as a shared, common good. ..."
"... There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game for commercial exploitation. ..."
"... The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. ..."
"... "Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief." ..."
"... "Four Futures" ..."
"... Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first. "Greed is good". ..."
"... Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel. In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class, and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster. ..."
Yves here. I have been saying for some years that I did not think we would see a revolution, but
more and more individuals acting out violently. That's partly the result of how community and social
bonds have weakened as a result of neoliberalism but also because the officialdom has effective ways
of blocking protests. With the overwhelming majority of people using smartphones, they are constantly
surveilled. And the coordinated 17-city paramilitary crackdown on Occupy Wall Street shows how the
officialdom moved against non-violent protests. Police have gotten only more military surplus toys
since then, and crowd-dispersion technology like sound cannons only continues to advance. The only
way a rebellion could succeed would be for it to be truly mass scale (as in over a million people
in a single city) or by targeting crucial infrastructure.
By Gaius Publius
, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to
DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter
@Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
"[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues
to grow. An
analysis of
2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion
in total wealth. As of
June 8,
2017 , the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average,
each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
-Paul Buchheit,
Alternet
"Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
-NBC News,
June 14, 2017
"4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
-ABC7News,
June 14, 2017
"Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry
nut-bars with guns."
-MarianneW via
Twitter
"We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through
the news of another shooting in the same day."
-SamT via
Twitter
"If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to
put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm
arguing for justice and peace."
-
Yours truly
When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.
Until elites stand down and stop the
brutal squeeze , expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come
apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate
the whole of the
Neoliberal
Era , there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There
are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently
militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure - the storm that kills this year,
the hurricane that kills the next - but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the
beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves,
the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and
the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does
if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to
but down - physically, economically, emotionally. The
Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying
of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just
remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
The pot isn't boiling yet - these shootings are random, individualized - but they seem to be piling
on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as
well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.
Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier
My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms
we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend
that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's
more than one way in which to be a denier of change.
These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a
pre-revolutionary state ; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have
chosen Sanders over Trump. The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long
and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched - tightly "ordered" states, highly
chaotic ones - have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.
But the elite aren't going to stand down, whatever that might mean. The elite aren't really
the "elite", they are owners and controllers of certain flows of economic activity. We need to
call it what it is and actively organize against it. Publius's essay seems too passive at points,
too passive voice. (Yes, it's a cry from the heart in a prophetic mode, and on that level, I'm
with it.)
"If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible
they'll also aim their anger out as well?"
Not necessarily. What Lacan called the "Big Other" is quite powerful. We internalize a lot
of socio-economic junk from our cultural inheritance, especially as it's been configured over
the last 40 years - our values, our body images, our criteria for judgment, our sense of what
material well-being consists, etc. Ellis's American Psycho is the great satire of our
time, and this time is not quite over yet. Dismemberment reigns.
The college students I deal with have internalized a lot of this. In their minds, TINA
is reality. Everything balances for the individual on a razor's edge of failure of will or knowledge
or hacktivity. It's all personal, almost never collective - it's a failure toward parents or peers
or, even more grandly, what success means in America.
The idea that agency could be a collective action of a union for a strike isn't even on the
horizon. And at the same time, these same students don't bat an eye at socialism. They're willing
to listen.
But unions don't matter in our TINA. Corporations do.
Most of the elite do not understand the money system. They do not understand how different
sectors have benefitted from policies and/or subsidies that increased the money flows into these.
So they think they deserve their money more than those who toiled in sectors with less support.
Furthermore, our system promotes specialists and disregards generalists this leads to a population
of individualists who can't see the big picture.
Thank you Gaius, a thoughtful post. That social contract is hard to pin down and define – probably
has different meanings to all of us, but you are right, it is breaking down. We no longer feel
that our governments are working for us.
Of tangential interest, Turnbull has just announced another gun amnesty targeting guns that
people no longer need and a tightening of some of the ownership laws.
One problem is the use of the term "social contract", implying that there is some kind of agreement
( = consensus) on what that is. I don't remember signing any "contract".
I fear for my friends, I fear for my family.
They do not know how ravenous the hounds behind nor ahead are. For myself? I imagine myself the same in a Mad Max world. It will be more clear, and perception shattering, to most whose lives allow the ignoring of
gradual chokeholds, be them political or economic, but those of us who struggle daily, yearly,
decadely with both, will only say Welcome to the party, pals.
Increasing population, decreasing resources, increasingly expensive remaining resources on
a per unit basis, unresolved trashing of the environment and an political economy that forces
people to do more with less all the time (productivity improvement is mandatory, not optional,
to handle the exponential function) much pain will happen even if everyone is equal.
Each person
does what is right in their own eyes, but the net effect is impoverishment and destruction. Life
is unfair, indeed. A social contract is a mutual suicide pact, whether you renegotiate it or not.
This is Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, is we don't speak of Fight Club. Go to the gym,
toughen up, while you still can.
"Social contract:" nice Enlightment construct, out of University by City. Not a real thing,
just a very incomplete shorthand to attempt to fiddle the masses and give a name to meta-livability.
Always with the "contract" meme, as if there are no more durable and substantive notions of
how humans in small and large groups might organize and interact Or maybe the notion is the best
that can be achieved? Recalling that as my Contracts professor in law school emphasized over and
over, in "contracts" there are no rights in the absence of effective remedies. It being a Boston
law school, the notion was echoed in Torts, and in Commercial Paper and Sales and, tellingly,
in Constitutional Law and Federal Jurisdiction, and even in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.
No remedy, no right. What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social
contract," the "have-naught" halves?
When honest "remedies under law" become nugatory, there's always the recourse to direct action
of course with zero guarantee of redress
"What remedies are there in "the system," for the "other halves" of the "social contract,"
the "have-naught" halves?"
Ah yes the ultimate remedy is outright rebellion against the highest authorities .with as you
say, " zero guarantee of redress."
But, history teaches us that that path will be taken ..the streets. It doesn't (didn't) take a
genius to see what was coming back in the late 1960's on .regarding the beginnings of the revolt(s)
by big money against organized labor. Having been very involved in observing, studying and actually
active in certain groups back then, the US was acting out in other countries particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere, against any social progression, repressing, arresting (thru its surrogates)
torturing, killing any individuals or groups that opposed that infamous theory of "free market
capitalism". It had a very definite "creep" effect, northwards to the mainstream US because so
many of our major corporations were deeply involved with our covert intelligence operatives and
objectives (along with USAID and NED). I used to tell my friends about what was happening and
they would look at me as if I was a lunatic. The agency for change would be "organized labor",
but now, today that agency has been trashed enough where so many of the young have no clue as
to what it all means. The ultimate agenda along with "globalization" is the complete repression
of any opposition to the " spread of money markets" around the world". The US intends to lead;
whether the US citizenry does is another matter. Hence the streets.
JTMcFee, you have provided the most important aspect to this mirage of 'social contract'. The
"remedies" clearly available to lawless legislation rest outside the realm of a contract which
has never existed.
The Social Contract, ephemeral, reflects perfectly what contracts have become. Older rulings
frequently labeled clauses unconscionable - a tacit recognition that so few of the darn things
are actually agreed upon. Rather, a party with resources, options and security imposes the agreement
on a party in some form of crisis (nowadays the ever present crisis of paycheck to paycheck living
– or worse). Never mind informational asymmetries, necessity drives us into crappy rental agreements
and debt promises with eyes wide open. And suddenly we're all agents of the state.
Unconscionable clauses are now separately initialed in an "I dare you to sue me" shaming gambit.
Meanwhile the mythical Social Contract has been atomized into 7 1/2 billion personal contracts
with unstated, shifting remedies wholly tied to the depths of pockets.
Solidarity, of course. Hard when Identity politics lubricate a labor market that insists on
specialization, and talented children of privilege somehow manage to navigate the new entrepreneurism
while talented others look on in frustration. The resistance insists on being leaderless (fueled
in part IMHO by the uncomfortable fact that effective leaders are regularly killed or co-opted).
And the overriding message of resistance is negative: "Stop it!"
But that's where we are. Again, just my opinion: but the pivotal step away from the jackpot
is to convince or coerce our wealthiest not to cash in. Stop making and saving so much stinking
money, y'all.
and there's the Karma bec. even now we see a private banking system synthesizing an economy
to maintain asset values and profits and they have the nerve to blame it on social spending.
I think Giaus's term 'Denier' is perfect for all those vested practitioners of profit-capitalism
at any cost. They've already failed miserably. For the most part they're just too proud to admit
it and, naturally, they wanna hang on to "their" money. I don't think it will take a revolution
– in fact it would be better if no chaos ensued – just let these arrogant goofballs stew in their
own juice a while longer. They are killing themselves.
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we
have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have
seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the
grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome;
they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let
us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we
shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry
with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by
themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment
they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they
wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to
take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another,
to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to
go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten
the game. -Learned Hand
Here in oh-so-individualistic Chicago, I have been noting the fraying for some time: It isn't
just the massacres in the highly segregated black neighborhoods, some of which are now in terminal
decline as the inhabitants, justifiably, flee. The typical Chicagoan wanders the streets connected
to a phone, so as to avoid eye contact, all the while dressed in what look like castoffs. Meanwhile,
Midwesterners, who tend to be heavy, are advertisements for the obesity epidemic: Yet obesity
has a metaphorical meaning as the coat of lipids that a person wears to keep the world away.
My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash: Think
Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest environmentalists.
Meanwhile, I just got a message from my car-share service: They are cutting back on the number
of cars on offer. Too much vandalism.
Are these things caused by pressure from above? Yes, in part: The class war continues, and
the upper class has won. As commenter relstprof notes, any kind of concerted action is now nearly
impossible. Instead of the term "social contract," I might substitute "solidarity." Is there solidarity?
No, solidarity was destroyed as a policy of the Reagan administration, as well as by fantasies
that Americans are individualistic, and here we are, 40 years later, dealing with the rubble of
the Obama administration and the Trump administration.
DJG: My middle / upper-middle neighborhood is covered with a layer of upper-middle trash:
Think Starbucks cups and artisanal beer bottles. Some trash is carefully posed: Cups with straws
on windsills, awaiting the Paris Agreement Pixie, who will clean up after these oh-so-earnest
environmentalists.
Yes, the trash bit is hard to understand. What does it stand for? Does it mean, We can infinitely
disregard our surroundings by throwing away plastic, cardboard, metal and paper and nothing will
happen? Does it mean, There is more where that came from! Does it mean, I don't care a fig for
the earth? Does it mean, Human beings are stupid and, unlike pigs, mess up their immediate environment
and move on? Does it mean, Nothing–that we are just nihilists waiting to die? I am so fed up with
the garbage strewn on the roads and in the woods where I live; I used to pick it up and could
collect as much as 9 garbage bags of junk in 9 days during a 4 kilometer walk. I don't pick up
any more because I am 77 and cannot keep doing it.
However, I am certain that strewn garbage will surely be the last national flag waving in the
breeze as the anthem plays junk music and we all succumb to our terrible future.
Related to this, I thought one day of who probably NEVER gets any appreciation but strives
to make things nicer, anyone planning or planting the highway strips (government workers maybe
although it could be convicts also unfortunately, I'm not sure). Yes highways are ugly, yes they
will destroy the world, but some of the planting strips are sometimes genuinely nice. So they
add some niceness to the ugly and people still litter of course.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population views the
public space/environment as a shared, common good. Thus, streets, parks and public space might be soiled by litter that nobody cares to put away
in trash bins properly, while simultaneously the interior of houses/apartments, and attached gardens
if any, are kept meticulously clean.
Basically, the world people care about stops outside their dwellings, because they do not feel
it is "theirs" or that they participate in its possession in a genuine way. It belongs to the
"town administration", or to a "private corporation", or to the "government" - and if they feel
they have no say in the ownership, management, regulation and benefits thereof, why should they
care? Let the town administration/government/corporation do the clean-up - we already pay enough
taxes/fees/tolls, and "they" are always putting up more restrictions on how to use everything,
so
In conclusion: the phenomenon of litter/trash is another manifestation of a fraying social
contract.
The trash bit has been linked in other countries to how much the general population
views the public space/environment as a shared, common good.
There *is* no public space anymore. Every public good, every public space is now fair game
for commercial exploitation.
I live in NYC, and just yesterday as I attempted to refill my MetroCard, the machine told me
it was expired and I had to replace it. The replacement card doesn't look at all like a MetroCard
with the familiar yellow and black graphic saying "MetroCard". Instead? It's an ad. For a fucking
insurance company. And so now, every single time that I go somewhere on the subway, I have to
see an ad from Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The importance of the end of solidarity – that is, of the almost-murderous impulses by the upper
classes to destroy any kind of solidarity. From Yves's posting of Yanis Varoufakis's analysis
of the newest terms of the continuing destruction of Greece:
With regard to labour market reforms, the Eurogroup welcomes the adopted legislation safeguarding
previous reforms on collective bargaining and bringing collective dismissals in line with best
EU practices.
I see! "Safeguarding previous reforms on collective bargaining" refers, of course, to the 2012
removal of the right to collective bargaining and the end to trades union representation for each
and every Greek worker. Our government was elected in January 2015 with an express mandate to
restore these workers' and trades unions' rights. Prime Minister Tsipras has repeatedly pledged
to do so, even after our falling out and my resignation in July 2015. Now, yesterday, his government
consented to this piece of Eurogroup triumphalism that celebrates the 'safeguarding' of the 2012
'reforms'. In short, the SYRIZA government has capitulated on this issue too: Workers' and trades'
unions' rights will not be restored. And, as if that were not bad enough, "collective dismissals"
will be brought "in line with best EU practices". What this means is that the last remaining constraints
on corporations, i.e. a restriction on what percentage of workers can be fired each month, is
relaxed. Make no mistake: The Eurogroup is telling us that, now that employers are guaranteed
the absence of trades unions, and the right to fire more workers, growth enhancement will follow
suit! Let's not hold our breath!
The so-called "Elites"? Stand down? Right.
Every year I look up the cardinal topics discussed at the larger economic forums and conferences
(mainly Davos and G8), and some variation of "The consequences of rising inequality" is a recurring
one. Despite this, nothing ever comes out if them. I imagine they go something like this:
"-Oh hi Mark. Racism is bad.
-Definitely. So is inequality, right, Tim?
-Sure, wish we could do something about it. HEY GUYS, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT MY NEW SCHEME TO BUY
OUT NEW AND UPCOMING COMPANIES TO MAKE MORE MONEY?"
A wet dream come true, both for an AnCap and a communist conspiracy theorist. I'm by no means
either. However, I think capitalism has already failed and can't go on for much longer. Conditions
will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement or relief.
