You are an excellent performer? A perfectionist, perhaps?
That's what is wrong with you! If you care to shovel real dough into your coffers, you might do well if you are dumb enough and an enormous loser.
Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary and former Goldman-Sachs co-chairman, makes a living as a senior counselor and director at Citigroup Inc. these days. While Citigroup's stock has lost 70% in value, good ol' uncle Bob cashed in measly $115 million in pay--excluding stock options--since 1999. Over the past 12 months you, the tax payer, stuffed more than $45 billion dollars up his hapless employer's bottom, and I think that's awfully nice of you.
According to The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 29th, 2008), Rubin claims his role was "peripheral to the bank's main operations." Peripheral to the bank's main operations means he is kinda like selling cigars in the men's room and that's why he is one of the highest paid officials on the street. Rubin didn't want to run any of Citigroup's businesses, and he told colleagues he wanted "more time for activities such as fly fishing." What has he accomplished in his opinion? "It's a funny way to think about it. I think I've been a very constructive part of the Citigroup environment. I have been very involved."
How about you?
Are you involved and a constructive part of your company's environment? Are you blind, deaf, and mute enough to not know what's going on around you? Do you need more time for fly fishing? Can you lie sufficiently to deny responsibility for decisions you have made? Have you actively helped destroy 70% of your employer's assets? Grandpa Robert, for example, was indeed involved in a decision in late 2004 and early 2005 to grow Citigroup's CDO holdings (Collateral Debt Obligations), while the mortgage market was clearly heading South.
See, unlike most of my fellow citizens, I love people like Robert Rubin! I do not begrudge him the $245,000 he made per week for 9 years straight while pissing away his shareholder's savings as sufficiently as he could. And you ought to celebrate this man, as well.
Why?
Because he is living proof that life is unfair. And how is that a good thing? Freedom, Baby, freedom. Freedom EXCLUDES fairness. You can have one or the other, but you cannot have both simultaneously.
The miserable existence of a professional bungler and dumbass like Bob Rubin is an expression of YOUR freedom: the freedom from being equal and from having to share your candy bar with everybody else. Your freedom to earn more money than your neighbor and by Zeus, you do not need to feel guilty about it.
Putz Rubin shows you dollar for dollar that nobody gets paid according to his performance. At least real money has absolutely zero correlation with the quantity or the quality of your output. In other words, you are not only free TO succeed, you are also free FROM succeeding. You may mess up things royally and you still have a chance to end up in the money. Plenty of it, as in Bobby's case.
I don't suggest for you to become an old snake and a quack like Citi-Bob. Maybe you don't find it appealing to lie a lot and to dumb yourself down to shitty Bob's gutter standards. But before you are getting worked up over the Robert Rubins in the world and the sizable chunks of money that is foisted upon these poor guys apparently undeservedly, think again: we don't get in life what we deserve.
You do have options. You may be angry at some people over their salaries or ball your eyes out in mommy's lap and wallow in sadness that you don't have that many chips to play with. Or, you understand Robert Rubin as an inspiration and learn from him that the verb 'to deserve' deserves to be scratched out of your dillweed new age vocabulary. There are individuals who deserve to get knighted by the Queen, but they get gout instead. Huh, well.
I won't have people like Robert Rubin as my friends, and he would never choose to be near me. But his salary and the pathetic ways he "earned" it cannot enrage me. Not at all!
On the contrary, I am ecstatic that money works sort of like God--in mysterious ways--and defies all logic, rational thought, and meticulous calculation. We are addicted to discover the rules and laws our monetary affairs may be based upon, and then Robert-I-screw-you-and-Rub-it-in grins at us from the front page of our favorite rag. Jerks like Rubin are not role models your brats should adore as heroes and yet, they point into the right direction.
If money followed reliable patterns or universal laws, your freedom to make it would be limited. As scary as it doubtlessly is for you and me: we are free to try new things, and the new things are free to develop both ways.
Where there is no guarantee, there is freedom. A whole shitload of it!
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Now go in peace and buy my damn book already: 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' What the hell are you waiting for?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
do be do be do
"Diego [Rivera] provided the money; Frida [Kahlo] managed it. Rivera took no interest in finances, leaving large checks in payment to him in unopened letters for years. When reprimanded, he would counter, 'Demasiado molestia' (too much to bother)." --Hayden Herrera, 'Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo'
Do you need to have financial goals in order to earn decent money? Of course not. Dame Anita Roddick did not write down her goals first before founding the Body Shop. Neither did Diego Rivera imagine how much money he intended to make before painting another mural. I don't believe he had any frame of reference to store such a nutty idea in his brain. To Señor Rivera, sex and communism were more important issues to ponder, besides painting, than what he could buy with the fruits of his labor.
Professional pimps and whores should write down their goals but miraculously, even their business ventures have functioned nicely throughout the millennia without insipid new age advice. Infallible baby boomers, sort of eternal teenagers, raised modern generations of bungling prostitutes. And I am afraid that might include you and me. Here goes the theory: 'This is where I want to end up.' 'What do I need to do to get there?'
Doing X in order to acquire Y equals a certain form of prostitution. No?
I admit, I am wrong. I'm exaggerating shamelessly, and I have rudely offended you. I am sorry, so sorry. I'm trying to make obvious that it is not only possible to achieve success without previous goal setting, but it may be easier to make money when you are not chasing the poor buck as if you were hunting down a sick, exhausted rabbit. We don't literally think "I hope money gives up and croaks before I do," but often we live our lives steered by a similar philosophy. Not a promising guarantee for contentment or happiness.
Does that imply we don't need to work to get what we want? Yes and no. Yes, because you really don't NEED to work. And No, it's not work I am ranting against. Phenomenal psychic that I am, I do see work in your future and lots of it.
You are permitted to work as much as you want! To my limited knowledge, there is no law that forces you to work: you have the RIGHT to work. You don't have to. You don't need to. You may and you can work.
The ongoing compromise makes us hate work. It's not work itself. Jobs are not the problem. Between you and your miserable job, you are what's miserable. The job is fine, just like any other job. The mindset 'I NEED to work' is counter productive to achieving anything you want, because whatever you do to get there is not what you really want. The NEED to work, the idea that turns your job or your business into an involuntary activity, royally screws up your life.
Yeah, but I must work to pay bills and to buy groceries for my damn family! How can I make money if I don't work? There we go again, I did not say you should NOT work. Did I suggest you sit on the sofa, watch The Simpsons, and rent or mortgage payments accumulate in your bank account automatically? Not that I recall!
Let us take a step back. To make one crucial thing crystal clear: I love Homer Simpson and I will not badmouth my heroes. Having said that, I know individuals--some of them loaded with dough, others poorer than Diogenes--who sit and wait. And they wait. Neither I nor they know what they are waiting for. They wait staring at their TV set. They wait while polluting perfectly fine beaches with their useless arses. And they wait ON THEIR JOBS for better times and for better jobs.
Holding down (sic!) a job does not mean one works productively. Just describes a hog occupying the space of another. Unions have made a sweet living out of nudging workers to lofty levels of insufficiency. Work does not mean something useful or marketable will come out the other end.
Bunches of people successfully hide their lazy buttocks behind work. Looking busy doesn't substitute sufficiency, and going to work every day is no proof that work will be done once you get there. Jobs are perfect to spend decades of your life in a waiting pattern. Cubicles were practically invented to keep couch potatoes out of each other's sight. WORK is one of the most misunderstood terms in our times. As a four-letter-word it is considered intrinsically dirty, but is it?
On Monday, November 10th, 2008, USA TODAY printed an article about a Philip Morris owned turkey-processing plant in California that laid of 1,450 workers in 1992. USA TODAY has been tracking 15 former plant managers throughout the past 16 years. As common as it is to despise what we do, it was natural for those fired workers to hate being deprived of their jobs. We hate jobs AND we hate losing them!
