I was praying for your being open to the current real vs the unreal.
1984 and Brave New World are books I was assigned and rolled my eyes at in high school as I thought they were preposterous and we had averted their weird images of the world. I see each day, more and more, the connection in today's world to the imagined world of these two books.
As ACIM says, this is the world of the ego, but there is a Real World and we need to consistently tap into that Truth. We have to keep vigil for each other. We have to keep vigil for each other. We must be in this world but at the same time remember we are NOT of this world.
Instead of raging against the machine, let’s work together to bring democracy into the marketplace. Put your money in credit unions. Shop for your food in a food coop and if you don’t have one, start one together. Find ways to convert businesses to worker coops. Get the government to make supportive laws for coops. Look at Mondragon, Spain. We should be rising up. But not to rage, instead we could be building a new human-centered, democratically and equitably based economy that truly serves the people because it is owned by the people.
Incredible truth, thank you. And more of this "digital gulag" is beginning to seep in more assiduously unless we wake up to it. Time to demand where we reside locally, who is putting up the cameras. Time to look up. Time to hold our ground.
Rage Against the Machine, indeed!!! This is a terrifying and very real phenomenon that is becoming widespread and accepted (if not acceptable) in the workplace. Even remote work-from-home is being monitored by companies that seek to increase productivity while dehumanizing the people performing the work. It is George Orwell’s nightmare “1984” come true - Big Brother is watching! There’s a great recent New York Times feature, “The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score,”
I'm grateful everyday that I am self employed. The people who work in our company take breaks! One of the most dedicated employees plays video games on her phone and has an Ipad open to the book she's reading. It's not unusual to walk in her office and find her "taking a break". It was a bit weird to me at first. But I've come to realize her job is very stressful and without these couple of "pleasures" I doubt she'd be able to do her job as well as she does. Being productive is important, but being under constant stress and irritable is not how anyone should have to live.
Yes!!!!! Yes, yes, yes!!! I worked as a teachers assistant at my children's intermediate school (11-13 years of age) in New Zealand. I felt exhausted just looking at the precious little souls and the way they were treated like performing seals - one task to the next. The school thought they were forward thinking because they allowed 5 mins of meditation into the classroom after lunch (this could be colouring in or anything 'like that') however when the children weren't 'actively' what they considered was allowable meditation - they were told off harshly. I felt the teacher didn't understand the intention behind this idea at all. I also just talked to a yoga instructor for an article who came back from LA some years back where kundalini yoga was everywhere at that time. She tried to get a job as a kundalini yoga instructor here in Auckland just 6 years ago and she was told either no or 'okay but no chanting or gongs'. She had to open her own yoga studio that Aucklanders flocked to (before covid) and found out she was largely responsible for it being so available here. "We are all yearning for that connection," she told me but I notice people here are so afraid of genuine connection. It's something that intimidates many who don't know how to deal with this. It scares me having three teenagers in this era but it also makes me realise more than ever before that we need to connect, talk about spirituality and what is important to us. Speak from that place of insight and awareness just as you are doing now with this piece you have written, Marianne. No more standing back, we need to get involved. We always have as you've recognised but these productivity analysis reports just underline how very far we still have to go.
All the monetary garbage that goes on is a function of the basic system we have degenerated to where the rich oligarchy have taken over to enrich themselves and exploit the masses. It's an economic world where it should be a compassionate one. Yet we resist deep dives into what's causal as we fumble with surface realities. The big fix for the world has to be some form of Universal Basic Income, where everyone gets pulled out of survival with at least minimum needs met for food, shelter, education and health care. Then we have a playing field for making choices that don't just put money in the pockets of the rich.
Gr8 soul-satisfying read on a soul-disturbing trend.
WEIRD CREEPINESS is the perfect phrase— and not just for employee-surveillance trends like the WPS, but also all the other soul-disturbing stories trickling into my Twitter feed daily:”Chess-Playing Robot Fractures Child’s Finger” “Neuralink Will Show Brain Implant Progress” “Desantis Targets Woke Corporations”.... All VERY creepy
Just read a really creepy article on the 7-mountains Christian dominionist mandate being pushed by the Flynn/Trump crowd calling for complete domination of the “mind-molding” spheres of business, government, & culture.
The Worker Productivity Score would seem to be the kind of mind-f*ckery that would serve this dystopian worldview well. An authoritarian corporation’s means of identifying & tossing out its nonconforming “undesirables.” Psychopathic billionaires need only master this process in the business arena before moving on to government & culture hierarchies.
The government has already been extensively subdued, so it won’t take much effort there. But culture’s gonna be a little harder to dominate…
Humanities, the arts & mindfulness training may be humanity’s greatest hope. And courageous Truth-tellers. Soul satisfaction (like Whitman said) is our greatest instrument for Truth detection. And soul-disturbing stuff like employee surveillance is a blinking-red light. Good stuff, as always! So grateful for all you do.
