Author Topic: Work as a Tool of Social Control  (Read 2978 times)

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Nation of One

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Work as a Tool of Social Control
« on: July 19, 2014, 10:11:30 pm »
Exploring Our Paranoia in 2005

Quote from: Quaestor
When I look at how unfufilling, mindless and meaningless many jobs are, I wonder what role they really play. That is, is any real and necessary work getting done in such jobs?

I've also wondered why it is that when your work is done for the day, you can't leave early? I mean, what better reward to give to uber-productive employees than time off?

When I see that yes, many jobs involve non-essential work and then couple that with the unwillingness of many employers to let staff go home early when they've produced more than their share, it's clear to me that work in modern society is a social control tool. It doesn't matter what you produce. But your time is what's important.

A phone-in radio show I was listening to yesterday really brought the concept home to me. One of the interviewees fielding calls said that people often engage in workaholic behaviours to avoid very critical questions in their lives. Questions like, "Is my marriage working out?" "Am I raising my kids right?". The speaker also went on to say how work tires people out such that they become indifferent to larger issues outside the home. Needless to say, workaholism also helps feed a material goods habit.

The way I read this is that when people are tired from work, mired in problems at home, and addicted to material goods, they become politically neutralized and unable to agitate vigorously for necessary change.

Perhaps the biggest symbol of work as a control tool is the office cubicle. These are designed to effectively cage a worker and place him under constant surveillance. It's just a more genteel form of prison. They are also designed to artificially create a hierarchy and entrench inequality. The cubicle is also sold to the workers under the rubric of 'team-building' or some other catchy management buzzword.

Quote from: Finally Free
Quote from: Broken Spirit
Quote from: Quaestor
it's clear to me that work in modern society is a social control tool. It doesn't matter what you produce. But your time is what's important.

I think I may be paranoid, but I suspect I may be offered a job in Manhattan (as an entry level programmer) to get me the hell away from the Internet. Is that too far fetched?
I am afraid to go on interviews because I know in my heart I don't want to be "caged" and "controlled". I don't want to become one of the zombies.

I imagine someone saying, "Would you please keep that **** busy so he stays off the Internet? Please just place him in a cubicle, keep him very busy, and monitor him. Monitor him!"

Is it too far-fetched?

Am I being paranoid?

Broken spirit, I don't think you're being paranoid at all. Not to make light of your position (I do understand where you're coming from), but your "Monitor him!" comment made me laugh my guts out.

I had an experience several years ago (in real life) that made me realize that there are in fact shadowy figures who pull the levers of power in this world. So your suspicions are probably closer to the truth than you might ever dare imagine.

I sometimes wonder if all this outsourcing, 'downsizing', 'rightsizing', 'do more with less' mantra, isn't an attempt by the elites to rein in the masses and remind them of where their daily bread comes from. I'm convinced that these elites live with the fear every day that the masses are about to jettison their cubicles, and soon.

Quote from: Quastor
Quote from: Broken Spirit
<snip>

I think the whole glorification of "team work" is geared toward discouraging independnt thinking. The result is an upside down world, where some of the most vulgar power-seekers are promoted, while those who Nature has made wise and authentic, will be mocked for not caring about "the bottom line".

It just occurred to me that the reason for the upside-down world you speak of is that the ones who hold the real power, or have the ability to promote, only recognize other birds of a feather. That is, like seeks out like.

Check out some of the workplace-bullying websites out there, and you'll find the numbers of psychopaths (most of whom have secured positions of power) is very (and rather disturbingly) high. The moral of the story: if you want power, better get a good dose of psychopathy into your veins.


Quote from: guest
The people who have power in society have it for a reason...

Quote from: fired
i always wondered why big companies always have dumb employees. i think they look for them! [so they can control people]


Quote from: Broken Spirit
I hate to keep saying this, but if you apply the six sacred words (Nothing that is so, is so), you'll see that failure to "succeed" in the work-place may be our greatest success.

