I said this after a discussion with an electrician who has been working 90-100 hour weeks. The people asking him to do this don’t give a shit, but he said that “when I make a promise I keep it.”
This is a good sentiment, but can you see, in a painfully obvious way, how it can and is being abused? These assholes don’t deserve that level of effort out of him. My current suspicion is that the GC, who is too lazy to even create a schedule, gets a bonus for hitting his date.
Most wars are fought by people that feel loyalty to people who, at the top at least, do not feel loyalty to them in turn.
There are many good people in this world, and a great many of them fail to grasp how many bastards there are.
I am increasingly of the opinion that most persistent anxiety is caused by unprocessed trauma, and that trauma is processed by activation and motion.
This is more or less the opinion stated here, shared by Barry McDonough [sp?], in a personal interview with an MD. You lean in. You pull the knife or circular saw in, as I saw in my breathwork session. When you realize something terrifies you, you activate that fear, then move, in any direction.
Last night was awful for me, but I woke up peaceful. I asked unconscious parts of me to process an activation of grief, anxiety, and this sense of unreality that had me wondering if I was going to lose it. I fell asleep, but it was like I woke periodically to the sound/sense of battle all night long, with horrible shaking. I got up about 5:30, did a relaxation exercise, and slept peacefully for two more hours. The battle, I feel, is won, although tonight will be the first test.
We all have all the tools we need to process anything, although many will remain unaware of this across their lifetime. This overwork, paradoxically, has been enormously good for me. I am activating grief, then dissolving/releasing it in motion. I am activating trauma, then dissolving/releasing it in motion.
Healing is work. There is no other word for it. It does not just happen.
But large segments of our unconscious know EXACTLY what we need, and are quite willing to provide it.
And I want to be clear that what I am discussing is mainstream psychology. I am referencing techniques most good therapists use every day.
They have a large rework of an Executive suite that was supposed to begin in January, but which they held off on, so as to make a LOT of revisions. Work commenced some time in March. The original deadline was July 1, based on a January start date. They decided to keep the July 1 date, despite the delay.
This has meant numerous trades not only working 80-90 hour weeks, but also constant redoing of work already done, that has been damaged by other trades. The painters, for example, have more or less had to paint the place twice. It is the second biggest cluster-fuck I have ever seen, and by far the largest preventable one I have seen. There is no urgency, outside of the stupidity and cupidity of the top executives. The punch list will be so long it may as well be viewed as on-going construction. The final, end date of absolute completion will 2-3 weeks AFTER it would have been, had a tough but sensible schedule been put in place.
Here is the point I wanted to make: pretty much EVERY trade has had fantasies of walking off the job, but chosen to stay because they need the work. Choice, as in worker self determination and freedom, can ONLY come in conditions of economic prosperity. Nowhere else.
In any negotiation, the strength of your position is your BATNA: Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. This is the one idea of which I know that has originated at Harvard in the past 50 years that has been useful.
In conditions of economic malaise, such as characterizes every foray into socialism, your BATNA is shit. You have no choice. Workers are screwed.
And it doesn’t matter if you have a union. Unions make everything more expensive, and thus cause decreased overall economic activity. Find me a Rust Belt, and I will find you States which allow unions to coerce membership.
It doesn’t matter if you have protective regulations. Workers who need the work are going to overlook abusive practices.
The ONLY thing which reliably empowers workers, which would allow these guys and gals to tell this large corporation FUCK YOU, you sorry, abusive sacks of shit who don’t give a flying fuck about us, our lives, our safety or our families, would be plentiful economic activities elsewhere. The GC would then be forced to actually treat them with some sense of fairness and consideration.
As always, the policies pursued by the Democrats and their apologists in the Republican Party work to disempower the very people they rhetorically claim to support. The problem is that they don’t really care. They perhaps did at one point, but that was 50 years ago.
I will add as well that the root cause of economic malaise is monetary inflation and the wealth transfers it enables. Everything else is window dressing. Of course relative economic freedom is a good thing–we should in my view abolish corporate income taxes, for example–but if you ponder that 90% of our collective wealth has done to banks and the government over the past century, via devaluation of the currency, you should readily see this is the single most important factor.
Given sound monetary policy–such as the Germans appear to practice–we could all work less, earn more, and have more time for pursuing happiness as we conceive it.
If you are unfamiliar with Robert Putnam, here is a place to start.
His finding, which he himself suppressed for something like 10 years, is that the more diverse a neighborhood is, the less people interact, and the less they trust one another.