"And it is up to us, each one of us, to push back. Hell no, don’t work at a place where there is a Worker Productivity Score. Raise hell, talk to others, organize against it. Rage against the machine because the machine is coming after you." ... Thank You ... I like your insights ... This reminds me of the new interest in Unions ... I think it's all part of the same struggle ... The Struggle to Preserve Our Humanity ... Thank You ... Very Well Written!
Things are accelerating fast towards the absurd. Of course I can't prove it whatsoever but I wouldn't be surprised to know we're are being 'observed' and it is well known, we're beyond trustworthy. We should be under Trusteeship with a blueprint to follow and those who refuse will be eliminated. That's gonna be a lot of people. Most of what we are doing at this point is not worth saving. Everything must change.
Marianne, this is a fascinating piece. I am not aware of the Worker Productivity Score (WPS). It seems from what you write herein that someone thought it would be great to have people behave as robots! Also, I have detected restraint from some highly able lifelong friends to honestly deal with our new culture of untruth, or they are unwilling to go against this bad status quo trend and have relinquished their critical thinking skills, including seeking coherence. It's as though they have given up and view themselves as well monetized or not--this is where fear resides! (I have lost friends over these past few years since they are reluctant to examine what is truth or not and view me as an outlier for questioning our socio-economic and governance systems. It is dreadful.) So thanks for sharing your assessment that's distressing--it's so far away from love!
This just happened to me literally fired from my one year sales job for not using a tool they recommend you use for each Customer in the last 7 days. Monitoring my use of the tablet when in fact some customers don’t need to use the tools process as they know what they want. No coaching no verbal or written warning, just asked to leave the store immediately and no return. If this can be done to a producing sales associate that makes the company money which by the way us usually the bottom line in business I don’t know what it means for the rest of societies rank and file workers. It’s a scary new world and we must fight back! PS I’ve felt like this for years now kinda instinctively felt this was coming for a long time now.
Humanity is inconvenient to the system of capitalism which is run by evil sociopaths. In large the worst of humanity has trapped the best of humanity in systems that prioritize money over life, greed over compassion, war over peace. Like a snake eating its tail, humanity has failed itself and all other life on this beautiful planet.
So happy you are connecting the dots, Marianne!!
I was praying for your being open to the current real vs the unreal.
1984 and Brave New World are books I was assigned and rolled my eyes at in high school as I thought they were preposterous and we had averted their weird images of the world. I see each day, more and more, the connection in today's world to the imagined world of these two books.
As ACIM says, this is the world of the ego, but there is a Real World and we need to consistently tap into that Truth. We have to keep vigil for each other. We have to keep vigil for each other. We must be in this world but at the same time remember we are NOT of this world.
That goes against everything that humanity is about! Shame on them!!!
Instead of raging against the machine, let’s work together to bring democracy into the marketplace. Put your money in credit unions. Shop for your food in a food coop and if you don’t have one, start one together. Find ways to convert businesses to worker coops. Get the government to make supportive laws for coops. Look at Mondragon, Spain. We should be rising up. But not to rage, instead we could be building a new human-centered, democratically and equitably based economy that truly serves the people because it is owned by the people.
Thank you for putting it into words. So many things running afoul these days and so many veils being lifted - scary.
Incredible truth, thank you. And more of this "digital gulag" is beginning to seep in more assiduously unless we wake up to it. Time to demand where we reside locally, who is putting up the cameras. Time to look up. Time to hold our ground.
Thank you, Marianne.
Rage Against the Machine, indeed!!! This is a terrifying and very real phenomenon that is becoming widespread and accepted (if not acceptable) in the workplace. Even remote work-from-home is being monitored by companies that seek to increase productivity while dehumanizing the people performing the work. It is George Orwell’s nightmare “1984” come true - Big Brother is watching! There’s a great recent New York Times feature, “The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score,”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html
that tracks your “productivity” as you read it online! Scary shit.
I'm grateful everyday that I am self employed. The people who work in our company take breaks! One of the most dedicated employees plays video games on her phone and has an Ipad open to the book she's reading. It's not unusual to walk in her office and find her "taking a break". It was a bit weird to me at first. But I've come to realize her job is very stressful and without these couple of "pleasures" I doubt she'd be able to do her job as well as she does. Being productive is important, but being under constant stress and irritable is not how anyone should have to live.
Yes!!!!! Yes, yes, yes!!! I worked as a teachers assistant at my children's intermediate school (11-13 years of age) in New Zealand. I felt exhausted just looking at the precious little souls and the way they were treated like performing seals - one task to the next. The school thought they were forward thinking because they allowed 5 mins of meditation into the classroom after lunch (this could be colouring in or anything 'like that') however when the children weren't 'actively' what they considered was allowable meditation - they were told off harshly. I felt the teacher didn't understand the intention behind this idea at all. I also just talked to a yoga instructor for an article who came back from LA some years back where kundalini yoga was everywhere at that time. She tried to get a job as a kundalini yoga instructor here in Auckland just 6 years ago and she was told either no or 'okay but no chanting or gongs'. She had to open her own yoga studio that Aucklanders flocked to (before covid) and found out she was largely responsible for it being so available here. "We are all yearning for that connection," she told me but I notice people here are so afraid of genuine connection. It's something that intimidates many who don't know how to deal with this. It scares me having three teenagers in this era but it also makes me realise more than ever before that we need to connect, talk about spirituality and what is important to us. Speak from that place of insight and awareness just as you are doing now with this piece you have written, Marianne. No more standing back, we need to get involved. We always have as you've recognised but these productivity analysis reports just underline how very far we still have to go.
