Follow the Leader
I know I’m not the first person, and definitely not the only one, who is dealing with total bullshit at work. The funny thing is that people generally go along with stupid shit no matter how anti they may actually be. It drives me crazy when I catch myself starting to believe the bullshit or being bullied by it. I know you are all wondering “what the fuck happened?” Without getting into details I’m going to outline a few issues that I believe represent the current state of affairs for the majority of employees. I’m sure even Jung would agree that these items outline cross-cultural archetypes even though they mostly are defined through the US today. I wish I could better grasp the mind the drives this madness, not to correct it – but to destroy it. Anyway, without additional delay:
Work Stupidity List 5326:
- Apathy, laziness, and poor performance are rewarded while intelligence, hard work, and innovation are punished.
- Supervisors care more about achieving the next tier in their personal career ascension than they do about the company mission or their unit’s performance.
- Commands and reprimands are given thoughtlessly and accepted carelessly.
- Everyone is always at fault.
- The easiest option is always the right option.
- Respect is demanded not earned.
- Enforcement of trivial regulations supersedes achieving critical goals.
- All supervisors want to be your friend.
- Real problems are seldom confronted while infractions are nuked repeatedly.
- Longevity is the prerequisite for leadership, not ability.
- The more money spent by a certain department means the greater the importance of that department.
- Budgets are for exceeding not minimizing.
To most people anti-intellectualism would be a completely negative ideal, but for whatever fucking reason it is swallowing up every facet of modern life. Most people are fucking idiots. They don’t want intelligent conversation or enlightening art – they want stupidity. Nobody is encouraged to be intelligent. Nowadays people are brazenly stupid. They are proud of what they don’t know. We don’t accept anything on TV, where the attention span is like 3 goddamn seconds, that is not amusing, violent, and sexual. Blatant willful ignorance is the norm.
Potentially this is the most enlightened period in human history. The development of new ideas and technologies has not reduced human stupidity it has enhanced it. There are more means of becoming educated, more books, more movies, and more information than could possibly be used. We have an almost unlimited potential for knowledge at our fingertips. Technology is everywhere, information is abundant and available, and the world is full of lessons. The funny thing is that these days to be stupid requires effort, but most people choose this path over intelligence. Most people would rather play dumb.
TV
Does it make you intelligent or increase stupidity? It’s a no-brainer. The media is about dumbing down, the media is about simplifying, the media is about the twenty second sound bite. The scenario is not unfamiliar. Here I sit like a slug. My mouth feels like I’ve been chewing on old underwear. I’m covered in greasy crumbs. I have this sour feeling and I’m tired like I’ve been sleeping on the floor. I’m all alone. I don’t know exactly what I’ve even been watching all this time. I am numb, but feel vaguely alarmed and vaguely aroused. I am frustrated because there has been no release. This is the TV experience.
Look at popular culture. Youth is venerated over the aged. Qualities of youth are carelessness and stupidity, along with a certain ignorant frivolity. In contrast an older person knows better, has experienced more, and has a degree of wisdom. An older person’s actions are driven by goals. Maybe in a world overburdened with facts and information stupidity can be appealing. Maybe it’s a reverse psychology mind-fuck. For example, most people in this world appear completely stupid. Therefore if I appear to be intelligent I will irritate them so I’m going to be more stupid than they are so that they like me.
I know the feeling. At the end of a long day I want turn my brain off. Most people do it, they call it vegging out. You sit in front of the TV and become a passive consumer. It’s a virtual catatonia, a mindless meditation. All the while marketing is attempting to impose this philosophy of futility. That way people will only pay attention to the superficial things in life, focus on this fashionable consumption and thereby keep people controlled, passive, marginalized. This also prevents people from taking positive control of their lives, prevents them from amassing commodities, and maintains the mindless consumer slave-state.
Media that is less complex, has less dialogue or is fundamentally simplified, can easily be marketed all over the world to any audience. This favors action, violence, and sex.
People don’t really know what the fuck is going on so they create ridiculous and rigid belief systems to help them understand the world. Religion for example. These belief systems are actually injurious to thinking and learning. In a belief system information is processed deferentially. This means that information that supports the schema is taken in while information that rejects the schema is rejected. This sets a course that is detrimental to actual understanding. In this way, ironically, a belief system actually makes you dumber. This eventually leads to a complete failure to see things as they really are and the ability to take in new information. Most people have a very automatic association to these belief systems (i.e. religion and politics).
