pinkfloydpsw's Blog

Good Evening Sir and Madam, I Will Be Your Waiter This Evening…

I get paid 19k2 a year, it is not a lot, for this 19k2 I am expected to be a technical expert, a problem solver, a specialist with the ability to analyse, research, understand and react to difficult technical problems. Just to be clear in how I frame myself in this essay I wish to reinforce that these character traits are not what I decide them to be but are what may be reasonably expected of me to fulfil my position at my place of work, essentially I am expected not to be an idiot . . . . .. Except . . . … When listening to bosses.

I am actually happy at work for the most part when left alone to do what I am paid for, I have Autonomy in that I can make decisions and am mostly left unsupervised, Mastery in the fact that I am one of only a handful of qualified individuals that can do my job and Purpose in the fact that I think what I do has meaning to the individuals that the team I work in support. I work with individuals who are refreshingly realistic negativists, mostly self educated, sceptical enough not to be easily fooled, strong in intellect yet fallible enough to backtrack and reset the course of action when in error. It makes for both a challenging and rewarding environment with just the right amount of chaos, productivity and humour and I wouldn’t change it in any way, given the chance others would though, how long it will last is anyone’s guess. After recent events I do not retain confidence…

A Starter of Marx….

Karl Marx had a theory, amongst many, that one of the ways a subordinate is subordinated is that they are encouraged to shift their fundamental values to be more in line with the class that is subordinating them, this solves the problem of workers realising the exploitative nature of their position; labouring in an environment that rewards others to a greater extent than themselves, alienating them from the ability to own the goods they produce and putting the ownership of their labour into the hands of those who purchase it as opposed to themselves as the seller of it (a simplification but you get the idea).

“In any epoch the ruling ideals will be the ideals of the ruling classes” Marx

This is true but there are mechanisms to check and balance the exploitative results this statement could conjure in the imagination, the rise of unions provided a power to fight against the virtual ownership of the subordinated, suffrage gave the commoner a way to define their own governance and national institutions, which are (of course) socialist by nature, provided rights to the worker that had previously only been enjoyed by his masters. Radical ideals of democracy flourished in the early to mid 20th century when production, innovation, technological development and union membership were all at their peak, as Tony Benn put it “Democracy shifted power from the pocket book to the ballot box”. In places of work in recent times the need to subdue the wages and the rights of the worker are much more definite than they in that time had been, no longer does Britain dominate production and distribution of goods around the world, no longer can the wealth of a small nation remain unchallenged by global subordinates, there is a shortage of resources and in modern times the hoarding of both wealth and materials has caused a gap between the wealthy and the poor in post industrial societies that is vastly bigger than any time in modernity. Historically a (western democratic) mass industrial society on an upward trajectory controls its labour markets through a process of negotiation between the representatives of that force (unions), the providers of the wealth that can build the infrastructure of production (capitalists) and the legislative body that defines the rights, obligations, entitlements and opportunities of all citizens (government). The union although powerful is a body that is just as democratic in nature as the government that it negotiates with. The point to remember here is that the corporate capitalists are the non-democratic non-ethical body, the body that seeks the best deal for the few at the detriment of the many, the corporate capitalists are the bad guys in this essay, and they are to be both feared and mistrusted, democracy itself is in essence an anti-capitalist ideal.

Dinner Time….

I have had to soak up much in the way of nonsense in my forty or so years, I am the product of an educational system that promises more than it can deliver, one that nearly had me and still does have some of my peers believing that we could achieve anything we wanted if we just worked hard, played by the rules and wanted successes enough. I am a citizen in a society that reviles drug use unless it is prescribed by the sales agents of large pharma (the medical industries), in which case it is just fine to zombify your badly behaved kids in school or dull the anxieties of life such as debt or job insecurity with long term chemical treatments and massive amounts of pills that as a glorious side effect also switch off the creative parts of the human experience and leave us just  an illusion of happiness, docile bodies amongst docile bodies; kind of like creating the smell of roses in the nostrils of a man who is standing in a pile of dung. I am a consumer and a victim of the most sophisticated and subtle system of totalitarianism (corporate media) the world has ever seen, where my contemporaries interact with the upper classes not in a battle of rights nor the necessarily continuous contestation of democracy as an imperfect though desirable ideal but in a sycophantic expansion of the notion that desire is the solitary component of success, we go on TV shows where we compete for the affections of the gentry, we do battle in talent contests where the prize is further exploitation, we backstab and badmouth each other to gain the approval of those who dangle the carrot of progress in front of us, the middle classes see the unemployed as leaches and the greedy as heroes, we beg to get what we used to be entitled to and once could earn, we are the modern gladiators but unlike the gladiators of old we are doing all of these things voluntarily.

