All professions are conspiracies against the common folk.
George Bernard Shaw
Programmers and system administrators are not he only one who have problems with burnout which can
be defined as a severe case of alienation. Outsourcing, introduction of some complex, ineffective, but fashionable
technologies is rampant everywhere. Here is how one physician commented on his experience, which is
actually pretty close to feelings of many IT systems administrators (
Health Care Corporate CEOs Fret About Physician Burnout....Because It Hurts Their Profits naked
capitalism)
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 discusion 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.
Chronic fatigue -- exhaustion, tiredness, a sense of being physically run
down
Self-criticism for putting up with the demands
A sense of being besieged
Exploding easily at seemingly inconsequential things
Frequent headaches and gastrointestinal disturbances
Weight loss or gain
Sleeplessness and depression
Shortness of breath
Suspiciousness
Increased degree of risk taking
Other more expanded list of warning signs are:
Exhaustion. Lack of energy associated with feelings of tiredness
and trouble keeping up with usual activities.
Detachment. People headed for burnout begin putting distance between
themselves and other people, Freudenbeger said, particularly those with whom
the person has had close relationships.
Boredom and cynicism. The burnout victim begins to question the value
of friendships and activities, and even life itself.
Increased impatience and irritability. According to Freudenbeger,
burnout victims are usually people who have been able to do things quickly.
However, as burnout takes hold, their ability to do things diminishes and they
become impatient and begin to blame family and coworkers for things that are
their own fault.
A sense of omnipotence. Some victims begin thinking that no one else
can do their jobs as well, not even God.
Feelings of not being appreciated. Burnout victims want to be appreciated
for their added efforts which really aren't producing more but less, Freudenbeger
said. These feelings result in the burnout victim becoming bitter, angry, and
resentful.
Change of work style. Reduced results and conflicts with others eventually
cause burnout victims to withdraw from decisive leadership and work habits,
or to compensate for conflicts by becoming more demanding, tyrannical or inflexible.
Paranoia. Long-term burnout can lead victims to believe that someone
is out to get them.
Disorientation. Long-term burnout causes the victim's thoughts to
wonder, speech pattern to falter and concentration spans to become limited.
The person may joke about becoming senile but inwardly, stress and agitation
are the problem.
Psychosomatic complaints. Physical ailments such as headaches, lingering
colds, backaches and similar complaints flourish in burnout victims. Although
the complaints may have real physical causes, they are more likely brought on
by emotional stress, which the victim may not want to admit, Freudenbeger said.
Depression. The depression is usually temporary, specific and localized
to one area of life.
Major depression. Some burnout victims will develop major depression
that pervades all areas of their lives. Generally, the burnout victim will stop
blaming others for negative circumstances and start blaming themselves. Instead
of being angry with others, he or she will feel guilty for everything that goes
wrong.
Suicidal thinking. As the depression progresses, the results can
be suicidal thinking, Fredenbeger said. Some personality types, such as the
hysterical personality, may make suicide threats or gestures that are manipulative.
However, an obsessive-compulsive personality will likely attempt suicide, he
said.
I believe that you can often somewhat loosen the grip
of CF a bit. There is a classic story about the pilot who endured several
years as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam. Nearly starved and frequently beaten by
his captors, the pilot stunned interviewers when he said he had so much to be grateful
for in the time he was held. For him, the hunger and beatings weren't the biggest
problems. The hardest part of imprisonment was complete isolation in a cramped and
dirty room. The pilot told about a female rat that found her way into his lonely
cell. He felt blessed by her companionship and the opportunity to witness, over
time, the birth and mother's care of three litters of babies. The rat was his only
contact with another living being for a long time-and its presence was a gift, he
said, that gave him strength and the ability to endure extreme stress and hardship.
That pilot's story exemplifies some really important concepts for dealing with
stress and burnout. First you need to distinguish between things which he wanted
(better conditions, more and better food, freedom) and minimum conditions that needed
to survive and preserve sanity (contact with another living being).
First you need to distinguish between things which he wanted
(better conditions, more and better food, freedom) and minimum conditions that needed
to survive and preserve sanity (contact with another living being).
The research by Dr. Karen Ballard, a
program development and evaluation specialist at the University of Arkansas' Cooperative
Extension Service, showed that Vietnam POWs either died quickly or
"they
not only survived imprisonment, but, in many cases, did remarkably well when they
returned home."
What distinguished the survivors? "The awareness that they had choices,"
Ballard says. "They may not have had a lot of choices-they may not have had very
good choices. But they had the capacity to evaluate their own resources and select
the best available choices for their situations. They couldn't control all of their
circumstances, but they chose to control what they could."
Ballard says trying to figure out what those choices are is the first step away
from the path that leads to chronic, toxic stress and burnout. She recommends an
"honest" self-inventory to identify what's causing the stress. "Write it down. Think
about what makes you angry, unhappy, sad-what makes you not want to go to work,"
she advises. "Make an exhaustive list. This is a critical step to gaining control.
Work on it for days if you need to." While the main reason is clear it is
a particular control freak, modes of his attacks and circumstances under which he
attack you need to be identified. "Control freak" is one of those terms for which
the meaning is starting to get distorted and became a nasty little clutch:
68% of employees with a female boss consider her to be a control freak.
57% of employees with a male boss consider him to be a control freak.
But each control freak is different and combination of qualities that make them
tick is different too. For example I saw control freak that give no attention of
time control at all but are tremendously concerned with the creating useless detailed
procedures for each minor step. Some control freaks are total "gatekeepers" and
isolate subordinates from all information. But some are selective and actually can
encourage some outside communication. You can use those few opportunities if you
are careful.
"... 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
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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
"... 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 Chicagochockfull 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 whileviolating a cardinal rule in Italy that mealtime
is sacred and tranquil. Loneliness rules.
And the cafes and restaurants on weekends in Chicagochockfull 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 faade. 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.
"... 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 weekbecause 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 Pakistanwith 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 donein the shortest
amount of time and on a consistent basis40 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 weekbecause 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. Youre absoluately right. And the deeper casue is this: separation
from God. If we dont fight our way back to God, individually and collectively,
things are going to get a lot worse. With God, loneliness doesnt 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'.
"... 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 Tnnies wrote critical
works on individualization and urbanization. Simmel's The Philosophy
of Money describes how relationships become more and more mediated by
money. Tnnies' 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.
"... 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.
Forget Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaia spinning in a blur with her leg impossibly held
straight up against her ear. The sight of skier Bode Miller collapsing with emotion at the end of
a race dedicated to his brother while NBC cameras lingered uncomfortably on the long shot. Or
even jubilant Noelle Pikus-Pace climbing into the stands to race into her family's arms after her
silver medal finish in the Skeleton.
The image that stands out most in my mind during the broadcast of the 2014 Winter Olympics? The
Cadillac commercial with a boxy, middle-aged white guy in a fancy house striding purposefully
from his luxurious swimming pool to his $75,000 luxury Cadillac ELR parked out front while
extolling the virtues of hard work, American style.
"Why do we work so hard? For stuff?" actor Neal McDonough asks in the commercial that has been
playing without cease. "Other countries work. They stroll home. They stop by a caf. They
take the entire month of August off. "Off," he says again, to reinforce the point.
"Why aren't you like that? Why aren't WE like that?"
The first time the commercial aired during the Opening Ceremonies in Sochi, the slight pause
after those two questions made me hopeful. I sat up to listen closely.
Was he about to say we should be more like that? Because Americans work among the most hours of
any advanced country in the world, save South Korea and Japan, where they've had to invent a word
for dying at your desk. (Karoshi. Death from Overwork.) We also work among the most extreme
hours, at 50 or more per week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American
works about one month more a year than in 1976.
Was he going to say that we Americans are caught up in what economist Juliet Schor calls a
vicious cycle of "work-and-spend" caught on a time-sucking treadmill of more spending, more
stuff, more debt, stagnant wages, higher costs and more work to pay for it all?
Would he talk about how we Americans, alone among the advanced economies, whose athletes are
competing between the incessant commercials with such athleticism and grace, have no national
vacation policy. (So sacrosanct is time off in some countries that the Court of Justice of the
European Union ruled in 2012 that workers who get sick on vacation are entitled to take more time
off "to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure.").
American leisure? Don't let the averages fool you, he could say. While it looks like leisure
time has gone up, time diaries show that leisure and sleep time have gone up steeply since 1985
for those with less than a high school degree. Why? They're becoming unemployed or underemployed.
And leisure and sleep time for the college educated, the ones working those crazy extreme hours,
has fallen steeply.
Americans don't have two "nurture days" per child until age 8, as Denmark does. No year-long
paid parental leaves for mothers and fathers, as in Iceland. Nor a national three-month
sabbatical policy, which Belgium has.
Instead of taking the entire month of August off, the most employers voluntarily grant us
American workers tends to be two weeks. One in four workers gets no paid vacation or holidays at
all, one study found. And, in a telling annual report called the "Vacation Deprivation" study,
travel company Expedia figures that Americans didn't even USE 577 million of those measly
vacation days at all last year.
Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2013 Center for Economic and Policy Research, May
2013
So as I watched the Cadillac commercial, hanging onto that rich white guy's pause, I was hoping
he'd make a pitch to bring some sanity to American workaholic culture. It wouldn't have been a
first for the auto industry. Henry Ford outraged his fellow industrialists when he cut his
workers' hours to 40 a week. (Standards in some industries at the time were for 12-hour workdays,
7 days a week.) Ford did so because his internal research showed 40 hours was as far as you could
push manual laborers in a week before they got stupid and began making costly mistakes. He also
wanted his workers to have the leisure time to buy and use his cars.
The rich guy takes a breath and smirks. We work so much "Because we're crazy, driven hard-working
believers, that's why."
Bill Gates. The Wright Brothers. Were they crazy? He asks. We went to the moon and, you know what
we got? Bored, he says.
"You work hard. You create your own luck. And you've gotta believe anything is possible." Fair
enough. "As for all the stuff?" he says as he knowingly unplugs his luxury electric car, "that's
the upside of only taking TWO weeks off in August, n'est ce pas?"
"Sleeker. Faster. More Intuitive" (The New York Times); "Welcome to a world where speed
is everything" (Verizon FiOS); "Speed is God, and time is the devil" (chief of Hitachi's portable-computer
division). In "real" time, life speeds up until time itself seems to disappear-fast is never fast
enough, everything has to be done now, instantly. To pause, delay, stop, slow down is to miss an
opportunity and to give an edge to a competitor. Speed has become the measure of success-faster
chips, faster computers, faster networks, faster connectivity, faster news, faster communications,
faster transactions, faster deals, faster delivery, faster product cycles, faster brains, faster
kids. Why are we so obsessed with speed, and why can't we break its spell?
The cult of speed is a modern phenomenon. In
"The Futurist
Manifesto" in 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marionetti declared, "We say that the splendor of the world
has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed." The worship of speed reflected and promoted
a profound shift in cultural values that occurred with the advent of modernity and modernization.
With the emergence of industrial capitalism, the primary values governing life became work, efficiency,
utility, productivity, and competition. When Frederick Winslow Taylor took his stopwatch to the
factory floor in the early 20th century to increase workers' efficiency, he began a high-speed culture
of surveillance so memorably depicted in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. Then, as now,
efficiency was measured by the maximization of rapid production through the programming of human
behavior.
With the transition from mechanical to electronic technologies, speed increased significantly.
The invention of the telegraph, telephone, and stock ticker liberated communication from the strictures
imposed by the physical means of conveyance. Previously, messages could be sent no faster than people,
horses, trains, or ships could move. By contrast, immaterial words, sounds, information, and images
could be transmitted across great distances at very high speed. During the latter half of the 19th
century, railway and shipping companies established transportation networks that became the backbone
of national and international information networks. When the trans-Atlantic cable (1858) and transcontinental
railroad (1869) were completed, the foundation for the physical infrastructure of today's digital
networks was in place.
Fast-forward 100 years. During the latter half of the 20th century, information, communications,
and networking technologies expanded rapidly, and transmission speed increased exponentially. But
more than data and information were moving faster. Moore's Law, according to which the speed of
computer chips doubles every two years, now seems to apply to life itself. Plugged in 24/7/365,
we are constantly struggling to keep up but are always falling further behind. The faster we go,
the less time we seem to have. As our lives speed up, stress increases, and anxiety trickles down
from managers to workers, and parents to children.
There is a profound irony in these developments. With the emergence of personal computers and
other digital devices in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many analysts predicted a new age in which
people would be drawn together in a "global village," where they would be freed from many of the
burdens of work and would have ample leisure time to pursue their interests. That was not merely
the dream of misty-eyed idealists but was also the prognosis of sober scientists and policy makers.
In 1956, Richard Nixon predicted a four-day workweek, and almost a decade later a Senate subcommittee
heard expert testimony that by 2000, Americans would be working only 14 hours a week.
Obviously, things have not turned out that way. Contrary to expectation, the technologies that
were supposed to liberate us now enslave us, networks that were supposed to unite us now divide
us, and technologies that were supposed to save time leave us no time for ourselves. Henry Ford's
adoption of the policy of eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure, eight hours of rest seems
a quaint memory of a bygone era. For individuals as well as societies, these developments reflect
a significant change in the value and social status of leisure. During the era Thorstein Veblen
so vividly described in The Theory of the Leisure Class, social status was measured by
how little a person worked; today it is often measured by how much a person works. If you are not
constantly connected, you are unimportant; if you willingly unplug to recuperate, play, or even
do nothing, you become an expendable slacker.
Nowhere is the impact of speed more evident than in the world of finance. Since the 1960s, information,
media, and communications technologies have given rise to a new form of capitalism. Financial capitalism
involves a fundamental change in the way economic value is calculated: not by determining the relation
of monetary and financial signs to real commodities, products, or assets like inventory, a factory,
or real estate, but rather by their relationship to other financial signs like currencies, options,
futures, derivatives, swaps, collateralized mortgage obligations, bitcoins, and countless other
so-called financial innovations.