"While devastating at the time, the turkey plant closing 'was a good thing that happened,' says Pablo Martinez, 55, and now the owner of two busy Mexican restaurants that employ 24." Two of the 15 guys died meanwhile (and not of joblessness). Thirteen of the 15 former employees "indicate, anecdotally, that those who lose jobs in recessions can land on their feet, and even thrive. They say being jobless can steel and motivate people to work long and hard hours, teach them to be self-reliant and to distrust safety nets, and spur them into fields they are passionate about."
One gentleman went on to restore collectible cars, employing 10 people today. Another became a lawyer specializing in creditor's rights. All 13 agree overall, that "losing their jobs was gut wrenching but a BLESSING."
Do they work less? I don't think so. Most of these guys had to work MORE during the past 16 years than ever before during their lives as employees. It is not the actual work people hate: it is the element of prostitution and slavery we abhor. I have to do what I don't want to do in order to get what I want. Gruesome!
Goal setting can lead to doing more of the things you hate to do. I know individuals who are paid so well for jobs they despise that they don't dare to quit, because wife and brood would be quite upset if they had to cut down on their spending standards. It is utter nonsense to believe that better pay will turn a nasty job into something you can enjoy in the future. You got to be an empty dumbass to fall for a mind trick like that, but let's not talk about multi-level marketing here.
The more emotionally attached we become to achieving a particular goal, the more we may hate our work. The more we want something, the more we hate what we do to get there--potentially.
A paradox? Absolutely, but you have experienced it, haven't you? The more you want something, the higher the price. The higher the price, the more desirable a certain target becomes. Eagerly trying to get it--or him, or her--INCREASES the difficulty to succeed. The grittier the challenge, the more worthwhile appears the pursuit. We are suckers for pain. The highest value we project into things we shall never call our own. The lowest value is represented by the stuff that clutters our home.
It doesn't have to be that difficult. What does it cost you to abandon what everybody else wants, that stuff with a price tag so high that it is improbable for you to ever possess it? Exactly: nothing. You could access a tremendous amount of additional energy by withdrawing it from exorbitant goals.
Why don't you want what nobody else wants?
Goals need to be written down for acquisitions so expensive, that whatever you'll have to do to reach your goals is likely to be work you will hate. It is not a law, but it is "likely," I said. Do we hate our jobs to create a balance between things we want and those we do not? Doomed logic! A form of slavery where slave and slave driver are the same person. There is no significant difference between employees and the self-employed, other than that the self-employed are somewhat more aware of their active role in this dilemma. The self-employed CHOOSE their status quo while the typical employee resorts to pointing fingers.
Within less than one minute, every employee could CHOOSE to do what she believes she is forced to do by circumstance. As addicted to pain as most of us are, it is unlikely that employees will flip the switch soon between misery and fun. The freedom to do so, however, is available without changing one damn thing in our lives. Perhaps self-torture is too cool to give up.
We hate to do what we do in order to have what we crave to have. NOT because we hate doing what we do: rather, we hate THAT we have to what we do. I have bad news for you. This irritating fact is not going to change when you hop jobs a thousand times.
Oh, I just want to do what I love to do!
Yeah right, how could I forget. May I ask you seriously: how many individuals do you know personally who do what they love to do, and I mean ALL DAY? And I am certain they all thrive financially, don't they? Now? I am waiting ..... how many?
I don't know ANY.
What does that mean? Just as it is pure idiocy to expect that children will guarantee your happiness--and what an impertinent, reckless idea to unload that responsibility on the small shoulders of your kids--work WILL NEVER MAKE YOU HAPPY. The job you currently hate won't make you happy and, write this down instead of your stupid goals, work you think you might love will never make you happy, either!
You have the grand freedom to EXPRESS YOUR HAPPINESS on your job, while playing with your brats, or when you are founding and building your own business. Doing 'what you love' as a recipe for happiness must disappoint you eventually, as it will drown you in depression if you try to gain happiness from finding and being with a person you love. Love is so incredibly overrated, it's not even funny anymore. You long to establish a business by doing what you love? Good God, I feel for you!
You hate your job or you love your work: what's the difference? Is that so important to you how you 'feel?' One dude hates to repair cars for a living and the other can't wait to get home from work, so that he can repair his vintage Jaguar all night long. Duh!
If you are still sorting out what you like and what you dislike in life, I recommend you grow up. I may sound like a condescending ass once again--and you are correct, that is me--but please quit wasting your time on things that are of secondary importance. When you watch a newborn baby, you will realize that the emotions this little bundle goes through change every couple of seconds WITHOUT any change in the environment.
Human beings feel stuff. All kinds of stuff. Sadness, thrill, lust, angst, joy, worry, love, stress, happiness, comfort, boredom, compassion, or an itch. If you think there must be a reason for all this, you are doomed. A vast variety of feelings makes you originally you, in connection with thoughts you have parallel to the adventure to feel. Picking one single experience, 'love' in this case or the love for what you do, is equally blockheaded as it is to choose 'being bored' forever. It won't work because it can't work, and your own life is proof that you are incapable of holding one preferred feeling for years to come.
You can't even maintain one feeling--like worry--for an entire day. Try it. You'll crack up laughing about this silly idea pretty soon. No, you cannot do what you love for a living. It's nonsense and it can't be done. WHAT you do and how you feel about it is unimportant. What you are willing to put into it is what truly counts. That turns you from being a consumer into a producer.
Happiness can't be bought or worked for. Or love, for that matter. Any attempt in that direction will be frustrated, leaving you devastated and floored. You can't do what you hate and hope to be happy once your stupid ship will come in. Neither can you do what you love and expect happiness any time soon. Both ideas are futile.
It only works the other way around. You can be happy first. When? That's up to you to decide. Then do whatever the hell it is you choose to do, things you enjoy and activities you can't stand. Hey, feel free to do what you hate and still: nothing you do can take away your happiness! Not even your blasted job.
Your choices: reaching your goals no matter what, or being happy no matter what.
What is more appealing to you? I am in no position to give you advice. But if you asked me what I choose, I'd tell you it is the latter. Being happy through sadness, worry, love, hate, joy, and--God forbid, lust--gently breaks through limitations that alternatives fail to challenge.
Good luck to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Hey, even if you feel a slight temptation: DO NOT buy my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' I'll cost you!
Do you need to have financial goals in order to earn decent money? Of course not. Dame Anita Roddick did not write down her goals first before founding the Body Shop. Neither did Diego Rivera imagine how much money he intended to make before painting another mural. I don't believe he had any frame of reference to store such a nutty idea in his brain. To Señor Rivera, sex and communism were more important issues to ponder, besides painting, than what he could buy with the fruits of his labor.
Professional pimps and whores should write down their goals but miraculously, even their business ventures have functioned nicely throughout the millennia without insipid new age advice. Infallible baby boomers, sort of eternal teenagers, raised modern generations of bungling prostitutes. And I am afraid that might include you and me. Here goes the theory: 'This is where I want to end up.' 'What do I need to do to get there?'
Doing X in order to acquire Y equals a certain form of prostitution. No?
I admit, I am wrong. I'm exaggerating shamelessly, and I have rudely offended you. I am sorry, so sorry. I'm trying to make obvious that it is not only possible to achieve success without previous goal setting, but it may be easier to make money when you are not chasing the poor buck as if you were hunting down a sick, exhausted rabbit. We don't literally think "I hope money gives up and croaks before I do," but often we live our lives steered by a similar philosophy. Not a promising guarantee for contentment or happiness.
Does that imply we don't need to work to get what we want? Yes and no. Yes, because you really don't NEED to work. And No, it's not work I am ranting against. Phenomenal psychic that I am, I do see work in your future and lots of it.
You are permitted to work as much as you want! To my limited knowledge, there is no law that forces you to work: you have the RIGHT to work. You don't have to. You don't need to. You may and you can work.
The ongoing compromise makes us hate work. It's not work itself. Jobs are not the problem. Between you and your miserable job, you are what's miserable. The job is fine, just like any other job. The mindset 'I NEED to work' is counter productive to achieving anything you want, because whatever you do to get there is not what you really want. The NEED to work, the idea that turns your job or your business into an involuntary activity, royally screws up your life.