I am reminded of my embroilment in this constant journey to falsehood when I turn on one of many news channels to be informed that the Ukraine is being overrun with Russian forces that are hell bent on destabilizing the new found liberation of the region, I turn over to see that the US is destabilizing what was a democracy in the Ukraine by supporting radical right-wing forces and that Russia has stepped in to try to save the democratic process and protect the people from Neo Nazis who wish to become the new oligarchic leaders and can’t wait for the triviality of elections that they would probably lose in anyway, on another channel we are celebrating the deaths of millions in a conflict caused by the empire builders and noble royals of Europe and on the last one I see before turning it off there is a show about a street where the inhabitants apparently choose to be in penury. Which news is true or is it all spun to fulfil the need for myself as a citizen to be either unaware of the truth or to be informed in a contrived way that will give me the governmentally agreed upon version of truth? In this sort of media driven culture how would anyone know that the fundament of their knowledge has even a shred of fact in it?

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Napoleon Bonaparte.

Anyway to the real point of my Ire, like I say I have been soaking up lies for most of my life, as have you (you even discover that the things your parents told you aren’t true), but my last nerve was stretched to breaking by the corporate machine that I work for when I was forced to attend what I can only describe as a pseudo-pseudoscientific brain removal session where the agenda seemed to be solely focussed on the corporate enculturation of the attendees into a collective of happy faced drones who go smilingly about their tasks in the face of imminent disaster and who are encouraged to face the constant erosion of their already fragile and anxiety-saddled positions with breathing exercises and stress reduction techniques. I am sure the deliverer of this day of development was not even aware of the foolishness of the premise that we can solve our issues with happiness or a positive attitude or the resulting supposition, which cannot be escaped when meeting out such positivist nonsense, that for every person who does succeed (supposedly on the back of their positivity) there will many who do not and under this form of thinking we can only conclude that they just weren’t positive enough or as the sportsman could be quoted “they just didn’t want it enough”. I believe the term for this falsehood is The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, one where the protagonist fires randomly at a barn then paints a target where the majority of the bullets hit. In reality the very same traits that bring the greatest achievements just happen to be the traits that bring about the greatest failures also, determination and a unwillingness to be swayed by the objections of others or reality itself. I am not against optimism but there is a time when you should just stop smiling and get on with doing something about the problems you’re faced with.

Real world problems require real world solutions, the idea that you can cure anxiety was a nonsense to existentialist philosophers like Sartre or Kierkegaard or a psychoanalyst like Sigmund Freud, to them anxiety was not a condition of living in society but a structure of the self, a mechanism where we envisage the outcome of the current trajectory and act to manoeuvre it in a way more suiting to our individual or societal needs. It is our very anxiety that allows us to face problems and make decisions, to want to be cured of it is just laughable. While it is true that consumerism and capitalism are the creators of new needs and subsequently new pressures there is no point in the history of man where the problems of his labours, his desire for autonomy and the pressures of time have not been present and there is no time in post-civilisation history where the problem of equality or freedom is also not present. Suggested solutions to these real world problems can be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle of  ancient Greece, the political works of Cicero of the Roman Republic, the eastern philosophical works of Confucius and the pre-/peri-/post-enlightenment writings of Hobbs, Locke, Bentham, Marx, Durkheim, Weber etc etc etc….. We call this social theory and it does not usually involve smiling or breathing being postulated as a solution to the problems inherent in living and working together in the structure that we have named society.