With the advent of Big Data and high-speed computers and networks, where more than 70 percent
of the trades are algorithmically executed in nanoseconds, financial markets no longer function
primarily to provide the capital necessary to keep factories running and businesses operating. The
virtual economy of Wall Street has been decoupled from the real economy of Main Street. The value
of fungible bits is determined by infinitesimal price differences that human beings cannot recognize
fast enough to execute trades. Algorithms can program other trading algorithms to adapt on the fly
without human intervention.
Though the importance of high-speed, high-volume trading is widely acknowledged, its political
and social implications have not been adequately understood. The much-discussed wealth gap is, in
fact, a speed gap.
In the past 50 years, two economies that operate at two different speeds have emerged. In one,
wealth is created by selling labor or stuff; in the other, by trading signs that are signs of other
signs. The virtual assets scale at a speed much greater than the real assets. A worker can produce
only so many motorcycles, a teacher can teach only so many students, and a doctor can see only so
many patients a day. In high-speed markets, by contrast, billions of dollars are won or lost in
billionths of a second. In this new world, wealth begets wealth at an unprecedented rate. No matter
how many new jobs are created in the real economy, the wealth gap created by the speed gap will
never be closed. It will continue to widen at an ever-faster rate until there is a fundamental change
in values.
One of the most basic values that must be rethought is growth, which has not always been the
standard by which economic success is measured. The use of the gross national product and gross
domestic product to evaluate relative economic performance is largely the product of the Cold War.
As the battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union expanded to include the economy,
the question became whether capitalism or communism could deliver more goods faster.
The preoccupation with the rate of growth did not end with the Cold War. In December 2012, Jared
Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., concluded a
New York Times op-ed entitled "Raise the Economy's Speed Limit" by
arguing,
"The first thing to do is to keep applying the accelerator on pro-growth policies that strengthen
near-term demand."
There are only three ways markets can expand to keep the economy growing: spatially-build new
factories and open new stores in new places; differentially-create an endless variety of new products
for consumers to buy; and temporally-accelerate the product cycle. When spatial expansion and differential
production reach their limits, the most efficient and effective strategy for promoting growth is
to increase the speed of product churn. In fast food, fast fashion, fast networks, and fast markets,
time has become money in ways Benjamin Franklin never could have anticipated. The highly touted
virtues of innovation and disruption are merely the latest version of Joseph Schumpeter's "creative
destruction," which advocated growing the economy by accelerating obsolescence. Out with the old
and in with the new, and the faster the better.
The obsession with speed now borders on the absurd. In the world of high-speed trading, investors
in Chicago, for example, can no longer trade on New York markets because of the additional nanoseconds
required to transmit buy and sell orders over networks that can never be fast enough. Far from making
place irrelevant, speed has made location more important than ever. Financial firms, following a
practice known as "co-location," now build facilities for their servers located as close as possible
to the servers of the markets on which they trade.
But speed has limits. As acceleration accelerates, individuals, societies, economies, and even
the environment approach meltdown. We have been conned into worshiping speed by an economic system
that creates endless desire where there is no need.
The world that speed continues to create is unsustainable. Contrary to Thomas L. Friedman's insistence
that today's high-speed global capitalism creates a flat world whose horizons are infinitely expandable,
the world is both literally and figuratively round and, as such, imposes inescapable constraints.
On this finite earth, there can no longer be expansion without contraction-any more than there can
be growth without redistribution. When limits are transgressed, the very networks that sustain life
are threatened.
To understand why we are approaching the tipping point, it is necessary to take a systemic approach.
Financial capitalism is an example of a general principle for highly connected complex systems.
Every such system has, as a condition of its possibility, that which eventually undoes it. In this
case, the commitment to the policies of growth that has enabled the U.S. economy to prosper for
decades now threatens its collapse. High-speed, high-volume markets have created unprecedented wealth
for the .01 percent, but, as the 2008 financial meltdown and the
2010 Flash Crash
demonstrate, they have also made the global economy much more volatile.
The problem is not only, as Michael Lewis argues in Flash Boys, finding a technological
fix for markets that are rigged; the problem is that the entire system rests on values that have
become distorted: individualism, utility, efficiency, productivity, competition, consumption, and
speed. Furthermore, this regime has repressed values that now need to be cultivated: sustainability,
community, cooperation, generosity, patience, subtlety, deliberation, reflection, and slowness.
If psychological, social, economic, and ecological meltdowns are to be avoided, we need what Nietzsche
aptly labeled a "transvaluation of values."
As a lifelong educator, I would like to think that this process might begin in the classroom.
Unfortunately, many of the developments that have changed our economic system have also transformed
our educational system. People often ask me how higher education and students have changed in the
four decades I have been teaching. While there is no simple answer, the most important changes can
be organized under five headings: hyperspecialization, quantification, distraction, acceleration,
and vocationalization.
As I have noted, technologies that were designed to connect us and bring people closer together
also create deep social, political, and economic divisions. The proliferation of media outlets has
led to mass customization, which allows individuals and isolated groups of individuals to receive
personalized news feeds that seal them in bubbles with little knowledge of, or concern about, other
points of view. This trend also infects higher education.
Since the early 1970s, higher education has suffered from increasing specialization and, correspondingly,
excessive professionalization. That has created a culture of expertise in which scholars, who know
more and more about less and less, spend their professional lives talking to other scholars with
similar interests who have little interest in the world around them. This development has led to
the increasing fragmentation of disciplines, departments, and curricula. The problem is not only
that far too many teachers and students don't connect the dots, they don't even know what dots need
to be connected.
The emergence of the Internet creates the possibility of eroding these barriers and breaking
down divisive silos, but the vested interests of nervous administrators and tenured faculty members
committed to obsolete ways of organizing knowledge and teaching have blocked that promising prospect.
Rather than expanding universes of discourse, networking technologies have, in many cases, narrowed
the boundaries of conversation. Dealing with the problems created by a wired world will require
a radical restructuring of the educational system at every level.
The growing concern about the effectiveness of primary, secondary, and postsecondary education
has led to a preoccupation with the evaluation of students and teachers. For harried administrators,
the fastest and most efficient way to make these assessments is to adopt quantitative methods that
have proved most effective in the business world. Measuring inputs, outputs, and throughputs has
become the accepted way to calculate educational costs and benefits. While quantitative assessment
is effective for some activities and subjects, many of the most important aspects of education cannot
be quantified. When people believe that what cannot be measured is not real, education and, by extension
society, loses its soul.
Today's young people are not merely distracted-the Internet and video games are actually rewiring
their brains. Neuroscientists have found significant differences in the brains of "addicted" adolescents
and "healthy" users. The next edition of the standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders will very likely specify Internet addiction as an area for further research. The epidemic
of ADHD provides additional evidence of the deleterious effects of the excessive use of digital
media. Physicians concerned about the inability of their patients to concentrate freely prescribe
Ritalin, which is speed, while students staying up all night to study take Ritalin to give them
a competitive advantage.
Rather than resisting these pressures, anxious parents exacerbate them by programming their kids
for what they believe will be success from the time they are in prekindergarten. But the knowledge
that matters cannot be programmed, and creativity cannot be rushed but must be cultivated slowly
and patiently. As leading scientists, writers, and artists have long insisted, the most imaginative
ideas often emerge in moments of idleness.
Many people lament the fact that young people do not read or write as much as they once did.
But that is wrong-the issue is not how much they are reading and writing; indeed they are, arguably,
reading and writing more than ever before. The problem is how they are reading and what they are
writing. There is a growing body of evidence that people read and write differently online. Once
again the crucial variable is speed. The claim that faster is always better is nowhere more questionable
than when reading, writing, and thinking.
All too often, online reading resembles rapid information processing rather than slow, careful,
deliberate reflection. Researchers have discovered what they describe as an "F-shaped pattern" for
reading web content, in which as people read down a page, they scan fewer and fewer words in a line.
When speed is essential, the shorter, the better; complexity gives way to simplicity, and depth
of meaning is dissipated in surfaces over which fickle eyes surf. Fragmentary emails, flashy websites,
tweets in 140 characters or less, unedited blogs filled with mistakes. Obscurity, ambiguity, and
uncertainty, which are the lifeblood of art, literature, and philosophy, become decoding problems
to be resolved by the reductive either/or of digital logic.
Finally, vocationalization. With the skyrocketing cost of college, parents, students, and politicians
have become understandably concerned about the utility of higher education. Will college prepare
students for tomorrow's workplace? Which major will help get a job? Administrators and admission
officers defend the value of higher education in economic terms by citing the increased lifetime
earning potential for college graduates. While financial matters are not unimportant, value cannot
be measured in economic terms alone. The preoccupation with what seems to be practical and useful
in the marketplace has led to a decline in the perceived value of the arts and humanities, which
many people now regard as impractical luxuries.
That development reflects a serious misunderstanding of what is practical and impractical, as
well as the confusion between the practical and the vocational. As the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences report on the humanities and social sciences,
"The Heart of the Matter,"
insists, the humanities
and liberal arts have never been more important than in today's globalized world. Education
focused on STEM disciplines is not enough-to survive and perhaps even thrive in the 21st century,
students need to study religion, philosophy, art, languages, literature, and history. Young people
must learn that memory cannot be outsourced to machines, and short-term solutions to long-term problems
are never enough. Above all, educators are responsible for teaching students how to think critically
and creatively about the values that guide their lives and inform society as a whole.
That cannot be done quickly-it will take the time that too many people think they do not have.
Acceleration is unsustainable. Eventually, speed kills. The slowing down required to delay or
even avoid the implosion of interrelated systems that sustain our lives does not merely involve
pausing to smell the roses or taking more time with one's family, though those are important.
Within the long arc of history, it becomes clear that the obsession with speed is a recent development
that reflects values that have become destructive. Not all reality is virtual, and the quick might
not inherit the earth. Complex systems are not infinitely adaptive, and when they collapse, it happens
suddenly and usually unexpectedly. Time is quickly running out.
Mark C. Taylor is chair of the department of religion at Columbia University. His latest
book, Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left, is just out from Yale
University Press.
No self-respect cognitive dissonance in
the office...
2/10/06 | Guardian
How do you avoid becoming a corporate drone? Firstly, it helps to accept
that if you spend most of your waking hours confined to the office, it will
eventually get to you. Anyone starting an office job expecting to escape
the politics and petty bureaucracy is in for a shock. You can't expect to
remain dignified in that environment. It's better to recognize your inevitable
deterioration into something contemptible. The only alternative is to join
the ranks of the deluded, seek opportunities and aspire to professionalism
but that's the action plan of the trainee drone.
Of course, jobs are supposed to give people self-respect, not take it
away. But due to the nature of the typical workplace (authority hierarchies,
miscommunication, chaos), employees end up behaving in undignified ways:
concealing things from their bosses, redirecting blame, feeling resentment
over trivial matters, reporting that everything's fine when it isn't, hiding
in the toilets, etc.
Obviously this behavior doesn't fit our beliefs about ourselves as essentially
rational and well-adjusted. The result is cognitive dissonance, which occurs
when our self-image is contradicted by our actions. How can you come to
terms with your 'guilty' behavior if you see yourself as honest and dignified?
You think you're above it all, but the evidence of your own actions shows
that you're immersed in it. Faced with the horror of your out-of-character
behavior, you rationalize and make excuses. You turn into an office drone.
Any smart person with a meaningless job suffers the crippling cognitive
dissonance of: "I am intelligent, my waking hours are spent in stupidity".
Rationalizations are used to mask the frustration: "I'd be bored without
my job" (if you really believe that, it's probably time to consider
entering a nursing home). According to Leon Festinger, creator of dissonance
theory, the less you are paid to do stupid work, the more you will attempt
to rationalize it ("well, it was fun"), rather than admit to doing it for
the money. Remember this next time you hear someone claim to "enjoy" their
underpaid desk job.
As an office worker, don't expect to have any dignity. Perhaps the only
way to stay sane is to accept that you'll turn into something despicable.
Don't fall for the office management propaganda about integrity and professionalism.
In the corporate workplace, self-respect is out of the question it exists
only in the delusions of drones.
Recently, the commander of Canada's military, Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire,
left his work to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. He says he didn't
lose his ability to cope until two years after the mission to Rwanda, when he
became suicidal.
"Sometimes I wish I'd lost a leg," he says on a video produced for counselling
of soldiers.
"You lose a leg, it's obvious and you've got therapy and all kinds
of stuff. You lose your marbles ... very, very difficult to explain, very
difficult to gain the support that you need."
This military commander's testimony lends credibility to the crushing effects
of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, which arises from experiencing one
or more extraordinarily horrific and life-threatening events.
By contrast, teachers' stress typically arises gradually over many
years, resulting in accumulative stress disorder or ASD-commonly called burn-out
or exhaustion. Recently a teacher of 22 years described it this way:
"I'm not sleeping through, waking in the night with panic attacks, loss of memory,
on edge at home and school, mind racing. Calmed myself with a few drinks in
the evening; that made me more edgy, so I quit that. I'm getting more and more
distant from my wife and kids, and I'm burnt out of my career. I don't even
know who I am anymore."
What major factors contribute to teachers' accumulative stress? Take
an idealistic, mission-oriented teacher who tries to meet everybody's needs;
place this teacher in a hurried, time-bound, ever-evolving school system that
can ask for the best on the one hand, and can erode character and destroy trust
on the other; set the school system in communities and among families who question
authority; and add the aging process and the family life events that will inevitably
occur with that teacher. The result: numbers of teachers experience the extreme
effects of accumulative stress on themselves, their work and, eventually, on
their families.