How terrible to be ruined for slavery! If only I could be a good slave! How sweet life would be if only I would work harder like the Horse in Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, but no, I had to go and develop my intelligence. Now look at the mess I'm in: unemployable personality.

Damn my intelligence! Intelligence has become a liability if not a disability.

Quote from: fired
last resort? i tell the interviewer that this company will probably suck and i just get up and walk out.


Quote from: Broken Spirit
Now, now, you'll never get a job with that attitude ... good for you!

Quote from: Q
What if work isa religion?

Quote
Damn my intelligence! Intelligence has become a liability if not a disability.


Yep, I've been saying that for years - and put up with being called everything from an arrogant megalomaniac to an insecure victim of envy for my trouble. While both accusations might well have a grain of truth to them, I still think the core of it is exactly what BS and others have suggested. To think too broadly and consistently ruins one for slavery - or in more mainstream terms, it cripples one's motivation and attitude regarding employment.

Psychologists and those in the mainstream who are conditioned by them would say I'm reversing cause and effect here. They would say I'm screwed up in the head to begin with, and that's why I think these things. And again, while I can't deny there may be a grain of truth to that as well, I maintain that they are unable to see the other side of the coin. How could they? They lack either the intelligence or the will to think unconventionally, and usually both. Blunt but true, as far as I can tell.

I have another favorite saying which I made up quite a while ago - "The greatest possible advantage in the workplace is a healthy ignorance."
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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Nation of One

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Re: Work as a Tool of Social Control
« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2019, 11:45:14 am »
For those who may benefit from a little validation that they are not alone in questioning systemic stupidity, I happened upon a couple forums while searching "I would rather starve to death than get a job." 

Not surprisingly, some of the most clear-headed and intelligent reflections I found flowing from those who are considered by society (or consider themselves) to be mentally ill (in need of "treatment"):

(1)  Would rather be dead than work full-time

From there, a link to:

(2)  I just hate work.

... and that's about all I found before feeling guilty about "goofing off." 

Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Silenus

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Labor and Death - Jean Baudrillard
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2020, 01:15:22 pm »
Quote
Other societies have known multiple stakes: over birth and kinship, the soul and the body, the true and the false, reality and appearance.  Political economy has reduced them to just one: production.  But then the stakes were large, the violence extreme and hopes too high.  Today this is over.  The system has rid production of all real stakes.  A more radical truth is dawning, however, and the system's victory allows us to glimpse this fundamental stake.  It is even retrospectively becoming possible to analyse the whole of political economy as having nothing to do with production, as having stakes of life and death.  A symbolic stake.

Every stake is symbolic.  There have only ever been symbolic stakes.  This dimension is etched everywhere into the structural law of value, everywhere immanent in the code.

Labor power is instituted on death.  A man must die to become labor power.  He converts this death into a wage.  But the economic violence capital inflicted on him in the equivalence of the wage and labor power is nothing next to the symbolic violence inflicted on him by his definition as a productive force.  Faking the equivalence is nothing next to the equivalence, qua sings, of wages and death...

Labor is slow death...

All this becomes clear in the genealogy of the slave.  First, the prisoner of war is purely and simply put to death (one does him an honor in this way).  Then he is 'spared' [epargne] and conserved [conserve] (=servus), under the category of spoils of war and a prestige good: he becomes a slave and passes into sumptuary domesticity.  It is only later that he passes into servile labor.  However, he is no longer a 'laborer', since labor only appears in the phase of the serf or emancipated slave, finally relieved of the mortgage of being put to death.  Why is he freed?  Precisely in order to work..."

"Every stake is symbolic."

i.e. A TOTAL FUCKKING FARCE
« Last Edit: January 21, 2020, 01:19:38 pm by Silenus »

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."

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Re: Work as a Tool of Social Control
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2023, 02:14:11 pm »
Men are dropping out of the labor force because they’re upset about their social status.