“Melting Pots” are schools for isolation.
All of our problems can be solved, but only if we tell the truth about them.
Mexicans, to take but one example, value family and leisure. This is a stereotype, but in my own experience largely an accurate one. When Americans are busting their asses to get things done, Mexicans are sitting around talking. Where Americans, given the opportunity for corruption or theft, by and large do the right thing, Mexicans take bribes and steal, if the victims are not a part of their social group.
These two factors, and these two factors alone, are the principle reason that our nations differ so much in their economic success. Put simply, it is as simple as math figuring out why nations prosper. We trust one another, because most of us can be counted on to do the right thing. Mexicans do not trust one another, because a great many of them cannot be counted on to do the right thing. That is why their nation is so awful millions of them choose to abandon it and come here illegally.
One is not supposed to say these things, of course, but I am not saying anything many are not thinking.
How did it get so hard to speak the truth in public?
I am tired and drinking, again. But I will say again this life is endlessly fascinating. My god there is so much to see and experience. And even the ugly is glorious.
That sad looking kid on the bus, three rows back listening to his iPod? He can teach you something. And you can teach him.
Go to it!!!
I got into a minor pissing contest with someone today, who I have gotten into similar situations with before. I look at him and all I see is a severely abusive father, and probably some sexual paraphilias of some sort. He is a mess.
To the point, something pushed the present moment away from him, like a raft or life preserver that could have saved him from drowning in water that terrified him. Nothing was there. No one saved him. And so he goes on, attacking the world, controlling the world to the extent of his ability.
For my part, of course, I am a bit vain and oversensitive. I whine more than I ought to. I’m working with guys whose work ethic I cannot but admire. One electrician told me he had a severely strained groin muscle. The doctor told him to stay off his feet for three weeks and ice it up. Instead, he is working 80 hour weeks. He is a better, tougher man than me.
I am still processing a story a guy I met in a bar told me last week. He is a mortician, and his company does body pick up. The cops find a suicide or homicide or simple death from natural causes, and after they have mapped out the scene, he takes the body to the Medical Examiner.
2 weeks ago he had to haul away two women, mother and daughter, who had had their home broken into, been ducktaped to chairs, and beaten so severely with something that their heads were gone.
The person or people who did this are still walking the streets, as far as I know.
Feel the horror of that image, then imagine, if you can, which is doubtful, a horror ten times that within the person who did that, a fear and sense of utter and complete powerlessness so overwhelming that it drives you mad. You break, you stumble, you fall, and you never, ever get back up. Your brain decays until it takes all your will and powerful intoxicants just to get through the day.
Morality in many respects is psychology. The task is not to set rules, but to help people understand how the world works so that they can make good decisions.
And some people are so far gone they cannot be redeemed. They can only be imprisoned or put to death.
That, at any rate, is the present state of our technology. Perhaps one day methods can be devised to help even homicidal psychopaths deal with the absolute tyranny with which their souls are governed, by evils they likely in most cases can’t even recall.
This is random, but I felt I needed to post it.
To be capable of deep love for people who suffer deeply, you must be capable both of suffering deeply, and TURNING IT AROUND. Pace, then lead. That is basic NLP. No wave is too large for the brave. Let it break on you, then counterattack.
And I think to myself that if goodness is taking pleasure from the happiness of others, service of the sort most religions call for is really an act which brings pleasure. We assume, mistakenly, that the deepest pleasures are those we generate for ourselves and ourselves alone. But why do we think and feel this? Why can’t I be HAPPIER, say, that my kid is happy, than in any other activity I can think of?
Nothing in this universe demands of us abject servitude, or unrelenting self abnegation. These are human constructions, derived from sadists and other malefactors.
The equation is simple: give up the easy and immediate for the harder but much, much better and longer lasting.
Goodness of this sort is not different in principle from the test sometimes given to 4 year olds, in which they are offered one cookie now, or two cookies in an hour. Those who held out for two cookies scored very substantially better on the SAT 13 years or so later, and were better adjusted.
Ayn Rand’s mother made a similar proposition to her when she was about 3. She had to give up a favorite doll for a year, if memory serves, to get 2 a year later. Rand chose to do this, but her mother forgot about it, and had thrown away her doll. That in my view is the ultimate source of Atlas Shrugged.
Life is endlessly fascinating. How much we can see if we only look.
I am happy at this moment, and wish you the same. It is quite possible for all of us.