As a counsellor with NSTU, I am privileged to meet some of the most dedicated
teachers in Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, by the time I meet them in counselling,
they are often extremely exhausted, suffering from ASD. This is understandable,
for as General Dallaire says, "You lose a leg, it's obvious." ASD creeps up.
Teachers lose their energy, their sleep, their desire and capability to care,
their identity as a good teacher. They wait and wait, hoping the next weekend,
holiday or vacation will fully restore them. Their families and friends share
the burden. Sometimes it is only when these teachers notice the effects on their
families and friends that they take corrective action.
Without breaching confidentiality, this article gives voice to exhausted,
disheartened teachers and the effects of accumulative stress on their families.
These teachers offer a message of courage for us all.
As teachers gradually accumulate stress, families can lose teachers to teaching.
A husband stands at the back door on August 20 with the family pet beside him.
His wife, a teacher, is going to school to set up her classroom. He mutters
to the dog, "Say good-bye to her, Skippy. That's the last we'll see of her until
next July 1."
Just as family stress goes to school with teachers, so too does work-related
stress, and no scalpel exists that could divide the stress created in the two
main centres of our lives.
Teachers express stress many ways in families. Consider the following:
"And you can forget about sex till March break," declared one teacher
to her chagrined husband. "Too many students, reports and meetings to focus
on anything else."
"So Dad, why are you so grouchy when you come home from school?" a 12-year-old
daughter asks her father, a teacher of 28 years. "Mom tells me to go to
my room and stay out of your way."
Does teaching in today's school affect teachers' home life more than in past
years? Many teachers would say, "Yes, definitely." One male high school teacher
aptly explains, "I'm overwhelmed with kids' problems. They're dealing with probation,
pregnancy, drugs, you name it. The system is designed to burn you out
if you're too conscientious in care of the kids. It's stacked against
you. You can't do the job the way you know is best for the kids. I know I was
a good teacher. I don't know any more if I can even be a decent husband or father."
Teachers commonly describe the burden of guilt and neglect of their own families.
"I put more time and effort into my students than into my own children. And
when I do spend time with my kids, I'm often correcting their behaviour and
trying to control them to live up to my perfectionist standards. Is it possible
to just enjoy my own kids?" asks one beleaguered teacher.
The stress on the family can become extreme when sick leave has been used
up. One anxious teacher put it this way, "I just don't know how we're going
to manage while waiting for the salary continuation decision. And if it doesn't
come through, I'm just going to have to go back to the classroom, even if it
ruins my health for life. My family depends on my income; I have no choice."
Of course, some of the effect of teachers' work stress on their families
is inevitable. As caring persons, teachers take students' needs to heart and
may be unaware of the costs of caring. Teachers may minimize the costs of work-related
stress on families and glibly accept the cost as "part of the price of doing
a good job." For the idealistic teacher, "caring too much" is an oxymoron.
For the exhausted teacher, "caring too much" smacks of reality. And the threat
of breakdown of health, or of couple and family relationships, is often the
bell that tolls the heavy cost of teachers' accumulative stress. As one teacher
observed, "I didn't know my partner meant so much to me till we temporarily
separated. It's funny too-the first time in years that I told my kids how much
they meant to me was when I was down and out. I'm reunited with my partner now,
so I guess this work exhaustion had a silver lining for me with my family."
Teachers daily walk the shoreline of social change, where past ways of thinking
and relating meet future ways of doing and being. This presents both danger
and opportunity: the danger of losing values of the past, and the opportunity
of participating in co-creating the future. Travelling this shoreline throughout
a teaching career requires a delicate balance.
Teaching entails a great deal of planning for tomorrow and evaluating yesterday.
Hence, for teachers it's a struggle to live "today." While evaluating students'
work, teachers are implicitly evaluating themselves, and often coming out feeling
they are less than superb. This can induce considerable self-pressure. By comparison,
most of the working public undergo only annual performance evaluations.
Since most teachers want to create both healthy families and healthy school
environments, how can teachers reduce work-related stress in their homes and
foster healthy work-styles in their schools?
First, recognize accumulative stress as a reality. Don't wait for
the possible breakdown of health or couple-family relationships to toll your
alarm bell. Refuse to live at work. Limit your work time by your energy level
and the clock, not by the time demands of the task.
Contribute to healthy work styles among staff. Support time for self-care,
setting limits and saying "no" as warranted. Share resources, ideas and mutual
appreciation.
Here are four suggestions from teachers recovering from exhaustion.
If you think you're burned-out, talk to someone. Don't let shame prevent
you from seeking support. You need the support of other people.
Be patient. Both medication and talking therapy take time. Don't rush
the recovery time. There's nothing to be gained by going back too soon.
Re-orient your lifestyle. Do activities less out of obligation and more
because they're good to do and you choose to do them.
Spend casual, relaxed time with close friends, your partner and children-time
that doesn't involve achieving a task. Pursue a recreational interest that
uses a different part of your mind/body than teaching. Take time to play,
whatever that means to you.
Teachers often describe the peak of accumulative stress as a breakdown. Later
in the healing process, they may describe it as a breakthrough. It's a breakthrough
to choose a liveable balance of work and play, family life and school life.
It's a breakthrough to the courage to be.
Peter Mullally is a Therapist of Counselling Services at the Nova Scotia
Teachers Union.
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 weekand 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 Pakistanwith 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 donein the shortest amount of time and on a consistent
basis40 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 weekbecause it's probably making the team less effective overall.
A rapidly spreading kind of trauma now affects millions of people every day,
but the English language hasn't yet been extended to deal with it.
Well-known neologisms like `jet lag' and `road rage' describe well-known
phenomena. But what do we call the combination of helplessness and agony
that affects us when our computers or computer-based appliances do inexplicable
things, for which there's no apparent workaround?
I've often seen secretaries in tears when they're trying to cope with name-brand
operating systems. My computer-savvy friends tell me that their vacations with
relatives tend to be occupied mostly by the need to fix hardware and software
glitches. I myself have often cried out for help to colleagues who have generously
made house calls, in order to unwedge my highly customized Linux system.
Recent discussions with friends have led to several good suggestions, including:
cyber despair (David Eisenbud, Talin)
technitis (Chuck McManis)
compu-terror (Steve Diamond)
cyber burned or cyburned (Betsy Zeller, Dave Marvit)
techno lost (Ned Holbrook)
digital dread (Aza Raskin)
techno angst (Jono DiCarlo)
irritable bit syndrome (Charles Merriam)
In a few random conversations I found that the first of these was most likely
to provoke instant recognition and a lively response. But my sample size has
been small.
What to do? I suggest that, the next time you're attacked by this malady,
you run through the list above and see which term best characterizes your feelings.
Then blog about it. The best term should soon rise to the top, and become integrated
into our common vocabulary.
CAUSES OF BURNOUT
To understand the causes of burnout it helps to understand what sustains motivation.
Just as the body needs vitamins and protein for optimal health, certain "nutrients"
are also essential to sustain high motivation: (1) Rewards for good work, and
(2) Feeling you can control things that influence you. These factors nourish
motivation and help overcome burnout.
Lack of Rewards Rewards include praise, feelings of satisfaction,
high self-esteem, raises, bonuses, promotions, fame, credibility, challenge,
adventure, fun, and anything else that is positive to you. Negative
rewards include avoiding criticism, alleviating loneliness, reducing debts,
turning off fear, avoiding guilt, getting away from bad relationships, and
avoiding anything else that you find punitive and unpleasant.
Feeling Powerless We must believe we are potent, that we have
the power to influence what happens to us. I say "believe" because how we
see the world exerts a significant impact upon one's susceptibility to burnout.
Believing that you can't control what happens to you and feeling helpless
is one of the most threatening human experiences. Any time you believe the
world uncontrollable, you are in trouble.
Research suggests, for example,
that Voodoo deaths may be caused because the victims believed they were
helpless. Many concentration-camp prisoners seemed to have died of helplessness.
They were told and believed that the environment - the guards - had total
power over them. Based on his own experience, Bruno Bettleheim, a renowned
psychologist who survived one of the worst Nazi death camps, says that it
was when people gave up trying to influence what happened to them that they
became "walking corpses."
Learned Helplessness Psychologist Martin Seligman spent years
studying the impact of "controllability" on people and animals. He demonstrated
that experiencing uncontrollability tends to undermine motivation to learn
in new situations. Burnout victims have learned that they can't control
their respective worlds so they stop trying to do so, which handicaps their
ability to adapt or learn in the future. In this way they become psychologically
"crippled" and burnout becomes chronic.
When people stop looking for ways to control their situations, they will
stop finding them. Their own self-imposed "blindness" will keep them helpless.
They will remain helpless because they feel helpless. Once a defeatist attitude
is learned, it tends to cling tenaciously. Defeated people see only defeat,
never success, and thereby remain defeated.
PERSONAL POWER
Personal power, the capability to influence the world around you in the ways
you desire, is the opposite of helplessness, which causes burnout. Personal
power is empowering and combats burnout. Personal power is a feeling of I-Can-Do
- a belief that you can act to control your work. While we have little control
over other people, we do have control over ourselves - something we tend to
forget when we're feeling helpless. As we develop our capabilities, we gain
a sense of mastery and control.
The experience of mastery changes everything. Because striving for mastery
focuses your attention on areas in which you are skilled, a sense of confidence
and being in command of yourself develops. Building personal power comes from
developing your capabilities, your powers. It means learning how to get what
you need. To the extent you are able to do this, you are powerful.
MANAGE YOURSELF Effective self-management requires knowledge
and skill. You probably acquired your self-managing skills informally,
from parents and teachers. Consequently, you may not manage yourself effectively.
Properly done, self-management increases your personal power because you
can create situations in which you can give yourself the rewards you need
to sustain high motivation
Acknowledge Yourself Even in unresponsive
and hostile environments you have an inexhaustible source of powerful wins.
You can give yourself acknowledgment and rewards. Unfortunately, few people
know how to use these self-rewards. Most people engage in negative-talk,
a powerful punitive means of self-control. On the other hand, surprisingly
few use self-acknowledgment. Thus, for most of us this self-renewing source
of power remains dormant. Instead, we remain dependent on acknowledgment
from others.
MANAGE STRESS It is important to know how your body and
psyche function and which situations trigger your stress responses. This
understanding can be used to raise and lower your tension level as needed.
Personal power comes in knowing that, although you may not like the difficult
situations, you CAN handle them. Such feelings enable you to rise to the
occasion and to handle difficulties skillfully rather than by avoiding problem
situations. Relaxation allows the body to repair, rest, and prepare for
optimal functioning and to plug into "Remembered Wellness." With practice
anyone can learn to use relaxation to control stress. Personal power increases
when you can relax at will. For example, when faced with a crisis situation,
if you can keep activation within the optimal range for peak functioning
you will remain alert and have all your resources to draw on to deal with
the situation. Confidence grows because you know you can remain cool regardless
of provocation. You feel in command instead of helpless.
BUILD A SUPPORT SYSTEM A strong social support system made up
of family, friends and co-workers can help buffer you against the negative
effects of stress. People with strong social support systems tend
to be healthier and live longer. It's vitally important that you take
active measures to build and maintain your support system.
Cultivate Allies Allies can help you get your job done. Co-workers
can help - or hinder - your accomplishing your objectives. When you have
allies who you can count on to help you get things done, you feel more in
control - even in very difficult situations. Your personal power grows because
you can call on certain people to effect certain change.
DEVELOP SKILLS Inevitably, you will encounter situations requiring
skills you've not yet developed. Personal power comes from knowing
how to arrange learning situations for yourself. When you know how to acquire
the skills you need, you'll have confidence to tackle new challenges and
handle the unexpected.
Stretch Although objectives should be small steps, they should
be big enough to make you stretch. Think of yoga as an example.
When doing yoga you position your body in a particular posture and then
slowly s t r e t c h the muscles you are exercising. Similarly, the
series of small step objectives should slowly stretch your abilities.
Don't worry about the steps being too small. No step is too small
as long as there is some stretch and some movement. Remember the inertia
principle: A body in motion will tend to stay in motion. Use small
steps to keep yourself in motion toward your goal.
MODIFY YOUR JOB Almost every job has some leeway for tailoring
it to better fit your work style. The ability to mesh a job to your
style increases feelings of potency and enjoyment of work.
Alter Job Focus Few jobs are clearly defined. Take advantage
of its ambiguity and shape the job according to what you enjoy doing and
what best capitalizes on your skills and interests. First, look around for
needs and ways you can provide a service. When you see a problem within
your department, write it down, mull it over, and consider how you can convert
it into an opportunity. Always focus on this question: "How can I provide
a service?" Simultaneously review all of your activities. There must be
some you enjoy more than others.
Expand Your Job Expand those parts of your job you enjoy most.
When you discover a service you can provide by engaging in an activity you
enjoy, move on it! And make what you do visible. Be alert to ways of highlighting
the needs you fill. In this way you can mold the job into one that is more
interesting. It will evolve with you, and you'll receive more acknowledgment
for your efforts because you have pointed them out.
CHANGE JOBS Sometimes the best solution is to change jobs.
Too often, however, burnout victims quit an unsatisfactory job without analyzing
the source of dissatisfaction or exploring what is needed, and grab the
next job that comes along. Sometimes the new job is as bad as, or even worse,
than the old one. Personal power comes in knowing what you need in a job
and how to go out and get it.
Use Your Imagination Don't limit yourself. Consider every way
you can imagine to achieve what you want. Look at what skills you have and
then make your plan. When you have made a plan and have determined your
path it's time to go to work. Work as hard as you would for "the company."
Many people will go all out for a job, yet when it comes to themselves and
their own goals, they work half-heartedly. You owe it to yourself to give
it your best shot. Chances are you'll hit the bull's eye. The hard part
is not the reaching, but the deciding what the goal is. All that is required
to get where you want to go is hard work and determination. Remember this:
You could be working just as hard for something you don't want, and don't
even like.