"Conditions will only deteriorate for anyone not in the "1%", with no sight of improvement
or relief." Frase's Quadrant Four. Hierarchy + Scarcity = Exterminism (From "Four Futures" )
Reminds me of that one quip I saw from a guy who, why he always had to have two pigs to eat
up his garbage, said that if he had only one pig, it will eat only when it wants to, but if there
were two pigs, each one would eat so the other pig won't get to it first. Our current economic system in a nutshell – pigs eating crap so deny it to others first.
"Greed is good".
Don't know that the two avenues Gaius mentioned are the only two roads our society can travel.
In support of this view, I recall a visit to a secondary city in Russia for a few weeks in the
early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR. Those were difficult times economically and psychologically
for ordinary citizens of that country. Alcoholism was rampant, emotional illness and suicide rates
among men of working age were high, mortality rates generally were rising sharply, and birth rates
were falling. Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful
and educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks. There was also adequate food, and critical
public infrastructure was maintained, keeping in mind this was shortly after the Chernobyl disaster.
Here in the US the New Deal and other legislation helped preserve social order in the 1930s.
Yves also raises an important point in her preface that can provide support for the center by
those who are able to do so under the current economic framework. That glue is to participate
in one's community; whether it is volunteering at a school, the local food bank, community-oriented
social clubs, or in a multitude of other ways; regardless of whether your community is a small
town or a large city.
" Yet the glue of common culture, sovereign currency, language, community, and thoughtful and
educated citizens held despite corrupt political leadership, the rise of an oligarchic class,
and the related emergence of organized criminal networks."
None of which applies to the Imperium, of course. There's glue, all right, but it's the kind
that is used for flooring in Roach Motels (TM), and those horrific rat and mouse traps that stick
the rodent to a large rectangle of plastic, where they die eventually of exhaustion and dehydration
and starvation The rat can gnaw off a leg that's glued down, but then it tips over and gets glued
down by the chest or face or butt
I have to note that several people I know are fastidious about picking up trash other people
"throw away." I do it, when I'm up to bending over. I used to be rude about it - one young attractive
woman dumped a McDonald's bag and her ashtray out the window of her car at one of our very long
Florida traffic lights. I got out of my car, used the mouth of the McDonald's bag to scoop up
most of the lipsticked butts, and threw them back into her car. Speaking of mouths, that woman
with the artfully painted lips sure had one on her
"... The spike in reported burnout is directly attributable to loss of control over work, increased performance measurement (quality, cost, patient experience), the increasing complexity of medical care, the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs), and profound inefficiencies in the practice environment, all of which have altered work flows and patient interactions. ..."
"... The rest of the items seem more plausible. However absent from the post is consideration of why physicians lost control over work, have been subject to performance measurement (often without good evidence that it improves performance, and particularly patients' outcomes), and have been forced to use often badly designed, poorly implemented EHRs ..."
"... In fact, we began the project that led to the establishment of Health Care Renewal because of our general perception that physician angst was worsening (in the first few years of the 21st century), and that no one was seriously addressing its causes. Our first crude qualitative research(8) suggested hypotheses that physicians' angst was due to perceived threats to their core values, and that these threats arose from the issues this blog discusses: concentration and abuse of power, leadership that is ill-informed , uncaring about or hostile to the values of health care professionals, incompetent, deceptive or dishonest, self-interested , conflicted , or outright corrupt , and governance that lacks accountability , and transparency . ..."
"... We have found hundreds of cases and anecdotes supporting this viewpoint. ..."
"... However, the biggest cause of physicians' loss of control over work may be the rising power of large health care organizations, in particular the large hospital systems that now increasingly employ physicians, turning them into corporate physicians . ..."
"... We have also frequently posted about what we have called generic management , the manager's coup d'etat , and mission-hostile management. Managerialism wraps these concepts up into a single package. The idea is that all organizations, including health care organizations, ought to be run people with generic management training and background, not necessarily by people with specific backgrounds or training in the organizations' areas of operation. Thus, for example, hospitals ought to be run by MBAs, not doctors, nurses, or public health experts. Furthermore, all organizations ought to be run according to the same basic principles of business management. These principles in turn ought to be based on current neoliberal dogma , with the prime directive that short-term revenue is the primary goal. ..."
Here is what the blog post said about the causes of burnout:
The spike in reported burnout is directly attributable to loss of control over work, increased
performance measurement (quality, cost, patient experience), the increasing complexity of medical
care, the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs), and profound inefficiencies in the
practice environment, all of which have altered work flows and patient interactions.
We dealt with the curious citation of inefficiencies as a cause of burnout above.
The rest of the items seem more plausible. However absent from the post is consideration of
why physicians lost control over work, have been subject to performance measurement (often
without good evidence that it improves performance, and particularly patients' outcomes), and have
been forced to use often badly designed, poorly implemented EHRs . Particularly absent was any
consideration of whether the nature or actions of large organizations, such as those led by the authors
of the blog post, could have had anything to do with physician burnout.
Contrast this discussion with how we on
Health Care Renewal have discussed burnout
in the past. In 2012, we
noted the first report on burnout by Shanefelt et al(2). At that time we observed that the already
voluminous literature on burnout often did not attend to the external forces and influences on physicians
that are likely to be producing burnout. Instead, burnout etc has been addressed as if it were lack
of resilience, or even some sort of psychiatric disease of physicians.
In fact, we began the project that led to the establishment of
Health Care Renewal because of our general
perception that physician angst was worsening (in the first few years of the 21st century), and that
no one was seriously addressing its causes. Our first crude qualitative research(8) suggested hypotheses
that physicians' angst was due to perceived threats to their core values, and that these threats
arose from the issues this blog discusses:
concentration
and abuse of power, leadership that is
ill-informed
,
uncaring about or
hostile to the values of health care professionals, incompetent,
deceptive or dishonest,
self-interested
,
conflicted
, or outright
corrupt
, and governance that lacks
accountability
, and transparency
.
We have found hundreds of cases and anecdotes supporting this viewpoint.
... ... ...
Finally, the Health Affairs post mention of "loss of control over work" deserves special attention.
It could represent a catch-all of more "system factors" as noted above. However, the biggest
cause of physicians' loss of control over work may be the rising power of large health care organizations,
in particular the large hospital systems that now increasingly employ physicians, turning them into
corporate
physicians .
In the US, home of the most commercialized health care system among developed countries, physicians
increasingly practice as employees of large organizations, usually hospitals and hospital systems,
sometimes for-profit corporations. The leaders of such systems meanwhile are now often
generic managers
, people trained as managers without specific training or experience in medicine or health care,
and " managerialists
" who apply generic management theory and dogma to medicine and health care just as it might
be applied to building widgets or selling soap.
We have also frequently posted about what we have called
generic management
, the
manager's
coup d'etat , and
mission-hostile management. Managerialism wraps these concepts up into a single package. The
idea is that all organizations, including health care organizations, ought to be run people with
generic management training and background, not necessarily by people with specific backgrounds or
training in the organizations' areas of operation. Thus, for example, hospitals ought to be run by
MBAs, not doctors, nurses, or public health experts. Furthermore, all organizations ought to be run
according to the same basic principles of business management. These principles in turn ought to
be based on current
neoliberal dogma
, with the prime directive that short-term revenue is the primary goal.
... ... ...
Summary
I am glad that physician burnout is getting less anechoic. However, in my humble opinion, the
last thing physicians at risk of or suffering burnout need is a top down diktat from CEOs of large
health care organizations. The CEOs who wrote the Health Affairs post not have any personal responsibility
for any physicians' burnout. However, the transformation of medical practice by the influence of
large health care organizations run by the authors' fellow CEOs, particularly huge hospital systems,
often resulting in physicians practicing as hired employees of such corporations likely is a major
cause of burnout. If the leaders of such large organizations really want to reduce burnout, they
should first listen to their own physicians. But this might lead them to realize that reducing burnout
might require them to divest themselves of considerable authority, power, and hence remuneration.
True health care reform in this sphere will require the breakup of concentrations of power, and the
transformation of leadership to make it well-informed, supportive of and willing to be accountable
for the health care mission, honest and unconflicted.
Physicians need to join up with other health care professionals and concerned member of the public
to push for such reform, which may seem radical in our current era. Such reform may be made more
difficult because it clearly would threaten the financial status of some people who have gotten very
rich from the status quo, and can use their wealth and power to resist reform.
"... Open offices are a real nightmare to work in IMO. ..."
"... So that management can spy on employees (which is ironic because studies show that people are more productive when they think people are not looking at them) ..."
"... What about the phone yakkers? I've been in the cubes, and some of the folks had quite a hearty style on the phone, being in sales or service type positions. Fine people, no animosity with them but loud continuous phone calling distracting. And it was their job, after all! ..."
On that BBC article, it's no surprise about open offices. Open offices
are a real nightmare to work in IMO.
Study after study shows that open offices are terrible.
1. High worker anxiety
2. Easier to spread illnesses (so higher sick leaves)
3. Distractions (hard to focus with noises)
4. They communicate the idea of lack of trust
5. Those who get closed offices are resented
6. Terrible for introverts
They are terrible for that reason.
Regarding open offices, the reason why management likes them is because:
1. Save real estate costs
2. So that management can spy on employees (which is ironic because
studies show that people are more productive when they think people are
not looking at them)
3. Management needless to say can retreat to privacy where needed
This is a trend that needs to be killed with fire IMO, but won't die
because management is frankly, more interested in domineering than productivity.
What about the phone yakkers? I've been in the cubes, and some of
the folks had quite a hearty style on the phone, being in sales or service
type positions. Fine people, no animosity with them but loud continuous
phone calling distracting. And it was their job, after all!
"... "The social power, i.e. the multiplied productive force", wrote Marx, appears to people "not as their own united power but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and end of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control." ..."
"... This leads to the sort of alienation which Marx described. This is summed up by respondents to a You Gov survey (pdf) cited by Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins, who said; "Economics is out of my hands so there is no point discussing it." ..."
"The social power, i.e. the multiplied productive force", wrote Marx,
appears to people "not as their own united power but as an alien force existing
outside them, of the origin and end of which they are ignorant, which they
thus cannot control."
I was reminded of this by a fine passage in The Econocracy in which the
authors show that "the economy" in the sense we now know it is a relatively
recent invention and that economists claim to be experts capable of understanding
this alien force:
As increasing areas of political and social life are colonized by economic
language and logic, the vast majority of citizens face the struggle of making
informed democratic choices in a language they have never been taught. (p19)
This leads to the sort of alienation which Marx described. This is
summed up by respondents to a You Gov survey (pdf) cited by Earle, Moran
and Ward-Perkins, who said; "Economics is out of my hands so there is no
point discussing it."
In one important sense such an attitude is absurd. Every time you decide
what to buy, or how much to save, or what job to do or how long to work,
economics is in your hands and you are making an economic decision.
This suggests to me two different conceptions of what economics is. In
one conception – that of Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins – economists claim
to be a priestly elite who understand "the economy". As Alasdair MacIntyre
said, such a claim functions as a demand for power and wealth:
Civil servants and managers alike [he might have added economists-CD]
justify themselves and their claims to authority, power and money by invoking
their own competence as scientific managers (After Virtue, p 86).
There is, though, a second conception of what economists should do. Rather
than exploit alienation for their own advantage, we should help people mitigate
it. This consists of three different tasks:
We should help people make better decisions for themselves. This
needn't consist of "nudging". We might do it by increasing their information.
Or we might do it by warning people to avoid the most common errors
of judgment. This is what I do in the day job. By this standard, Martin
Lewis is one of country's leading economists.
We shouldn't engage in futurology. That's the job of soothsayers,
necromancers and charlatans*. Instead we should help build resilience
to shocks. At the individual level, this consists in helping people
to make choices, such as in building well-balanced portfolios. And at
the social level it means helping to build institutions which allow
people to bear risk: this can be private insurance markets as well as
a welfare state.
We can undermine the justifications for inequalities of wealth and
power by pointing out that bosses and bankers' claims to them are often
plain wrong.
The difference between these two conceptions has been highlighted, inadvertently,
by Jeremy Warner. He says economists have had a "terrible year" because
their warnings of a Brexit shock were wrong. Maybe, maybe not. But this
allegation only applies to economists as priests. In our second conception,
economists have had a good year. For example, most actively managed UK equity
unit trusts have under-performed trackers, which supports our longstanding
advice in favor of passive management.
I should stress here that the distinction between economists as priests
and economists as dentists is separate from the heterodox-orthodox distinction.
Orthodox economics, when properly used, can both serve a radical function
and help inform everyday decisions.
You might object here that my distinction is an idiosyncratic one. Certainly,
economists as dentists earn less than economists as priests: I know as I've
done both. But there are reasons for that, which have little to do with
economists' social utility.
* OK, I do it sometimes – but only to keep my editor happy.
Socialism or Barbarism is a book about
globalism,
U.S. socialism and
capitalist
systems by HungarianMarxist philosopher and
Professor EmeritusIstván Mészáros. It was published in
2001 and is composed of two parts, the first part is an expanded version
of an essay of the same title originally published in 2000[1];
the second part consists of an interview conducted in 1998.[2]
Mészáros' is convinced that the future of socialism will be decided in the
U.S.A. and sees its main obstacle to be the globalization of
Keynesian liberal-capitalism. He reckons that the 21st century will coincide
with the third stage of capitalism which Mészáros characterizes as the
barbarous global competition for domination between a plurality of free-market
capitalist systems.[3]
His examination of the history of American capitalism predicts several eminent
ramifications to this struggle:
imperialist driven territorial expansion in the
Middle
East, the continuation and increase of
NATO aggression,[4]
increased
infrastructure weakening with major degradation in the quality of life for
the
lower class[5],
and eventually a proxy war with
China via U.S.A.'s
defense treaties with Japan.[5]
Much of the book is devoted to applying Marx's nineteenth century theories
to current events, such as the environment:
"
Marx was to some extent already aware of the "ecological problem," i.e.
the problems of ecology under the rule of capital and the dangers implicit
in it for human survival. In fact he was the first to conceptualize
it. He talked about
pollution,
and he insisted that the logic of capital - which must pursue profit,
in accordance with the dynamic of self-expansion and capital accumulation
- cannot have any consideration for human values and even for human
survival. [. . .] What you cannot find in Marx, of course, is an account
of the utmost gravity of the situation facing us. For us the threat
to human survival is a matter of immediacy.[6]
"
What Mészáros prescribes is a labor union socialist solution, specifically
the syndicalist form of socialism that
Samuel Gompers had abandoned when the
AFL provided the a workforce for the U.S. involvement in
World
War I. He advocates a marxist form of socialism:
"
What is of primary importance is that under all conceivable varietties
of the capital system surplus labor must be appropriated by a
separate body superimposed on, and structurally dominating, labor. Here,
as you can see, the fundamental category is surplus labor, and
not surplus value, as people often erroneously assume. [. . .]
