I - and others - have written elsewhere about greed and materialism, about how wanting bigger, flashier houses (they're not homes) and more and more gizmos feed the "demand" that neoliberals claim they satisfying (as in the neoliberal's cry of "we're making things cheaper" - which is actually arguable, given the overall effect), but there is another aspect: life cycles.
People go through various stages of life. To simplify, we're born and are dependent on our parents, then we move and learn how to be a reasonably independent adult (well, we're supposed to), and then move into the rest of our adulthood -which does NOT have to centre around having kids. There is an aspect of that, typically in our late 20s and our 30s, where many of us seek to demonstrate how au fait we are with life's expectations, and how competent we are with life's expectations - it's basically the chronologically older version of the idiot kids who think smoking is "cool", except it is often more widespread.
From a spiritual point of view, this is when we're actually probably most compliant with society's norms - as kids, we have a limited capacity to think and act independently, but we have no such excuse as an adult.
Not all people go through this. Some are diverted simply because of their perspicacity (I didn't fall into that category, sadly - sigh ... ), others because of their life experiences (e.g., being LGBTIQ, which I did share) or personal characteristics (e.g., art or similar, which helped me a little) or because of beneficent influences (in my case, the flawed books of the controversial author Lobsang Rampa). Nevertheless, I also went through this demonstration-of-competence-with-cultural-norms in my 30s, but at work, and it is THAT I wish to write about.
The problem here is that it is those people who seem, to the people further up the social, business or cultural hierarchy, to be "ambitious" are basically thoughtlessly perpetuating an existing system that may (a) not be working, (b) be working or no longer be appropriate, or (c) be working fine, possibly with a need for adjusting.
And, just as a life unexamined is not worth living, so too is the system or norm that is unexamined not worth adopting or following. Don't be a blind follower - if what you're considering is worth adopting or following after you have critically evaluated it, then by all means do so (with regular reviews from time to time), but if it isn't, at least don't actively support it (if it needs change, change it).
Actively supporting such unexamined matters is how worker's rights have been eroded in recent decades. Let's consider two aspects: increasing hours of work with increasing seniority, and always being connected.
The company I worked for the 80s tried to formalise expectations around additional hours of work: I read the memo, did some calculations (hey, I'm an engineer), and realised that my hourly rate of pay would effectively go down, under this scheme. Increased pay for seniority is meant to reflect increased skill that comes from having gained experience (University degrees are just a Licence to start learning), including the ability to get work done more quickly and efficiently, not simply compensation for extra hours of work (at reduced pay) - nor is it meant to be compensation for sacrifices along the way, but even if that had the intention here (I'll come to what the intention really was shortly), it failed on that measure. So, I thanked them politely and declined to go further up the corporate ladder.
My politeness, and tendency to believe that, once you've expressed your view, you shouldn't necessarily then continue to ram it down others' throats, has been a tactical problem at times (although a long-term strategic strength - which is why the solution to others' trying to ram their views down people's throats is not to counter-ram, but to get them to appreciate that people will not always agree, and in fact have the right to disagree [on non-violent matters - and note that bigotry is a form of violence], and stop trying to bully / intimidate threaten/ coerce other people [or groups of people, or nations, even] into subjugation ... still, I could have done better on the office politics, I now realise [I consider many pressures on life have - whether intended or not - the effect of distracting us from spending time reflecting / thinking on such matters, and I do wonder how deliberate that is on the part of neoliberal people, who probably disguise it as "workplace harmony", or something similar]).
In this case, my refusal to go along with what those above me had meekly gone along with resulted in, shall we say, "considerable anger" being expressed by them.
The problem there wasn't that I'd said "no", but that the fact that saying "no" brought their meek compliance and failure to choose others options into the light of active consideration.
I've often considered (well, found, is actually a more accurate word) that similar self-anger over missed opportunities is behind vehement opposition to many progressive changes - for instance, the "free love" revolution of the 60s highlighted all those times people had remained "chaste and pure" (and missed out on sex) so that they could demonstrate their compliance with social norms and that they were - in the views of whoever they were trying to please - "good" people.
The failure of the neochristian "god" to blast those noisily orgasmic people into oblivion probably didn't help the sanguininity of the older "meek compliants".
More seriously, there were also flaws on the part of "free love", such as consent (social pressure and other problems can exist in so-called "radical" groups as well), health risks, unwanted pregnancies, etc.