REPROGRAM YOUR THOUGHTS Sometimes your emotions may seem out
of your control. If so, you may be a victim of runaway thinking and
not knowing how to curb your thoughts, you respond to every red flag waved
before you. Personal power comes in knowing how to empty your mind
of negative chatter so that you can focus on the moment and the challenges
at hand. It's through the constant chatter of words that you carry frustrations
from work home with you.
Use Potent Language If you study them you'll discover that most
worrying and negative thinking makes you feel helpless. This is why I call
it HELPLESS THINKING. If you engage in a lot of helpless thinking you will
soon believe what you are saying to yourself and will become particularly
susceptible to burnout. In fact, it is a vicious cycle because as people
fall victim to burnout they tend to engage in more and more helpless thinking,
which accelerates the process. When you keep telling yourself that you are
helpless it makes it very difficult to turn around the situation and beat
job burnout. Consequently, it is vitally important to tune into your thinking
and take corrective action if you hear yourself thinking in helpless ways.
What you need to do is to substitute a helpful thought for the helpless
one. For example, berating yourself for thinking, "Oh, I blew it!" is guaranteed
to result in stress. In contrast, you will experience a greater sense of
control - personal power - if you think, "I made a mistake, but I can learn
from my mistakes." Both thoughts are "accurate" descriptions, but the first
one is a helpless thought that generates feelings of helplessness while
the second way of thinking is powerful because it focuses on what you can
do.
DEVELOP DETACHED CONCERN Detached concern is a higher-order level
of mental control in which personal power is gained by letting go.
This is particularly important for those who work with people having serious
or even impossible problems. It is the attachment to your notions
of how things ought to be than can imprison you and make you feel helpless.
As with the Chinese finger puzzle, it's only when you stop pulling and instead
push your fingers further into the holder that you can break loose.
Laugh a Lot When you catch yourself taking things too seriously,
laugh. Think of the "cosmic chuckle" and of the absurdity of it all. Satirize
your distress. Imagine yourself in a Charlie Chaplin script. Pretend
you are a stand-up comedian and that the disastrous situation is material
for your next gig. As a discipline, practice finding humor in disaster.
You'll save your sanity, your health, and your perspective.
Burnout usually occurs when stress builds and a person feels they are no
longer able to control their world, and lack motivation to proceed. Sometimes
the physical and psychological problems can become severe enough to cause illness
and the inability to function on the job. The worker feels overwhelmed and his
or her career is actually threatened.
SEVEN STRESS-BUSTING STRATEGIES FOR EMPLOYEES
1. Use Humor. Change your perspective on your situation. Learn to
smile, look for the humor in the workplace. Sometimes looking at a situation
or a problem in a different light can help you to feel differently about the
event. A recent UCLA Medical Center study suggests that laughter and humor can
help to reduce stress. Laugh: it's good for you!
2. Pace Yourself. Maintain a practical schedule with your expectations.
Identify job activities that could be simplified, and plan thoroughly to prevent
last minute problems. Use good time management strategies to help pace the workload.
3. Reinforcement. Value yourself and your contribution to the company.
Do the best work you can, even if you feel no one is noticing. Keep reinforcing
positive thoughts in your mind.
4. Release Stressful Emotion. Being frequently angry, filled with
rage or anxiety, is not healthy. Taking a brisk walk or some other physical
activity using the large muscles will help release pent up emotions and aid
the body to eliminate harmful chemical responses.
5. Practice Good Nutrition. Stress robs your body of needed vitamins
and minerals such as vitamin B and vitamin C, potassium, calcium and zinc. A
number of research studies have concluded that stress increases susceptibility
to illness. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables, maintaining a balanced diet
and limiting the amount of caffeine, nicotine and sugar promotes health and
improves your ability to handle difficult situations.
6. Talk to Someone. Share your burden; discuss stressful events with
another person. Often an associate, friend or Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
counselor can help you see the lighter side or offer a fresh approach to the
problem.
7. Take Time for Yourself. Take stress breaks during the day. Stretch
at your desk. Take short vacations at least twice a year. It is important to
take time off for yourself especially during stressful periods.
Burnout reflects an uneasy relationship between people and their work.
Like relationship problems between two people, those between people and their
work usually indicate a bad fit between the two, rather than just individual
weaknesses, or just evil workplaces. And so reversing burnout requires focusing
on both individuals and their organizations to bring them back into sync with
each other.2
Beating burnout is not just a matter of reducing the number of negatives.
Indeed, sometimes there is not a lot you can do about the negative aspects of
work. Instead, it is often more useful to think about increasing the number
of positives, and of building the opposite of burnout, engagement. When burnout
is counteracted with engagement, exhaustion is replaced with enthusiasm, bitterness
with compassion, and anxiety with efficacy
The Six Areas of Burnout
How do individuals and organizations move from burnout to engagement? How
do they make sense of what's going wrong, and figure out how to make things
right? Our surveys and interviews of more than 10,000 people across a wide range
of organizations in several different countries have revealed that most person-job
mismatches fall into six categories: workload (too much work, not enough resources);
control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power);
reward (not enough pay, acknowledgment, or satisfaction); community (isolation,
conflict, disrespect); fairness (discrimination, favoritism); and values (ethical
conflicts, meaningless tasks).3
We originally developed this six-category framework as a way of organizing
the vast research literature on burnout. Our subsequent work then showed that
both individuals and organizations could use the framework to diagnose which
categories are especially troublesome for them, and then to design interventions
that target these problem areas.4 The six-area framework has now
been incorporated into assessment programs for organizations5 and
for individuals.6
To fix burnout, individuals and organizations must first identify the areas
in which their mismatches lie, and then tailor solutions to improve the fit
within each area. In Mark's case, his core problem is work overload. Workers
in the nonprofit sector are distinctly vulnerable to work overload for two reasons.
First, nonprofit organizations may often have fewer resources than organizations
in other sectors, leaving workers with too little time and too few tools with
which to handle their workload. Second, nonprofit employees have high expectations
and are attempting to solve truly monumental problems. Their idealism can lead
them to overextend themselves and take on too much.
Mark is also experiencing an imbalance in the area of values. Although workers
in the nonprofit sector may not face the same ethical dilemmas that many workers
in for-profit companies do, they often feel value conflicts of a different sort:
between the loftiness of their ideals and the realities of their day-to-day
work. This is what is going on with Mark, who often feels so bogged down in
the details of organizing volunteers and coordinating actions that he loses
sight of the larger goal of environmental preservation. His work no longer feels
meaningful to him
Mark also feels a lot of dissatisfaction in the area of rewards. No one goes
into the nonprofit sector to get rich, but Mark expected to enjoy his activist
activities more. He also expected more appreciation and praise from his colleagues
and from the communities he serves.
In contrast, Susan's core problem is in the area of community. 7
In her work setting, she is excluded from her colleagues' circle of support,
and she spends a lot of time feeling isolated and lonely. Being left out of
the loop introduces a second mismatch for Susan, this time in the area of control.
By the time an issue appears on a meeting's formal agenda, the matter has already
been settled in the informal conversations in which Susan could not participate.
As a result, Susan does not feel that she has an adequate say in how she does
her work.
As time wears on, Susan has begun to suspect that her lack of community and
control at work are due to a third area of mismatch: fairness. She wonders whether
the male doctors in the ER are discriminating against her because she is a woman.
Because of this hint of injustice, Susan feels not only anxious and uncertain
about how best to do her job, but also angry and hostile toward her colleagues.
Two Paths to Engagement
There are two paths to banishing burnout: the individual path, and the organizational
path. Both Mark and Susan took individual approaches; they first identified
the mismatches leading to their burnout, and then enlisted their colleagues
and organizations in addressing those mismatches.8
An organizational approach, in contrast, starts with management first identifying
mismatches that are commonly shared, and then connecting with individuals to
narrow these person organization gaps.9 The sidebar (left) describes
how this organizational approach was used in a large organization. This strategy
of working collaboratively on shared problems can be used in organizations of
any size, even those nonprofits that are small and that have limited resources.
No matter the path to engagement, it is important to keep in mind that positive
changes don't just happen. Instead, people must take action, and well-informed
action, at that. Rather than assumptions and "best guesses" about what the problem
is, the six-area diagnostic tool can help pinpoint it more accurately. Solutions
that don't address the problem can be worse than no solutions at all.
For example, we recall attending a meeting of teachers for which the school
superintendent had hired a motivational speaker to inspire them and help them
deal with stress. As the speaker reeled off stories from his own days as an
athletic coach, we watched the teachers sitting silently, their venom rising
with each minute. They did not lack motivation. Decent pay, adequate supplies,
parents' support, a manageable workload, yes. But not motivation. The superintendent's
well-meaning attempt to nip burnout in the bud only nurtured it.
Lightening Mark's Load
Having identified workload as his main relationship problem with his work,
Mark is finding ways to relax during strenuous times. He now takes regular breaks
in which he gets away from the job, either physically (e.g., by jogging around
the neighborhood) or mentally (e.g., by reading a book that has nothing to do
with his activist interests). Even more effective for him are temporary changes
in work, in which he "downshifts" to some less demanding task (e.g., taking
care of routine paperwork, sweeping the floor) before returning to the more
challenging jobs.
Another critical discovery for Mark is that he really didn't have to be the
center of his activist universe. Instead of being the lone person who does everything,
he is learning to delegate tasks, to train others to do what he did, and to
get them to share the responsibility. "Now I don't struggle against the feeling
of burnout," he says. "I'll say to myself: 'Oh, I'm burned out, I'll just sit
here for a while. Let somebody else do it.' And you know what? Somebody else
does."
Mark's new perspective on his place in his activist organization reflects
the wisdom of an older colleague who told him: "When I was younger, I was convinced
that I needed to drive myself every single minute. Now I feel that I can go
to the sauna, and I'll still hate imperialism in an hour and a half. And that's
helped me to stay an activist."
By addressing his workload problem, Mark has simultaneously improved the
fit between him and his activist work on the dimension of value. To relieve
stress, he took several long hikes in the wilderness, which renewed his feelings
of awe at the beauty of nature -- feelings that fueled his commitment to environmental
activism in the first place. "I felt in love. It was a passion I hadn't felt
in a long time. There was very little burnout. Instead there was a craving."
Building Susan's Community
After zeroing in on community as her primary area of self-work mismatch,
Susan first took a few minutes at the start of her next shift to talk with Tom,
one of the most approachable of the doctors. Tom told Susan that he was amazed
that she could feel left out, and assured her that no one intended to exclude
her. Susan didn't quite buy Tom's assurances, but nevertheless replied that
she was pleased to hear this, because she certainly didn't want to go through
the complicated, time-consuming, and awkward process of making a formal complaint.
She was confident that before too long, the ER doctors' clique would know all
about their conversation.
Susan took the second step toward narrowing the gap between her expectations
and her work reality at the next meeting of the ER medical staff. She told the
staff that she was feeling left out of important decisions, and requested that
they include her in all discussions about clinical matters and hospital issues
during her shift. There were a few furtive glances, but overall most people
nodded and said, "Of course."
With Tom and a few other doctors, Susan has smoothly moved into relaxed conversations.
She refers to her feelings of burnout only within the context of working on
better ways of working together. With the other doctors, it has been more of
an uphill battle, but is still an improvement over silence. Since Susan took
her complaints to her colleagues, there have been a lot fewer surprises at medical
staff meetings, making Susan feel like she has more say in her work environment.
She also now realizes that the doctors' previous exclusive patterns were more
a matter of thoughtlessness than a concerted campaign to exclude her -- thereby
assuaging her fears of sexism.
Feeling that she is part of a community, respected, and in control is giving
Susan a renewed enthusiasm for her work. The end of the shift brings the same
familiar pattern of aches and pains from the hours on her feet. But the dullness
of feeling is now rare.
"Looking back now, I'm shocked to think of how close I was to losing my connection
to the work that I love and that I do very well," she says. "It's not just about
working with the patients. It's taking on colleagues and relationships to make
sure you're included and respected."
By confronting the situation in an informed and focused way, Susan has been
able to repair the relationship between herself and her work. An important principle
in Susan's situation is that unfair treatment is difficult to sustain after
it has been brought into the open. There were no defensible grounds for excluding
Susan from professional discussions at work. But the situation persisted until
Susan called her colleagues on their actions.
Shining On
Mark and Susan have had different experiences of burnout, reflecting the
unique qualities of their work settings. Each situation involved a different
area of mismatch, and each called for distinct solutions. Note that neither
attempted to address all of their mismatches at once. Rather, each first identified
and addressed his or her core area of concern.
Both had also begun to feel the personal costs of burnout, which include
poorer health and strained private lives. But at least as important, Mark's
and Susan's organizations had also begun to suffer. When employees shift to
minimum performance, minimum standards of working, and minimum production quality,
rather than performing at their best, they make more errors, become less thorough,
and have less creativity for solving problems. They are also less committed
to the organization and less willing to go the extra mile to make a real difference.
Burnout is not a problem of individuals but of the social environment in
which they work. Workplaces shape how people interact with one another and how
they carry out their jobs. When the workplace does not recognize the human side
of work, and there are major mismatches between the nature of the job and the
nature of people, there will be a greater risk of burnout. A good understanding
of burnout, its dynamics, and what to do to overcome it is therefore an essential
part of staying true to the pursuit of a noble cause, and keeping the flame
of compassion and dedication burning brightly.
Sources
"Mark" and "Susan" are pseudonyms.
For our review of the psychological literature on burnout, see Maslach,
C., Schaufeli, W.B., & Leiter, M.P. "Job Burnout," in Annual Review of Psychology
52, eds. S.T. Fiske, D.L. Schacter, & C. Zahn-Waxler (2001): 397-422.
Maslach, C. & Leiter, M.P. The Truth About Burnout (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1997).
Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. "Areas of Worklife: A Structured Approach
to Organizational Predictors of Job Burnout," in Research in Occupational
Stress and Well- Being 3, eds. P.L. Perrewe & D.C. Ganster (Oxford: Elsevier,
2004): 91-134.
Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement:
A Complete Program for Organizational Renewal (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2000).
Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving
Your Relationship With Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).
See also De Jonge, J. & Kompier, M.A.J. "A Critical Examination of the
Demand- Control-Support Model From a Work Psychological Perspective," International
Journal of Stress Management 4 (1997): 235-258.
Leiter & Maslach, Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving Your
Relationship With Work.
Leiter & Maslach, Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement: A Complete
Program for Organizational Renewal.
WASHINGTON -- Job burnout normally afflicts people in helping or service
professions -- such as ministry or medicine -- but it can affect anyone.
Psychologist Herbert Freudenbeger, who claims credit for the term, defines
burnout as a depletion of energy and a feeling of being overwhelmed by other
peoples' problems.
The condition is analogous to combat stress in that it occurs when
a person has "seen too much, done too much, and had to contend with a situation
for too long," said Col. (Dr.) Karl O. Moe, chairman of the psychology
department at Malcolm Grow Medical Center, Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
Job burnout, he said, results from prolonged work stress. Symptoms
include digestive upsets; a constant sense of fatigue, coupled with insomnia;
and an extreme anxiety over proving one's self-worth.
If not treated, burnout can lead to depression and even suicidal thoughts,
Freudenbeger said in his book "Burn-Out."
He lists warning signs that people should watch for:
-- Exhaustion. Lack of energy associated with feelings of tiredness
and trouble keeping up with usual activities.
-- Detachment. People headed for burnout begin putting distance between
themselves and other people, Freudenbeger said, particularly those with
whom the person has had close relationships.
-- Boredom and cynicism. The burnout victim begins to question the value
of friendships and activities, and even life itself.
-- Increased impatience and irritability. According to Freudenbeger,
burnout victims are usually people who have been able to do things quickly.
However, as burnout takes hold, their ability to do things diminishes and
they become impatient and begin to blame family and coworkers for things
that are their own fault.
-- A sense of omnipotence. Some victims begin thinking that no one else
can do their jobs as well, not even God.
-- Feelings of not being appreciated. Burnout victims want to be appreciated
for their added efforts which really aren't producing more but less, Freudenbeger
said. These feelings result in the burnout victim becoming bitter, angry,
and resentful.
-- Change of work style. Reduced results and conflicts with others eventually
cause burnout victims to withdraw from decisive leadership and work habits,
or to compensate for conflicts by becoming more demanding, tyrannical or
inflexible.
-- Paranoia. Long-term burnout can lead victims to believe that someone
is out to get them.
-- Disorientation. Long-term burnout causes the victim's thoughts to
wonder, speech pattern to falter and concentration spans to become limited.
The person may joke about becoming senile but inwardly, stress and agitation
are the problem.
-- Psychosomatic complaints. Physical ailments such as headaches, lingering
colds, backaches and similar complaints flourish in burnout victims. Although
the complaints may have real physical causes, they are more likely brought
on by emotional stress, which the victim may not want to admit, Freudenbeger
said.
-- Depression. The depression is usually temporary, specific and localized
to one area of life.
-- Major depression. Some burnout victims will develop major depression
that pervades all areas of their lives. Generally, the burnout victim will
stop blaming others for negative circumstances and start blaming themselves.
Instead of being angry with others, he or she will feel guilty for everything
that goes wrong.
-- Suicidal thinking. As the depression progresses, the results can
be suicidal thinking, Fredenbeger said. Some personality types, such as
the hysterical personality, may make suicide threats or gestures that are
manipulative. However, an obsessive-compulsive personality will likely attempt
suicide, he said.
Once a person is burned out, the solution could be in changing jobs. "It
doesn't have to be out of their career field," Moe said. For example, he said
an emergency room nurse could work in a different section of the hospital, "somewhere
that doesn't cause such an emotional drain." After a period of time, the person
could go back to the emergency room, Moe said.
Since prolonged stress leads to burnout, the No. 1 buffer against stress
is social support, Moe said.
"You need to have someone at work whom you can talk with and blow off steam.
You don't even have to talk about the problem, as long as you have enough of
a relationship to know you could talk about it if you wanted to," Moe said.
If support at work is not possible, "talk with someone in your family or
from church, or one of the organizations you belong to," said Moe.
Burnout victims also need to take care of their physical needs with rest
and proper nutrition, according to Drs. Frank Minirth and Paul Mier in their
book "How to Beat Burnout."
Additionally, they recommend that the person talk about his or her negative
feelings rather than bury them. This will help the burnout victim see the situation
more realistically, they said, and move on.
For more information about stress or job burnout, people can contact the
base mental health clinic, Moe said.
[Jan 15, 2007] Burnout
Burnout is a cluster of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion reactions.
It is the result of constant and repeated emotional upheaval associated with
people at home and in the work place. It is created by an environment with too
many pressures and not enough support. People who burn out develop negative
self-concepts and job attitudes, while becoming detached, apathetic, angry or
hostile.
Burnout is a major problem in the helping occupations, where people give a lot
to others but fail to take care of themselves in the process. Professionals
in medicine, social work, law enforcement and education are especially prone
to burnout symptoms.
Of course, burnout can also affect people in other types of careers as well.
Jobs that promote burnout include ones in which workers do repetitive or routine
tasks, never get much feedback or have a lot of responsibility but very little
control.
Employees who are suffering from burnout feel they are answerable for everything
that happens. They feel they receive very little cooperation from co-workers,
and they personally feel powerless to change things. These feelings tend to
make them assume a martyr-like position, become resigned and apathetic, and
focus on the worst aspects of the job. Persons suffering from burnout often
blame others or the situation, rather than taking action for change. How does
burnout happen? It can begin when a person who has difficulty setting priorities
and putting life into balance is confronted with a stressful home or work environment.
Some common sources of job-related stress include:
Poor time management
Conflicts with co-workers, supervisors and managers
Feeling unable or unqualified to do the job
Difficulties adapting to changes in the work routine
Feeling overwhelmed by work
Inability to meet deadlines
Lack of support from supervisors and managers
Feeling that work is meaningless or boring
Many people learn to with job-reowonists, idealists and workaholics. They start
out enthusiastic about their work, dedicated and committed gh energy levels,
positive attitudes and are high achievers.
Over time, stress and the inability to cope with it lead to pessimism and early
job dissatisfaction. Workers in the early stages of burnout feel fatigued, frustrated,
disillusioned and bored. They may suffer from symptoms of stress, such as:
increased consumption of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine
abrupt speech
decreased eye contact during conversations
changes in sleeping and eating habits
withdrawal from other people
moodiness and irritability
As burnout progresses, work hgin to deteriorate. Affected workers arrive late
and leave early. Productivity drops. They become isolated and withdrawn and
avoid contact with co-workers and supervisors. They become increasingly angry,
hostile and depressed. Most suffer from physical symptoms of stress such as:
chronic fatigue
headaches
back pain
dry mouth and throat or difficulty swallowing
diarrhea or constipation
rashes, hives or other skin problems
chest pains or heart palpitations
nervous tics
In the final stages of burnout, workers experience an irreversible feeling of
detachment and a total loss of interest in their jobs. Self-esteem is very low.
Feelings about work are totally negative and chronic absenteeism becomes a problem.
At this point, the only course of action is to change careers.
Burnout doesn't happen overnight, and it can be reversed with the right steps.
Managers can help by:
Using employees to their full potential. Involve them in decision making,
increase their responsibilities and allow them to use their skills and abilities.
Employees need to feel needed and important.
Giving positive feedback and recognizing achievement. Praise and encouragement
are vital to job satisfaction.
Developing a supportive management style. The most stressful management
styles are: intimidating; overly ambitious; cold and arrogant; or demanding
and unfair. If you see yourself in any of these styles, you need to make
a change.
Being fair and realistic in your promotion practices. Unfair promotion
practices speak very poorly of a company's attitudes toward its employees.
Encouraging your employees to share their feelings and concerns. Talking
with co-workers can help put an issue into perspective.
Striving for success. Work groups that are constantly trying new ideas
and taking risks seldom burn out.
Baptist Hospital East's Center for Behavioral Health offers
Building Healthy
Employees, a program which provides on-site training on topics such as team
building, communication, assertiveness, stress management and relaxation, workplace
wellness, conflict resolution, self-esteem and peak performance, and accessing
strengths. The Center for Behavioral Health also offers
Relaxing in
the 90s: A Stress Management Workshop for individuals who want to learn
more about stress management and relaxation techniques. For more information,
call (502) 896-7105.
IT managers may well be on the brink of burn-out, according to research which
found that many technical staff are being pushed beyond the limits in terms
of working hours.
The results found that a quarter of IT managers work a 60-hour week,
which represents almost four hours overtime per day. Also, 90 per cent of IT
managers typically exceed the 48-hour working week set out by the European Working
Time Directive.
Government sector workers are hardest hit, with 100 per cent of respondents
working above and beyond the call of duty. Retail was second worst with 93 per
cent working overtime, followed closely by the education, finance, manufacturing
and hi-tech sectors.
The main reason behind the extra hours was a lack of resources,
according to 28 per cent of the respondents. Another 22 per cent said that the
pressure of development work accounted for extra time, with 10 per cent
highlighting unrealistic deadlines as a major problem. A further 14
per cent said that they were expected to be available for out of hours support
calls.
David Godwin, vice president of strategy at Attenda, the internet outsourcing
company responsible for the research, said that "UK companies needed to adopt
a 24-hour culture if they were to succeed in the internet economy".
But he added that the UK was going about it the wrong way by putting the
"responsibility for maintaining a 24-hour presence onto in-house IT departments
on top of already heavy workloads".
Almost all IT managers in the south of England, excluding those in London,
said they were affected by extra working hours, with the next worst spot being
the Midlands. Around 86 per cent of London managers said they were affected,
with 75 per cent in Scotland and 71 per cent in the north of England.
Godwin likened the IT manager working day to that of a junior doctor. "While
burn-out among IT managers is not a matter of life or death, the potential to
cause damage to their companies' online presence is great," he said.
What a recent study considers overwork in the U.S. workforce at large may
be little more than business-as-usual for the IT professional. Working "12 to
14 hour days and over the weekend is just the status quo for IT," says Russell
Clark, director of E-commerce and portals for OAO Technology Solutions Inc.,
an IT consulting firm with a staff of 2,200, in Greenbelt, Md.
But Clark agrees with the Families and Work Institute survey of 1,003 workers
that it's not just the amount of work that determines whether someone feels
overworked. Hard work paired with personal control over the work--for example,
working to advance in a career, or saving toward college--can give a feeling
of satisfaction. Overwork is more likely when people work longer hours for
external reasons, such as needing to meet management expectations or because
the workload requires that much time.
Or maybe it's boring. IT professionals generally work on a project basis,
and for Clark there's a thrill akin to winning a race in reaching project milestones
and hitting the big deadlines. "You love it," he says. "but if it's a project
you're not interested in, once you get past eight hours, you get upset."
Some say no matter what the job, consistent long hours still add up to overwork.
John Drake, author of Downshifting (Berrett-Koehler, 2001), and founder
of an HR consulting firm known now as Drake Beam Morin, says IT is probably
the worst area for overwork abuse. "IT is a key piece in most companies; long
hours and dedication are expected--especially in small startups where it's 'we
give you stock, you grow the company, work 12 to 16 hours a day,'" he says.
To avoid employee burnout, Clark rotates the work among his 20 staffers,
and encourages a team environment where it's easy to have fun. In a previous
job at Disney/ABC Sports, his group created sports games for PCs and PlayStations.
Project deadlines coincided with the start of each major league season: baseball
was due by April, football by August. "Even if you're not into sports, you'd
get into it," he says. "Staying late and on weekends was just fun to us. If
I were by myself doing the same work, it would've been no fun."
Longer work hours are becoming the norm, though not by choice. The average
American employee works 42 hours a week and would prefer to work just under
35. A recently released InformationWeek Research 2001 Salary Survey finds
that on average, IT staffers work 45 hours a week plus 24 hours of on-call
time. Managers are working 50 hours a week, and on-call time is up 60% from
last year's 15 hours a week to 24 hours.
Beth Devin, senior VP of retail technology, Charles Schwab & Co., says IT
systems are partially to blame for the longer on-call hours. More systems
are 24-by-7, she says, "more are customer-facing, so they can't go down. Before,
you could do lots of background work during hours when the business is closed."
Drake says there's a cost to overwork: It can lead to costly mistakes, resentment,
anger, and even workplace violence. His bottom line: Companies will only do
something about the problem if they see a payoff. Drake expects the big payoff
to be greater retention of good employees and lower recruiting costs.
LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- In a recent column, "No
Thanks, I Don't Want To Be A Millionaire," we reviewed an AARP survey of
Americans' attitudes toward getting rich. Interestingly, they discovered that
lots of Americans are saying: "No, I don't want to get rich. I don't want to
be wealthy. I don't want to be a millionaire."
Why? Because it's just not worth it to them. The price is too high, too much
of a loss of their humanness. However, for a majority of Americans, getting
rich is a major goal -- but they are paying a high price.
Sorry, too busy for Workaholics Anonymous!
"The more we become connected,
the more detached we become to the more
human elements of life."
U.S. News &
World Report
And unfortunately, the price is getting even higher. Listen to how subtle
and deep the problem has become. A recent
U.S. News & World Report tells of a software engineer who was "too busy"
to drive some distance to Workaholics Anonymous meetings for help with his addiction.
So he set up an Internet chapter of the organization. Now he's got time to
spend kvetching online with more than one hundred workaholics worldwide who
attend these digital meetings.