Yeah, but I must work to pay bills and to buy groceries for my damn family! How can I make money if I don't work? There we go again, I did not say you should NOT work. Did I suggest you sit on the sofa, watch The Simpsons, and rent or mortgage payments accumulate in your bank account automatically? Not that I recall!
Let us take a step back. To make one crucial thing crystal clear: I love Homer Simpson and I will not badmouth my heroes. Having said that, I know individuals--some of them loaded with dough, others poorer than Diogenes--who sit and wait. And they wait. Neither I nor they know what they are waiting for. They wait staring at their TV set. They wait while polluting perfectly fine beaches with their useless arses. And they wait ON THEIR JOBS for better times and for better jobs.
Holding down (sic!) a job does not mean one works productively. Just describes a hog occupying the space of another. Unions have made a sweet living out of nudging workers to lofty levels of insufficiency. Work does not mean something useful or marketable will come out the other end.
Bunches of people successfully hide their lazy buttocks behind work. Looking busy doesn't substitute sufficiency, and going to work every day is no proof that work will be done once you get there. Jobs are perfect to spend decades of your life in a waiting pattern. Cubicles were practically invented to keep couch potatoes out of each other's sight. WORK is one of the most misunderstood terms in our times. As a four-letter-word it is considered intrinsically dirty, but is it?
On Monday, November 10th, 2008, USA TODAY printed an article about a Philip Morris owned turkey-processing plant in California that laid of 1,450 workers in 1992. USA TODAY has been tracking 15 former plant managers throughout the past 16 years. As common as it is to despise what we do, it was natural for those fired workers to hate being deprived of their jobs. We hate jobs AND we hate losing them!
"While devastating at the time, the turkey plant closing 'was a good thing that happened,' says Pablo Martinez, 55, and now the owner of two busy Mexican restaurants that employ 24." Two of the 15 guys died meanwhile (and not of joblessness). Thirteen of the 15 former employees "indicate, anecdotally, that those who lose jobs in recessions can land on their feet, and even thrive. They say being jobless can steel and motivate people to work long and hard hours, teach them to be self-reliant and to distrust safety nets, and spur them into fields they are passionate about."
One gentleman went on to restore collectible cars, employing 10 people today. Another became a lawyer specializing in creditor's rights. All 13 agree overall, that "losing their jobs was gut wrenching but a BLESSING."
Do they work less? I don't think so. Most of these guys had to work MORE during the past 16 years than ever before during their lives as employees. It is not the actual work people hate: it is the element of prostitution and slavery we abhor. I have to do what I don't want to do in order to get what I want. Gruesome!
Goal setting can lead to doing more of the things you hate to do. I know individuals who are paid so well for jobs they despise that they don't dare to quit, because wife and brood would be quite upset if they had to cut down on their spending standards. It is utter nonsense to believe that better pay will turn a nasty job into something you can enjoy in the future. You got to be an empty dumbass to fall for a mind trick like that, but let's not talk about multi-level marketing here.
The more emotionally attached we become to achieving a particular goal, the more we may hate our work. The more we want something, the more we hate what we do to get there--potentially.
A paradox? Absolutely, but you have experienced it, haven't you? The more you want something, the higher the price. The higher the price, the more desirable a certain target becomes. Eagerly trying to get it--or him, or her--INCREASES the difficulty to succeed. The grittier the challenge, the more worthwhile appears the pursuit. We are suckers for pain. The highest value we project into things we shall never call our own. The lowest value is represented by the stuff that clutters our home.
It doesn't have to be that difficult. What does it cost you to abandon what everybody else wants, that stuff with a price tag so high that it is improbable for you to ever possess it? Exactly: nothing. You could access a tremendous amount of additional energy by withdrawing it from exorbitant goals.
Why don't you want what nobody else wants?
Goals need to be written down for acquisitions so expensive, that whatever you'll have to do to reach your goals is likely to be work you will hate. It is not a law, but it is "likely," I said. Do we hate our jobs to create a balance between things we want and those we do not? Doomed logic! A form of slavery where slave and slave driver are the same person. There is no significant difference between employees and the self-employed, other than that the self-employed are somewhat more aware of their active role in this dilemma. The self-employed CHOOSE their status quo while the typical employee resorts to pointing fingers.
Within less than one minute, every employee could CHOOSE to do what she believes she is forced to do by circumstance. As addicted to pain as most of us are, it is unlikely that employees will flip the switch soon between misery and fun. The freedom to do so, however, is available without changing one damn thing in our lives. Perhaps self-torture is too cool to give up.
We hate to do what we do in order to have what we crave to have. NOT because we hate doing what we do: rather, we hate THAT we have to what we do. I have bad news for you. This irritating fact is not going to change when you hop jobs a thousand times.
Oh, I just want to do what I love to do!
Yeah right, how could I forget. May I ask you seriously: how many individuals do you know personally who do what they love to do, and I mean ALL DAY? And I am certain they all thrive financially, don't they? Now? I am waiting ..... how many?
I don't know ANY.
What does that mean? Just as it is pure idiocy to expect that children will guarantee your happiness--and what an impertinent, reckless idea to unload that responsibility on the small shoulders of your kids--work WILL NEVER MAKE YOU HAPPY. The job you currently hate won't make you happy and, write this down instead of your stupid goals, work you think you might love will never make you happy, either!
You have the grand freedom to EXPRESS YOUR HAPPINESS on your job, while playing with your brats, or when you are founding and building your own business. Doing 'what you love' as a recipe for happiness must disappoint you eventually, as it will drown you in depression if you try to gain happiness from finding and being with a person you love. Love is so incredibly overrated, it's not even funny anymore. You long to establish a business by doing what you love? Good God, I feel for you!
You hate your job or you love your work: what's the difference? Is that so important to you how you 'feel?' One dude hates to repair cars for a living and the other can't wait to get home from work, so that he can repair his vintage Jaguar all night long. Duh!
If you are still sorting out what you like and what you dislike in life, I recommend you grow up. I may sound like a condescending ass once again--and you are correct, that is me--but please quit wasting your time on things that are of secondary importance. When you watch a newborn baby, you will realize that the emotions this little bundle goes through change every couple of seconds WITHOUT any change in the environment.
Human beings feel stuff. All kinds of stuff. Sadness, thrill, lust, angst, joy, worry, love, stress, happiness, comfort, boredom, compassion, or an itch. If you think there must be a reason for all this, you are doomed. A vast variety of feelings makes you originally you, in connection with thoughts you have parallel to the adventure to feel. Picking one single experience, 'love' in this case or the love for what you do, is equally blockheaded as it is to choose 'being bored' forever. It won't work because it can't work, and your own life is proof that you are incapable of holding one preferred feeling for years to come.
You can't even maintain one feeling--like worry--for an entire day. Try it. You'll crack up laughing about this silly idea pretty soon. No, you cannot do what you love for a living. It's nonsense and it can't be done. WHAT you do and how you feel about it is unimportant. What you are willing to put into it is what truly counts. That turns you from being a consumer into a producer.
Happiness can't be bought or worked for. Or love, for that matter. Any attempt in that direction will be frustrated, leaving you devastated and floored. You can't do what you hate and hope to be happy once your stupid ship will come in. Neither can you do what you love and expect happiness any time soon. Both ideas are futile.
It only works the other way around. You can be happy first. When? That's up to you to decide. Then do whatever the hell it is you choose to do, things you enjoy and activities you can't stand. Hey, feel free to do what you hate and still: nothing you do can take away your happiness! Not even your blasted job.
Your choices: reaching your goals no matter what, or being happy no matter what.
What is more appealing to you? I am in no position to give you advice. But if you asked me what I choose, I'd tell you it is the latter. Being happy through sadness, worry, love, hate, joy, and--God forbid, lust--gently breaks through limitations that alternatives fail to challenge.