In order to do away with the labor theory of value, you have to away
with the extraction and allocation of surplus labor by an external body
of any sort, be that political or economic. [. . .] In other words,
we can only speak about socialism when the people are in control of
their own activity and of the allocation of its fruits to their own
ends.[7]
Although the concept of bureaucracy has fallen into the common domain of
political sociology, theory of history, and public opinion, and has been sanctified
to the success it has today, it has nevertheless remained so imprecise that
it is still meaningful to question the identity of the phenomena it claims to
describe. At first one is astonished at the diversity or ambiguity of the responses.
But this is only a first impression. Bureaucracy appears as a phenomenon that
everyone talks about, feels and experiences, but which resists conceptualization.
Thus, rather than immediately attempting to provide a new definition or description,
we will measure the difficulties encountered by theory, assume that they have
a meaning, and from the very beginning critically examine what both motivates
and perpetuates these difficulties.
Outline of The Problem of Bureaucracy
Already in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx draws
attention to the specific nature of the social stratum in charge of the administration
of public affairs. To corporations dedicated to particular activities and attached
to particular interests, this stratum appears to represent a universal interest.
We will follow the development of the theory of the state in Marx's later works,
then in Lenin's State and Revolution, and its application to post-revolutionary
Russian society by Trotsky, together with an examination of the role that the
bureaucracy plays as a stratum inextricably bound to the structure of a class
society. From this viewpoint, the bureaucracy is neither a class nor a stratum.
It is a result of the division of society into classes and class struggles,
since its function is to secure the acceptance of the rules of an order (an
order undoubtedly connected with relations of production, but in need of being
formulated in universal terms and maintained by force). Bureaucracy is "normally"
at the service of a dominant class since the administration of public affairs
within the framework of a given regime always assumes the preservation of its
status. But since it is not simply a section of this class, when the balance
of social forces permits it, it can run counter to some of its interests, thus
acquiring a relative autonomy. The limits of power are always determined by
the configuration of social relations. In short, bureaucracy is a special body
in society because its function is such that it supports the established structure
and its disappearance would mean the end of bourgeois domination. (Marx said
that the Commune's first revolutionary measure was the suppression of the bureaucracy
through the lowering of functionaries' salaries to that of the average worker.)
Since it is not a key to social stratification, its role in the society is ascribed
by the real historical agents-classes in struggle.
The viewpoint changes as soon as one observes the growth of the stratum devoted
to administrative tasks in the various sectors of civil society. Thus, it is
tempting to look for criteria defining a type of social organization that recognizes
the similarities between the bureaucracies of the state, industry, party, unions,
etc. Comparison encourages research into the conditions for the emergence of
bureaucracies in order to define a type which would pull together various characteristics.
From this viewpoint, very close to Weber's thesis, the bureaucracy appears
again as one particular mode of organization corresponding to a more or less
extended sector within society. In other words, the social dynamic doesn't seem
to be affected by the development of bureaucracies. The mode of production,
class relations and political regimes can be studied without reference to a
phenomenon designating only a certain type of organization.
A qualitative change in the theory of bureaucracy takes place when it is
used to refer to a new class considered to be the dominant class in one or several
countries, or even seen as destined to displace the bourgeoisie all over the
world. This is suggested by the evolution of the Russian regime after the rise
of Stalin, with the disappearance of the old proprietors and the liquidation
of the organs of workers' power along with a considerable extension of the Communist
Party bureaucracy and the state, which took over the direct administration of
society. Similarly, social transformations connected with the development of
monopolistic concentration in large industrial societies (notably in the United
States) also generate reflection on the development of a bureaucratic class.
This necessitates a change in the theory since, because of its role in economic
and cultural life, the bureaucracy is now understood as a stratum able to displace
the traditional representatives of the bourgeoisie, thus monopolizing power.
Finally, we believe that a completely different conceptualization is required
if the phenomenon of bureaucratization is seen as a progressive erosion of the
old distinctions linked to private property. Bureaucratization here refers to
a process seeking to impose a homogeneous social form on all levels of work-at
the managerial as well as the executive level-such that the general stability
of employment, hierarchy of salaries and functions promotion rules, division
of responsibilities and structure of authority, result in the creation of a
single highly differentiated ladder of socio-economic statuses. This last thesis
refers to a social dynamic in bureaucracy, and lends it a goal of its own, the
realization of which engenders an upheaval of all of society's traditional structures.
If this is what the problem of bureaucracy boils down to, it is important to
examine each of these theses and explore their contradictions.
The Marxist Critique of State Bureaucracy
As in Hegel, the Marxist account of bureaucracy is conditioned by a theory
of history. In fact, when Marx criticizes Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his own
theory is still in gestation. Yet, the philosophical viewpoint still takes absolute
precedence, and it is remarkable that Marx could sketch out a description of
bureaucracy.
According to Marx, Hegel's error consists in having accepted the bureaucracy's
self-image. It claims to embody the general interest, and Hegel decides that
it does so. Marx argues that the general interest is actually reduced to the
bureaucracy's interest which requires the permanence of particular spheres,
i.e., the corporations and the estates, in order to appear as an imaginary universal.
The bureaucracy assigns its own goals to the state.
It maintains the social division in order to confirm and justify its own
status as a particular and privileged body in society. As real
activities take place in civil society, the bureaucracy is itself condemned
to formalism since it is completely occupied with preserving the frameworks
in which its activities are carried out and in legitimating them. This critique
reveals a series of empirical traits of bureaucracy whose relevance remains
concealed to those who cling to appearances
First it is the reign of incompetence Marx writes: "The highest point
entrusts the understanding of particulars to the lower echelons, whereas
these on the other hand credit the highest with an understanding in regard
to the universal and thus they deceive one another." But this incompetence
is rooted in the system The bureaucracy is a circle from which no
one can escape
Finally it lives for the secret the hierarchy guards the mysteries of
the state and acts as a closed corporation with respect to the outside world.
Furthermore, it engenders a cult of authority which is "the principle of
its knowledge and being," while "the deification of authority is its mentality."
Finally, it is exposed to a "crass materialism." The bureaucrat makes
the goal of the state his own private goal: "a pursuit of higher positions,
the building of a career." Marx also shows that this materialism is accompanied
by a similarly crass spiritualism: the bureaucracy wants to do all, and,
in the absence of a real function, it is condemned to an unrelenting activity
of selfjustification.2
Marx's analysis applies to nineteenth century Germany, i.e., to a backward
society. Its relevance, however, is not thereby diminished. When he elaborated
his theory of the state as an instrument at the service of the dominant class,
through the study of a nation where bourgeois development had erased particularism
and destroyed the corporations (the France of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte), Marx
kept the idea already developed against Hegel: that
the state bureaucracy is essentially a parasitic body. Thus,
in dealing with Bonaparte's regime, he writes: "This executive power, with its
enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its ingenious state machinery,
embracing wide strata, with a host of officials numbering half a million besides
an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes
the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores, sprang up in
the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system, which
it helped to hasten."3
In Marx's eyes. the Paris Commune's most revolutionary measure was to have
installed cheap government and to have suppressed the privileges and hierarchy
characteristic of state bureaucracy. In State and Revolution, Lenin only reiterates
what Marx had said on these points. The bureaucracy and the standing army considered
as two typical institutions of the state are seen as parasites engendered
by the internal contradiction which tears this society apart, but parasites
which block its vital pores." To be sure, he clarifies this notion of parasitism,
and points out that the recruitment of the bureaucracy from the middle and lower
strata detaches part of their members from the rest of the people and allies
them to the dominant class. Furthermore, the state bureaucracy is the "stake"
in a permanent battle between the large parties fighting over the administrative
domains. Particularly during a change of regime, these parties tend to appropriate
a substantial part of the booty for their clients.
What is the relevance of the Marxist analysis and what difficulties does
it encounter? In the first place, taken as an empirical phenomenon, it presents
the state bureaucracy in a light which continues to clarify it today as it did
a century ago. It is a critique that resembles common opinion but gives it its
reasons. It is still the case that bureaucracy is a circle out of which no one
can escape, that subordinates rely on their superiors to take the initiative
and to resolve difficulties, while the superiors expect their subordinates to
solve particular problems which elude the level of generality where they have
been conceived. This solidarity in incompetence goes quite far in tying the
employee, situated on the bottom of the ladder, to the system of which he is
a part. As a result, it is impossible for him to denounce this system without
simultaneously denouncing the vanity of his own function, from which he derives
his own material existence. Similarly, bureaucrats seek the highest positions
and work itself is subordinated to the gaining or maintenance of personal status,
such that the bureaucracy appears as an immense network of personal relations.
Actually, relations of dependence displace the objective relations outlined
by the division of labour, while internal struggles are superimposed on the
formal hierarchy and constantly tend to remodel it according to their exigencies.
Today, more than ever, the distribution of the most important positions between
the large parties appears as a division of booty whenever there is a change
in regime. These observations are worth stressing. Such traits are
well-known, but what is not explained is why they are not investigated: Marx,
and Lenin after him, gave an account. Even if they were wrong, that should not
be an excuse for not considering it. But in recognizing its relevance, it is
not sufficient to stop at a superficial account of bureaucracy which retains
only its official image. In this regard, Marxism
preserves a freshness of approach which fares well when contrasted with the
vision of certain contemporary sociologists. As already indicated,
Marx only sketched out a description which was subsequently smothered by a theory.
From this comes the treatment of state bureaucracy as a general category
without any attempt to explain its functioning. If the bureaucracy includes
all of its members, it still remains stratified (it is, in its essence, stratification)
and all of its members do not participate in it in the same way. What is the
location of the bureaucrat's power? Why does the bureaucracy always grow in
size? Does the very life of the bureaucratic organism include a principle of
proliferation? Clearly, state bureaucracies are usually staffed by middle-class
elements. By becoming bureaucrats, do they remain part of their class? Do they
change their mentality? Do they become sensitive to new interests?
Marxism does not answer these questions: its conception of society as completely
regulated by the class struggle does not encourage a study of bureaucracy for
its own sake.
Today the state is the largest capitalist and the largest investor. In addition
to what it administers directly through fiscal and economic policy, it tends
to direct investments on a national scale. Although the state is a battlefield
between large political parties which include representatives of private capital,
and its policies are often the result of countervailing social forces, tile
struggle between these groups is not the same as that which unfolds in civil
society. When joined to the requirements of public administration, the division
of interests creates a space for its own decision-making -a space which grows
and develops as the process whereby the state increasingly drains larger amounts
of capital and takes over an increasing number of tasks previously left to private
initiative. The defence of the established order
which guarantees the position of the rulers over those who are ruled, creates
and recreates everyday the foundations of this sovereignty. In
this perspective, the previous conception of state bureaucracy cannot be held
any longer. In particular, the concept of parasitism seems inadequate, or at
least inaccurate: why does the bureaucratic mode of organization as such multiply
parasites? The thesis that, on the whole, bureaucracy is a parasitic phenomenon
threads its way into Marxist theory.
Actually, the bureaucracy is necessary in the
context of capitalist society. In order to be effective, the
critique must be located at the same level as that of capitalistic organization.
If this is the case, does it not seem as if there is a dialectic of domination
in modern society whereby a social stratum meant to plan and improve conditions
of domination grows in proportion as industrial work invades all sectors of
social life, and that the life of the masses must be subordinated to it? When
all is said and done, does this process of bureaucratization, so visible in
the framework of the state, also obtain within what the young Marx called civil
society?
The Bureaucracy as a Type of Organisation
Let us provisionally skip these questions in order to deal with another perspective
which uncovers the multiplicity of bureaucracies in modern society and draws
attention to their common function and similarity. Here Max Weber is the starting
point. He lists certain traits he considers typical of modern bureaucracies:
(I) The duties of functionaries are officially fixed by laws, rules,
or administrative dispositions;
(2) The functions are hierarchical and integrated into a system of command
such that at all levels lower authorities are controlled by higher authorities;
(3) Administrative activity is spelled out in written documents;
(4) These functions require a professional apprenticeship;
(5) The work of functionaries demands complete devotion to the office;
(6) Access to the profession is at the same time access to a particular
technology, jurisprudence, commercial science, administrative science, etc.
From this analysis some conclusions can be drawn concerning the bureaucrat.
His office appears to him as the exercise of a profession to which a determinate
ensemble of knowledge is attached. Moreover, it is neither de facto nor
de jure the source of fees any more than it is the object of a contract
in terms of which the employee sells his labour power. The particular nature
of the office implies that in exchange for certain material guarantees (the
assurance of a suitable standard of living), the functionary contracts a specific
duty of fidelity to the office; he is in the service of an objective and impersonal
goal, not of a person. This goal is inherent in the enterprise to which he is
attached-state, commune, party or capitalist enterprise. Secondly, the bureaucrat
enjoys a certain prestige with those he dominates. This prestige is usually
guaranteed by a special status which confers on him certain rights sanctified
by rules. Thirdly, the functionary is normally appointed by a superior authority.
If it is true that there are certain bureaucracies whose members are elected,
the pure type requires the principle of appointment. Hierarchical discipline
is undermined when the functionary derives his power from the approval of electors,
i.e., from below and not from above . Fourthly, the stability of employment
is normally assured, even though a right of possession over the office is never
recognized. Fifthly, the bureaucrat normally receives a remuneration in the
form of a salary determined by the nature of employment and, possibly, by seniority.
Sixthly, parallel to the hierarchical order of the bureaucracy a hierarchy of
salaries is established: the majority of functionaries desire that promotions
be made as mechanically as possible. Max Weber also indicates the role of certain
factors in whose absence the bureaucracy would not completely develop. For example,
its structure is not definitively established until the natural economy has
been eliminated, i.e., until capitalism dominates society. Furthermore, the
emergence of democracy allows the substitution of an administration of anonymous
functionaries, detached from every particular social milieu and devoted to tasks
of universal significance, for the traditional administration by notables, provided
with local authority. Finally, Weber goes so far as to identify the movement
of bureaucratization with the process of capitalist rationalization. More than
the quantitative development of administrative tasks, what appears decisive
is their qualitative change, the necessity for a large enterprise, whatever
its nature, to envisage its activities from a strictly technical viewpoint and
to obtain a predictability or a calculability of results as exact as possible.
Bureaucracy in this sense is the social form most adequate to the capitalist
organization of production and to a society based on it. The elimination of
personal relations, the subordination of all activities to the application of
a norm linked to an objective goal, makes it into a model of economic rationality
established by industrial capitalism. Here, from a technical viewpoint, Max
Weber does not hesitate to judge modern bureaucracy as superior to all other
forms of organization.