But that's hardly scratching the surface. Turns out that 44% of Americans
call themselves workaholics, well over 100 million. No wonder U.S. News is concerned
about this new addiction:
"Can we keep working harder and harder indefinitely?" Americans are now working
an average of 47 hours a week, an increase of 4 hours in two decades. We're
working longer and harder, and yet a recent Gallup poll shows that 77% of us
"enjoy the time away from work more than they do their time on the job." In
short, most Americans are not "doing what they love." Most are "doing what they
don't love," assuming the money will follow. But at what price?
Will technology sabotage the new economy?
These surveys are interesting. America's economy, our markets, our companies,
our labor force are all focused on increasing productivity, output, returns,
wealth. And one of the great benefits of technology was supposed to be as a
labor-saving tool.
Technology was supposed to increase the efficiency of human effort per production
unit, make life easier, and (we were promised) give us more time for our personal
lives. What a joke! The opposite is the truth. Listen to Stephen Roach of Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter:
Technology traps us into working 24/7. "Courtesy of laptops,
cellphones, home fax machines, and other appliances, knowledge workers are
now online in cars, planes, trains, and homes, virtually tethered to their
offices."
Technology will burnout human beings. "The 24/7 culture of nearly
round-the-clock work is endemic to the wired economy. Acceleration of productivity
growth through hard work alone isn't sustainable: People simply can't work
harder and harder indefinitely. That's a lesson that should not be lost
on America and its brave new economy."
This issue is not going away. In fact, it is absolutely guaranteed to become
a much bigger problem for Americans. Moreover, at some point it is likely to
backfire and sabotage many of the positive gains technology is clearly adding
to our new economy, as Roach hints.
Scary stuff! We know technology's promises are already backfiring on a strictly
materialistic level, forcing us to work harder, not less. But, in addition,
they are also taking away our intangible humanness, especially with Internet
technology, because, "the more we become connected, the more detached we become
to the more human elements of life."
It happened to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams.
All wrestled with monumental cases of writer's block. Now you can add Jon Bentley
and thousands of other modern-age writers to the list.
But Bentley isn't a writer of plays or poetry. He, first and foremost, is
a writer of code. And in the digital age, his affliction is called programmer's
block. The "I've hit the wall" feeling is just the same as writer's block, however,
it happens when the programmer's brain is unable to fathom where that next line
of code will come from.
When
Linux enthusiast site Slashdot earlier this week conducted a programmer's
block session online, hundreds of developers chimed in with their favorite antidotes.
The question: "What do you do if your productivity drops to two lines of code
a day, and you just sit and stare at the code and feel like you don't know how
to do it anymore?"
I just came back to Finland from something of
a nightmarish project in Singapore. Me and a fellow coder wrote almost
1MB of code in a month (and even documented a large part of it in the
same time). I spent some 330 hours coding during that month and quite
often I would hit this very problem for whatever reasons, stress, fear,
anxiety, lack of sleep. Since we were under a very tight deadline, I
had to figure out a way to get around it and I actually came across
something that worked for me. Hopefully someone else will find this
useful.
Finding myself unable to code, I started writing the code in english
on paper. I would sit down in a corner of the room and start writing
in english. "check the user permissions. if the guy is an admin, show
this and that screen. for each line in the screen, make sure it's bla
bla." and so on. Once I was done and saw that I had something that could
work, I took the text, pasted it into the existing source code and started
translating it to code (Java in this case). Maybe it won't work for
everyone, but it did wonders for me and I was able to overcome my block
several times this way
Been there tons of times. What usually works for
me is getting lots of sleep, drink lots of caffiene and do a little
"research". the first to will get your mind into a state where you can
focus better and the research can help you see the possibilities. Newsgroups
are good for this. Lots of examples to peruse while you are thinking.
Getting started is the toughest part when you are stuck, so just start
trying things and a solution will usually come to you.
Coder's block seems the biggest problem for me when I don't have
confidence with what I'm doing. Recently a large Intranet project I
am working on did a 180 degree turn when I was asked to reimplement
my work in VBA/ASP instead of PHP. I hit a wall. I felt like I was being
asked to "dumb down" my application and implement it in a buggy language.
What finally got me going was what I mentioned above. It's really a
lot like running. Sometimes you have to push through the low points
to keep going.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
Reference Services Review 20 (Summer 1992), 7-14,50. -- All rights reserved.
(mirror
Fatigue)
COPING WITH TECHNOSTRESS: INDIVIDUAL STRATEGIES
In a sense, all reactions to stress--from initiating a self-instruction program
to hiding under one's desk--are forms of coping. Some, however, are more
constructive, more appropriate to the reference workplace, and more likely to
succeed than others. Coping with stress is a highly individual matter;
different people react to a situation in different ways. Here are some
guidelines for individuals facing technostress:
Relax
It is easy to get so involved in reference problems, or so drawn into the
cerebral, precise, high-speed world of the computer, that you forget the intimate
connection between body and mind. Some of the most effective techniques
for immediate relaxation work through the body: for example, breathing deeply
and regularly, or alternately tensing and relaxing muscles. Other
techniques free the mind from mechanical routine: for example, visualizing yourself
in an idyllic, peaceful setting. Disciplines such as yoga and t'ai chi
combine both aspects, and can be very rewarding; but even the simplest relaxation
methods are vastly better than no relaxation at all. [17]
Stay Healthy
Sound general health may be an individual's greatest ally in coping
with technostress, as it is with other forms of stress. Taking
care of one's self naturally includes getting proper nutrition, exercise,
and rest. [18] The more intense the work environment, the more
important it is to place this in perspective and make sure one's off-the-job
activities and interests are sufficient to provide both physical and mental
variety. Whatever your preference--climbing rocks, listening to Mozart,
petting the cat, or just sitting barefoot on the back porch with a glass of
iced tea--the injunction to "get a life" has special meaning for those
overburdened with high tech.
Cultivate a Positive Attitude
While reading articles about technostress is not recommended as a prime relaxation
technique, it certainly helps to realize that you are not alone.
Recognizing that stress is natural, that ambivalent feelings toward technology
are acceptable, and that many others in the profession have the same problems,
opens the way to a more relaxed and positive attitude.
Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated the importance of "self-talk"--the
internal monologue of self-evaluating statements that forms a large part of
most people's mental activity. Seemingly simple techniques, such as replacing
negative thoughts with positive affirmations, can be very effective in overcoming
self-doubt and perfectionism. [19] If you find yourself thinking "I'll never
get the hang of these CD-ROMs," try replacing this with "I can help most people
who come to the desk with CD-ROM questions." When faced with a new
challenge, think back and visualize your past successes in similar circumstances.
Finally, cultivate a sense of humor--specifically, the ability to laugh
at your own situation (as opposed to waxing sarcastic about computers
or library users). This may be the most important technique of all; it
is certainly the best barometer of psychological health.
Manage Your Time
As the notion of negative self-talk implies, technostress can become
a self-fulfilling prophecy; the perception that one is a victim can get in the
way of constructive choices and actions. Conversely, positive
steps that move a person away from victim status are likely to improve a stressful
situation.
An excellent first step is to devote some time each week to learning
and exploration. Since there is never enough time, and since urgent
everyday demands will always be competing for attention with long-range learning
goals, this will probably require a conscious setting of priorities and some
skillful time management. To reduce external interruptions and demands,
set aside some personal space and time for learning, with the understanding
that calls are to be returned later, visitors asked to come back at another
time, and E-mail not monitored.
Set Realistic Goals
No one can be an expert at everything. To guide the learning
process, pick an area where you can make a contribution and concentrate your
efforts there. Approach this personal territory with a spirit
of exploration but also with tangible goals in mind, such as preparing for a
demonstration to other staff. When you reach a goal, celebrate!
MANAGING TECHNOSTRESS: ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES
Clearly, the individual initiatives described above are most likely to succeed
in an organization that encourages and rewards these efforts, placing an explicit
value on professional development and adaptation to change. Here are some concrete
steps that department heads, online coordinators, and administrators can take
to support front-line staff: [20]
Believe in Each Individual
Some people on any reference staff have special aptitudes for searching,
some for teaching, some for pioneering, and some for applying established methods.
Each has his/her individual starting point for development. One may be
ready to explore the Internet, while her colleague may need to take a typing
class to become an effective searcher. All are worthy, and each can make a contribution
if given the proper support. Especially where a staff member's self-esteem
is on the line, an attentive and positive attitude on the part of a department
head or coordinator can make a significant difference. This is one area
in which "management by wandering around" pays real dividends.
One way to make people more comfortable with new technologies is to provide
a low-anxiety setting for learning. For example, at The University of
Texas at Austin General Libraries, a "Prototype Information Workstation" [21]
was set up for testing and demonstration purposes, and staff were invited to
sign up for individual practice sessions. When few responded, the online
coordinator began offering individual guided orientation sessions using this
machine. The usual agenda consists of a quick review of the workstation's capabilities,
followed by whatever the learner wants to explore; other universities' online
catalogs and various Internet resources are common topics of interest. The sign-up
rate is still low, but so far at least one person per department has taken advantage
of this opportunity.
Foster Cooperation
While some people work and learn best on their own, many can benefit from
the mutual support of a team setting. One useful technique for helping new searchers
overcome their initial anxiety is the "buddy" or "mentor" system in which the
novice is guided by a more experienced colleague--first watching some actual
searches, then "soloing" under the mentor's supervision.
Most reference department heads and library managers have learned the value
of involving staff in planning for new technologies and services: to foster
a sense of control and ownership, and (pragmatically) because they know a lot.
Designated groups and task forces can be especially valuable when the initiative
comes directly from the staff. At UT Austin, for example, the library
administration recently began inviting staff to submit proposed charters for
"Innovation Teams ... to explore library-related problems and issues in a creative
manner and to seek solutions that will benefit the organization." [22]
Organize and Filter the Information Barrage
Department heads and online coordinators are responsible for seeing that
staff get current information about new technologies and systems. However,
as anyone with a full in-basket knows, merely routing printed information does
not guarantee that people will pay attention to it, let alone act on it.
There may not be time to sit down and write digests or reviews for the staff,
but some selectivity in routing materials, and some indication of what is most
important, can help. Other typical means of communication include searchers'
meetings and forums featuring guest speakers, demonstrations, or discussions
of service issues.
Provide Opportunities for Hands-on Practice
Developing and retaining computer skills requires application of the proverb
"I hear and forget; I see and remember; I do and understand." Not surprisingly,
researchers have found that experienced searchers perform better than novices,
and that "even a brief acclimatization can result in significantly enhanced
results." [23] While many libraries take advantage of online training
provided by vendors and database producers, effective learning requires ongoing,
hands-on practice.
Typical practice opportunities include use of DIALOG's ONTAP files, EPIC
practice files, and equivalents on other systems; offline practice on CD-ROMs
that operate like their online counterparts (e.g., DIALOG OnDisc); and where
equipment permits, the chance to "work out" on new CD-ROM systems before they
go public. A good case can also be made for offering each qualified searcher
a certain amount of subsidized searching on actual online databases, for purposes
of practice, demonstrations, and individual research. Experience with
a $50/searcher/year subsidy at UT Austin suggests that not all searchers will
take advantage of it (a help at budget time!), and that those who do appreciate
this useful "perk."
Distribute the Expertise
In today's complex environment, it is unrealistic to expect each librarian
to completely master every information system. All reference staff need
to have a basic level of competence on major end-user systems, and possibly
on some mediated systems as well. [24] Beyond that level, it makes
sense to divide up the territory, putting specific people in charge of certain
technologies, vendor systems, or databases.
This distribution of responsibility benefits the individuals involved, by
letting them concentrate their energies and attain mastery in specific areas.
It benefits the online coordinator, who can draw on the assigned "experts" for
advanced assistance. It also benefits staff and users in general, since
reference staff and administrators alike will know where to go with questions
or referrals.
The classic example of this strategy, as applied to new technologies, is
the Library Technology Watch program at the University of California at Berkeley.
In this program, six staff members serve as volunteer "topic experts" specializing
in "Optical Disk Technology (including CD-ROM), Hypermedia and Multimedia, Information
Transfer (including downloading from databases and catalogs into personal bibliographic
databases), Networks and Networking (BITNET, the Internet, etc.), Expert systems
and Artificial Intelligence, [and] Emerging and Miscellaneous Technologies."
Participants devote five hours per week to this program, with their other
responsibilities shifted accordingly. They are expected to "read current literature
in the field, summarizing and routing to other Library staff as appropriate;
contribute to a monthly attachment to CU News of annotated citations of current
literature; draft position papers as required for Library policy advisory committees
and/or Library administration; give presentations to Library groups or staff
at large; consult with peers at other institutions; serve on appropriate task
forces or committees; [and] cultivate contacts with faculty engaged in information
technology research and with appropriate Information Systems and Technology
staff." These duties emphasize serving as an information resource in the
chosen area, rather than troubleshooting, training, or being the sole provider
of direct services. The first year's experience with this program reportedly
has been very positive. [25]
Simplify the Technicalities
Librarians who are reluctant to do online searches often complain that the
process is cumbersome, with too many technical details to remember. While
lobbying vendors to streamline their systems and adopt the NISO Common Command
Language may have salutary long-term effects, there remains much that online
coordinators can do in the short term to improve the local interface for searchers.
Paul Heckel's advice to software designers is applicable here: "The effective
communicator looks for simplicity as it will be perceived by his audience, and
he will do complex things to achieve that simplicity." [26]
Are your searchers learning logon sequences that could be built into "auto-logon"
scripts, one for each vendor? Most communications programs have this capability.
Once this is accomplished, consider providing a menu-based environment that
presents a list of online systems and lets staff initiate a search by selecting
the one they want. On an MS-DOS machine, this can be done with batch files
or specialized programs such as Automenu; on a Macintosh, with careful arrangement
and naming of windows and icons.