Good luck to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Hey, even if you feel a slight temptation: DO NOT buy my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' I'll cost you!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
pleasure of pain
"People love to suffer fear and pain--think of all the recreational activities based on experiencing these things--from horror movies to roller coaster rides, and from aerobics classes to dieting. People will even pay good money to suffer fear and pain. They need it, they have to have it, they won't be happy without it." --Crystal Dawn and Stephen Flowers, Carnal Alchemy
Pain is the new pleasure. Well, it's not really new. The motto "No pain, no gain!" has been gathering friends and believers for centuries. Flagellating monks in the dark ages knew how to beat the exciting side of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain into the open. Hardworking men and women of the 21st millennium are facing fresh new sets of painful challenges. Yet they adapt quickly to exploit even gloomy areas of their reality for the purpose of extracting pure fun.
The fact that 87% of employees hate what they do can mean two different things: they are either too stupid to do what they love to do, or hating what they do IS EXACTLY what they love to be doing. Yes Ma'am, hating what they do is BETTER than doing what they love, because what they love to do is depising a lousy job. Isn't that obvious?
People aren't dumb! Give individuals some credit and yep, that includes yourself. We are making mistakes and we run into dead ends, once in awhile--that's how evolution works--but we do know what we want to do and where we'd like to go. We don't need ninny nannies and safety Nazis who are eager to protect us from ourselves, but who see us capable of paying for their exorbitant bills.
You want equality or freedom? You can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. If you value equality over freedom, you see your fellow human beings as weak or certifiably irresponsible idiots, incompetent to do what it takes to live their lives. It doesn't matter whether you want to destroy or protect people who appear to be somewhat subhuman from your perspective. I am sorry, but identifying a "lesser" class of people who desperately needs your patronizing help differs not from stigmatizing a defined group you plan to harass and hate.
You will hate me for saying this: movements for equality have fascist roots, one group trying to dominate the other. What's so bad about freedom, other than the fact that it scares the bejeezus out of us? Freedom respects your choices as an individual, assumes your capability, and expresses trust that you know better what's good for you than anybody else does. Cries for equality murder individuality in its slumber. Yours!
Hating a job means dealing with controllable portions of pain. Both, unemployment and self-employment, come with a high probability of going beyond the threshold into spheres of unpredictable and unbearable pain levels. Doing what you love and turning it into a business has the potential of lifelong torture and total self-destruction built in to it. Am I joking? I wish! No, risks and possibilities of self-employment and entrepreneurship are not limited to financial ups and downs. The chance that you will always love what you say you love is slim. You won't. It is more realistic to expect that you will hit moments when you hate the day you were born, during your career as a self-employed business person.
Thus is the price of freedom and I am willing to pay it. You don't have to be self-employed, and you continue to have my undivided respect if you don't. Being employed is still an expression of that same freedom and hating what one does is the price the majority of employees pays. There is no right or wrong here. But don't let the surface fool you:
Those who hate what they are doing, are doing what they love!
Egbert Sukop
Pain is the new pleasure. Well, it's not really new. The motto "No pain, no gain!" has been gathering friends and believers for centuries. Flagellating monks in the dark ages knew how to beat the exciting side of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain into the open. Hardworking men and women of the 21st millennium are facing fresh new sets of painful challenges. Yet they adapt quickly to exploit even gloomy areas of their reality for the purpose of extracting pure fun.
The fact that 87% of employees hate what they do can mean two different things: they are either too stupid to do what they love to do, or hating what they do IS EXACTLY what they love to be doing. Yes Ma'am, hating what they do is BETTER than doing what they love, because what they love to do is depising a lousy job. Isn't that obvious?
People aren't dumb! Give individuals some credit and yep, that includes yourself. We are making mistakes and we run into dead ends, once in awhile--that's how evolution works--but we do know what we want to do and where we'd like to go. We don't need ninny nannies and safety Nazis who are eager to protect us from ourselves, but who see us capable of paying for their exorbitant bills.
You want equality or freedom? You can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. If you value equality over freedom, you see your fellow human beings as weak or certifiably irresponsible idiots, incompetent to do what it takes to live their lives. It doesn't matter whether you want to destroy or protect people who appear to be somewhat subhuman from your perspective. I am sorry, but identifying a "lesser" class of people who desperately needs your patronizing help differs not from stigmatizing a defined group you plan to harass and hate.
You will hate me for saying this: movements for equality have fascist roots, one group trying to dominate the other. What's so bad about freedom, other than the fact that it scares the bejeezus out of us? Freedom respects your choices as an individual, assumes your capability, and expresses trust that you know better what's good for you than anybody else does. Cries for equality murder individuality in its slumber. Yours!
Hating a job means dealing with controllable portions of pain. Both, unemployment and self-employment, come with a high probability of going beyond the threshold into spheres of unpredictable and unbearable pain levels. Doing what you love and turning it into a business has the potential of lifelong torture and total self-destruction built in to it. Am I joking? I wish! No, risks and possibilities of self-employment and entrepreneurship are not limited to financial ups and downs. The chance that you will always love what you say you love is slim. You won't. It is more realistic to expect that you will hit moments when you hate the day you were born, during your career as a self-employed business person.
Thus is the price of freedom and I am willing to pay it. You don't have to be self-employed, and you continue to have my undivided respect if you don't. Being employed is still an expression of that same freedom and hating what one does is the price the majority of employees pays. There is no right or wrong here. But don't let the surface fool you:
Those who hate what they are doing, are doing what they love!
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 21, 2008
advocatus diaboli
I upset people. That's what I do. Some of my best friends think of me as an irritating bastard and still, that won't keep them from inviting me to the next Thanksgiving dinner. Sweet people, but how much worse must be your perception of me? You, who don't know me personally, don't have many options between hating my guts and loving me "anyway." But wait, perhaps there is something else to be considered:
My evil ways are the fault of my rotten star sign, of course. Hence it's useless for me to issue a public apology.
People crave advice. How do I know that? The revenue of the how-to industry, self-help books, and the self-improvement movement are proof how much we desire for others to tell us what to do. First we need to know how valuable a person's opinion might be: we are obsessed with credentials.
Once you can prove to me you're good, I'm willing to believe your opinion is worth listening to. Recently, I read a guy's book who spend some 55 pages--and I kid you not--on building up his readers' belief in his, this authors, abilities. Incredible! Of course, "past performance is no guarantee for future results," but apparently those using their credentials as bait have unshakable faith in the stupidity of their audience.
We believe someone's credentials, we trust her advice ... but we still WON'T do what she suggests. All of us have had brilliant advice throughout our entire lives. Our parents and grandparents have told us for decades not to spend more money than what we are making. It doesn't get simpler than that. And, did you listen?
Some of us, if not most of us, had to painfully learn it again while paying exorbitant prices for this simple lesson that a first grader can understand intellectually. We don't care about advice, no matter how true and down-to-earth it may me. Honestly, we don't give a rat's pink behind about anybody's credentials. We want to do what we want ... but that can be the most difficult thing to figure out.
I have said it before and I shall do so again: I will never tell you what to do. Neither will I bore you with advice about things you "should not" do. I am giving you EXTREME ideas to ponder. I don't care whether you "like" what I say or not. You happen to agree? So what? You disagree and you feel offended? So?
This is not about an argument one of us can win. It's a waste of time to find common ground by working towards a congruent opinion. I don't care what you think, and I hardly care about my own thoughts. The devil's advocate was invented by the Catholic Church--by Pope Sixtus V., to be exact--in anno domini 1587 to deal with cases of beatification and canonization. The Promotor of the Faith or Promotor Fidei, as his title was called officially, had the purpose to get to the bottom of each case, to find the truth (Saint or no Saint).
Often I playfully take the position of the devil's advocate not to unveil an absolute or "objective" truth, but to enable YOU to discover simply what you want to think and what you really want to do. I don't know what you should think, and I don't have the slightest idea what you should do. The devil's advocate may believe what she claims or she may not believe it herself. That is immaterial. What YOU believe is important, or at least I hope it is of importance to you.
