A few years back, my company had tons of "mindfulness" crap. They would bring in visiting lecturers on it. They had a meditation room. They had us put our name on a "mood elevator." Leaders would regularly mention maintaining their mindfulness. I think I'll make a post about it.
I think it's a combination of 1) compa it's wanting to pretend their being helpful when they're not and 2) a genuine grift on the part of corporate consultants.
You're the master of well-crafted ambivalence: "This guy sucks galactically, you have to read him!"
About Kat's book - I confess I liked it, glued moles and all, because she won me over with a very direct reference to one of my favorite songs ever, John Darnielle's "No Children", that uncovers large chunks of the book as a novelization of that song. I like Rosenfield's non-fiction writing in general and, once I picked up that thread, I was no longer reading a novel but being a fellow fan, playing along with her nifty little exercise.
The #heartwarming ending to that anecdote is that now I work for an organization that both encourages me not to answer email at home, AND regularly sues the state agency I was interviewing for.
Re: the interview question and self-care. A lot of the managers at work have started asking questions like this in interviews. That’s a hard no from me. “We’re going to overwork you to the point you’re breaking. What do you intend to do about that?”
We also have a whole wellness manager now, and the department seems to consist of (1) relentlessly spamming us with invitations for Zoom yoga at lunch and after work; (2) encouraging participation in DEI events, lunchtime “clubs” (which some workers describe as “just more work we’re expected to do”) and exercise competitions; (3) handing out occasional goodie bags with swag and small gift cards; (4) putting the latest gimmicky things onsite (“you can use this nap pod/reset room/treadmill workstation”) without considering if your working conditions necessitate a nap pod or reset room, something is terribly wrong; and (5) holding endless meetings and requesting “plans” from us (those with direct reports) to demonstrate we’re working hard in specific gimmicky ways to promote everyone’s “wellness” and “engagement” at work with fun activities.
What they’re missing is: if the work isn’t engaging in and of itself, if what you’re doing 40+ hours a week doesn’t satisfy you (or is breaking you) a pumpkin carving event or a dessert contest won’t make it better. If your workers are disengaged, maximally stressed, or underpaid, your problem is not a lack of Valentine cupcakes. My “wellness plan” is to treat people with respect, take on at least as many of the unpleasant tasks as I ask them to take on, express my sincere appreciation for their contributions, and send them home early once in a while to spend more time with people who matter to them.
If you’re not doing those things, a $10 Target gift card won’t compensate, and if you _are_ doing those things, a formal wellness plan is irrelevant.
Death looms over everything, but to paraphrase Bart Simpson, if death looms over everything, don’t you just get used to it? Maybe not all the time but I think most people do get used to it, most of the time. And good luck to them!
I’ve never had any transcendent moment of realization about the oneness of everything (although in my religious youth I sought something like that so desperately), but it kind of obviously is so. The trees dropping and sprouting leaves, animals eating and getting eaten, intellects appearing and disappearing-this is what’s going on. As it was in the beginning…
I can see why people can get afraid or disgusted or sick of it, like you can with the weather in the Northeast, but I just enjoy the good parts and whistle past the graveyard. I’m going to read On Truth and Lies. We’ll see if I can keep whistling!
From the archive piece: "I think that with some easily-achievable changes society could be vastly more equal and just." I'd be very interested in reading an elaboration on what those changes are.
I should have clarified, the swag was shirts, almost exclusively. Each chip had a project name. For patent and trademark reasons the project name was a geographical location. Later, the project names were dropped, and a chip number was used. Most of the time, we never knew what the chip number was. CPUs were named after rivers, chipsets were named after cities ... after some SNAFU over using planet names. Test chips were named after NASA exploratory craft.