It does not follow, however, that the development of bureaucracies must affect
the nature of a political and economic regime, no matter how necessary they
might seem once certain conditions are fulfilled. On the contrary, Weber claims
that the numerical importance of this form of organization does not in any way
determine its relation to power. The proof is that the state bureaucracy accommodates
itself to diverse regimes - as demonstrated by France, where the state bureaucracy
has remained remarkably stable. The proof lies also in the fact that during
war, the bureaucratic staff of a conquered country is used by the foreign power,
and continues to carry out its administrative tasks. In principle, bureaucracy
is indifferent to the interests and values of a political system, i.e., it is
an organ at the service of rulers located somewhere between the rulers and those
who are ruled.
These analyses do not reveal their full meaning until they are located within
a certain methodological perspective. Weber sees bureaucracy only as a type
of social organization. Actually. bureaucracies do not necessarily realize their
pure form: certain empirical conditions are needed in order that the various
characteristics be simultaneously present. But once defined, the type makes
the impure forms intelligible. Even when Weber states that the process of bureaucratization
and of capitalist rationalization are closely tied together, this could be misleading.
Historical explanations are something different from the determination of a
social type. Thus, the method partly determines its results. If bureaucracy
is seen as essentially neutral in relation to an economic and social system,
and it appears as having no historical goal, it is because Weber sees it from
a purely formal viewpoint. as a type of organization, and not as
a specific social stratum which, in establishing a certain set of relations
between its members, generates its own history. Consequently, Weber cannot deal
with "state socialism" without prejudice. According to him, bureaucracy can
adjust more easily to state socialism than it can to bourgeois democracy. Yet,
the history of state socialism is alien to that of bureaucracy. Strangely enough,
Weber's conclusions on this point are similar to those of some Marxists, although
inspired by different principles. In the eyes of these Marxists, state bureaucracy
is alien to the social dialectic obtaining at the level of relations of production.
For Weber a sequence of events can be reconstituted to make sense out of the
development of state socialism. Although favored by these events, however, bureaucratization
does not generate them. Yet, certain historical developments can be adduced
to refute this thesis even more easily than Marx's account which is concerned
with an empirical description. In the system resulting from the Russian revolution,
which Weber calls "state socialism" (an expression which need not be criticised
here), bureaucracy is not actually alien to power. The future state leaders
come out of it: Stalin made a career in the party bureaucracy. For a long time
he sought the highest position before obtaining it; he added to his functions
of party secretary those of the state bureaucracy before becoming the master
of power. Just because his rule had a charismatic character does not mean that
he was independent of the bureaucracy: the latter was the permanent foundation
of his power. While charisma can disappear or change its character with the
death of the dictator, the new power will reconstitute itself on the basis of
the bureaucracy. The political battles concerning the direction of the state
take place in the upper reaches of the bureaucracy.
Extended to the limit, the state bureaucracy comes to take over final political
and economic decisions, i.e., it becomes the focus of a new system. Had Weber
accepted this, he would not have formulated his definition of the bureaucratic
type as he did. Given the nature of his thought. he refused to regard bureaucracy
has having a dynamic goal of its own. Thus, he was unable to investigate its
constitutive traits, i.e., how it is rooted in social being and increases its
power. The enumeration of criteria can be useful, but as long as what holds
them together remains un-investigated, the phenomenon described remains indeterminate.
It matters little if one adds or subtracts a criterion: nothing allows one to
decide if, in the absence of certain selected traits, a social complex is or
is not bureaucratic. In order to decide, it is necessary to grasp the source
of bureaucratisation.
The above does not apply only to Weber, but to every attempt at a formal
definition. Thus, Alain Touraine writes: "I call bureaucracy a system
or organization where status and roles, laws and duties, conditions of access
to a position, controls and sanctions, are defined by their location in a hierarchical
line and thus by a certain delegation of authority. These two characteristics
assume a third; that the fundamental decisions are not taken within the bureaucratic
organization. the latter being only a system of transmission and of execution."
This definition, obviously inspired by Weber-although more concise-can readily
find many applications. It is easy to agree with Touraine when he claims that
a ministry is a bureaucratic organization. The same cannot be said when he adds
that an industrial enterprise is only partially so. If only the first characteristic
of bureaucracy is found here, how can one claim that the enterprise is a partial
bureaucracy? Does he not mean that a system of organization functioning according
to fixed rules and in an impersonal manner already entails bureaucratization?
If, on the other hand, it is admitted that the delegation of authority is decisive,
and that workers do not participate in decisions, does it make sense to speak
of a "bureaucratization of work"?
This ambiguity grows when Michel Crozier, in elaborating on Touraine's definition,
decides that "the Western workers in general, and French workers in particular,
have already largely entered the channels of bureaucracy. He tells us that "delegation
of authority is not necessary for participation in a bureaucratic system." It
is characterized primarily by the existence of hierarchy. Does this mean that
it is possible to participate in a system without possessing authority? In such
a case, however, the problem would only be displaced, because relations within
the bureaucratic system, between the authority and the executive sector dedicated
to the manufacturing tasks and subjected to external authority, remain to be
defined: the problem of knowing what role the relations of authority play in
the constitution of the bureaucracy would remain. If it is necessary to admit,
on the other hand, that a bureaucratic system on the whole does not necessarily
locate these relations and that it is essentially characterized by the existence
of a hierarchy. it is still necessary to determine the meaning of a bureaucratic
hierarchy. The notion is vague enough to be applicable to very different structures:
nothing is more hierarchical, for example, than the court of an hereditary monarchy.
What is, then, the basis of hierarchy in bureaucracy? What justifies a vertical
classification of functions and roles? The question is always reintroduced to
evaluate the import of this or that criterion functioning in the conception
of bureaucracy.
If Weber enumerated certain precise characteristics of bureaucracy without
wishing to privilege any one of them which could have designated another social
reality, it is because he had a strong feeling of its specificity. What is interesting
in his analysis is what he links to this feeling, i.e., the multiplicity of
bureaucratic forms of organization in modern society. Even if he fails, he at
least forces us to confront his examples and types, and to come up with a new
account.
Let us return to state bureaucracy, in order to ask what stratum of functionaries
Weber dealt with. His definition surely applies to ministerial personnel, or
at least to those functionaries whose duties carry certain responsibilities
and whose 'office' entails a loyalty to the goal of the enterprise. It is a
professional formation having specialized knowledge in relation to subordinates
assigned to purely executive tasks and whose labour-time is rigorously checked.
But, strictly speaking, does this definition apply to all the functionaries
who hold 'office'? Can one say, for instance, that according to Weber's framework,
secondary school teachers are part of the French bureaucracy? The professor's
personal position corresponds to Weber's characterization of the bureaucrat.
Only on one point is the definition inadequate: participation in a system of
authority. Access to a certain position or a level in the hierarchy does not
give him power over subordinates. Similarly, his relation to his superiors is
special. Obviously, he is subjected to administrative power.His lot depends
on decisions taken at the managerial level. Yet, he largely escapes this power;
the content of his activity is only very partially determined. His professional
activity has its own goal. It is not justified in terms of a transformation
of the object-which cannot be confused with the objective goal immanent in the
ministerial enterprise. Finally, and above all, the secondary teacher is not
in the process of making a career out of a job. He can hope for a change
from one grade of seniority to another by the most rapid route. But, unlike
bureaucrats, he does not seek a new function which will carry with it a higher
social status, expanded responsibilities, and increased power over subordinates.
The secondary school teacher remains largely an isolated individual. Undoubtedly,
his activity is social, since it necessarily brings him into contact with a
public, but it is not socialized. The division of labour can oblige him to specialize
in a branch of teaching and thus to relate his activity to those of other teachers,
without, however, generating a unity of production. rn short, if we try to apply
the concept of bureaucracy in the way Weber himself did (neglecting the value
judgements implied in his description), we are led to exclude certain levels
of functionaries from the framework of bureaucracy while also reforming his
system of interpretation.
Since Weber did not integrate French high school teachers into his type,
it follows that most of the characteristics, which he considers typical and
which apply to our example, acquire an import only in certain precise cases.
On the other hand, the absence of certain traits makes it difficult to speak
of bureaucracy. In the first place, we see a connection between a certain hierarchy
and a system of authority (of command-subordination, according to Weber), such
that progression in the hierarchy corresponds to amassing a higher status, new
responsibilities, and more power. In the second place, Weber's idea that bureaucracy
expects its members to identify with the undertaking appears at first glance
to have only an apologetic function, but proves to have some sociological content.
Such an identification assumes some professional activity linked to a role,
itself determined through relation to other roles within the enterprise.
The bureaucracy expects a subordinate to say "the Ministry" or "the Service"
instead of "I," and by this act of identification, this person exists as a bureaucrat.
But this act has no meaning for those whose work renders them strictly anonymous
or for those who are individualized to the point where work as such becomes
a sufficient justification of existence. In other words, what Weber calls the
identification with an office is something other than professional consciousness.
The latter finds its end in the act of production; the former, in the occupation
of an office. This professional consciousness calls for a behaviour conforming
to the interest of the bureaucracy, in response to the expectations of hierarchical
superiors-a behaviour proper for each member of the bureaucracy in a similar
situation. Thus, the activity of bureaucrats has two characteristics: it is
technical and bureaucratic. It can lose the first, not the second. For example,
the intense circulation of reports or of memos in offices serves only to express
the necessity of each manifesting his function to others, and the bureaucracy
functions only by virtue of a mutual recognition, constantly renewed according
to determined ceremony. The volume of paper internally consumed by an administration
allows one to measure its coefficient of bureaucratic integration. Stripped
of ~l malevolent intentions, this shows that the bureaucracy can only act by
constantly reflecting its activity in the mirror of its constitution. Finally,
because of the place it gives to the system of command-subordination, Weber's
analysis presupposes the existence of a geographical unity-a spatial framework
determined by bureaucratic activities. Of course, all the members of a bureaucracy
are not necessarily assembled in the same place, but their relations, the discipline
that unites them, the control of each by the others, tends to circumscribe a
specific world of offices. A second example mentioned by Weber, that of the
industrial enterprise, will allow us to test out his ideas and to specify ours.
In the first place, we are again led to ask whether bureaucracy is only an organ
of transmission and execution. Although an industrial enterprise is never autonomous
and its functioning must take into account the interests of a financing capital
on whom it depends, or the directives of a ministry if it is a question of a
nationalized economy, the fact remains that management has a considerable power
of decision. For the totality of decisions is not the action of an individual.
Whatever the personality of the general manager, the power of decision is necessarily
distributed among the different services and is concretized at the heart of
each service only through a more or less collective participation in the solution
of problems. To ask whether the direction is or is not distinct from the bureaucracy,
is to pose a false problem. In every organization in which hierarchy results
in delineating a function of direction -this transcends all those subordinatedd
to it. Yet, the fact remains that, if the power that it formally holds was actually
composite, i.e., if the decisions which fall to it by virtue of officially fixed
allotment had actually been partially elaborated at various lower levels, it
is still part of the framework which it dominates.
On the other hand, as with state bureaucracy, the most important thing concerning
the bureaucracy of an enterprise is its boundaries. Who are the bureaucrats?
Who can be assimilated into the bureaucracy? Finally, who definitely falls
outside this category? Clearly, for Weber, the definition of the capitalist
enterprise as a bureaucratic organization does not specify which sector, within
the enterprise, could be designated as bureaucratic (although he goes so far
as to claim that the capitalist enterprise offers an unequalled model of bureaucratic
organization). To maintain, with Crozier, that workers are part of a bureaucracy
as soon as they are placed with engineers and directors under a single hierarchical
ladder, would have seemed extravagant to Weber, not because some of his criteria
would have been contradicted, but because the position of a social group cannot
be established only by considering its juridical status. The fact that some
workers find their work assimilated to that of functionaries, says nothing about
the specific nature of their work, or of their relations with other social strata
within a given enterprise. The question of establishing the real situation of
workers is not automatically answered if the enterprise is nationalized, the
stability of work is guaranteed, or the workers are integrated with the cadres
in the same hierarchical system-although these conditions could have important
effects. In the industrial enterprise, the mass of workers is confined to purely
operational tasks. The ordering of workshops, the number and distribution of
positions, the rhythm of production, the duration and the intensity of work-all
is prescribed by an administration functioning at a distance from the place
of production and constitutes an alien and closed world with respect to it.
On the other hand, is it possible to consider all those who work in offices
as the bureaucracy? First of all, technical services should not be confused
with services of administration and exploitation. Although both share certain
common norms of organization, it remains that the social relations are different
by virtue of the different work performed. In short, the relations of authority
and the connections with the enterprise are not similar. In technical services
the engineers and the technicians, the draftsmen, have a relative autonomy by
virtue of their professional knowledge. Control over labour can only be effective
if the boss has a technical competence at least equal to that of his subordinates,
i.e., his control must be considered a technically superior function. Social
control could be practically non-existent where the work requirements were of
fixed duration, sufficing to establish a normal rhythm of output. Moreover,
the technicians' autonomy is also measured by their ability to move from one
enterprise to another by virtue of their knowledge. Generally speaking, the
position of technicians depends more on the work performed than on his place
in the social organization of the enterprise.
The functioning of administrative services is something else. Here, at the
bottom of the ladder, we find unskilled employees whose professional competence
is rudimentary or non-existent. Between them and the general management of the
enterprise, the hierarchy of positions is a power hierarchy. The relations of
dependence become determining and having a function defines one against a higher
level, whether it is that of the departmental supervisor, a boss, or a director.
Here the double nature of employment reappears. It answers to a professional
activity and expresses an established social order in which the enterprise finds
its concrete existence. In fact, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, relations
are such that they always serve to reiterate the authoritarian structure of
administration. This does not mean, however, that those located at the bottom
of the ladder participate in the bureaucracy in the same way as those at the
middle or upper levels. In certain respects, the employees are like workers,
deprived of any authority. They are often paid less than certain hourly labourers.
Thus, their work cannot be described as an 'office' and we cannot assume that
they could identify with the goals of the enterprise. Nevertheless, they are
not alien to the bureaucracy: they are the dependents . They often enter
into the enterprise only when provided with references certifying their "good
character." They cannot advance unless they prove their aptitude to obey commands:
they live in the hope of moving to a higher status. Thus, the situation of the
employee is ambiguous. He is not integrated into the bureaucratic system. lie
only endures it. Yet, everything tends to make him adhere to it, and he does
so effectively when he accepts his superiors' ideal: promotion. Moreover, he
is even less able to detach himself from the bureaucratic milieu since his work
is determined by the social organization of the enterprise, and in extracting
the resources that assure his subsistence, he perceives it as being as necessary
as the organization itself.
Bureaucracy thus overflows the active core of middle and upper level functionaries
tied to administrative and exploitative tasks: it is a hierarchy which plunges
its roots even into the productive sector, where supervisors and foremen control
the work of labourers. These functionaries hold real authority. Not only do
they hold positions with official duties defined by a certain division of labour
and submit to a certain discipline, but their function makes them participate
in the power of management and leads them to identify with the enterprise as
such. To say that they identify with it does not mean that they necessarily
have a correct idea of the enterprise's interests nor even that they are led
to place this above their own interests. In their eyes, the horizons of the
enterprise are absolutely confused with those of their employment. They see
the social order immanent in the enterprise as both natural and sacred, their
own function as something other than a mere source of remuneration or of professional
activity, but as the backbone of a system which needs their co-operation to
subsist and expand.