When I see individuals being pissed off about me assuming the role of the devil's advocate, I know I hit the bull's eye: they are completely lost! They are also upset with me because I don't give them the advice they would then REJECT. As upset as they are, I know for a fact that they would indeed reject ANY advice I could give them ("I don't feel so good, but at least I am better than you are.").
Devils' advocates remind us of our own painful moments of confusion. We don't like to be confused. We don't like to be seen by others as indecisive, hesitant, and insecure. Confusion equals weakness for many. I don't believe it used to be easy to land a job at Lehman Brothers, high up the food chain, for indecisive and insecure applicants. That must have really helped the company.
Confusion is good!
When you are at a crossroads and you literally do not know: THEN you get a taste of freedom. I won't deny that the experience of raw freedom is often painful, but it will be your very own truth that sets you free. It's not someone's truth somewhere that you need to hunt down.
I may tell you once-in-awhile that I argue the perspective of "advocatus diaboli." I am sorry if you don't enjoy that! Seriously, I am. I feel sorry for you because it might be in your best interest to treat any type of advice as if it was given by a fraud and a quack like me. The next street bum you see may have wisdom that's potentially more valuable to you than the combined knowledge of a hundred assorted lawyers from Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Lehman. Credentials are cheap these days. No, scratch that: credentials have always been worthless.
Confusion is good for ya, emotional upheaval included. Confusion means instant freedom.
Egbert Sukop
My evil ways are the fault of my rotten star sign, of course. Hence it's useless for me to issue a public apology.
People crave advice. How do I know that? The revenue of the how-to industry, self-help books, and the self-improvement movement are proof how much we desire for others to tell us what to do. First we need to know how valuable a person's opinion might be: we are obsessed with credentials.
Once you can prove to me you're good, I'm willing to believe your opinion is worth listening to. Recently, I read a guy's book who spend some 55 pages--and I kid you not--on building up his readers' belief in his, this authors, abilities. Incredible! Of course, "past performance is no guarantee for future results," but apparently those using their credentials as bait have unshakable faith in the stupidity of their audience.
We believe someone's credentials, we trust her advice ... but we still WON'T do what she suggests. All of us have had brilliant advice throughout our entire lives. Our parents and grandparents have told us for decades not to spend more money than what we are making. It doesn't get simpler than that. And, did you listen?
Some of us, if not most of us, had to painfully learn it again while paying exorbitant prices for this simple lesson that a first grader can understand intellectually. We don't care about advice, no matter how true and down-to-earth it may me. Honestly, we don't give a rat's pink behind about anybody's credentials. We want to do what we want ... but that can be the most difficult thing to figure out.
I have said it before and I shall do so again: I will never tell you what to do. Neither will I bore you with advice about things you "should not" do. I am giving you EXTREME ideas to ponder. I don't care whether you "like" what I say or not. You happen to agree? So what? You disagree and you feel offended? So?
This is not about an argument one of us can win. It's a waste of time to find common ground by working towards a congruent opinion. I don't care what you think, and I hardly care about my own thoughts. The devil's advocate was invented by the Catholic Church--by Pope Sixtus V., to be exact--in anno domini 1587 to deal with cases of beatification and canonization. The Promotor of the Faith or Promotor Fidei, as his title was called officially, had the purpose to get to the bottom of each case, to find the truth (Saint or no Saint).
Often I playfully take the position of the devil's advocate not to unveil an absolute or "objective" truth, but to enable YOU to discover simply what you want to think and what you really want to do. I don't know what you should think, and I don't have the slightest idea what you should do. The devil's advocate may believe what she claims or she may not believe it herself. That is immaterial. What YOU believe is important, or at least I hope it is of importance to you.
When I see individuals being pissed off about me assuming the role of the devil's advocate, I know I hit the bull's eye: they are completely lost! They are also upset with me because I don't give them the advice they would then REJECT. As upset as they are, I know for a fact that they would indeed reject ANY advice I could give them ("I don't feel so good, but at least I am better than you are.").
Devils' advocates remind us of our own painful moments of confusion. We don't like to be confused. We don't like to be seen by others as indecisive, hesitant, and insecure. Confusion equals weakness for many. I don't believe it used to be easy to land a job at Lehman Brothers, high up the food chain, for indecisive and insecure applicants. That must have really helped the company.
Confusion is good!
When you are at a crossroads and you literally do not know: THEN you get a taste of freedom. I won't deny that the experience of raw freedom is often painful, but it will be your very own truth that sets you free. It's not someone's truth somewhere that you need to hunt down.
I may tell you once-in-awhile that I argue the perspective of "advocatus diaboli." I am sorry if you don't enjoy that! Seriously, I am. I feel sorry for you because it might be in your best interest to treat any type of advice as if it was given by a fraud and a quack like me. The next street bum you see may have wisdom that's potentially more valuable to you than the combined knowledge of a hundred assorted lawyers from Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Lehman. Credentials are cheap these days. No, scratch that: credentials have always been worthless.
Confusion is good for ya, emotional upheaval included. Confusion means instant freedom.
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 14, 2008
loving idiocy
"Triple your income and enjoy life!" promised the business card I discovered on top of a urinal in a restaurant. Network sharketing at its best. I did not touch that card. Hell no! Somehow I had a problem computing my idea of enjoyment as a direct function of literally inviting others to piss on my name. Besides, it's kinda sexist and discriminating to exclude women as potential business associates even if your business is of such crappy nature.
Understandably, armies of job-hating employees prefer to suffer through the decades until retirement puts them out of misery. Or a heart attack. Or a quasi retirement, diversified by having fun as a friendly greeter at Walmart, part time.
Employees are bright people in general! Choosing despicable jobs for a lifetime does not mean an individual is too blockheaded to leave appalling work situations behind in exchange for freedom, riches, and the joy of doing what she loves to do. Not necessarily. At least subconsciously, most employees are aware that hating a job may not be the worst of all available alternatives.
We aren't fighting anymore for survival in an environment of sabertoothed tigers, poisonous snakes, and war parties of belligerent tribes. Well, in a transferred sense we are, and it continues to be a desperate act of survival for many of us. You don't need to be an anthropologist to recognize dynamics that were typical for stone age societies beautifully preserved in any bureaucracy. Groups of people, for that matter, tend to re-enact reprehensible forms of "togetherness" we thought we had overcome by now.
We haven't. Laziness is not as bad as its reputation and as we see, even evolution is not exactly forging ahead with a type "A" personality. Hostile work environments--infested with backstabbers, freeloaders, and other lowlife entities--benefit us. Imminent danger to get screwed keeps our senses and pencils sharp. Imagine that: everything you hate about your job is actually good for you!
The fact that we won't look too pretty after a week alone in the jungle often obscures the truth that our reptilian brain is still fully functional. We do know how to suspend judgment, bypass the neocortex, and knock on the old lizard's bedroom door. SNAP! And this hundred million year trained fight-or-flight machine rips a chunk out of anything and is ready for a second helping ... unless you start thinking first and fast. You may not believe in dragons anymore, the guardians of your sixth sense. I do: I have seen them fly.
Hating your job feeds the dragon, sharpens its claws, and keeps the old freak loyal to you and to your purposes.
Yet dragons love to take long naps and interruptions displease them. You know what that means, don't you? Eh? C'mon. You guessed it: our instincts are sufficiently developed to know that hating miserable jobs for forty years is BETTER and infinitely safer than unpredictable environments of entrepreneurship. Employees know that hating a job, as awful as it may be, still allows them to go home at a certain time, play with their kids on the weekend and pick up a paycheck in predictable intervals.
Employees know that self-employment can mean years of hell, physical and emotional hardship, sleep deprivation, having to see their family under constant existential threat, and worse: living with the pain and the guilt of not spending enough time with their loved ones.
It is utterly irresponsible to promise employees a better world when they enter self-employment. If you have a job today, heed my advice and keep your damn job! Each of the alternatives may not only be significantly worse than what you are hating today. Anything besides the things you hate doing today could easily be classified as torture by you and by independent judges.
Yes, you got that right. What you hate doing is rather foreplay than torture. The things you say you'd love to be doing may turn into brutal and violent (self)-destruction once you realize there is no way back and you will be forced to do it to the very end, until you die. I am not kidding!