A Glass of Vintage Pseudoscience

I called this bullshit pseudo-pseudoscientific with good reason, not only is there a deep underlying need within this project of normalisation to self validate by both highlighting a need for its services and providing the solution to that need there are various other problems that I can identify with the delivery of the project. Firstly it is a monologue, meaning that it is delivered without the ability for anyone who disagrees with it to voice that disagreement, secondly it is provided and supported by the very people who control the immediate tenure of the employees who have to attend the project thus it has a component of power that has been pre-inferred and cannot be ignored, thirdly it is ambiguous and vague in its interpretation whilst using much in the way of language that sounds scientific and is delivered in a way that seems as if it has concrete foundation it provides no real evidence of its own validity, it is no more than conjecture agreed upon and supported by anecdote. Psychics, faith healers, tarot readers and spiritualists use the same techniques that I could see in this particular monologue, the few parts where the audience participate with the speaker are positively biased (supporting of your own already held view) just like they would be at a psychic’s show, shotgunning the attendee with facts until something correlates and generates a hit that can be expanded upon, warm reading the audience with a Forer Experiment then using the results to confirm by categorisation that people are what they think they are (the least objective way to asses people is by asking them to define themselves). The main problem with this technique of validation is that it assumes employees end up in the role that they either deserve or desire and the further ridiculous assumption that they may be good at what they do and happy to do it. Speaking in ways that aim to bolster the validity of the workers self important view of him or herself, avoiding saying anything negative but craftily asking the attendee to highlight their own shortcomings so to dodge confrontation, speaking to the audience like they are imbeciles and, in what I witnessed while I was observing all of this, being correct in that assumption at the very least. People turn up at work because they are paid to, it is just that simple, work is not voluntary, only imbeciles fail to recognise that even though we may make compensatory statements such as “I love my job” or “I’m a grafter” we are there for the cash otherwise we would not be there. There seems to be at work here a mind to build an enculturated workforce that is not only happily complicit in their own oppression but happily consenting to the ever widening chasm between themselves and their oppressors.

A side Order of Scepticism

So I find myself sitting through this garbage because I have to, I am aware of the power and the validity that the speaker has been granted by the corporation because of the fact that they are being paid for this and that they have an audience of attendees who are not there voluntarily and may be just glad for the break in the monotony of their day jobs, I recognise that the room is full of people who are trying to make the best of this situation and may even be thoroughly determined to get something out of it. It is a haze of happy-clap rampant positivisms, I strongly disagree with nearly everything that has been said, and I find the arguments weak, the evidence shaky and the style of delivery pretty sickening too. Somebody made the mistake of asking during proceedings what I thought of the whole thing (a solicited response) and I also made the mistake of telling them, oops.

……..and what is my response?…… How in the face of this nonsense do I act?……  I say nothing, not a damned thing……….  I am powerless……

I leave and upon my exit the inevitable happens, people want to talk about the trauma that we have collectively endured (at least to me it is traumatic, I had real work to do), I have to bite my tongue for a bit but then I am forced by my inner demons to launch into a criticism of the whole event, a criticism that is met with distain by the sheeple that accompany me as they try their hardest to find a way to break the logic of my tirade against the speaker. I am at first accused argumentum ad hominem of deliberate negativity which is fine because I mostly embrace my critical faculties, then it is insinuated that I should have voiced my opinion during proceedings, the outcome of that would have been worse than having to sit through it, then we move on to the fact that I am not a recognisable expert in the subject of stress management and the woman who spoke to us is, this argument is countered by pointing out that the motivations behind this project are more likely to be centred around the needs of the corporation for us the workers to behave in ways that suit it, docile worker bees reminded of their subjectivity (expected conformity and cultivated sycophancy) more than an endeavour in making us more self actuated and truly happy in our jobs (I may have lost them at this point) and that the whole thing simply smacked of normalisation to me, and that they should buy and read 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury then lock themselves in a wilderness cabin and do not come out until they have read them and know better than to set their sail so high that it is blown by any wind of bullshit that happens by.

Room for a Realist Dessert?

The psychobabble from the (qualified) psychologist mirrors the efforts of the medieval religious scholar in its attempt to appear as a justifiable intellectual progression of the original ideal, a plethora of expanded theories on the real science of studying the human condition and the forces which besiege it further distancing themselves from the fundament of the discipline. I do not attempt in this essay to rubbish this discipline but as Herbert Marcuse discusses in his book One Dimensional Man the contradiction inherent in successfully challenging a paradigm is that it allows room for resurgence in mythological reason or a rise in the expansion of non-science type inferences; in logic this is known as The Appeal To Ignorance, a fallacy where the lack of evidence against the preposition is heralded as a proof of its validity or The Unfalsifiability Fallacy, Karl Popper’s insight into the ability of psychologists to claim any explanation for a phenomenon because you cannot prove otherwise. The linguistic trickery of the marketing department creeps into the corporate leaders addresses, the sort of information that is not actually said but is implied and must enter the monologue by these means so it is scrutinised. We have all seen adverts where the consumable product is in no way superior to its competitor’s but is presented as if it is or the one where a great improvement in the effectiveness of a device is touted as being a breakthrough when in reality there has been only a change in style applied. I sit in an audience of my peers hoping that I am not the only one who can see that the emperor has no clothes on; this may be weakness on my part and I am willing to be embarrassed over such foolishness, time will reveal.