To possess a status apparently differentiating his position from that of
mere labourers, to enjoy a prestige generating others' respect, to obtain a
remuneration and material advantages assuring a privileged condition of existence,
to belong to a milieu from which authority flows, where subordination is the
other side of a command, with opportunities for promotion-all these are the
traits of the bureaucrat.
Finally, the bureaucracy of the enterprise exemplifies the mystification
implicit in a purely formal description. The latter assumes that bureaucratic
organization is identical with the rational organization of the enterprise,
insofar as it is technically required by production itself. For, as soon as
we seek to locate the strictly bureaucratic sector and to emphasize a specific
type of conduct, we discover a dialectic of socialization different from the
dialectic of the division of labor. This does not mean that we can determine
what an adequate social organization of the enterprise would be like at a given
stage of the division of labor, since this depends on historical conditions
resulting from technical evolution and class struggle, but rather, that bureaucratic
organization has its own ends which cannot be deduced from the necessities imposed
by the organization of production. Once it is recognized that, in addition to
the manufacturing and the technical sectors, every large enterprise must deal
with tasks pertaining to the administration of personnel, to the sale of products
and to the purchase of primary materials and machines, to the determination
of production costs, etc., it does not follow naturally that the specialized
services function as they do in the real framework of the modern capitalist
factory. The requirements of planning, coordination, and information do not
necessarily create a determined social order. This order is instituted by virtue
of a social activity. From this viewpoint, it is essential to grasp how the
bureaucracy creates its order. The more activities are fragmented, services
diversified, specialized and partitioned, the more numerous the structural levels
and the delegations of authority at each level, the more co-ordination and control
sectors multiply because of this dispersion. Thus, the bureaucracy prospers.
The status of a bureaucrat is measured by the number of secretaries and
employees who depend on him, by the number of telephones and machines at his
service, more generally, by the authority allocated to his domain of organization.
As soon as conditions allow, he seeks to expand his sphere of influence and
to preserve it. This tendency engenders the formation of cliques and hidden
wars between departments which is stimulated by their separation. Each department
is quick to blame others for errors or delays in carrying out a program. But
at the same time, since this tendency responds to a common aspiration, it works
itself out. The more the bureaucrats multiply, the more complicated the system
of personal dependence becomes, the more the bureaucracy as a whole becomes
a rich and differentiated milieu. As this process intensifies, bureaucrats derive
a growing sense of their own objectivity. The bureaucracy loves bureaucrats
as much as bureaucrats love the bureaucracy.
The consequences of this situation can appear paradoxical. Weber is right
in claiming that the capitalist enterprise offers bureaucracy a privileged framework
for development, that the latter finds a motive for its organization in the
process of economic rationalization: the need for rigorous calculability and
of a predictability favoring the emergence of a special stratum of administrators
and imposing on them a certain kind of structure. Yet, this stratum elaborates
its conduct, actively intervenes in the structuring, and, located in historically
created conditions, develops while following its own interests. Thus one can
see what is behind the mask of law and impersonality, the proliferation of unproductive
functions, the play of personal relations, and the folly of authority.
Our third example will provide a kind of counter proof, since it presents
a bureaucracy which is apparently extremely different from what we have just
seen: the mass party. It is not surprising that Weber also refers to this example.
Weber did not fail to observe that there is a close connection between the party
and state bureaucracy since he had witnessed the emergence of a state bureaucracy
in Russia under the Communist Party. Yet, one wonders why this did not lead
him to revise his definition of bureaucratic organization. Actually it is not
sufficient to claim that the mass party is led by a body of "professionals"
in order to associate them with state functionaries or with managers. Most of
Weber's criteria do not apply to them. In the first place, if one considers
the organization of the party, it becomes obvious that the bureaucracy is not
only an organ for executing and transmitting orders: the management becomes
part of the Politbureau or a general secretary emerges from the bureaucracy.
It matters little that an individual or a handful of individuals holds all real
power. They have obtained it only by rising through the hierarchy of the party
and keep it only because they are supported by a stratum of bureaucrats who
direct party activities according to their directives, justify their decisions
and apply them, while ousting all opposition. If this stratum falls apart, the
power of the leaders dissipates. In the second place, the functions of bureaucrats
are well fixed by rules, but they do not form a whole as in the structure of
a state administration or an enterprise. There are no strict rules regulating
the passage from one position to another; there is no hierarchy of salaries.
The bureaucrats do not enjoy a special, officially defined status distinguishing
them from the rank and file. Access to the highest positions does not depend
on technical knowledge linked to a profession, and if the principle of nominating
leaders by the main organs is recognized, it coexists with a principle of election,
since these organs themselves are assemblies composed of delegates elected by
the rank and file. Finally, it is not even necessary to be remunerated by the
party in order to have an important central function in the hierarchy. This
particular characteristic of the party bureaucracy follows from the position
that it occupies in society as a whole. Its function is not defined by the division
of labor. Rather, it is an institution based on voluntary participation which
attempts to influence power-either to participate in it, or to capture it by
rallying a mass of individuals around a program of demands. That a group of
professionals is formed in the party in the process of coordinating its activities
changes nothing in the formal definition and ascribes to this sector characteristics
apparently very different from those found in industrial enterprises.
If so, how can one speak of the mass party as a bureaucratic institution?
This question leads us closer to what we have sought to formulate since the
beginning of our analysis: what is the social nature of the bureaucracy? If
we characterize mass parties as bureaucratic institutions, it is not because
we can define the parties by criteria equally applicable to industrial enterprises.
Things are more complicated. In the party, we distinguish a specific sector
where functions are hierarchical by virtue of participation in power; where
decisions are taken in the absence of any control from below, where respon-sibilities
are distributed in an authoritarian way, where organizational discipline detracts
from the free examination of decisions, where a conti-nuity of roles, actions
and persons is institutionalized, thus making the ruling minority practically
permanent. In other words, in the party bureau-cracy appears as the antithesis
of democracy. But this does not make much sense until we understand how the
bureaucratic organization is constituted. Its genesis is all the more comprehensible
when it does not immediately depend on economic conditions. As
previously mentioned, the party is based on voluntary participation motivated
by an ideological agreement on a program. This entails no particular
form of Organization. The technical organizational requirement comes about only
when the party attracts large masses. But the coordination of the activities
of small, local sections, of assuring the best propaganda, of properly managing
the assets gathered among the militants, does not necessitate any specific social
milieu. It is as a result of choice that this milieu turns out to be bureaucratic.
Choice here need not mean that individuals deliberately decide to create a bureaucratic
organization. It only means that a certain behavior becomes predominant, with
certain requirements coming to take absolute precedence, others fading. Since
the party adherence is a function of voluntary participation based on the shared
acceptance of some ideas, it would seem to follow that the maintenance of this
participation and agreement is essential to the life of the organization. Since
the party claims to articulate a collective will, and presents itself as a locus
of cooperation, it would seem to lose its raison d'tre if it used coercion
with its members. Furthermore, formally it could not do so since the members
are not dependent on the party for their livelihood. Yet, the party must operate
within society as a whole as a coherent force, maintaining continuity of action,
permanently binding those who participate in it, and finding a structure
which guarantees its unity, independently of the uncertain participation of
its militants.
Now, if the existence of the mass party generates this alternative, bureaucracy
comes about by giving the latter considerations absolute primacy over the former
and it does so in a way that makes its existence increasingly more necessary
and its choices irreversible. From the very beginning, bureaucrats come into
being as those whose work safeguards the party's existence and unity, while
their activity in the party makes them indispensable. But this activity is peculiar.
This becomes clear as soon as one compares it with the activity of ordinary
militants: it is based on the very institution. It is what is usually called
an organization activity. But the term is imprecise because it hides essential
features: that it is always a question of directing the militants' work in a
way that reinforces the party's existence and power. The organization's fundamental
aspect is the multiplication of party organs: the more cells and sections there
are, the more the life of the institution is differentiated, the more is its
power materialized, the more the leaders appointed to be in charge of coordinating
each sector. Thus, the efficiency of bureaucratic work is measured by the leaders'
ability to preserve and extend the field of activity that they organize. This
measurement, however, can be formulated in objective communicable terms if one
considers only the formal aspect of the bureaucrat's activity. This is what
gives rise to the fetishism of the agenda at party meetings, festivals or commemorations.
This is why what is called activism-a feverish and vain agitation~has become
routine. The number and diversity of the ceremonies from which the institution
derives its daily justification goes hand in hand with the proliferation of
bureaucrats. If they are entirely at the party's service, they become professionals,
although they need not be that in order to act as such. It is only necessary
that their activity be precisely specified, that their aim be mainly party preservation
and that it be carried out according to the leaders' instructions, which makes
it seem as a form of employment. On the whole, bureaucracy is this milieu for
which the party structure is both necessary, sacred, and irremovable. But this
milieu generates its own structure: in identifying with the goals justifying
the party's existence, it makes the party-to paraphrase Marx-its private property:
it sees itself as necessary, sacred and irremovable. The defense of the party
is the bureaucracy's self-defense. But this implies a particular interpretation
of the party's goals which results in the distortion of its original vocation.
In fact, the party cannot intervene directly in the social struggle as it should
according to its principles, nor can it be the locus of ideological discussion
without running the risk of self-transformation or even self-destruction. Thus,
the bureaucratic group feels threatened as soon as a principle of change is
introduced in the party: it is naturally conservative. This conservatism inspires
all inter-bureaucratic relations: the cult of authority, the will to control
all activities, the value of prestige around the functions of responsibility,
etc. All these are too well known traits to require further elaboration, In
the last analysis, the bureaucracy's behavior has its logic. The party, in fact,
is not a purely artificial organism, born out of ideological motivations. It
exists as a mass organization within society as a whole. Not only does it seek
power, but presently it penetrates, in various degrees, all sectors of society.
This penetration assures it the allegiance of an important part of its militants
who are employed in services where the party controls recruitment, either directly,
or through a friendly union. Although it can appear as an incomplete bureaucracy
if seen as an isolated institution, the party reveals certain material determinations
of bureaucratic stability, when considered within society as a whole.
Of course, the examples which have been chosen and purposely borrowed from
Weber present common traits. Most of all, however, they allow us to deal with
the phenomenon in a certain way. In our eyes, the bureaucracy is a group which
makes a certain mode of organization prevail, develops under certain conditions,
expands along with certain states of the economy and technology only by virtue
of a social activity. To attempt to grasp bureaucracy without focusing on a
type of specific behavior is condemned to failure from the very beginning. Bureaucracy
exists only through bureaucrats and their common aim to form a milieu apart
from those whom they dominate, to participate in socialized power, and to interdefine
each other in a hierarchy which guarantees them either material status or prestige.
To stress the phenomena of social behavior is not to reduce bureaucracy to
a sum of similar actions. The activity of the isolated individual is unintelligible:
it becomes meaningful only when placed in the context of a group. In fact, the
bureaucracy comes about in an immediate socialization of activities and behavior.
Here the group is not a category of activity or of socio-economic status; it
is a concrete milieu where each draws his own identity. It is here that we can
locate the link between bureaucracy and mass institutions. It is in ministries,
unions, parties and industrial enterprises that the bureaucracy finds its adequate
form because of the structural unity, the interconnection of the tasks, the
number of jobs, the proximity of men within each sector, the perspective offered
by a growing institutional development, the volume of capital engaged, etc.
All of this defines a field of social power. It follows that the bureaucrats'
identification with their enterprises is a natural mediation in consciousness
whereby a group acquires its own identity. But this identification must not
conceal the fact that in reality the bureaucracy does not have its destiny strictly
defined by the technical structure of the mass institution. It also makes its
own destiny. As the agent of a particular stratification, it multiplies positions
and services, partitions various activities, generates artificial controls and
coordinations, and reduces an ever growing mass of workers into merely mechanical
functions in order to exercise its authority at every level.
Bureaucracy or Class
At this point, we can examine the thesis that the bureaucracy is a class.
Undoubtedly, there is a ruling class in the USSR. Those who persist in denying
it do so by reiterating quotations from Marx according to which the abolition
of private property entails the disappearance of the ruling class, without seeing
that at a deeper level a class opposition has been reintroduced in the relations
of production. Here, the ownership of the means of production is no longer decisive.
What determines the proletariat as an exploited
class is its exclusion from the administration of production and its reduction
to merely mechanical functions.
What determines the position of a ruling class facing the proletariat is
the fact that all decisions concerning economic life (i.e., concerning the volume
and distribution of investments, wages, intensity and duration of labor, etc),
are made by a particular social stratum. What is relevant here is not to discuss
the class nature of the USSR, but to emphasize that bureaucracy cannot be seen
as a class without analyzing its dynamics within the context of traditional
capitalist society and the mass institutions where bureaucracies develop. To
merely define it there as a parasitical organ, or as a simple economic category,
is to overlook ho'," through its specific behavior, it creates a power base
, and how it uses circumstances to consolidate and grow. On the other hand,
to recognize its historicity and to establish the horizons of its activity is
to locate a world which it has made in its image and where it is the ruling
class. In the last analysis, the genesis of the bureaucracy in Russia is intelligible
only if it is related to the social type which, in different forms, obtains
in all modern countries.
But this observation concerning the conditions leading to the formation of
a ruling class after the Russian revolution applies only to a special case where
the bureaucracy has built its power through a specifically social activity.
If it is claimed that today this class is what it is only because of its function
in production, planning and the nationalization which guarantees its material
basis, then it becomes difficult to claim that it results from a political
bureaucracy whose earlier versions were not concerned with the extraction
of surplus value within the context of modern industry, but with the concentration
of authority in the hands of a ruling minority, the exclusion of the masses
from decision-making and from the information pertinent to these decisions,
the hierarchization of functions and the differentiation of wages. the rigorous
division of competence's; in short, the scientific organization of inequality
such that it becomes the principle of a new form of class oppression. Certainly,
the party bureaucracy has not artificially created a whole new world. Yet, it
would be inadequate to simply say that it has been served by circumstance. The
new type of class domination was prepared by the destruction of the political
and economic powers of the old owners, the state's taking over large sectors
of production, the existence of an already concentrated industry with a modern
administration, and the example of large industrial capitalist countries with
a growing fusion of capital and the state. But this domination forced its way
through only with a party which, by means of ideology, terror, and privilege,
melted elements torn from all the classes of the old Russian society into the
same mould.