My father--a farmer--ridiculed employees who made twice the money he did and who could afford to go on three-week vacations year after year. He mocked government employees who could not get fired, were basically exempt from paying income taxes, and had generous pensions waiting for them at retirement age (no, of course he didn't make fun of employees to their face).
My dad didn't have a safe paycheck nor a secured pension. He did not expect to retire, ever. When the weather demanded it, he would work every day for months. Sometimes he had a bad year, financially. I saw him--and us--going through several meager years in a row. Vacations? Yep, he enjoyed about half a dozen vacations, 3 - 5 days long in his late sixties, totaling a month of goofing off during his lifetime perhaps.
My old man worked for more than fifty years on a "job" he did not initially choose. He felt he had to take over this 800-year-old family business when his older brother got killed in WWI. Most individuals in our society would easily label my father's life as 50 years of "Labor Camp." Yet, I never heard him complain. He whistled at work. He was a happy man. He never said it explicitly, but I do know he absolutely LOVED his life and his vocation. He CHOSE to work every day.
I have met hundreds and hundreds of self-employed men and women, entrepreneurs, selfmade individuals in all sorts of industries, in different countries on several continents. My father's story does NOT stick out as special. On the contrary, as far as self-employment goes, he was quite normal. It matters not that my dad lived in Germany all his life. What I have learned and what I continue to admire is that America and the greatness of the U.S. have been build by such "normal" individuals.
Ingenious tinkerers willing to go through hell for the people and for the work they love. Reckless idiots in the eyes of outsiders, like the Wright brothers. No, those who hate what they do won't risk braking limbs and necks without a reflection of that risk in a pay raise. Only people who love what they do are willing to destroy marriage, friendships, and their own health over their "love."
Do you really love what you want to do? Enough to die for it? Oh, that is just my negative programming? Yeah sure, you new age dork! Agreed, there is an off-chance that you are lucky. Maybe you will coast through self-employment with ease, wade through truck loads of cash, and all that's good will only get better throughout eternity. And boy, I wish that's true for you. But if you expect that to happen, oh baby, I'm afraid you are a doomed freaking wretch.
Choice can turn one man's (and woman's, naturally) torture into another man's paradise. It is pure idiocy to assume doing what you love will make you happy. You are the one who has to modify everything you do, the stuff you hate doing and the things you say you love. You have to breathe happiness into every single one of your endeavors. If you don't, the stuff you love today will taste like yesterday's stale beer tomorrow and turn into a heavy burden.
It is dumb to believe doing what you love will get you anywhere. "It" won't. YOU may and you may not ... if and when you are ready for it. Asking you to quit employment and to do "what you love" is the equivalent of asking you to jump into a volcano and to fight with dragons to your last breath. If you happen to love THAT, then by all means do it! If you don't, I don't want to be held responsible for talking you into it. Nope.
And yeah, if you are aware of the risks--in addition to the risks you will never be aware of in advance--you will probably enjoy it. At any rate, I beg you (on my knees): start a business but do it parallel to your sleeping-dragon employment. You'll thank me soon.
In short, job-hating is an insurance policy against possibly traumatizing and maybe fatal self-employment. I urge you to love the job-hating if you lack the balls to subject yourself to the fate of going down or up in flames by doing what you "love." Whether it'll be "up" or "down" is not for you to decide: whether you like it or not, the market always has the last word.
Love thy dragon as thyself,
Egbert Sukop
Understandably, armies of job-hating employees prefer to suffer through the decades until retirement puts them out of misery. Or a heart attack. Or a quasi retirement, diversified by having fun as a friendly greeter at Walmart, part time.
Employees are bright people in general! Choosing despicable jobs for a lifetime does not mean an individual is too blockheaded to leave appalling work situations behind in exchange for freedom, riches, and the joy of doing what she loves to do. Not necessarily. At least subconsciously, most employees are aware that hating a job may not be the worst of all available alternatives.
We aren't fighting anymore for survival in an environment of sabertoothed tigers, poisonous snakes, and war parties of belligerent tribes. Well, in a transferred sense we are, and it continues to be a desperate act of survival for many of us. You don't need to be an anthropologist to recognize dynamics that were typical for stone age societies beautifully preserved in any bureaucracy. Groups of people, for that matter, tend to re-enact reprehensible forms of "togetherness" we thought we had overcome by now.
We haven't. Laziness is not as bad as its reputation and as we see, even evolution is not exactly forging ahead with a type "A" personality. Hostile work environments--infested with backstabbers, freeloaders, and other lowlife entities--benefit us. Imminent danger to get screwed keeps our senses and pencils sharp. Imagine that: everything you hate about your job is actually good for you!
The fact that we won't look too pretty after a week alone in the jungle often obscures the truth that our reptilian brain is still fully functional. We do know how to suspend judgment, bypass the neocortex, and knock on the old lizard's bedroom door. SNAP! And this hundred million year trained fight-or-flight machine rips a chunk out of anything and is ready for a second helping ... unless you start thinking first and fast. You may not believe in dragons anymore, the guardians of your sixth sense. I do: I have seen them fly.
Hating your job feeds the dragon, sharpens its claws, and keeps the old freak loyal to you and to your purposes.
Yet dragons love to take long naps and interruptions displease them. You know what that means, don't you? Eh? C'mon. You guessed it: our instincts are sufficiently developed to know that hating miserable jobs for forty years is BETTER and infinitely safer than unpredictable environments of entrepreneurship. Employees know that hating a job, as awful as it may be, still allows them to go home at a certain time, play with their kids on the weekend and pick up a paycheck in predictable intervals.
Employees know that self-employment can mean years of hell, physical and emotional hardship, sleep deprivation, having to see their family under constant existential threat, and worse: living with the pain and the guilt of not spending enough time with their loved ones.
It is utterly irresponsible to promise employees a better world when they enter self-employment. If you have a job today, heed my advice and keep your damn job! Each of the alternatives may not only be significantly worse than what you are hating today. Anything besides the things you hate doing today could easily be classified as torture by you and by independent judges.
Yes, you got that right. What you hate doing is rather foreplay than torture. The things you say you'd love to be doing may turn into brutal and violent (self)-destruction once you realize there is no way back and you will be forced to do it to the very end, until you die. I am not kidding!
My father--a farmer--ridiculed employees who made twice the money he did and who could afford to go on three-week vacations year after year. He mocked government employees who could not get fired, were basically exempt from paying income taxes, and had generous pensions waiting for them at retirement age (no, of course he didn't make fun of employees to their face).
My dad didn't have a safe paycheck nor a secured pension. He did not expect to retire, ever. When the weather demanded it, he would work every day for months. Sometimes he had a bad year, financially. I saw him--and us--going through several meager years in a row. Vacations? Yep, he enjoyed about half a dozen vacations, 3 - 5 days long in his late sixties, totaling a month of goofing off during his lifetime perhaps.
My old man worked for more than fifty years on a "job" he did not initially choose. He felt he had to take over this 800-year-old family business when his older brother got killed in WWI. Most individuals in our society would easily label my father's life as 50 years of "Labor Camp." Yet, I never heard him complain. He whistled at work. He was a happy man. He never said it explicitly, but I do know he absolutely LOVED his life and his vocation. He CHOSE to work every day.
I have met hundreds and hundreds of self-employed men and women, entrepreneurs, selfmade individuals in all sorts of industries, in different countries on several continents. My father's story does NOT stick out as special. On the contrary, as far as self-employment goes, he was quite normal. It matters not that my dad lived in Germany all his life. What I have learned and what I continue to admire is that America and the greatness of the U.S. have been build by such "normal" individuals.
Ingenious tinkerers willing to go through hell for the people and for the work they love. Reckless idiots in the eyes of outsiders, like the Wright brothers. No, those who hate what they do won't risk braking limbs and necks without a reflection of that risk in a pay raise. Only people who love what they do are willing to destroy marriage, friendships, and their own health over their "love."