Once searchers are logged on, one-page "cheat sheets" are a speedy, convenient,
and anxiety-reducing alternative to lengthy printed manuals. Several vendors
now provide this kind of documentation under such names as bluesheets, aidpages
or reference cards. Similar sheets are worthwhile for the communications
software itself, or for particular search activities such as duplicate removal,
output formatting, or downloading from CD-ROMs. The goal is to change
these situations from "emergencies" to routine matters.
Lower the Anxiety Threshold
Another common complaint from searchers is the "ticking meter" phenomenon.
Particularly in a mediated search when the customer is present, the buildup
of online costs creates psychological pressure that can distract the searcher
and result in mistakes.
To reduce this pressure, searchers at UT Austin have a financial "safety
net." If a searcher makes an error or encounters a system problem that
significantly increases the search cost, he/she has the option of having the
library pay for that portion of the search, charging the customer only for the
successful portion. Having this option available manifestly reduces anxiety;
when it is exercised, explaining the situation to the customer provides some
immediate positive public relations. Reports of such "charge-offs" give
the online coordinator an indication of possible training needs. Since
it is seldom invoked more than once or twice a month, this policy has proved
to be affordable.
Online systems can also be designed to reduce anxiety. DIALOG's recently
announced "set notice" command, which causes a warning message and cost estimate
to appear whenever the searcher gives a command that would generate output costing
more than a preset amount, should have a salutary effect. [27]
Set Priorities
Operating library services with a static or decreasing staff and budget is
a challenge that requires explicit setting of priorities at the individual,
departmental, and library levels. This process must include specification
of low as well as high priorities. In the environment of the 1990s, inability
to make these choices (even when masked by a "we do it all" attitude) is a sure
way to intensify stress among staff.
One way to delineate priorities is to specify the levels of service to be
given to various user groups. Many libraries have policies in place regarding
eligibility for online search services. An example of a more comprehensive
approach is the "Library Service Priority Program" recently announced by UC
Berkeley.
As new service patterns emerge, libraries need to consider how their markets
for computer-based information are segmented and which services should be supported
by various kinds of staff activity. This process involves both philosophical
and pragmatic questions. What is the library's responsibility to ensure
the quality of search results--and, given differing user needs, what is "quality"
in the first place? Should users of "full-service" (mediated) search services,
online end-user services, or public CD-ROM terminals have priority for staff
time? Given clear and realistic instructional objectives for each type
of user, what is the most cost-effective means of delivering instruction in
each case? Is the demand for equipment troubleshooting great enough to
justify dedicated staff? The answers to these questions will vary from one institution
to another. The important thing is that they be asked and that locally
"correct" solutions be implemented.
New technologies also call for libraries to set priorities, lest our reach
(what is technically possible) exceed our grasp (what staff are actually equipped
and trained to deliver on a daily basis). At UT Austin, for example, a
current priority is to get searchers set up with the software, information,
and skills required to telnet to other online catalogs and information systems
on the Internet. A similar program to foster use of Internet file transfers
(via ftp, WAIS, etc.) is being deferred until this first step is accomplished.
Generally, we will promote a new technology to users only after staff are sufficiently
familiar with it. This may not always place us on the cutting edge of
progress, but it does allow staff to master proven techniques at a reasonable
pace, thus helping to ensure that we can deliver what we promise
The paperwork is mind-numbing. What are my areas of strength as a teacher,
and what are my reasons for selecting those areas of strength? What are
my areas for growth and the reasons for selecting those areas for growth?
That comprises the first two pages of paperwork. I haven't started on
anything yet because I just hate it.
Then I must answer the following questions
about the lesson I will teach on Tuesday morning - notice the explanations in
parentheses for anyone who can't figure out the first part:
(1) What is the student goal(s)/objective(s) for the lesson?
(What is the ultimate desired outcome of this lesson?) In the event
that students are working on individual objectives, choose 2 or 3 students
and provides their objectives.
(2) What information do you have regarding your students' current abilities
in relation to this objective(s) and how has this impacted the design of
this lesson?
3. What teaching strategies will you use to teach this objective?
(How will you accomplish your objective(s)?)
4. What are the student indicators of success within this lesson?
(What behaviors will you look for to determine whether or not the students
are meeting the objective(s)?)
5. Identify the data which will be collected to evaluate the students'
achievement of the goal(s)/objective(s).
6. What future assessments will you use to determine the retention
and ongoing application of today's learning?
7. What is the relationship of this lesson to the larger unit of
study and to your annual goals?
8. Do you have any concerns at this point regarding this lesson
or these students?
Then there is another page for the "Reflecting Information Record" that has
seven more questions to be done after the evaluation/observation. I won't
bore you by writing those out. Then there are (I SWEAR it's true) SIX
more pages of paperwork to finish after that. There's an "Educator Information
Record" and "Professional Growth Plan" and a "Future Growth Plan." Right
now I have no idea what the difference is in those last two. Guess I'll
find out soon.
Yes, I'm procrastinating by writing this post instead of working on
the work (that's a joke that some of my readers may get - depending on what
books your school system requires you to read). But REALLY, is all this
paperwork crap necessary?
Reading the teachers' diaries is an exercise in frustration: Tales of breaking
up fist fights; confiscating scissors from one student threatening to stab another;
a student threatening to slash a teacher's tires - and time and time again,
there are no consequences for misbehavior. The offending students are simply
returned to the classroom.
Standardized testing has consumed increasingly larger parts of the day. Some
teachers were pulled from their regular teaching assignments for up to five
weeks as they administered and graded tests. One teacher wrote: "This situation
emplifies what education in New York City has become - preparing for tests,
testing, and grading tests. What has happened to teaching?"
Mandated teaching requirements also created some frustration for the teachers
- especially the veterans. "Sometimes I feel like I'm a robot regurgitating
the scripted dialogue that's expected of us day in and day out," one writes.
Another teacher restates her day despondently: "Teach mini-lesson... Student
raises hand with question. Tell him to put hand down. Students not allowed to
ask questions during mini-lesson. Feel guilty."
The report also describes constant interruptions during class time - administrators
calling seeking paperwork, PA announcements and parent visits. One Common Good
researcher observed a teacher who was interrupted sixteen times in a single
day. A certain amount of test preparation, disciplinary action and paperwork
can and should be expected in a typical workday for any teacher, but the situations
described in the diaries can't possibly be what anyone truly intended. Layer
upon layer of new mandates developed without a teacher's voice - much less a
real collaboration between classroom professionals and those who supervise them
- have resulted in a system that substitutes time- consuming bureaucratic routines
for quality teaching and learning.
This is not unique to New York. If we are serious about improving America's
schools, we need to listen carefully to what teachers are telling us. We must
bring order and safety to our schools, because learning suffers in an environment
that is neither safe nor secure. We need to strike a healthy balance between
teaching and testing, because students are denied important opportunities or
new learning when testing is excessive. And we must respect the skill and commitment
of our educators, providing them with the professional latitude they need to
do their jobs, rather than drowning them in paperwork and micromanagement.
[Nov. 5, 1999]
NetSlaves ~ Usually ships in 2-3 days
Bill Lessard, Steve Baldwin / Hardcover / Published 1999 Our Price: $13.97 ~
You Save: $5.98 (30%) Average
Prudloe Vensigian from Deep Run Mobile Home Park, Maryland , November
1, 1999
*****These guys are nuts, and that's great! Oh yeah! From reading
Netslaves it's easy to tell that these guys have been on the front lines
of the new media wars for a long, long time. Not in the Generals' tents,
but out where the layoff bullets fly and talented employees are more often
rewarded by watching their kiss-ass co-workers get promoted over their heads
than by anything else. If you are in, or want to get into, the fast-paced
Internet go-go economy, you must read this book. No, you're not the only
one who has found (or will find) that the pot of gold at the end of the
Internet rainbow has already been emptied by investment bankers and other
leeches, and that your share is just big enough to rent a studio apartmen,
pay your ISP bills, and buy takeout pan pizzas every few days. I create
Web site content for a living, so I live what these guys write, and dammit,
I still love my work as much as ever despite the fact that doing the scut
work behind the Internet is just as horrid as Steve and Bill say it is.
As the late songwriter and newspaper humorist Sylvia Miller put it, "If
misery loves company, then you're the one for me. You like to cry into your
beer, wine always makes me shed a tear."
If you read newspapers, books, or follow Net-business coverage on TV, you might
well think work on the Net is mostly about the billionaires who found Hotmail
or Yahoo or Netscape, or the clean, benefit-laced, campus-like work environments
they provide. You'd have no way of knowing the much more pervasive and unnerving
reality: for every one of those there's a zillion companies that come into the
world still-born, fail miserably, make and sell crummy stuff, and hire countless
miserable, exploited, harassed and burned-out programmers, techies, geeks and
nerds.
Baldwin and Lessard are combat veterans of the Net, both in terms of writing
and personal experience. They are also long-standing Truth Tellers.
In addition to writing about computing for a number of magazines and websites,
they also run the guerilla website
NetSlaves, a running
testimonial to real life for many in the hi-tech workplace.
"NetSlaves" is a terrific extension of the site, one of the few books to
come off of a website that really works as a book. Lessard and Baldwin have
a powerful story to tell, and they do it with a lot of punch. "NetSlaves" ought
to be handed out to every graduate of every tech school, and given to every
new employee of every Net company.
Baldwin and Lessard say their grand "pre-alpha" statement about the Nature
of Net-Slavery is this:
"Technology has changed, but human nature hasn't. Whether it's the Gold Rush
of 1849 or the Web Rush of l999, people are people. More often than not, they're
miserable, nasty, selfish creatures, driven by vanity and greed, doing whatever
they can to get ahead, even if it means stepping on the person next to them,
crushing the weak, and destroying themselves in the process."
The authors don't have a particularly high regard for many forms of Net work,
which they lambaste as the New Media Caste System, but they care about Net workers,
and the book is curiously affectionate, even loving about them, as well as a
hoot to read.
Both concede that one of their purposes in writing "NetSlaves" is to have
the book serve as a quasi-historical, quasi-anthropological reflection of a
particular moment in the culture.
Although the tone of "NetSlaves" is informal and funny, the point is pretty
serious. "NetSlaves" has done what legions of reporters and authors have so
far failed to do: paint a truthful picture of about the new nature of work in
the techno-centered world.
For all of the media blabber about Net commerce and hi-tech startups, life
in this fast lane can be brutal - insane hours, almost no employee-employer
loyalty, greed and moral cowardice, help-desk geeks driven mad by enraged customers,
back-stabbing, savage pressure, competiveness and the many resultant neuroses
from all of the above.
Baldwin and Lessard make no pretense of objectivity. They write with almost
ferocious authority and persuasiveness. They describe themselves as "two angry,
cranky bastards out for blood" on behalf of their exhausted selves and the countless
burnouts, geniuses, thieves, opportunists, workaholics and losers they've encountered
along the way.
"NetSlaves" gives us a whole new language for the villains and back-stabbers
who make up the hi-tech workplace. Particular venom is reserved for the "Fry
Cooks," the "get it done at all costs" project people of the New Media Caste
System. (There's also the "Garbagemen," the workers who have to get servers
up and running when they crash).
My favorite chapter is about the "Cab Drivers," the haunted and hunted itinerant
Web freelancers who design sites, followed closely by "Gold Diggers and Gigolos,"
a scathing portrait of the ambitious, night-crawling, hard-partying, butt-kissing
movers and shakers and wannabees of hi-tech work world.
"Most Web sites are designed by itinerant, restless young people who have
given up the constraints of working for one company in particular, in exchange
for the self-determination of pursuing their own path. The rationale is that
they can earn a higher hourly rate and pick and choose their projects.
"The reality, however," write Lessard and Baldwin, "is that these Cab Drivers
have to constantly hustle for work and their passengers, or clients, who are
also cash-crunched, are notorious for skipping out on their fares. Added to
this is the lack of health benefits that Cab Drivers face - a plight which has
forced many to simply neglect themselves." This is a world in which workers
are terrified or despondent when forced to take a few weeks off, convinced they'll
fall behind forever.
"NetSlaves" succeeds wonderfully in its goal to tell the truth about a particular
culture at a critical juncture in time. It is, in fact one of the few telling
looks inside the new kinds of workplaces springing up in the hi-tech, global
economy. Workers beware.
Its 4:30 am on a Friday and I just finished the last Mountain Dew. We ran
out of coffee hours ago, the remains of it now black sludge at the bottom of
the pot. The buildings air conditioning went off sometime the previous night
and its up to almost 90 degrees in the server room. The two volunteer hackers
on the staff went home after 12 hours, leaving me and the sysadmin
This is a normal day for me.
I'm a systems engineer in the client services division of a network security
software company. Basically what that means is that when networks break, I fix
them.
I am 22 years old, I make a large multiple of the national average salary,
and if I cashed in my stock options I could buy a very nice house. I'm also
sixty pounds overweight, I sleep an average of four hours a night, and I have
several ulcers. I usually spend about 60 hours a week at the office, but I'm
on call 24 hours a day seven days a week. If I was honest with myself Id probably
say I worked about one hundred hours last week. This is a normal life for someone
working in this industry.
We live in a world today that runs on information. And people want all of
it now. When was the last time you actually wrote out a personal letter to someone,
on paper, in pen? Why bother when E-mail is so much faster and easier? But what
goes on behind the scenes when you hit the "send" button? There are thousands
of people out there just like me who have titles like "Network engineer" and
"Systems administrator". We keep that information flowing, and we get paid what
seems like a lot of money to do it. If you've been in the market for a good
network admin lately you know what I mean. The market is pushing the salary
into the 100k+ plus range for someone with the necessary experience to handle
even a relatively small network, never mind what the really large companies
like State Farm insurance or Wells Fargo bank have.