It is inadequate, however, to point out the existence of a privileged class
in the USSR, or even to examine its own genesis, in order to comprehend what
bureaucracy actually is within the whole society that it dominates. An analysis
limited to exploitation within relations of production altogether misses the
nature of the bureaucratic class. Such an analysis would locate the privileged
strata. But the factory managers and the planners are not the only members of
the ruling class and all those who are privileged are not necessarily part of
these groups. As in the industrial enterprise, a mere foreman, as opposed to
an engineer, can be considered a bureaucrat because he has authority and he
identifies with management against workers, Similarly,
on a social level, some union or political functionaries can be considered members
of the bureaucracy while some technicians, although earning higher salaries,
are not members of the ruling class and do not share their values or lifestyle.
The social nature of the bureaucracy cannot be deduced from its
economic function. In order to be understood, it must be observed. In the absence
of an observation, the question dealt with here prevents a schematic conception
of history. Undoubtedly, in the USSR, as in Western countries,
there is more than one class facing the industrial
and agricultural proletariat. The bureaucracy is not composed
either by the ensemble of the working class nor simply by some thousands or
tens of thousands of leaders supported by the political police: one can only
define it by pointing to the solidarity which unites its members and crystalizes
them in the exercise of domination.
It is possible, however, to indicate certain traits of this class both by
examining its constitution as well as by extrapolating from the testimonies
of observers, or of political leaders aware of the difficulties that the regime
must confront. Here two remarks are in order. First of all, the bureaucracy
involves a mode of social participation different from that of the bourgeoisie.
Bureaucrats do not derive private power from a professional activity which allows
them to develop as a ruling class. They do not have a common interest which
could generate a power to manage society in their name. They are immediately
members of their class, and their personal attributes are a function of this
connection: they are what they are only by virtue of their dependence from the
state power which grounds and maintains the social hierarchy, i.e., political
power and economic power are merged within the bureaucratic class. To participate
in the appropriation of surplus value for them is the same thing as participating
in the system of domination. What this means is that the bureaucracy is the
privileged terrain of totalitarianism, i.e., of a regime where all social activities
are measured by the same criterion of validity dictated by state power. Here
pluralism of systems of behavior and of values immediately constitutes a menace
not only to the ruling minority but to the ruling class itself whose integration
depends entirely on its submission to the established power. Secondly, in spite
of the reinforced tendency to make a single authority prevail at all levels,
as already indicated, the bureaucracy cannot avoid conflicts which not only
contrapose groups against each other, but also contrapose bureaucracies against
each other. If the above is correct, bureaucracies exist full-fledged within
mass institutions: in parties, unions, in various branches of production and
various cultural sectors.In each of these contexts they attempt to grow and
monopolize an increasing part of social capital in order to expand in as broad
a field as possible. There is no pre-established harmony within the bureaucracy,
and the unity of the class does not 'naturally' prevail: it involves a constant
activity of unification. The rivalry of bureaucratic apparatuses reinforced
by the struggle of inter-bureaucratic cliques is only managed by the intervention
of a political principle at all the levels of social life. But the party which
applies this principle is itself the broadest and most complete bureaucracy.
If class unity is inconceivable without it since its mediation "politicizes"
all of society so that the state tends to merge with civil society, its presence
and its natural tendency to control and subordinate everything to its own power
generates the sharpest tension within the ruling class. Thus, the bureaucratic
system is unceasingly torn by internal conflicts, certainly different but not
any less dreadful than those typical of bourgeois regimes.
To maintain that the bureaucracy is the ruling class in the USSR does not
settle the question of its status in large industrialized Western nations. From
one viewpoint, the formation of a bureaucratic class seems to be an extension
of bureaucratic organizations: they blossom within mass institutions
because technological developments make human activities increasingly
more interdependent and impose a socialization
of administrative tasks parallel to that of production. From another viewpoint,
this class requires such a political integration and subordination to state
power that it cannot operate without instituting a system of total domination.
Yet, these two viewpoints are not incompatible; they allow us to see bureaucracies
as a type of social behavior whose success or failure is not preordained but
is a function of a complex of historical conditions. Bureaucratic organizations
have an affinity for regimes where the definitive elimination of private property
assures the broadest possible development and their integration within a new
class structure.
Similarly, rooted in bourgeois society and fettered in their development
by their natural conservatism, as well as by the profits they derive from the
established mode of production, they prove incapable of doing more than invading
bourgeois society, i.e., incapable of transforming the system of power. In other
words, nothing warrants the claim that, in the absence of a radical social
upheaval which would sweep away old regimes (as happened in Russia by workers'
and peasants' revolution, and in the peoples' democracies by war), bureaucratic
organizations would naturally overcome their division and become integrated
within a new state apparatus as parts of a ruling class. Furthermore, bureaucracies
exhibit an indeterminacy which is the source of the difficulties encountered
by theory. The bureaucracy is not a class as long as it is not the ruling class,
and when it becomes so, it remains essentially dependent on a political activity
of unification.
To maintain that bureaucrats are already a class within all of society, would
mean that they are distinguishable because of their particular interests, values,
or lifestyle. Actually, they are different only in terms of their aggregation
and by how they gain their status as members of a collectivity. Surely, this
trait is important. The interrelations of bureaucrats within each institution
correspond to a specific social model and outline a new global structure. But
so long as this structure is not realized, the bureaucracy does not constitute
a separate world: bourgeois society assimilates it. It is inadequate to point
out that high state functionaries are members of administrative councils, or
that important groups derive part of their income from the stocks that they
own, since this phenomenon of embourgeoisification is comparable to a similar
phenomenon of aristocratization of the bourgeoisie, who, during certain epochs,
rushed to buy land and nobility titles. What is important is that the difference
in the appropriation of wealth is not linked to production relations, while
in the context of society as a whole the various bureaucracies split along traditional
lines thus remaining heterogeneous and unaware of their identity-at least in
the absence of a social crisis. Moreover, polycentrism, which is part of the
essence of bureaucracies meant to crystalize into particular institutions prevents
the development of class unity.
From another viewpoint, the bureaucracy retains a principle of indeterminacy
even when this unity is attained: it does not exist apart from a social form
of power. It is not an economic category but comes about by participating in
a system of domination. Thus, there is a great temptation to deny that the bureaucracy
is a class where it is seen to rule or, in specific social contexts, where it
multiplies within bourgeois societies. If, on the contrary, it is claimed that
it is a ruling class in the USSR, there is a tendency to neglect or underemphasize
its basic constitution, the change in the function of the political in
bureaucratic society, the heterogeneity of organizations, the intra-bureaucratic
battles, and the differences of integration of the various strata within the
class. Most of all, this class could be seen as a general model in the process
of realization throughout, as if bourgeois society must naturally turn
into a bureaucratic society because of capital concentration. Economic rationalization
and bureaucratization are then associated, and the latter is seen as the adequate
expression of the former, forgetting that rationalization obtains within a regime
based on exploitation and that bureaucratization is part of a system of domination.
By stressing the phenomenon of bureaucratic parasitism, it is possible to ignore
that the bureaucracy simultaneously penetrates social life and poses itself
as an end: it responds to technical needs but also subordinates them to power
imperatives.
The study of bureaucracy, and the discussion that it calls forth, become
fruitful only if these simplifications are rejected. Then the true questions
can be asked, and advances toward their solution can be made on the condition
that the following principles are observed: (I) Attention must be paid to the
various bureaucracies instead of immediately swallowing up this image in a concept
which can then be handled with such an ease that it deprives bureaucracy of
all content; (2) Bureaucracy must be seen as a social formation, as a system
of meaningful behavior, and not merely as a system of formal organization. This
implies a historical definition of the phenomenon as a human enterprise with
its own goals; (3) Special emphasis must be placed on the relations of the bureaucracy
with other social strata and particularly among various bureaucratic groups
within a given institution; (4) From the social nature of the bureaucracy (its
sociality) no deduction should be made concerning a future based on a whole
series of historical conditions which are extensions of established structures
and events; (5) The question concerning the class nature of bureaucracy must
be posed. The answer must avoid a comparison between the bourgeoisie and the
bureaucracy. There must be a description of the specific participation of bureaucracy
in society as a whole, along with the connection of its political, economic,
and cultural determinations instead of relying on an a priori definition (having
alleged universal significance whereas it is actually an abstraction from the
nineteenth-century bourgeoisie) of the essential and the accidental features
of a class; (6) In studying a particular bureaucracy, the self-image of top
bureaucrats must not be uncritically accepted. The whole bureaucratic milieu
must be considered in order to define the bureaucratic mentality and behavior,
by relying on the workers who are most directly affected by the bureaucrats
and who, as a result, cannot be easily misled: those people whom the bureaucrats
dominate.4
Postscript (1970)
The above text deals with a theme which seems distant from present concerns.
For young readers, who are often the ones most engaged in political struggle,
this distance is even greater, since they cannot remember the proper context.
Those today who are between twenty and thirty years old, have not experienced
the overwhelming influence of the Communist Party during Stalin's life. The
1953 workers' insurrection in East Berlin, for some, the first to shake up the
image of socialism as it existed in the popular democracies, Krushchev's de-Stalinization
begun at the Twentieth Congress, the Hungarian and Polish uprisings-these are
merely part of one's personal pre-history, unable to enter into lived experience,
thus permitting one to assimilate them. These young people do not remember how
progressive intellectuals rallied around the Stalinist banner, returning for
the audacity of an independent gesture a redoubled fidelity-a time when the
Left was almost entirely limited to Trotskyists, some branches growing into
three or four tiny "groupuscles," or when the Communists labelled the Trotskyists
fascists, treating them accordingly when they had the chance, with the result
that the leftist press did not give them even the slightest mention.
Does this mean that the 1950s can awaken only the interest of the historian
and that what we wrote twelve or twenty years ago has only documentary value?
Does it mean that, in order to comprehend the present and to attenspt to set
the landmarks of change, it is necessary to look at Czechoslovakia rather than
to Hungary, to study Brezhnev's last speech rather than Krushchev's Report,
to challenge the Sartre who supports La Cause du Peuple rather than the
one who, in 1952, gave an apology for Communist politics in France?
The questions posed at that time have not become obsolete and, in spite of
changes which occasionally modify the practice and mentality of social actors,
or the interpretation of ideologies, a considerable part of the historical context
remains, along with the same choices and conflicts.
The distinction between what constitutes the present and the past, of what
belongs to new horizons and what is lost in the distance is subtler than we
are tempted to believe when considering only the generation gap or in pointing
to some major signs of change-which can effectively designate the novelty of
a conjuncture while hiding the continuity of the traits of a socio-historical
structure. The past is not really past until it ceases to haunt us and until
we have become free to rediscover it out of curiosity. But so long as the images
and the words continue to fill our thoughts and excite our passions, at a distance
from men and events that we have not experienced, they fully participate in
the present, whether they serve to destroy, or whether we need them to preserve
the framework of our life.
Thus, perhaps Bolshevism, or its Trotskyist variant, and the history of the
Russian revolution no longer have any 'real' efficacy. Maybe they only provide
fighting symbols for leftist militants whose goals escape them, or an identification
to an imaginary community of revolutionaries, in the absence of which their
opposition to the regimes in power disappears. Maybe the concept of revolution
itself now passes through unprecedented paths. Maybe the USSR Communist leaders
themselves need not only Stalin's ghost, but the Bolshevik legend as well, in
order to successfully carry out the prosaic tasks, impossible to enumerate,
of a new ruling class. What is certain is that today, the glorification of heroes
and the repetition of old speeches, always accompany action and mobilize faith.
After twenty years the sources of inspiration have not spoiled. At least
for a fraction of the new generations in Western societies, they are much more
alive than for their elders. And in Eastern countries, the same references support
both the opposition as well as the politics of the masters of power. It follows
that the temptation to dissipate certain illusions by examining the great revolutionary
politics of the past, to reveal what has been hidden (most often to protect
its imitation) is even more necessary in the present than when they had such
a great importance for those of us in Socialisme ou Barbarie. I discovered
how Trotsky, who for so long we considered the guarantor of the revolutionary
attitude, combined the fetishism of the party, the fetishism of the state's
'socialist bases,' and the repression of worker oppositions. Thus, we speak
for a tiny number. The circle has expanded and has also intensified the equivocal
nature of militancy where the will for emancipation joins the narrow subjection
to tradition and the taste for the sacred. Of course, the critique of Bolshevism
and Trotskyism has gained ground: the documents of the Workers' Opposition in
Russia are better known, we can read Voline, Archinov and Pannekoek while the
Kronstadt revolt sometimes has the value of an archetype. But it is too easy
to believe that it is enough to substitute a 'good' tradition for a 'bad' one.
Too often we are satisfied with changing the symbols without renouncing the
authority imputed to the pure image of a founder. Even those who see how the
party separates itself from the exploited strata, thus creating the kernel of
a new social formation, end up by transferring to the class as such the sacredness
hitherto invested in an institution or in men. Thus, questions which emerged
when there were militants in the Communist Party, and which burst their system
of beliefs, are suddenly extinguished under this new certitude that evil is
intrinsic to organizations, while obstinately refusing to look for the
conditions of their genesis in the history of the proletariat.
Thought could well free itself of certain images. What prevents it is the
relationship we entertain with the representation of the past. It is the mythic
function which we force it to play in order to assure ourselves of a truth already
given which will not betray us, in order to finally exorcise the indetermination
which is reborn ceaselessly in our living history.
In vain one relies on the movement which separates us from our old beliefs.
Of course, we have managed to destroy some illusions. But the soil on which
these illusions grew nourishes other germs. When we taste the bitter ecstasy
of overturning our first theses, it is perhaps then that we remain the most
captive of their principles. In any case, so many desires are invested on the
political level that the progress of knowledge displaces its own boundaries
instead of suppressing them, and each time new doors open before us, we must
assume that elsewhere others are closed.
We can easily see limits in others. We are struck by their inability before
a troublesome event to draw the inevitable conclusions that we have long since
reached. Thus, only recently there were the militant Communist intellectuals,
indignant at the Russian intervention in Czechoslovakia. For once, they condemned
USSR policies and even labdled them imperialist. But it was to denounce a "tragic
error" and to proclaim that a socialist state cannot act like a great power,
without disavowing its principles. Their audacity was great. They rose against
a hitherto unchallengeable authority. They exposed themselves to exclusion from
their party. Yet, they never asked themselves whether it makes any sense to
speak of socialism in the case of a state that oppresses its neighbors on economic,
political, military, and cultural levels. They defended the "democratic" demands
of Czech Communists and they criticized the governing group in the USSR, along
with their servile managers in the other countries. They did so, however, only
in order to oppose liberalism to authoritarianism, innovative methods to conservatism,
as if the conflicts were not rooted in social relations and the political police
terror was an accidental trait of the workers' state-the effect of a bad interpretation
of revolutionary strategy or, even better, the sign of the ambitions of an intolerant
clique. They deplored an error, but were quick to limit it to the case of Czechoslovakia.