Do you really love what you want to do? Enough to die for it? Oh, that is just my negative programming? Yeah sure, you new age dork! Agreed, there is an off-chance that you are lucky. Maybe you will coast through self-employment with ease, wade through truck loads of cash, and all that's good will only get better throughout eternity. And boy, I wish that's true for you. But if you expect that to happen, oh baby, I'm afraid you are a doomed freaking wretch.
Choice can turn one man's (and woman's, naturally) torture into another man's paradise. It is pure idiocy to assume doing what you love will make you happy. You are the one who has to modify everything you do, the stuff you hate doing and the things you say you love. You have to breathe happiness into every single one of your endeavors. If you don't, the stuff you love today will taste like yesterday's stale beer tomorrow and turn into a heavy burden.
It is dumb to believe doing what you love will get you anywhere. "It" won't. YOU may and you may not ... if and when you are ready for it. Asking you to quit employment and to do "what you love" is the equivalent of asking you to jump into a volcano and to fight with dragons to your last breath. If you happen to love THAT, then by all means do it! If you don't, I don't want to be held responsible for talking you into it. Nope.
And yeah, if you are aware of the risks--in addition to the risks you will never be aware of in advance--you will probably enjoy it. At any rate, I beg you (on my knees): start a business but do it parallel to your sleeping-dragon employment. You'll thank me soon.
In short, job-hating is an insurance policy against possibly traumatizing and maybe fatal self-employment. I urge you to love the job-hating if you lack the balls to subject yourself to the fate of going down or up in flames by doing what you "love." Whether it'll be "up" or "down" is not for you to decide: whether you like it or not, the market always has the last word.
Love thy dragon as thyself,
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 7, 2008
frontal attack
"If you have a job without any aggravations, you don't have a job." --Malcolm Forbes
In other words, "loving your job" is not the equivalent of enjoying every damn thing that's part of your job. Every job has elements you won't like at all. Loving your children doesn't mean that they are sweet, well-behaved creatures all day, and just the way they "should" be. On the contrary, if our love for somebody or something doesn't absorb a good portion of adversity, love ain't love.
The quest to find something you love to do for a living is often carried out as a "frontal attack" of the problem. What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? Where are my strengths? Not even a mad bull would expect to win with such a doomed strategy. It's not likely to work well for you either.
Jobs per se are not our last inhumane bastion of self-hatred, but certainly one of vast proportions. Most jobs are an expression of self-neglect and certainly the lack of self-respect. You think your individuality is a liability, your creativity is worthless, and you aren't worthy of freedom? Get a job. Any job will do, in fact.
Jobs are time machines transporting you into the dark ages of socialism. You don't matter. The stuff you do doesn't matter. And your paycheck is rather immaterial. You are doing it mostly "for the benefits." You really believe you can improve on a pitiful situation like that? Well, fetch my free ebook 'How to Better Hate Your Job', pray hard, and I wish you the best of luck.
Forgive me! I got side-tracked. Apropos, that's what jobs are in general: detours of life. Jobs distract you from doing something worth your while. Jobs divert you from being yourself and from the development of your individual genius. Jobs are coffins of individuality (and so is multi-level garbaging), but hey babe: Don't quit if you have a job right now! I am serious. Build a business parallel to this bloody black hole of individuality. Start something on your own! And--as I hope you recall--it does NOT have to be based on activities you enjoy in order for you to love it.
Have you watched "Glory" with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick--when Denzel could still act (and wasn't just Denzel Washington in a new setting)--or "The Patriot" with Heath Ledger and Mel (Oh-God-teach-me-to-be-a-less-obvious-antisemitic-ass-while-drunk) Gibson? You'll remember battle scenes with two armies standing vis-a-vis slaughtering each other, showing the brutal stupidity of frontal attacks.
When you attack your life's problems head on, you are becoming canon fodder just like dead soldiers of previous centuries. "I think only positive," or "I want to do what I enjoy for a living," are frontal attacks on your intelligence, and they aren't blessed with better chances to succeed than bitter exchanges of musket salvos in the 18th century. In order to do what you love, you don't have to do what you love.
Come again? Yep, you heard me perfectly well the first time.
Human beings have the incredible ability to love what they don't like. We can even hate what we're doing, and we can hate it so much that we love the way we hate it. Following our feelings is immature. "Yeah, but what if it doesn't feel right?" Your feelings and emotions got you by the nose? Not good. It's part of growing up to learn how to do WHAT YOU WANT without getting distracted or slowed down by the way you may feel.
You seriously believe Lance Armstrong could have won the Tour de France seven times--and he's preparing for the Tour de France 2009 as we speak--had he listened to his feelings all the time? Sure he likes cycling, but do you realize the inhumane pain he puts himself through to do what he wants?
If and when you do what you want, it will NOT feel good all the time. On the contrary, when you do what you really want you will go through so much pain that others would call it torture if they were forced to do the same, involuntarily. Doing what you want may cause you MORE pain than the job you hate so much. Being obsessed with feeling good is good only for morons. It's the frontal attack of loving what you do ... and childish: I love you as long as I like you.
In case you really want to to what you love, you gotta learn to love it while you hate it. When you do what you want it may hardly feel good at all. I promise, doing what you love will put you through more pain, trouble, and challenges than enduring a job you hate. And you got to love it.
The only thing that matters is that it is what YOU want. Who cares how that feels?!
Egbert Sukop
In other words, "loving your job" is not the equivalent of enjoying every damn thing that's part of your job. Every job has elements you won't like at all. Loving your children doesn't mean that they are sweet, well-behaved creatures all day, and just the way they "should" be. On the contrary, if our love for somebody or something doesn't absorb a good portion of adversity, love ain't love.
The quest to find something you love to do for a living is often carried out as a "frontal attack" of the problem. What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? Where are my strengths? Not even a mad bull would expect to win with such a doomed strategy. It's not likely to work well for you either.
Jobs per se are not our last inhumane bastion of self-hatred, but certainly one of vast proportions. Most jobs are an expression of self-neglect and certainly the lack of self-respect. You think your individuality is a liability, your creativity is worthless, and you aren't worthy of freedom? Get a job. Any job will do, in fact.
Jobs are time machines transporting you into the dark ages of socialism. You don't matter. The stuff you do doesn't matter. And your paycheck is rather immaterial. You are doing it mostly "for the benefits." You really believe you can improve on a pitiful situation like that? Well, fetch my free ebook 'How to Better Hate Your Job', pray hard, and I wish you the best of luck.
Forgive me! I got side-tracked. Apropos, that's what jobs are in general: detours of life. Jobs distract you from doing something worth your while. Jobs divert you from being yourself and from the development of your individual genius. Jobs are coffins of individuality (and so is multi-level garbaging), but hey babe: Don't quit if you have a job right now! I am serious. Build a business parallel to this bloody black hole of individuality. Start something on your own! And--as I hope you recall--it does NOT have to be based on activities you enjoy in order for you to love it.
Have you watched "Glory" with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick--when Denzel could still act (and wasn't just Denzel Washington in a new setting)--or "The Patriot" with Heath Ledger and Mel (Oh-God-teach-me-to-be-a-less-obvious-antisemitic-ass-while-drunk) Gibson? You'll remember battle scenes with two armies standing vis-a-vis slaughtering each other, showing the brutal stupidity of frontal attacks.
When you attack your life's problems head on, you are becoming canon fodder just like dead soldiers of previous centuries. "I think only positive," or "I want to do what I enjoy for a living," are frontal attacks on your intelligence, and they aren't blessed with better chances to succeed than bitter exchanges of musket salvos in the 18th century. In order to do what you love, you don't have to do what you love.
Come again? Yep, you heard me perfectly well the first time.
Human beings have the incredible ability to love what they don't like. We can even hate what we're doing, and we can hate it so much that we love the way we hate it. Following our feelings is immature. "Yeah, but what if it doesn't feel right?" Your feelings and emotions got you by the nose? Not good. It's part of growing up to learn how to do WHAT YOU WANT without getting distracted or slowed down by the way you may feel.