BLOG: Why are people dropping out of the workforce? It’s not laziness.

published on December 2, 2021 - 2:27 PM
Written by Barak Hernandez

____________________________________________________________________

If you keep knocking on the devil’s door long enough, eventually someone’s going to answer. Translation: Don’t tempt fate. This is exactly what has happened to the U.S. workforce. Long before the pandemic that began in 2020, the American worker was working frantically to find gainful employment and make ends meet. This was not always easy and many U.S. workers were not only working full-time but were also taking on additional work gigs like Uber, Lyft and Door Dash. The American dream was just that — a dream.

Then you have other variables that put the American worker against the wall like a toxic work environment, immature managers and a company that is not aligned with its vision and mission statements. When an employee does not feel valued or appreciated and starts to feel like a number on a productivity sheet, he or she will start to look for the door. The job market before Covid19 was bleak in terms of finding a really good, well-paying job with a company that would be around for the next decade and that you could possibly grow old with to retirement. Those days of a person being able to retire with a company are long gone.

Now enter the pandemic that put the entire world on pause. Every industry was impacted to the very core of its foundation. Now U.S. companies would do their best to stay alive by adapting to the new way of the world where there are no consumers, no open offices, no revenue and no American worker. The U.S. government would need to come to the rescue of American companies by providing government backed loans, grants and emergency financial relief in the form of payroll protection. One of the hardest hit industries has been the restaurant and hospitality sectors, many who were mom and pop owned companies.

This was a welcomed relief and would do much to help American companies navigate through the storm the pandemic caused. The American worker would not be left out in the cold either; the U.S. worker could now apply for pandemic unemployment, a stimulus paycheck and a pandemic food stamp card that would average $350 per child per household. This was needed help indeed. However, who would have thought that the very instrument used to help the U.S. worker would also be the catalyst in preventing the eager anticipation of the American worker to return back to the workforce?


Returning to the crime scene

The math is simple, why would an employee return to work if for the last 365 days they have had their bills paid for, had medical coverage, had rent and or mortgage put on hold and have their food provided for each month. And have plenty of time to spend with their children and loved ones? The answer is that they would not want to return anytime soon. It’s not laziness on their part. It is a matter of a changed perspective and a new level of expectation between employee and employer. Has not the American family been asked to do enough during the pandemic?

There was a time when a manager had power supreme and an employee would do just about anything to keep his job, even if it meant working late hours, holidays, and weekends doing a job that is dangerous and inviting the boss over for dinner and allowing him to flirt with his wife. Not anymore! The days of those types of working conditions are just about over and with good riddance. Currently there is a shortage of workers who are available to work and showing up for work. The term “ghosting” clearly describes this new phenomenon. Ghosting is the act of an employee who has been hired by a company and does not show up for their first day of work, or works for the company a few days or weeks and then suddenly never shows up for work again. The reason behind this is that they found a better offer somewhere else or they do not see the need to play ball with a company.


The future of the American workforce


Technology is a beautiful creation of man. It allows a person to start his or her own business out of the comfort of one’s own home. A person can create their own persona on YouTube and make money by having followers who simply click the “subscribe” button. The point of the matter is this, change has arrived and it’s not going anywhere. There is a generation that is alive and well who now have options of where they want to work because the silent desperation of wishing, stressing and wanting an organization to want you has been mitigated by the freedom of a changed perspective. The kind of change in perspective that changes the trajectory of an entire generation and history is defined by people — not agencies, organizations, or managers.

The spirit of the American worker is still very much alive. It is no longer afraid of not having work because it has seen the edge of the great void of having nothing and still being able to survive as if transported back to the early colonial days where you had to rely on yourselves to provide food and lodging. Instead of steel traps and log cabins, we have keyboards, screens, and cell phones that allow us to care for ourselves monetarily or at least give us the choice. Isn’t that the whole idea behind being free? Having the ability to have a say in one’s life, having the ability to grab the steering wheel and yell out, “I will decide where I will go, I will decide how my children will be raised, and I will decide how much I will work and how I will be treated by my employer.”



Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~