The CTP (Customer Team Planner) typically designed the shirts as they were early on the project. It was cool to wear this swag, especially since after a few years, you didn't have to buy any work shirts. Though we did tend to hold onto to some of them far too long. Since we were always bouncing around to do some little bit of work on each chip, we collected quite a few shirts. Then you'd stash one at the back of your closet, and bring it out ten years later, and that started the whole hallway conversations with people you vaguely knew ... "Oh, did you work on Mars? I did the ESD testing; Oh I didn't know you were on that, I did the I/O timing validation."
"Nietzsche feels towards most everyone the way anti-Black racists feel towards Black people" - Phwoar.
I think your puzzlement about Nietzsche vs Heidegger is a perfect illustration of the arbitrariness of many"Chimera"/Corpolib/SJwhatever" positions: and why its better to think of it all like emergent folk religion rather than any kind of formal movement or school of thought. (Hey maybe some of us would then stop trying to argue with it, like we're arguing with a rational movement!)
I think they really *do* find the idea of hatred of some specific groups as profane - much more than "all of humanity" despite those groups being necessary subsets of humanity by logic. As a result, this all makes total sense internally. After all, the idea that human beings are a cancer on our planet - on mother earth - is a position that comfortably sits within the environmentally inclined members of that tribe. Obviously that's a huge logical tension , but so are many tenets of religious belief.
The general lack of understanding of how theology evolves obscures this I think. Think how much within the history of Christianity, there were endless battles between Church thinkers. They were trying to hammer out a creed and render all of it somewhat consistent to transform it from a disparate set of mystical ideas and predecessor beliefs into a *relatively* consistent set of beliefs that you could build a workable social institution upon with governance, rules etc. It was against this actually pretty carefully constructed edifice that atheist movements rebelled: not primitive folk religion, because actually the Church actively stomped out such beliefs unless it couldn't incorporate them.
American Protestantism - from what I can see - tends to mythologise the early Church a little bit as a time of relatively disorganised, "pure" form of Christianity that was "closer to Christ". But it was a total goddamn mess intellectually and it took some brilliant minds and a lot of pain to create something that was at least workable regardless if God exists or not.
A few years back, my company had tons of "mindfulness" crap. They would bring in visiting lecturers on it. They had a meditation room. They had us put our name on a "mood elevator." Leaders would regularly mention maintaining their mindfulness. I think I'll make a post about it.
I think it's a combination of 1) compa it's wanting to pretend their being helpful when they're not and 2) a genuine grift on the part of corporate consultants.
You're the master of well-crafted ambivalence: "This guy sucks galactically, you have to read him!"
About Kat's book - I confess I liked it, glued moles and all, because she won me over with a very direct reference to one of my favorite songs ever, John Darnielle's "No Children", that uncovers large chunks of the book as a novelization of that song. I like Rosenfield's non-fiction writing in general and, once I picked up that thread, I was no longer reading a novel but being a fellow fan, playing along with her nifty little exercise.
The #heartwarming ending to that anecdote is that now I work for an organization that both encourages me not to answer email at home, AND regularly sues the state agency I was interviewing for.
Re: the interview question and self-care. A lot of the managers at work have started asking questions like this in interviews. That’s a hard no from me. “We’re going to overwork you to the point you’re breaking. What do you intend to do about that?”
We also have a whole wellness manager now, and the department seems to consist of (1) relentlessly spamming us with invitations for Zoom yoga at lunch and after work; (2) encouraging participation in DEI events, lunchtime “clubs” (which some workers describe as “just more work we’re expected to do”) and exercise competitions; (3) handing out occasional goodie bags with swag and small gift cards; (4) putting the latest gimmicky things onsite (“you can use this nap pod/reset room/treadmill workstation”) without considering if your working conditions necessitate a nap pod or reset room, something is terribly wrong; and (5) holding endless meetings and requesting “plans” from us (those with direct reports) to demonstrate we’re working hard in specific gimmicky ways to promote everyone’s “wellness” and “engagement” at work with fun activities.
