Mike Lofgren, David Stockman. A few true conservatives, solid Republicans, have become disgusted with their party, and have owned up to the mistakes made by that party and its adherents. Stockman I have talked of before. Lofgren, the long-serving Republican analyst on the Senate Budget Committee, says that most of the national debt has been piled up by Republicans, and now they have the monstrously selfish gall to not want to own up to it, let alone pay for it, and are willing to bring the country down in the process. He saw the train wreck coming from the Republican intransigence about getting tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. Because when the Republicans made it a necessary condition prior to any agreement on raising the debt ceiling, when they knew very well that to do so would mean a detailed law could not be crafted in time for the Aug 2nd deadline, Lofgren, who just retired, saw it as a looming disaster and wrote op-ed pieces about it.
Only the fact that the markets have now begun to accept and factor some of the marked dysfunction in the US political-fiscal process, have things been relatively calm from what they could be.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Pet Projection
The number of people with pets seems to be on the increase. Some of it may be economic, as children are delayed, etc. But some of it seems to this observer to be because pets increase in importance due to the fact that in this society we are disconnected from each other, and yet at the same time have a drawing human need to feel connected with something or someone, to feel less alone. Yes, people love their pets, and yes, many families have pets, but these do not seem to negate the trend.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
We Are Not Regenerating
As the readers of the P&H joint blog know, I returned from a two week vacation relatively recently, the first in too many years (a long story for a prof). Sure, I got bits of time in those years—a few days here, a few days there—but not a vacation, and I certainly don’t count “working vacations” (if work is involved, it’s not a real vacation). Frederick Taylor, for all his probable damage to the soul of work (or, in his defense, at least the perversion of his techniques by others), did determine that 14 days/2 weeks off (he is generally credited with scientifically establishing the basis for the 2-week American vacation) was necessary to return a modern, industrial-age worker to the same effectiveness and efficiency he had when he began to work.
But this frenetic American culture, and one tied in electronically at nearly all times, doesn’t get that. People “can’t afford” to be gone from the workplace that long—think of the work that will pile up, not to mention the emails, etc., as well as the workplace politics that will work against in the absence, plus, if you can be gone that long, they will think they can do without you, and they will—permanently. So people end up getting away in driblets of 3-7 days at most. It isn’t enough. If 7 or even 10 days had been enough, Taylor would have determined it, for he didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for workers.
And so we don’t rest and recuperate, and we don’t regenerate. We plow forward in semi-panicky exhaustion, and we burn our adrenal systems out (even a small amount of stress effectively continual will do enormous damage, and we usually have far more than a small amount), let alone the damage we do to the rest of our mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational health.
And all this doesn’t even include the stress outside the workplace. We need the time off. ALL of it. In a row. But we don’t get it. Some of this we do to ourselves. Much of the rest, the culture does to us. And part of that culture is the exploitative nature of work—exploitative commoditized-labor companies and organizations that is the reality in far too many instances.
My Finnish friends were right—American workplace culture is not sustainable to the human spirit, and killing quality of real life around the world, because with globalization, everyone has to compete.
But this frenetic American culture, and one tied in electronically at nearly all times, doesn’t get that. People “can’t afford” to be gone from the workplace that long—think of the work that will pile up, not to mention the emails, etc., as well as the workplace politics that will work against in the absence, plus, if you can be gone that long, they will think they can do without you, and they will—permanently. So people end up getting away in driblets of 3-7 days at most. It isn’t enough. If 7 or even 10 days had been enough, Taylor would have determined it, for he didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for workers.
And so we don’t rest and recuperate, and we don’t regenerate. We plow forward in semi-panicky exhaustion, and we burn our adrenal systems out (even a small amount of stress effectively continual will do enormous damage, and we usually have far more than a small amount), let alone the damage we do to the rest of our mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational health.
And all this doesn’t even include the stress outside the workplace. We need the time off. ALL of it. In a row. But we don’t get it. Some of this we do to ourselves. Much of the rest, the culture does to us. And part of that culture is the exploitative nature of work—exploitative commoditized-labor companies and organizations that is the reality in far too many instances.
My Finnish friends were right—American workplace culture is not sustainable to the human spirit, and killing quality of real life around the world, because with globalization, everyone has to compete.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
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