So what does all this have to do with the bullshit going on at my work right now? Well, probably nothing, but let me end with a quick quote:
“I do not make terms with incompetence.” – Atlas Shrugged
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Totally dude! Like, why read books. All the good books get made into movies anyway so reading books is stupid right!? HAHAHA!
Those who work harder get paid less and those who hardly work get paid exorbitant amounts.
For instance, lets take the custodian at say AIG who cleans the toilets, empties the trash and waxes the floors. At the end of their 10 hour day what do they have to show for all their hard work and slavery? A soar back, a poo stank that never quite leaves as it is reapplied daily and say $90 if they’re lucky enough to make more than minimum wage. Of that $90 dollars taxes leaves him with $60 a day which works out to approx. $15,000 annually.
Now the lets take a look at an AIG exec. who makes $250,000 annually and then makes another $250,000 of bonuses(greatly understated). Of course he has a portfolio of income property, trust funds, retirement accounts, IRA’s and offshore accounts that he can write off for taxes. So instead of paying 30% taxes like the lowly custodian he pays 20%. Now what does this exec do during a day at the office? Well every Friday he has a golf date with the other execs and customers that hold large accounts. The other four days he rides up in his Bentley, says high to his trophy secretary, sits down in the plush $5,000 leather throne and turns on msnbc to see what the world of stocks is up to while perving out on Maria Barteloma. Then after drinking his coffee and kicking back watching TV he sets upon the task of instilling fear upon the employees. Usually finding some B.S. technical reason to “Write” an employee up and build evidence toward their impending dismissal. Lunch at an elite restaurant and repeats the mornings activities.
This is the reason why I pray for apocalyptic anarchy of some kind. A game changer, an abrupt violent meltdown of society that would level the playing field and allow me to have a glimpse of hope that equality was achievable. Civil war, zombie uprising or Red Dawn would do. Something where my physical ability and street smarts are as relevant and powerful as an AIG exec. I thought that this current depression would be the catalyst of a social turnaround but alas those in power have found a way to rape me even deeper and harder than before. And they have the gull to tell me it could be be worse.
I agree and disagree. Bosses at times are a-holes, this is true, but the economics of the industrialist vs the laborer as you describe them fall short for me.
The top 1% pay over a third, 34.27% of all income taxes. The top 5% pay 54.36% of all income taxes. The top 10% pay 65.84%. The top 25% pay 83.88%. The top 50% pay 96.54%.
The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.46% of all income taxes.
The top 1% is paying nearly ten times the federal income taxes than the entire bottom 50%.
Think of it this way: less than 3.5 dollars out of every $100 paid in income taxes in the United States is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of wage earners. Are the top half millionaires? No, more like “thousandaires.” The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $29,019 and up annually.
The janitor may have to toil with dirty bathrooms all day, but the executive is the one who created that job, that building, that industry. The janitor may have a crappy apartment and garbage furniture, but the industrialist is paying for all the roads, police, unemployment, welfare, and possibly very soon health care as well for that janitor. Essentially everything outside the janitor’s front door has been invented, manufactured, bought and paid for by the industrialist. The janitor may sweat more from physical struggle but the industrialist has responsibilities that require more faculties than just the act of emptying trash-cans and scrubbing floors. Monkeys can be trained to complete these tasks.
Look, I’m not an elitist. Janitors, school teachers, police officers, nurses, plumbers – these people grind shit for a living. They are the salt of the earth. I do not look down upon them for their station in life, but if they want more than what they have they need effect positive change to achieve it. Merely blaming their financial betters and enacting legislation to equalize everyone’s stake is not the answer. That is communism, that is the willing abandonment of our inalienable human rights simply for comfort. That is the ultimate financial tyranny.
I don’t deny the hunger to see a ‘game changer’ in full effect, but the economics of wage disparity is not equivalent to intellectual deficit in the workplace for me. I don’t hate the bosses for being bosses, what I despise is their stupidity and lack of common sense. I don’t deny that lying, cheating, and stealing take place, and additionally I don’t deny that there are people who are actively trying to be complete dicks to their underlings in order to preserve their power. I hate that shit too, it is honorless. I agree that at times ‘dog eat dog’ is a brutal business, but the alternative is completely unacceptable to me.