Fear Change, Hate Your Life
Feb. 5th, 2006 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynI'm reading this article -- more of a rant, really -- about a couple of corporate philosophy buzzword books.
Two lines from it particularly stood out for me:
I work because I need the money to pay my bills, period.
...
I choose not to enable those who are screwing me.
The rant targets two different books, and as it happens, I've read both* of them at the request of my current workplace.
The message of WMMC? is "change happens, adapt and change with it." The message of the Fish! books is "Sometimes you can't change your situation, but you can always do your best to be happy in it."
The author of this rant hates both these books. His alternative recommendation appears to be "Change is bad. Be angry when things change! Certainly you wouldn't want to change anything yourself. And don't be happy about the way things are, either! Instead, spend your life being angry about it. But keep working to pay your bills, 'cause of course you have to, but it's best if you be misearble about it. Yeah, that'll teach those bastards!"
...
Somehow, I'm having a hard time finding his message inspirational. "Quitting the Paint Factory" and other paeans to the joys of giving up on the corporate world and doing your own thing, those I can relate to. I may not do it myself, but I can understand and admire those who do. I can even understand (if not agree with) those who advocate socialism or communism as an alternative to capitalism.
But this attitude of "Corporate America sucks and I hate being a part of it -- but I'm going to anyway, and my only act of protest is going to be in being as miserable as possible about my own life" -- that I can't understand. If you're not going to change the situation, why not make the best of it? If you're unwilling to make the best of it, why not change it?
Oh, I understand that it's not as simple as "choosing a good attitude" or "change when necessary". Both of the books are simplistic at best, and it's hard not to be cynical about them. Still, to reject both concepts as utterly devoid of merit ... buh.
* Although I don't think I read the same "Fish!" book he did -- there are a bunch of them and I don't recall the title of the specific one I read. Still, I doubt the philosophy changes much from one to the next.
Two lines from it particularly stood out for me:
I work because I need the money to pay my bills, period.
...
I choose not to enable those who are screwing me.
The rant targets two different books, and as it happens, I've read both* of them at the request of my current workplace.
The message of WMMC? is "change happens, adapt and change with it." The message of the Fish! books is "Sometimes you can't change your situation, but you can always do your best to be happy in it."
The author of this rant hates both these books. His alternative recommendation appears to be "Change is bad. Be angry when things change! Certainly you wouldn't want to change anything yourself. And don't be happy about the way things are, either! Instead, spend your life being angry about it. But keep working to pay your bills, 'cause of course you have to, but it's best if you be misearble about it. Yeah, that'll teach those bastards!"
...
Somehow, I'm having a hard time finding his message inspirational. "Quitting the Paint Factory" and other paeans to the joys of giving up on the corporate world and doing your own thing, those I can relate to. I may not do it myself, but I can understand and admire those who do. I can even understand (if not agree with) those who advocate socialism or communism as an alternative to capitalism.
But this attitude of "Corporate America sucks and I hate being a part of it -- but I'm going to anyway, and my only act of protest is going to be in being as miserable as possible about my own life" -- that I can't understand. If you're not going to change the situation, why not make the best of it? If you're unwilling to make the best of it, why not change it?
Oh, I understand that it's not as simple as "choosing a good attitude" or "change when necessary". Both of the books are simplistic at best, and it's hard not to be cynical about them. Still, to reject both concepts as utterly devoid of merit ... buh.
* Although I don't think I read the same "Fish!" book he did -- there are a bunch of them and I don't recall the title of the specific one I read. Still, I doubt the philosophy changes much from one to the next.
Re: Defiance for ths sake of defiance is silly, yes...
Date: 2006-02-07 07:20 pm (UTC)Thank you for the comment, dear. You know, I do know how difficult it is to get out of a bad spot, and how useless most advice seems when I'm in one. And yet I still find it frustrating to watch miserable, unhappy people reject every overture and suggestion with mockery and scorn. "How dare you think your advice could possibly be of value to me or, indeed, ANYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD?" Which is rather the point this fellow takes; anyone who defends the books as "Well, I found it useful" is condemned as a tool or an idiot.
So, I dunno, maybe I am a tool or an idiot, serving my abusive corporate masters with slavish, undeserved loyalty. Maybe someday the next revolution will roll past, and all the workers of the world will be freed, and they'll look back on me with the scorn and derision of a traitor to her own class, a house slave who was duped into thinking slavery was OK just because her master didn't beat her like everyone eles's.
Re: Defiance for ths sake of defiance is silly, yes...
Date: 2006-02-08 04:04 am (UTC)Ah, I'd missed the connotation of abusive lashing out at anyone who _is_ getting along well in the system.
That, too, makes sense....but is regretable. It occured to me the other day that the crux of this is the anger (like in high school) at all the other people who aren't stopping the bad things happening to you. And the hope that berating them might goad _somebody_ into doing _something_, at least in part.
Also, I think the part of the advice that offends them is the implicit message "you should be able to be happy with anything your employer does to you. if you can't be happy, you're just not trying hard enough." Being told that you have no right to feel hurt by abusive behaviour is quite provocative.
Now, arguably, that message _isn't_ intended. But when you feel like you're in a fight, it's hard not to see any message that isn't about "how to resist your tormentor better", there's a hard time seeing that message as trustworthy.
This doesn't excuse the bile being spit here. But it is a good sign of (a) how stupid people get under prolonged stress and (b) how much prolonged stress there is in your system. If you take anything positive away from this, just pay attention to worker's issues insofar as they are election issues; if you feel really motivated, attend municipal government meetings where public input is allowed.
But the horror of modern society is that if it's doing something wrong, getting consensus that wrong is being done is very difficult. Doing something _productive_ about it is even harder; measuring results and adjusting is very rare. Things run on autopilot, and while lots of people have influence, no one , even the president, has _control_.
There is no one to rescue us from ourselves, as a society, and that is a very distressing idea to those in bad places.
But it is regretable that someone spent a whole book on a futile venting of their pain and frustration. There's a reason I stopped angsting in my journal, after all. It doesn't help.