Never in this reality will there be an admission of the truth that there is inequality, there are prejudices, we are not a team of individuals that are “In this together”, we are not unified in our motivations and that there is no care on the part of the corporation for its employees save for the group of individuals that work side by side at the top of the pyramid extracting the largest amount of value from its ability to generate revenue and protecting themselves from the rational and justifiable call from the worker for a more equitable system. Jurgen Habermas postulated in his theory of communicative rationality that there would be certain conditions that would have to be met before entering into any dialogue or discussion, one was that the words spoken would by necessity be truthful, another was that they would have to be relevant, another is that they are readily understandable and the last is that they are socially justifiable. It is only in a situation where power distorts the conversation that there is any room for a falsehood to stand unchallenged. Imagine the scenario where you are talking with your boss and she injects a lie into the discourse, before you even think to correct her you will consider the implications of what is bound to seem, to her at least, a challenge to authority; you will in the face of power allow the distortion of communication.

What should be paramount is the right to criticize all things that are pertinent to our own situation, to see bosses lay off a co-workers whilst wasting large sums on badly thought out projects that never see fruition is an angst we all have felt, without a certain amount of internal criticism coupled with an attitude that leaders are not just leaders in financial and decision making terms but also bear responsibility and face the consequences of their decisions the executive body might stumble from one disaster to the next oblivious that there are realities faced by others as a result of their errors.

Coffee and a Cigar

Position is not meritocratically earned as elites would have us believe but has been enabled by a social group or family link; there is rarely fairness to power and position upon examination. Elites are part of a class system that sets barriers and unnecessarily manipulates the standard criteria of admission to positions of high remuneration. As an example of this we can look at the difference in perception and reality between two well known careers; that of the dentist and of the car mechanic. It is apparent that the job of a dentist is one which is hard to obtain but easy to do (this is the elite position) where the job is to repair a single specific human organ using a quite mundanely repetitive and limited skill set; this is a highly paid job with a social perception that the individual performing it is a greatly contributing member. Conversely a car mechanic (lowly) is in reality an engineer of ability who must constantly update an already formidable skill in what is a challenging and diverse role but he is easily replaceable and badly considered. With this comparison we can see that the role is not remunerated as per its inherent difficulty of function and is not obtainable based on the simple fact of the amount of persons who would be capable of doing it but by the parameters of a (wholly manufactured) perception within society by a sphere of elites who decide the price of labour because they are enabled to do so by their control of education and media. A person must attend college to become a dentist, a person need have no qualifications to become a vehicle engineer that cannot be gained within an apprenticeship, and I dispute that this should be the necessary case. In fact I would not argue that there is a need to push mechanics onto a degree course to qualify for their role, quite the opposite, the system is not broken in this way, I would reduce the lofty role of the dentist to be more identifiable with what it truly is; a mechanic for teeth who would be likely no better or worse at capping and filling than if he had simply gained his status through the apprenticeship method in the same way the mechanic had.

Finally the Bill

I realise that I am not free, not free when my labour is paid for to act or speak in any way I please in my place of work. I am expected to conform, I see the point in this, there are methods by which a person is more productive in a productive environment that are hard to argue with and make rational sense and there are bound to be subtleties in the workplace that make sense on other levels than on the shop floor that the worker must conform to but has no real need to understand. I see the point of structures of power, the necessity of command and the compliance of the worker to the needs of management as a rationally justifiable symbiosis (I would never think to argue that I should be in charge instead just by virtue of the fact that I consider myself capable in my own role) but the problem I can highlight with all of this is the creeping domination, the idea that I can have my opinion formed/owned/shaped/scrutinised by my corporate masters because they purchase my labour from me; my labour and my time are for sale, my intellect on the other hand is not. My supervisors, managers and executive masters subordinate me in only the fact that they command higher financial remuneration and hold loftier positions of power within the corporation; I dispute the idea that they are in any other way my superiors.

I was compelled to write this essay through rage and frustration, I bear the psychologist involved no ill will and I will even concede that she may have believed that her talk would bring about the happiness she intended it to but I cannot go along with any of what it contained. I maintain that it was a good thing for her that she was protected by power, if not for that condition I would have demolished her in the same fashion as the child that can see how the magician’s tricks are being done and is not holding back in telling the rest of the audience as well.

I hope you have enjoyed your meal and will come again soon……………

Paul Simon Wilson