What they’re missing is: if the work isn’t engaging in and of itself, if what you’re doing 40+ hours a week doesn’t satisfy you (or is breaking you) a pumpkin carving event or a dessert contest won’t make it better. If your workers are disengaged, maximally stressed, or underpaid, your problem is not a lack of Valentine cupcakes. My “wellness plan” is to treat people with respect, take on at least as many of the unpleasant tasks as I ask them to take on, express my sincere appreciation for their contributions, and send them home early once in a while to spend more time with people who matter to them.
If you’re not doing those things, a $10 Target gift card won’t compensate, and if you _are_ doing those things, a formal wellness plan is irrelevant.
Death looms over everything, but to paraphrase Bart Simpson, if death looms over everything, don’t you just get used to it? Maybe not all the time but I think most people do get used to it, most of the time. And good luck to them!
I’ve never had any transcendent moment of realization about the oneness of everything (although in my religious youth I sought something like that so desperately), but it kind of obviously is so. The trees dropping and sprouting leaves, animals eating and getting eaten, intellects appearing and disappearing-this is what’s going on. As it was in the beginning…
I can see why people can get afraid or disgusted or sick of it, like you can with the weather in the Northeast, but I just enjoy the good parts and whistle past the graveyard. I’m going to read On Truth and Lies. We’ll see if I can keep whistling!
From the archive piece: "I think that with some easily-achievable changes society could be vastly more equal and just." I'd be very interested in reading an elaboration on what those changes are.
For the photo contest my guess is discarded busts of Anton Ego on the coast of Normandy. Nailed it.
I should have clarified, the swag was shirts, almost exclusively. Each chip had a project name. For patent and trademark reasons the project name was a geographical location. Later, the project names were dropped, and a chip number was used. Most of the time, we never knew what the chip number was. CPUs were named after rivers, chipsets were named after cities ... after some SNAFU over using planet names. Test chips were named after NASA exploratory craft.
The CTP (Customer Team Planner) typically designed the shirts as they were early on the project. It was cool to wear this swag, especially since after a few years, you didn't have to buy any work shirts. Though we did tend to hold onto to some of them far too long. Since we were always bouncing around to do some little bit of work on each chip, we collected quite a few shirts. Then you'd stash one at the back of your closet, and bring it out ten years later, and that started the whole hallway conversations with people you vaguely knew ... "Oh, did you work on Mars? I did the ESD testing; Oh I didn't know you were on that, I did the I/O timing validation."
"Nietzsche feels towards most everyone the way anti-Black racists feel towards Black people" - Phwoar.
I think your puzzlement about Nietzsche vs Heidegger is a perfect illustration of the arbitrariness of many"Chimera"/Corpolib/SJwhatever" positions: and why its better to think of it all like emergent folk religion rather than any kind of formal movement or school of thought. (Hey maybe some of us would then stop trying to argue with it, like we're arguing with a rational movement!)
I think they really *do* find the idea of hatred of some specific groups as profane - much more than "all of humanity" despite those groups being necessary subsets of humanity by logic. As a result, this all makes total sense internally. After all, the idea that human beings are a cancer on our planet - on mother earth - is a position that comfortably sits within the environmentally inclined members of that tribe. Obviously that's a huge logical tension , but so are many tenets of religious belief.
The general lack of understanding of how theology evolves obscures this I think. Think how much within the history of Christianity, there were endless battles between Church thinkers. They were trying to hammer out a creed and render all of it somewhat consistent to transform it from a disparate set of mystical ideas and predecessor beliefs into a *relatively* consistent set of beliefs that you could build a workable social institution upon with governance, rules etc. It was against this actually pretty carefully constructed edifice that atheist movements rebelled: not primitive folk religion, because actually the Church actively stomped out such beliefs unless it couldn't incorporate them.
American Protestantism - from what I can see - tends to mythologise the early Church a little bit as a time of relatively disorganised, "pure" form of Christianity that was "closer to Christ". But it was a total goddamn mess intellectually and it took some brilliant minds and a lot of pain to create something that was at least workable regardless if God exists or not.