I started work on this problem with the sysadmin on Thursday before the close
of business, getting things set up, preparing for the changes etc The company
was switching internet service providers that night because the previous one
hadn't provided the level of service they needed. This entailed changing the
IP addresses, and DNS configurations of every machine in the building, running
three different operating systems, probably two hundred machines all told, then
setting up the servers, routers, and switches necessary to get it all running.
It's a big job, but with six people working on it we figured we could get it
done before start of business the next day. Normally you would do this kind
of thing over a weekend, but the ISP could either do the changeover tonight,
or wait till next week, and we needed to be online before Monday.
Getting back to what happens when you press the send button. You expect the
computer to send the message, and that the person it was sent to will receive
it. What happens to the message then is an incredibly complex series of storage,
sending, routing, switching, redirecting, forwarding and retrieving, that is
all over in a fraction of a second, or at most a few minutes. But you don't
care how or why it gets there, only that it does, and this is all you should
care about. After all you don't have to know how your cars engine works in order
to drive it right. But someone has to know in case it breaks. And when your
email breaks you expect someone to fix it. It doesn't matter what time it is,
or where the message is being sent, you want it to get there now.
Its now 8 am and the network is still down. We've managed to isolate a routing
problem and are in the process of fixing it. The ISP gave us the wrong IP addresses
and now we have to go back and redo all two hundred machines in the building.
The router was crashing and we couldn't figure out why. Two hours on the phone
with the vendors support, and three levels of support engineer later we fix
it. People are starting to come in to work and ask why they can't get their
email. The changeover process takes us about three hours and finally everyone
has the right IP, but things still aren't working right. A bunch of people use
DHCP for their laptops and the DHCP people cant get out to the net. The CEO
of the company is one of those people
So what do we do? Well we hire people to take care of the network. And we
give them benefits and pay like any normal employee. We also give them pagers,
cell phones, a direct phone lines to their houses so that any time, any where,
we can get them, because the network could go down, and we DEPEND on that network,
and those people. This is where things go skew from the normal business model.
All compensation is basically in exchange for time. The only thing humans
have to give is their time. When I pay you a salary it is in exchange for me
being able to use your abilities for a certain period of time every year. The
assumption is that the more experienced or knowledgeable you are the more your
time is worth. This works fine when you are being paid a wage, but salaried
employees aren't. They exist under the polite fiction that all their work can
be done in a forty hour period every week, no matter how much work there is.
We all know this isn't the case of course. And when it comes to Systems administrators
and network engineers that polite fiction isn't so polite. In exchange for high
salaries and large stock options the company owns you all day and all night,
every day and every night. You are "Mission critical". High salaries become
an illusion because when it gets down to it your hourly rate isn't much better
than the assistant manager of the local Pep Boys.
I finally went home at 1 that afternoon. I couldn't stay awake any more and
if I didn't leave right then I wouldn't have been able to drive home. The funny
thing is I felt guilty for leaving. Things still weren't working quite right,
and I felt like I should have stayed until they were. Even funnier is that I
volunteered for this. The only part of the job that I actually had to do was
to change a few IP addresses and configure the firewall, but I thought I'd lend
a hand, and I couldn't do the firewall till everything else was working anyway.
My wife hadn't seen me in two and a half days, and I could barely give her a
kiss when I walked through the door and collapsed on my bed. The SysAdmin was
fired a few hours after I left. Back to work Monday morning.
From reader comments:
like furnace stokers (Score:2, Funny) by [email protected] (http://durak.org/sean/)
on Monday July 26, @06:57AM EDT (#2) (User Info) http://durak.org/sean/
i sometimes liken system and network admin to being a coal stoker in the
basement of a big building, just shoveling coal into the furnace 24/7 to
keep the business above running. punchline of your story is that they
fired the (only?) full time system administrator. personal and professional
info on homepage: http://durak.org/sean/ Amen Brother (Score:1, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, @06:58AM EDT (#3)
Been there. All I can suggest is that you make a serious effort to spend
more time playing and less time working. When I left my last job, I had
8 weeks vacation accrued, and a real bad attitude. I took two months off
working, and now I limit my work week to 50 hrs on regular weeks, and anytime
I work more than that, I take off a day or half day in the following week.
This has really helped me be a lot nicer person overall (and my wife REALLY
likes that). I have always met folks in high positions who DO appreciate
my effort, and have thus always had stellar reviews and reccomedations for
future employment. Good luck, and stay sane.
[July 15, 1999] Information overload can be coupled with real overload, that
is characteristic of startups.
They think that because they work 18 hours a day, neglect their home
life, end up divorced, have kids that don't know them, and few real friends,
they are "Heroes". They gave their all, 110%. Guess what, for that 110%,
you will get a watch and maybe a small pension when you retire. You will
dye alone, and no one that ever worked with you will care. There is so much
more to life than the grind. People who overwork themselves aren't heroes,
they are idiots...
Another reader stated about WEB-related jobs
I work in "the Industry" and telecommute from home (very small apartment
on the 5th floor). I have 10+ people over me and a few below me, and I've
never met any of them face to face -- I only know them by e-mail, though
I work with them every day for 18+ hours, sleeping on a futon in between.
Pay is good, but it's very isolated -- no human contact at all, and I
get very tired of staring at the same Netscape, Emacs, and shell windows
all day, every day.
I go through 150+ ounces of dew and coke every day, and there's nothing
directly outside but traffic and other buildings. Time pressure is also
fairly high. Everything must always be done "within 24 hours" because that's
the way the Web works, I guess. I'm getting fairly tired of working this
way.
Another interesting quote:
You know, media companies aren't the only ones. ANY sort of internet
startup, and I've worked for MORE than one, has so many unreasonable demands
that it's absurd.
And in my experience, most of it's the people in charge. I'm working
for a startup now. Hating every minute of it. I'm expected to work 80 hour
weeks, be on call, do customer tech support (I'm the system administrator),
and do seven other people's jobs while I'm at it.
Which *NECESSITATES* a 70 hour work week. Every.. freaking.. week! And
to add insult to injury, I'm not even paid 1/4th of what I'm worth according
to every salary survey out there. And of course, I'm going to be the first
one asked to take a pay cut or vacation when the VC runs out. Which I expect
to be very soon.
The company is a management disaster. Ignorance and blatant lack of record
keeping and blatant lack of research has already wasted over $4 *MILLION*.
And of course, in typical "let's get ready for that day far FAR away when
we make an IPO" fashion, we have a CEO, CFO, CTO, and COO already. Who's
combined salaries could buy me *two* RS/6000 SP2 Advanced Switches (which,
last check, are over $100k/ea) *AND* a Lexus!
Yet another:
Why DON'T you take your own advice? I've left two companies so far, when
the management got absolutely intolerable--when the 'con' list got longer
than the 'pro' list.
Two truths I've learned in my first two internet jobs (since '94, when
I graduated university):
Once you lose absolutely all respect for management because
of their incompetence, there is no way they can earn it back. It's time
to leave.
When nobody in your chain of command knows what you do and how...
when it's "assholes all the way up," it's time to leave.
Michael Wolff / Paperback / Published 1999 Our Price: $11.20 ~ You Save:
$2.80 (20%) Average Customer
A reader from Dallas, Texas , August 21, 1999
Simple, targeted revenge for mistakes he made in business I struggled
to force myself to finish this book in hopes that somewhere, maybe even on the
last page there would be a reason for having ever purchased this book. I was
wrong. I felt like the entire purpose of this book was to make others look worse
than the writer, and thereby raise himself up in the process. It didn't work.
The internet has only just begun, yes there were early days, but it's a fast
growing medium that, unlike any other medium, the masses can control. There
are big players, there are major corporations in the game, but people still
have control over what they do. Arrogant editors and writers & VCs miss the
point. The medium is about people, community, tribal aspirations, connections,
ideas, concepts or the simplest truth of them all.......the internet is a campfire,
pure and simple enough for even this author to somehow have understood from
the earliest days of his internet struggles. I enjoyed reading AOL.COM, had
high hopes this book would be in that class, it was/is not.
A reader from Pune, India , August 20, 1999
Excellent narravative of startups and VC-Owner relationship Among
the various books available on the topic of startups, etc, this book most closely
and frankly puts across the relationship between the Founder of a startup and
the VCs who finance it. Also recorded the life and death of a internet startup.
At times, the author seems almost aplogogetic, but that is always better than
cockiness.
A very good buy!
A reader from Indianapolis , August 11, 1999
Business Blinders Michael Wolff's attack on the the Internet Business
world is interesting, but he makes the one mistake every business person seems
to make: there is more to the world than making money. There is more to the
Internet than how it is commercialized. If there are NO businesses on the Internet
in the future, it still is going to be important. Since Wolff never get's beyond
Television asumptions, he overlooks some of the most interesting things that
Internet has to offer in Many to Many communication: the regular guy is just
as accessable as the huge corporation. The regular guy can probably make money
EASIER than the big corporation. There is more to life than being the organization
man...
It's normal to feel frustrated, angry, depressed, dissatisfied or anxious
occasionally. But if you're caught in the burnout cycle, you usually will
experience these negative emotions more and more often, until they become
chronic. Eventually, you will feel emotional fatigue.
Interpersonal problems
When you feel emotionally drained, it becomes harder to deal with people
at work and at home. When the inevitable conflicts arise, you're likely
to overreact with an emotional outburst or intense hostility. This makes
communicating with co-workers, friends and family members increasingly difficult.
Some burnout victims are also apt to withdraw socially. The tendency to
withdraw is most pronounced among "helping" professionals, who often become
aloof and inaccessible to the very people they are expected to help.
Health problems
As your emotional reserves become depleted and the quality of your relationships
deteriorate, your physical resilience declines. You may frequently experience
minor ailments, such as colds, headaches, insomnia and backaches. In general,
you feel tired and rundown.
Below-par performance
During the burnout process, you may become bored with your job or lose
enthusiasm for your projects. Or you may find it difficult to concentrate.
You become less productive and the quality of your work declines.
Substance abuse
To cope with the stress associated with job conflict and declining performance,
you may find yourself drinking more alcohol, using more drugs, eating more
(or less), drinking more coffee and/or smoking more cigarettes. Increased
substance abuse further compounds your problems.
Feelings of meaninglessness
More and more, you find yourself thinking "so what" and "why bother?"
This is particularly common among burnout victims who were once very enthusiastic
and dedicated. Your enthusiasm is replaced by cynicism. Working seems pointless.
Take
This Job and Love It - HE213 - Take This Job and Love It with Dr. Dennis
Jaffe In this episode of The Human Edge, Dr. Dennis Jaffe explains how to renew
your organization by creating change from the inside out. Learn how to tap the
energy, commitment and creativity.. --http://www.previewit.com/p-movies/he213.htm
(Feature) Job burnout can affect anyone - (Feature) Job burnout
can affect anyone by Master Sgt. Merrie Schilter Lowe Air Force News Service
Features WASHINGTON -- Job burnout normally afflicts people in helping
or service professions -- such as ministry or medicine -- but it can affect.. --http://www.af.mil/news/Dec1995/n19951214_1405.html
No
Title - The Truth About Burnout How Organizations Cause Personal Stress
and What to Do About It Christina Maslach, Michael P. Leiter Today s workforce
is experiencing job burnout in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels,
both white- and blue-collar. --http://ace.acadiau.ca/science/cor/jbreview.htm
Self Evaluation Tests - SELF EVALUATION TESTS Click here to return to the
Job Search Welcome page. Are You Ready and Prepared To Make A Job Change? Click
Your Mouse Button On The Desired Option Job Burnout Test - Was it or
is it time to leave your present job? Workaholic. --http://www.jsearch.com/jsearch/unique/8810/jshome2a.html
Ronin | Personal Development - Beating Job Burnout (TM) How to Transform
Work Pressure Into Productivity Dr. Beverly Potter Beating Job Burnout
(TM) Cassette 0-914171-41-0 $9.95 Brain Boosters Foods and Drugs that Make you
Smarter Beverly Potter, Ph.D. Sebastian Orfali, M.A.. --http://www.generictype.com/Ronin/rn_persdevel.html
ACoA and Job Burnout - ACoA and Job Burnout Frederick A. Levy
LCSW All night long, Jim wrestled with his mattress. Pounding his pillow, his
mind reverberated with the clamoring cries of desperate co-workers vying for
his attention, like overly excited school children.. --http://www.cvinet.com/business/levy/article_8.html
Title List - Title List To view complete record information, select any
of the title(s) listed below. subject: STRESS. Re-Energize Yourself.Communicating
to Reduce Stress on the Job.The Courage to See Clearly Mellott, Roger.The Magic
of Conflict Crum, Thomas.. --http://www.rehab.state.tx.us/library/slinks/s000861.htm
Hints
for East Texas Job seekers - Employment (JOBS) of East Texas at a Glance,
PCSC, WWIT --http://www.wwits.net/e-texas/jobs.phtml
Healthcare Industry - Proven Methods & Latest Techniques Here s Jim Jacobus
Formula for Success The Healthcare Industry Extraordinary Performance Learn
the 5 Keys to Extraordinary Performance How to Master the One Thing You Control
in Life - ATTITUDE Determine Your.. --http://www.champjj.com/html/healthcare_industry.html
Title
List - Title List To view complete record information, select any of the
title(s) listed below. subject: BURN OUT (PSYCHOLOGY). SPECIAL EDUCATOR AND
JOB STRESS.JOB BURNOUT IN PUBLIC EDUCATION: Symptoms,TEACHER BURNOUT
AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.STRESS IN.. --http://www.misd.net/beal/eng/slinks/s000449.htm
untitled - Preventing Job Burnout by Susan Friedmann ExhibiTips,
Volume 3. #3, March 1995, Professional Development Copyright Trade Show Exhibitors
Association Do you feel trapped in your job? Are you emotionally exhausted,
frustrated, irritable, or negative. --http://www.tsnn.com/event/Advanstar/iecexpo/exhtips14.htm
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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