These ardent defenders of national communism, who still applaud the entrance
of Russian tanks into Budapest, shamelessly maintain that the Hungarian insurrection
was the work of reactionaries and American agents. Besides, while condemning
Moscow, has it not been pointed out by others that opposition to the USSR carries
the germs of counter-revolution? flow could they explain that a regime of popular
democracy was able to last twenty years almost entirely withdrawn from exchange
with capitalist countries and fused into the socialist bloc while preserving
a bourgeoisie so strong as to endanger it at the leaders' first error? While
supporting Dubcek, they were worrying about the consequences of reforms. They
based all their arguments on the defense of soesalism, whileb they saw present
everywhere under Brezhnev, Novotny, Dubcek or Husak. The Counter-revolution
was seen sprouting everywhere so that they would not dare take a step in one
direction without immediately beating a retreat. But one should also consider
the position of certain non-party leftists: they also surrounded themselves
with strange hesitations. The Czechs' taste for liberty raises their suspicion.
What in bourgeois society they consider the most precious acquisition-however
fragile, insufficient, and falsified in practice-they are ready to brand as
a sign of corruption in Czechoslovakia. They themselves evoke anti-socialist
forces, forgetting that they do not believe in the reality of socialism of the
peoples' democracies. Thus, they remain caught in the representations which
they thought they had discarded. So powerful and so widespread is the idea that
the world has been divided into two camps since the Russian revolution, that
they take it up again, in spite of all they have learned about exploitation
and oppression in the USSR. They seemed to be certain of the fact that the abolition
of private property ends in the fusion of Capital and State. But then they mechanically
repeated that all that American imperialism profits from is reactionary, and
that relations between East and West ultimately decide the revolutionary significance
of an event. Thus the whole casuistry elaborated by Sartre and other progressive
intellectuals at the time of the Hungarian insurrection has not lost its effectiveness.
Its terms are disjointed, the interpreters are ideologically displaced, but
the essence of the old position is preserved, the captive imaginary has not
really been released.
Undoubtedly, it is difficult to discover in one's own mind the forces which
draw it backwards. At least with time I have acquired a certain power, and if
I still conceal a part of what guides my judgments, I feel less disarmed before
old writings. It is useless to pretend a modesty which has no place when an
author must stand aside before the questions of knowledge; the essays which
I have written after I left the Trotskyist party are, in my opinion, better
equipped to explain the phenomenon of bureaucracy than most of the analyses
presently circulating under the label of the Revolution. What is interesting
about them is that they were guided by the desire to apply to the labor movement
or to the forces which claim to be part of it, the principles of analysis that
Marxism had elaborated in the critique of bourgeois society. To be sure, this
was not the result of an intellectual decision. It was the experience of militancy,
lasting several years, that taught me to scrutinize the strange logic whereby
a group (weak, numerically and, because of the inefficiency of its actions,
relatively free of political and economic constraints), reintroduced the rules,
practices, and inter-personal relations typical of the organizations which they
wished to fight, reweaving the same kind of social fabric, cultivating the principles
of frag-menting sectors of activity, segregating information, making its existence
an end in itself and finally, presenting a cloudy account closed to reflection.
Such an experience indicates some of the reasons why Trotskyism, in spite of
all its critiques against Communist Parties, did not really succeed in distinguishing
itself from them. Although it formulated different objectives in its program
and it insisted on the decisive function of mass mobilizations, the social relations
that it instituted were ordered according to a similar model. This was best
shown in its inability to confront the essential question of a sociological
definition of Stalinism, i.e., of inquiring into its social basis. At best,
Trotskyists reproduced Lenin's account of the degeneration of social democracy
in terms of the emergence of a labor aristocracy. Ordinarily, they stuck to
the pure and simple denunciation of leading groups judged opportunist or incompetent,
and associated their prestige to the Russian revolution, in the conviction that
the isolation of the socialist state left the revolutionary enterprise in shambles,
thus favoring the temporary advent of a bureaucratic caste. But their failure
was symbolic, for the same conceptions ultimately pervaded all the analyses
of the non- Stalinist Marxist Left. Of course, this Left distinguished itself
from the Trotskyists on many issues, beginning with their insistence on remaining
in the immediate vicinity of the Communist Party. But this Left was Trotskyist
in its ignorance, by virtue of its double conviction that party policies
were explainable in terms of methodological errors or in terms of a deformed
representation of the revolutionary task, and that these policies were the result
of unexpected "accidents" after the October revolution, i.e., disturbances in
the 'normal' development of socialism.
It is not by chance that, in a polemic with Sartre, I developed an argument
which, although it was seen as "Trotskyist," was largely directed against Trotskyism.
I discovered that progressives and Trotskyists could not help but meet as soon
as they eliminated some social phenomena from Marx's critique. Marx had stressed
the divergence between ideology and praxis. Moreover, he knew how to do a critique
of economic, political, religious, or philosophical ideologies as a privileged
means of unveiling contradictions operating at the level of praxis. For the
progressives and Trotskyists. this route was lost as soon as what they were
dealing with was no longer the bourgeois class or the Western capitalist system.
They limited their critique of Communist Parties and of the social strata from
which they drew their force to the level of ideas. They attacked these ideas
head-on as if they were without depth, self-sufficient, and did not occlude
social relations. Yet, Marx distinguished historical from sociological analysis.
His study of capitalism, so rich in references to events, focused on the specific
logic of a system and on the articulation of oppositions which develop once
the division of capital and labor is carried out on a large scale. Aware of
the need to describe the capitalists' actions, the correctives they needed,
the resistances that they awakened, and thus to outline certain sequences of
an empirical genesis, he nevertheless sought to decipher in apparently contingent
facts the signs of a necessity which was not the conscious product of peoples'
activities, but was imposed by their ignorance and often even at the cost of
their immediate interests. Our epigones, on the other hand, cling to the level
of historical development. When analyzing the USSR, they can only grasp the
chain of events invoking the consequences of the civil war, the revolutionary
defeats in Europe, or the capitalist blockade. It would have been scandalous
for them to admit that the course followed by the past revolutionary regime
was inevitable (a limited hypothesis having only heuristic value) and that the
social system that emerged had properties which had to be studied in themselves.
Furthermore, the powerlessness to detach themselves from an explanation in terms
of events coincided with the powerlessness to discover, beneath the representations
and institutional forms, the social relations which support them. Convinced
that state ownership of the means of production and the institution of the plan
were the result of the revolution, they located in them the bases of socialism
without ever asking how these institutions modified the relations established
in the process of production, their real function in the socio-economic system,
and the oppositions in which they were embedded.
No doubt, we would not have been able to base the critique of workers' organizations
(emerging from our experience in a small and militant party) and their concomitant
mode of representation (i.e., to measure the reversal of the Marxist problematic)
if we had not simultaneous]y learned to recognize the USSR-thanks to Castoriadis'
enlightening studies of the traits of a bureaucratic capitalism. The two analyses
bolstered each other. But with ideas, it is advisable to move beyond historical
descriptions. What is important is that knowledge of a bureaucratic phenomenon
involves reflection on the social conditions which give rise to it. As long
as these conditions remained hidden and we naively accepted the norms of our
milieu, we were unable to give free reign to our questions. We continue to believe
that an analysis of the USSR will be fruitful only if it is connected to an
analysis of the organizations of the labor movement in Western countries and
of their mode of insertion in the capitalist system -just as an analysis of
revolutionary undertakings at the turn of the century (in particular, Bolshevism),
assumes that we examine the divorce of practice and ideology in these organizations.
However, as legitimate as it may seem, the critical movement in our earlier
essays today seems to suffer from the obstinate prejudice of remaining in the
strict framework of the Marxist interpretation. Fidelity turns into equivocation
when it looks for pregiven answers to new questions.
Since we are only interested in fixing the stages and limits of our analysis
of bureaucracy, it should be noted that it was conducted in such a way as to
leave intact the image of the proletariat as a revolutionary class-as the carrier
of universal historical goals. When we saw in the USSR the existence of a ruling
class whose power was based on collective ownership of the means of production,
believing that the whole economic system was ordered in such a way as to maintain
the division between a mass of mere "doers" and a minority monopolizing managerial
tasks, we assumed-without even making any explicit hypothesis-that the new class
antagonism reproduced the contradiction denounced by Marx in his examination
of bourgeois society. We substituted the bureaucracy for the bourgeoisie, although
it had come about through a different process. At any rate, the proletariat's
position remained unchanged. The only difference was that now it was in a position
to discover the true nature of its goals, until then concealed under the necessity
of the struggle against private property. Only now could it recognize the basis
of socialism in the workers' administration of enterprises and collectivities.
We imagined that in contemporary bourgeois societies the process of bureaucratization,
which was becoming increasingly evident in spite of the maintenance of old forms
of ownership, created for the working class an analogous consciousness of its
goals-a consciousness that would not fail to operate during periods of crisis
when labor Organizations would be forced to openly uphold the capitalist system.
In other words, we assumed that the world proletariat had reached a stage in
which the task that Marx assigned it could be carried out. When we attacked
the development of bureaucracy in the West as well as in the East, we considered
the trans-formations in the industrial mode of production-the concentration
of enterprises, the rationalization of tasks due to technological change, and
the class struggle, the growing intricacy of productive and organizational functions
- as affecting only the structure of the ruling class. Finally, our analysis
of the genesis of bureaucracy in the organization of the working class and the
institutionalization of its forms of resistance, did not challenge but, on the
contrary, made even more evident, the proletariat's vocation to install a society
freed from all domination. We believed that one needed a trial of alienation,
even in the process of emancipation, for the critique of all alienations to
be carried out.
In retrospect it seems that we lacked audacity. We were afraid to admit that
the transformation of the mode of social domination could involve a profound
modification of the antagonistic terms described by Marx and, consequently,
would call for a revision of his model. Even when considering the economic sphere
we would have had to inquire into the changes affecting the nature of social
labor.
Similarly, the process of bureaucratization results in a tendency towards
homogenization of models of action, social relations, and norms. Formerly this
tendency was limited to workers' labor within large industry. At present this
tendency has expanded to strata of technicians, planning agents, and beyond.
Not only has it extended to state administrations on which the productive apparatus
depends, production of services and to large scientific laboratories, but also
into domains which would seem naturally not amenable to such assimilation-public
health, education, juridical institutions, etc. At the same time, the relation
of workers to the enterprise has been modified. This relation can no longer
be encapsulated in the clauses of the contract analyzed by Marx, but has expanded
to encompass a network of obligations covering the workers' social life, e.g.,
through institutions of social security, housing, education, and leisure. Moreover,
the evolution of technology and the rationalization of tasks has the consequence
of changing the proportion of skilled and unskilled labor in industry, the productive
tasks in the old sense of the term, and organizational tasks. In examining these
phenomena, it is futile to maintain that the proletarianization of society spreads,
according to the schema outlined by Marx, for the mass of men separated from
the means of production do not resemble the image that he had of them. Ultimately,
those factors resulting in heterogeneity are no less powerful than the forces
of resistance. In short, it is no longer possible to mix together in the same,
simple social stratum the most dispossessed, the most exploited and the most
frustrated in their creativity. The last are precisely those in whom the capacitiy
of knowledge and of intervention in the milieu of labor is most stimulated by
their training and the quality of their tasks. But they do not suffer the most
from exploitation, which remains the lot of the factory workers, nor do they
fail to benefit, sometimes substantially, from the growth of revenues. As for
the most dispossessed, those who presently perform unskilled labor, they are
not the most exploited in the sense that it is not from their production that
capital extracts the maximum surplus value that it needs to reproduce itself.
It does not follow from this that the working class has been erased: the specificity
of blue collar labor remains, along with the division of manual and mental labor,
in spite of modifications-especially in the latter. Nevertheless, one should
not reestablish the classic antagonism between technicians and professionals,
on one side, and administrators and technocrats on the other. This opposition
surely exists, but it does not imply, as Marx believed, a class which is excluded
from the process of socialization instituted by capitalism: a class condemned
to discover itself as alien to bourgeois society, a class which is not a class,
witnessing in its very existence-when it escapes the status of an economic category
from which it receives its definition from outside-its vocation for communism.
With the expansion of bureaucracy, several contradictions converge: between
leaders and led, between the strata which receive only scraps from economic
growth and the strata which ceaselessly increase the size of their advantages,
and between a minority in control of the means of knowledge and information,
the production and diffusion of representations, and the masses who, in spite
of their formation and their increasing importance, are deprived. In addition
to these contradictions in the labor process, there is another one, which contraposes
collectivities in all sectors of social life and culture against rules which
determine behavior in every minor detail and plugs it into the planned circuits
of giant organizations. But this opposition spreads in several directions. It
mobilizes various modes of Opposition. One of these takes place within the system
and is the result of bureaucratic impotence to satisfy recognized needs that
are even intensified by the multi-plication of organizational apparatuses. Another
mode of opposition translates the desire for collective control of resources
while a third places the fringes of the Population-essentially youth-in a position
of deviance, makes them into outcasts, tends to destroy symbolic references
without which the relation to reality dissolves.
In considering the ambiguous characteristics of this revolt that strikes
at the very heart of the system of domination by revealing the mechanisms which
guarantee the combined functioning of exploitation, oppression, and ideology
while at the same time shaking up all symbolic references to socialization,
we can measure the distance which separates us from the world analyzed by Marx.
In this world, the proletariat was the outsider and at the same time
the carrier of productive forces-itself being the greatest productive force.
Thus, it was designated as the revolutionary class.
Presently, the producer is not the outsider. It obtains, rather, in the rejection
of the models and norms of industrial society. Strategies ordered according
to realizable objectives cannot be based on conflicts between owners, means
of production, and workers. Thus, it becomes impossible to make everything converge
toward a single revolutionary focus to preserve the image of a society centered
around the praxis of a class, to maintain, in paraphrasing Marx, that bureaucracy
necessarily tends toward its own destruction by raising against itself as in
a single man the mass of the dispossessed. The locations of conflicts are many
and the revolutionary demand par excellence of collective self-management is
gaining ground.
Undoubtedly, all of this applies primarily to Western capitalist societies,
but it would be a mistake to imagine that the problems are posed in radically
different terms in the popular democracies and in the USSR. Certain indications
suggest that these problems are only masked by repression which comes down on
any and every opposition. The force of this repression, the visible figure of
power, has the effect of crystalizing revolutionary energies as soon as authority
vacillates. The insurrections of East Berlin, Poland, Liungary. and Czechoslovakia
provide ample evidence. Thus, one can expect in the USSR-in some unforesecable
future-a crisis of the regime, whose consequences will have an unheard of impact
in Eastern Europe as well as in the Western world. But this eventuality should
not lead us to forget the complexity, and indeed the heterogeneity, of conflicts
at work in modern industrial society-conflicts for which only the lazy imagination
of the little heirs of Leninism can delight in foreseeing the solution
in a "good" dictatorship of the proletariat.