In the workplace, hostility as reaction to behaviour that illustrates people have choices is still is a problem (at least most engineering firms offer a technical career path, in addition to a management career path), but so too is the meek compliance masquerading as demonstration-of-competence-with-cultural-norms.
The spread of the expectation of always being available with the spread of mobile phones is another example. When this practice was spreading, there were no laws compelling people to be available in their personal life - as far as I am aware, it wasn't even quantified into an agreement. what happened was that people on the corporate ladder would "try it on" by pushing the boundaries of work a little, and people who, often because of their lifestyle vulnerabilities, needed a job, would say "yes, that's fine".
I sometimes wonder how much of that is the "misery loves company" thinking that plagued the continuation of that sometimes fatal, always harmful workplace abuse called "initiations" (i.e., I was abused so you're going to be abused by me as revenge on those who abused me but are so much higher up the chain that I can't touch them - and they could sack me anyway; in the case of mobile phones, "I've had to be interrupted and taken away from my life, so I'm going to "expect" the same of you as revenge on those who abused me but are so much higher up the chain that I can't touch them - and they could sack me anyway).
Constantly being connected has spread through widespread acceptance of the loss or limitation of rights - and some pressure from clients who prefer their convenience over their competence at managing timelines (consumers are also far from blameless here, which is, again, something I and other have written about - and being more content with what we have in the West would help that: put our production into helping those who genuinely go without, not gilding the lilies of those who already have enough for a comfortable life).
It is how people choose to react in everyday workplaces that this battle is being fought and, ultimately, won or lost. I objected to the expectation of always being available when bosses tried to ram it down my throat in the 90s, and have generally simply refused to be unreasonably available. That doesn't have to be done aggressively, but a calm, assertive reminder that people have commitments outside the workplace (if they ask "such as?", I reply "that's my business, not yours"), or even a questioning of why they are doing this, and are they aware of where it will lead to (almost all the warnings I gave in the 80s and 90s during such discussion have come to pass, sadly ... maybe I needed to find or create a movement to fight this collectively, but I didn't know how, and wasn't impressed by the then-existing groups).
Keep in mind that the aim of the neoliberals is to turn workers into mindlessly compliant automatons - robots. It's a battle that has been going for a long time (the introduction of clocking on and off was one such battle, and many time and motion studies - and current incompetent thinking on ergonomics and caged hen approaches to offices - have similar overtones). Fight it to the extent that you are able - even if that is only writing a generic letter / email / other communication to your elected representative; one up from that (which can only be done in democracies, obviously), is asking polite questions, or making polite comments, in your workplace subject to your lifestyle vulnerability, of course: one of the other factors for many people in their 30s is that they have children.
(There are exceptions, such as emergencies, including war, but making a profit, let alone more profit, are NOT emergencies.)
I understand being responsible for dependents (I still am), but what gripes is when those people get older, the kids move out, and they possibly pursue a lifestyle change and make blithe naive remarks about the harm they did.
Are they really so unwilling to admit the truth of the damage they did to people when they were busy being compliant sock puppets?
I guess they evidently are (that may change - if nothing else, when they are reviewing their lives after passing, when it is too late to make any redress) - just as many are willing to overlook the problem of allowing for unpaid overtime, which means that many companies (especially in the USA) are not actually profitable.
In short, think.
If fear vs. courage is the issue, perhaps consider the following, from Eleanor Roosevelt (and a few extra, relevant quotes):
Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
You Learn By Living (1960)
Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
Remarks at the United Nations, 27th March 2,
1958
. . . My firm conviction [is] that it is the force of ideas rather than the impact of material things that made us a great nation. It is my conviction, too, that only the power of ideas, of enduring values, can keep us a great nation. For where there is not vision the people perish.
Tomorrow Is Now (1963)
The old type of economic thinking which has often led to certain types of political action, will also have to be changed and subordinate itself to the main objective before us—peace and a better life for the peoples of the world as a whole.
This cannot happen, however, without the necessary vigour on the part of the people in every nation to make their desires known, nor can it happen unless the difficulties can be brought out in the open and discussed.The people may not feel that they understand the details of a situation. They could not, perhaps, work out the solution. But they can insist on the ultimate objectives which they wish to attain.
Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, 3rd January, 1946”, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017),
accessed 23/09/2018, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1946&_f=md000226.
accessed 23/09/2018, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1946&_f=md000226.
I was going to include other matters in this post, but I'll leave it at that.
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our MÓ•gan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
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