So thankful for your briliant Insight and sharing the view 😁
All the monetary garbage that goes on is a function of the basic system we have degenerated to where the rich oligarchy have taken over to enrich themselves and exploit the masses. It's an economic world where it should be a compassionate one. Yet we resist deep dives into what's causal as we fumble with surface realities. The big fix for the world has to be some form of Universal Basic Income, where everyone gets pulled out of survival with at least minimum needs met for food, shelter, education and health care. Then we have a playing field for making choices that don't just put money in the pockets of the rich.
Gr8 soul-satisfying read on a soul-disturbing trend.
WEIRD CREEPINESS is the perfect phrase— and not just for employee-surveillance trends like the WPS, but also all the other soul-disturbing stories trickling into my Twitter feed daily:”Chess-Playing Robot Fractures Child’s Finger” “Neuralink Will Show Brain Implant Progress” “Desantis Targets Woke Corporations”.... All VERY creepy
Just read a really creepy article on the 7-mountains Christian dominionist mandate being pushed by the Flynn/Trump crowd calling for complete domination of the “mind-molding” spheres of business, government, & culture.
https://buckscountybeacon.com/2022/08/underreported-and-massive-theocratic-movement-joins-forces-with-michael-flynn-and-roger-stone/
The Worker Productivity Score would seem to be the kind of mind-f*ckery that would serve this dystopian worldview well. An authoritarian corporation’s means of identifying & tossing out its nonconforming “undesirables.” Psychopathic billionaires need only master this process in the business arena before moving on to government & culture hierarchies.
The government has already been extensively subdued, so it won’t take much effort there. But culture’s gonna be a little harder to dominate…
Humanities, the arts & mindfulness training may be humanity’s greatest hope. And courageous Truth-tellers. Soul satisfaction (like Whitman said) is our greatest instrument for Truth detection. And soul-disturbing stuff like employee surveillance is a blinking-red light. Good stuff, as always! So grateful for all you do.
"And it is up to us, each one of us, to push back. Hell no, don’t work at a place where there is a Worker Productivity Score. Raise hell, talk to others, organize against it. Rage against the machine because the machine is coming after you." ... Thank You ... I like your insights ... This reminds me of the new interest in Unions ... I think it's all part of the same struggle ... The Struggle to Preserve Our Humanity ... Thank You ... Very Well Written!
Things are accelerating fast towards the absurd. Of course I can't prove it whatsoever but I wouldn't be surprised to know we're are being 'observed' and it is well known, we're beyond trustworthy. We should be under Trusteeship with a blueprint to follow and those who refuse will be eliminated. That's gonna be a lot of people. Most of what we are doing at this point is not worth saving. Everything must change.
We cannot exist in their current system. We must hasten their fall...
Marianne, this is a fascinating piece. I am not aware of the Worker Productivity Score (WPS). It seems from what you write herein that someone thought it would be great to have people behave as robots! Also, I have detected restraint from some highly able lifelong friends to honestly deal with our new culture of untruth, or they are unwilling to go against this bad status quo trend and have relinquished their critical thinking skills, including seeking coherence. It's as though they have given up and view themselves as well monetized or not--this is where fear resides! (I have lost friends over these past few years since they are reluctant to examine what is truth or not and view me as an outlier for questioning our socio-economic and governance systems. It is dreadful.) So thanks for sharing your assessment that's distressing--it's so far away from love!
Yes exactly- that sums it up Joan in a nutshell - ‘it’s so far away from love!’☺️ Well said
This just happened to me literally fired from my one year sales job for not using a tool they recommend you use for each Customer in the last 7 days. Monitoring my use of the tablet when in fact some customers don’t need to use the tools process as they know what they want. No coaching no verbal or written warning, just asked to leave the store immediately and no return. If this can be done to a producing sales associate that makes the company money which by the way us usually the bottom line in business I don’t know what it means for the rest of societies rank and file workers. It’s a scary new world and we must fight back! PS I’ve felt like this for years now kinda instinctively felt this was coming for a long time now.
Lisa, sorry to learn your story. Wishing a better window of opportunity opens for you.
Thank you Joan, it’s been a real shocker but I’m hopeful for more meaningful opportunities coming my way! 😊
🙏
Humanity is inconvenient to the system of capitalism which is run by evil sociopaths. In large the worst of humanity has trapped the best of humanity in systems that prioritize money over life, greed over compassion, war over peace. Like a snake eating its tail, humanity has failed itself and all other life on this beautiful planet.