A study of the peculiar traits of bureaucratic regimes where nothing remains
of bourgeois institutions must inquire farther than I have done in order to
discover where the critique of totalitarianism leads. It will not do to refer
to the logic of bureaucratic organizations, the new mechanisms whereby the state
tends to penetrate all the details of the productive process, in all the representations
and relations between people in civil society and culture. Nor is it sufficient
to recognize in the party the opposite of what it pretends to be-the pivot of
a totalitarian integration. Nor can one point to a fundamental contradiction
between control and parasitism. In light of this analysis, it is advisable to
carry the critique into the home ground of Marxist theory.
An examination of the Russian regime challenges nothing less than the definition
of social reality and, with it, the distinction between base and superstructure.
Even if one notes that social relations are generated at the level of production,
and that property relations are only their juridical expression-as Castoriadis
has shown-one still remains too close to the Marxist problematic. What escapes
us is what distinguishes bourgoeis society from bureaucratic society. To be
sure, it is possible to point to a pertinent structural trait but it should
not be forgotten that it alone cannot characterize it. The very definition of
relations of production, reduced to the Opposition of means of production and
labor power, remains abstract as long as it does not clarify what it deals with,
as long as this relation remains purely within economic space. Rather, it must
be acknowledged that it allows this space to come about, that it is at the source
of a system of operations (specified in terms of production, exchange and distribution),
which are in turn dependent on a specific institutional structure, where modes
of power and representation are articulated according to various political and
symbolic schemas. In a sense, Marx allows one to think with the concept of mode
of production, of a structuring of the social field which locates various features
of the economy, of the policy and of the system of representation, as well as
their articulations. This structuring, however, assumes and does not generate
the referents of the economy, politics, or the symbolic. Indeed, we need only
consider the advent of capitalism to note the impact of extra-economic factors.
Even when it is characterized by a particular order of economic Operations and
regulated by specific mechanisms, the logic of a social system can only be grasped
by connecting the network of relations under the triple heading of production,
power, and representation. Seen in this fashion, it is certainly possible to
distinguish between what comes from the base and what comes from the superstructure.
However, this cannot be expressed in terms of the distinction between the economic
and the political. It obtains on two levels: it acts on the level of representation
where the function of imagination cannot be confused with that of symbols which
establish the possibility of social communication and make up the shell of the
economic-political field. Otherwise, how is it possible to indicate the originality
of the modern bureaucratic system? Plow is it possible to escape the alternative
of a bad sociology which sees in it either a variation of industrial Society,
or a variation of an a-temporal formation such as Asiatic despotism? To move
forward in the analysis, we must ask how, with the destruction of the bourgeois
regime, are the articulations of a social field reproduced on all levels, how
power relations, and the operations of production and representations combine
according to a new model of socialization. If, unable to do so, we preserve,
e.g., the classic Marxist conception of the state, or if we dismiss a priori
the political or symbolic function, the traits of totalitarianism will always
appear accidental.
Such an analysis would have at least one practical consequence. So long as
we remain prisoner of the Marxist schema, all signs of oppression-no matter
how quick we are to denounce them-turn out to have no Importance. Similarly,
as we have noted, democratic demands do not constitute an object for sociological
interpretation, if they are seen as expressions of the influence exercised by
bourgeois regimes, or a reflection of a-temporal humanist values. A new examination
of the social system would have to persuade us that with democracy we are in
the midst of a fundamental process of socialization-if we can read beyond the
forms to which it is attached in bourgeois regimes.
Lastly, it was by reexamining my views concerning the degeneration of the
"workers" parties and unions that I became aware of a critique too faithful
to the spirit of Marx. Without doubt it is important to observe the structural
homology between "revolutionary" organizations and of the organization of the
industrial system that they hope to destroy. Lenin's views in What Is to
Be Done? bears witness, in an exemplary and explicit manner, to the transfer
of norms from the industrial enterprise (the militarization of labor) to the
model of the party. Yet, the problem is not exhausted by invoking the alienation
which leads the exploited to reproduce in their own organization the constraints
that they suffer in bourgeois society-or which leads them to divest themselves
of their ability to direct their emancipation after having been dispossessed
of the ability to direct their production. Nor is the problem exhausted by emphasizing
the role of an intelligentsia quick to transform into power the superiority
that knowledge gives them. These answers are not false, but they leave in darkness
the mechanisms which determine the repetition. The adherence to models of authority
and hierarchy, the belief in the knowledge of the leader, the tenacious fidelity
to a tradition, the attachment to symbols, the fetishism of the institution,
do not point only to the inability of the working class to discover its own
identity. These phenomena take on the investment of energy-both individual and
collective-in the service of a socialization about which Marxists wish to know
nothing, although they are actually very good at mobilizing it. Like bourgeois
regimes, the bureaucratic regime would crumble if it did not nourish identifications
which conceal servitude and antagonisms, and which keep the large majority under
the authority of the leaders. By wanting to ignore the import of the 'imaginary,'
one only exposes oneself (under the good colors of revolutionary optimism-itself
mystifying and mystified) to the maintenance of an exercise in repetition. These
remarks on bureaucracy are far from attaining their goal. My hope is that the
reader, like myself, finds here the inspiration to continue.
Notes
I. This article originally appeared
in Arguments, no. 17 (1960); reprinted in Elements dune Critique de la Bureaucratie
(Paris: Droz, 1971). The "Postscript" was written in 1970.English translation
by Jean L. Cohen.
2. Karl Marx, The Critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 47.
3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte (International Publishers, ~969), p. 121. Emphasis added.
4. The analysis of bureaucracy
by the Socialisme ou Barbarie group differs from that of Trotsky and Burhoam
as follows (this section originally appeared in Arguments, no.4l]une-September,
1957]): "The ideas of Trotsky and Burnham differ qualitatively from those of
the Socialisme ou Barbarie group. Trotsky always saw the bureaucracy as a parasitic
transitory formation typical of a particular historical juncture-as a fungus
grown on the socialist organism that a new revolutionary wave would readily
sweep away. He always rejected the idea that it represented a social class and
a new social type. The existence of the bureaucracy did not alter the nature
of productive relations: the Russian proletariat simply had to chase it away
as one does with a bad manager, since there already were socialist relations.
Socialisme ou Barbarie denounced Trotsky's formalism by showing the absurdity
of a socialist society where the producers are expropriated from all managerial
tasks. It substituted the idea of a bureaucratic society for that of
a bureaucracy in society, i.e., a society which produced and reproduced
itself by separating the producing masses from a social stratum which collectively
expropriated surplus value. Such a bureaucratic society was made possible
by the rigorous integration of all bureaucratic strata by the state apparatus.
Furthermore, Socialisme ou Barbarie also pointed to the function of the official
ideology-borrowed from Marxism-Leninism-in the interests of the bureaucracy.
Finally, Socialiame ou Barbarie claimed that Trotsky's inability to analyze
the bureaucratic phenomenon was linked to his general notion of revolutionary
struggle (the absolute pre-eminence of the party) and of socialist society (state
centralization) which inadvertently facilitated the advent of a new society
of exploitation.
Burnham's merit, on the other hand, is to have pointed out the separation
in modern capitalism between production and ownership, and the formation of
a new type of society. But this is where the analogy with Socialisme
on Barbarie ends since the latter rejects Burnham on the following points: (1)
Burnham considers the factory managers as the members of the new class and the
real masters of society. He fails to see the changes in the phenomenon of management
which now comes to engulf society as a whole. He merely substitutes the managers
for the private capitalists without realizing that the process which places
power within the context of the enterprise and in the hands of managers tends
to dispossess every sector of its autonomy and subordinate everything to the
state apparatus.
Furthermore, he fails to see that the bureaucratic mode of social domination
generates new relations between its members whose power no longer flows from
their private economic activity. They are able to pose themselves as a separate
class by rigorously subordinating themselves to a control organ which guarantees
a permanent integration through the police and ideology. Hence, Burnham's acrobatics
in trying to explain two otherwise inexplicable phenomena: in the USSR the bureaucracy
is staffed by a stratum of political functionaries and the factory mangers,
whatever their lisiluence, do not hold power. (2) Burnham believes that the
rise of industrial managers is a result of their scientific knowledge, against
which the mass of producers are seen as ignorant. Accordingly, the managers
are indispensable and without them the factory could not function.
Against this view, Socialise ou Barbarie
claims that (a) the continuous socialization of work has exploded the
managers' old tasks since now the working of the enterprise is guaranteed at
all levels by collective organs, and that the existence of a separate managerial
apparatus answers the social need of exploitation rather than technological
requirements,- (Is) constant conflicts tear factory organization apart, with
the social hierarchy destroying cooperation and generating an irreducible irrationality;
(c) managers confront these basically insurmountable conflicts daily in the
attempt to facilitate cooperation and initiative among producers while keeping
them in coercion, isolation and inertia. In other words, Socialisme ou Barbarie
explains the existence of bureaucracy in terms of the class struggle and
not as a function of technological progress. (3) Against Burnham, Socialisme
ou Barbarie sees the contradictions of earlier capitalism to have been transposed
and even intensified within the bureaucratic society. Actually, the advent of
the bureaucracy is the result of a fundamental historical tendency described
by Marx as "the socialization of society." The bureaucracy seeks to coordinate
all of the activities that it deals with, have all individuals participate in
the social totality by formally denying all class distinctions, while radically
contradicting this tendency by its very existence, its system of oppression,
its hierarchy, and its fragmentation. It itself pays for this contradiction
with an unrelenting internal struggle. This double movement is the reason why
bureaucracy exists only in the horizon of communism, and generates the need
for its own destruction. In other words, for Socialisme ou Barbarie bureaucracy
is a total social phenomenon which is intelligible only in the perspective of
modern history and class struggle. The theory of bureaucracy is the theory of
revolution."
Although the concept of bureaucracy has fallen into the common domain of political
sociology, theory of history, and public opinion, and has been sanctified to the
success it has today, it has nevertheless remained so imprecise that it is still
meaningful to question the identity of the phenomena it claims to describe. At first
one is astonished at the diversity or ambiguity of the responses. But this is only
a first impression. Bureaucracy appears as a phenomenon that everyone talks about,
feels and experiences, but which resists conceptualization. Thus, rather than immediately
attempting to provide a new definition or description, we will measure the difficulties
encountered by theory, assume that they have a meaning, and from the very beginning
critically examine what both motivates and perpetuates these difficulti. The Problem
of Bureaucracy Already in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx draws attention to
the specific nature of the social stratum in charge of the administration of public
affairs. To corporations dedicated to particular activities and attached to particular
interests, this stratum appears to represent a universal interest. We will follow
the development of the theory of the state in Marx's later works, then in Lenin's
Stale and Revolution, and its application to post-revolutionary Russian society
by Trotsky, together with an examination of the role that the bureaucracy plays
as a stratum inextricably bound to the structure of a class society. From this viewpoint,
the bureaucracy is neither a class nor a stratum. It is a result of the division
of society into classes and class struggles, since its function is to secure the
acceptance of the rules of an order (an order undoubtedly connected with relations
of production, but in need of being formulated in universal terms and maintained
by force). Bureaucracy is "normally" at the service of a dominant class since the
administration of public affairs within the framework of a given regime always assumes
the preservation of its status. But since it is not simply a section of this class,
when the balance of social forces permits it, it can run counter to some of its
interests, thus acquiring a relative autonomy. The limits of power are always determined
by the configuration of social relations. In short, bureaucracy is a special body
in society because its function is such that it supports the established structure
and its disappearance would mean the end of bourgeois domination. (Marx said that
the Commune's first revolutionary measure was the suppression of the bureaucracy
through the lowering of functionaries' salaries to that of the average worker.)
Since it is not a key to social stratification, its role in the society is ascribed
by the real historical agents-classes in struggle.
The viewpoint changes as soon as one observes the growth of the stratum devoted
to administrative tasks in the various sectors of civil society. Thus, it is tempting
to look for criteria defining a type of social organization that recognizes the
similarities between the bureaucracies of the state, industry, party, unions, etc.
Comparison encourages research into the conditions for the emergence of bureaucracies
in order to define a type which would pull together various characteristics.
From this viewpoint, very close to Weber's thesis, the bureaucracy appears again
as one particular mode of organization corresponding to a more or less extended
sector within society. In other words, the social dynamic doesn't seem to be affected
by the development of bureaucracies. The mode of production, class relations and
political regimes can be studied without reference to a phenomenon designating only
a certain type of organization.
A qualitative change in the theory of bureaucracy takes place when it is used to
refer to a new class considered to be the dominant class in one or several countries,
or even seen as destined to displace the bourgeoisie all over the world. This is
suggested by the evolution of the Russian regime after the rise of Stalin, with
the disappearance of the old proprietors and the liquidation of the organs of workers'
power along with a considerable extension of the Communist Party bureaucracy and
the state, which took over the direct administration of society. Similarly, social
transformations connected with the development of monopolistic concentration in
large industrial societies (notably in the United States) also generate reflection
on the development of a bureaucratic class. This necessitates a change in the theory
since, because of its role in economic and cultural life, the bureaucracy is now
understood as a stratum able to displace the traditional representatives of the
bourgeoisie, thus monopolizing power.
Finally, we believe that a completely different conceptualization is required if
the phenomenon of bureaucratization is seen as a progressive erosion of the old
distinctions linked to private property. Bureaucratization here refers to a process
seeking to impose a homogeneous social form on all levels of work-at the managerial
as well as the executive level-such that the general stability of employment, hierarchy
of salaries and functions promotion rules, division of responsibilities and structure
of authority, result in the creation of a single highly differentiated ladder of
socio-economic statuses. This last thesis refers to a social dynamic in bureaucracy,
and lends it a goal of its own, the realization of which engenders an upheaval of
all of society's traditional structures. If this is what the problem of bureaucracy
boils down to, it is important to examine each of these theses and explore their
contradictions.
Allienation of bureaucracy means a bureaucracy that over the years have
grown big and insensitive to the needs of the citizens and the civil society, it
becomes corrupt, far from acting as the servant of the citizens. The larger the
bureaucracy the more rigid, inflexible, insensitive and corrupt it tends to become.
Instead of serving the citizens, they manipulate the elected ministers or allow
cartels to form to exploit the citizen's.
Bureaucratic Alienation Alienation is a problem within bureaucracies as
they tend to dehumanize those they serve through their impersonal operation.
Bureaucratic Inefficiency and Ritualism The problem of inefficiency is
captured in the concept of red tape. Bureaucratic ritualism signifies a preoccupation
with rules and regulations to the point of thwarting an organization's goals.
Bureaucratic Inertia Bureaucratic inertia refers to the tendency of bureaucratic
organizations to perpetuate themselves. An example from the federal government is
used to illustrate.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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