You seriously believe Lance Armstrong could have won the Tour de France seven times--and he's preparing for the Tour de France 2009 as we speak--had he listened to his feelings all the time? Sure he likes cycling, but do you realize the inhumane pain he puts himself through to do what he wants?
If and when you do what you want, it will NOT feel good all the time. On the contrary, when you do what you really want you will go through so much pain that others would call it torture if they were forced to do the same, involuntarily. Doing what you want may cause you MORE pain than the job you hate so much. Being obsessed with feeling good is good only for morons. It's the frontal attack of loving what you do ... and childish: I love you as long as I like you.
In case you really want to to what you love, you gotta learn to love it while you hate it. When you do what you want it may hardly feel good at all. I promise, doing what you love will put you through more pain, trouble, and challenges than enduring a job you hate. And you got to love it.
The only thing that matters is that it is what YOU want. Who cares how that feels?!
Egbert Sukop
Friday, August 22, 2008
parallel universe
Our realities differ: we don't live in the same world!
As a child, I could hardly suppress a gag reflex just hearing the word "asparagus." Today I find that stuff exquisite and delicious, as my parents had prophesied. We experience "soft" differences with other people--like a variety of opinions, theories, ideas, tastes--and "hard" ones, like two asparagus worlds defined by observable physical phenomena of a different nature. You may love strawberries while your boyfriend needs to be rushed to the next emergency room if he tries just one innocent strawberry. Parallel universes of the hard kind. No, it's non-negotiable. Some of us enjoy what may kill another.
For the time of the cold war, we witnessed socialist countries--member states of the Warsaw Pact, for instance--on one side of the fence and societies believing in a more or less free market on the other side. Fence? Not really: a wall, barbed wire, mine fields, and trigger-happy men guarded the line between those two worlds. People lost limbs and lives in the attempt to leave one universe and to enter the other. As a general rule, socialist governments and societies had a keen interest for their subjects not to mingle with the enemy, with evil capitalist pigs on the other and naturally greener side of the "fence." Negotiations were political charades, rituals bare of real meaning or purpose. Nobody expected to convince the other guy of anything.
Today, there are still--and again--socialist countries of one type or another. Charley Marx's legacy, as outdated and dusty as it truly is, continues to ail along through the 21st century. But that is not surprising. Interesting is what has happened under the surface. For Mr. Marx, religion was "the opium of the people." Over the course of some 150 years, socialism has become a new religion and the opium of the people. The tool of choice for thugs like Hugo Chávez and sick bastards like Kim Jong-il to oppress their helpless subjects. If socialist economies were ideal environments, you wouldn't need excessive violence to keep your people in your country, putting up with hearty tree bark for breakfast. On the contrary, the masses would be eager to enter your worker's paradise, but it looks as if North Korea is not today's immigrant country of choice. At least not yet.
What about religion, you ask? It has become irrelevant. Irrelevant not so much for believers, but as a dividing force it is significantly less important than it once was. The discussion of socialist ideas versus free market economy separates us more than differing religious denominations or the existence of religion per se.
Let's get to the fun part, shall we?
Socialism--employed here as a general term, including a garden variety of its ideological offspring--used to be at the root of revolutionary movements against establishment and capitalists. According to Forbes magazine, a nest egg worth $900 Million has successfully trickled into Fidel Castro's socialist lap, and Mr. Chávez can't wait to follow into his hero's footsteps. Not bad for a revolutionary and murderer to end up richer than the Queen of England. Who says that socialism doesn't pay? Not only does it pay, but it's the perfect setup for capitalist progress as well. Enter China: more millionaires pop up in China than anywhere else on Earth.
The ideal symbiosis. If you own a company, employ socialists. They will serve you well, and they will hate you more--as a good socialist should--if you don't allow them to benefit financially from your profits. The worse you treat them, the more loyal they will be to your company and to their musty beliefs. If you have socialist ideals on the other hand, seek employment at a capitalist firm who happily finances you and such luxury as your whimsical theories. As a bonus, you'll find plenty of ways to hate your--self-chosen!--"oppressor."
The fight against the outsourcing of jobs proves that today's socialists are not engaged in an uprising against the evil bourgeoisie. Hell no! Marx would drastically increase the rpm while rotating in his London grave could he see that employees, "the owners of labour," are begging to maintain their status quo. Benefit: it allows them to stay socialists a bit longer.
That's what has become of the good old "class struggle:" Capitalists need socialistic oriented employees, and socialists need capitalist employers if they don't want their theory to collapse.
As employers, we run our businesses following capitalist principles and nothing is wrong with that. Strange only that from the largest corporation down to the tiniest mom and pop operation at the corner, employers do NOT care to employ capitalists: employers feed socialist employees who receive a paycheck whether they work hard or hardly at all. Employees expect to get benefits and an occasional pay raise, but neither employer nor the employee's union will permit them to work as efficiently as they could and would. Employees who are eager to work overtime are often considered a burden. The last thing an employer wants is for paychecks to reflect true performance and real market value of the employee. Capitalist employers somehow believe that their profit relies on employees with socialist values.
As employees, we live in socialist work environments. How so? For the average employee, few things matter besides showing up for work. Individuality, character, initiative, and creativity are worthless assets. Even the influence of your performance on your income is negligible. You are "a unit," most decisions are made for you, your responsibilities are limited, your ideas and even high levels of competence can easily turn into liabilities. If you really love your job you are likely to be a sick, twisted individual who thrives on bureaucratic irrelevance, on promotions based on back stabbing more than on cold hard currency paid in exchange for the market value of your productivity.
Employees give up because the very elements that make capitalism exciting and adventurous are meticulously filtered out of their lives. No risk, no opportunity, no freedom. Small wonder employees are bored out of their minds, hate every minute of their unproductive and meaningless lives, while looking forward to retirement. Uh, at least we can blame evil corporations for depriving their poor wage slaves of well-deserved profit and freedom?
No, we can't! Most employees--naturally we must include government employees--despise and condemn profit taking. And nothing scares average people more than freedom. Freedom is the last thing they want.
Conclusion: employers grant their employees a favor by allowing them to live their socialist dream a couple of decades longer than they could realistically afford otherwise. 87% of Americans experience the luxury and the privilege of hating their jobs in monetary limitation, while the rest of us have to make do in freedom and happiness.
And what about the opium thing? Why is socialism the new religion and opium? 'Cause socialists insist to lie and to be lied to. They don't fight to get out. They fight to stay in their universe marked by struggle and limitation. They get teary eyes, for instance, when some prick promises higher minimum wages. Milton Friedman said, "There's a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won't find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs." That was in June 1995. To this day you can gain political mileage out of selling opium to the masses, promising the blue out of the sky.
Nobody will convince a socialist to switch universes and to live happily ever after as a member of a free market economy. Neither will a capitalist eagerly leave freedom--and risk--behind and voluntarily clip her own wings of thought and action. Both appear to like where they are.
Just in case: if you catch yourself bitching about your lot, you gotta choice to make which universe you want to live in. No stupid "class struggle" or fight necessary. Your "oppressors" are imaginary!
Egbert
P.S.: If you are wondering how a bastardized Marx would sound today, substituting "socialism" for "religion:"
"Socialistic suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Socialism is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
As a child, I could hardly suppress a gag reflex just hearing the word "asparagus." Today I find that stuff exquisite and delicious, as my parents had prophesied. We experience "soft" differences with other people--like a variety of opinions, theories, ideas, tastes--and "hard" ones, like two asparagus worlds defined by observable physical phenomena of a different nature. You may love strawberries while your boyfriend needs to be rushed to the next emergency room if he tries just one innocent strawberry. Parallel universes of the hard kind. No, it's non-negotiable. Some of us enjoy what may kill another.
For the time of the cold war, we witnessed socialist countries--member states of the Warsaw Pact, for instance--on one side of the fence and societies believing in a more or less free market on the other side. Fence? Not really: a wall, barbed wire, mine fields, and trigger-happy men guarded the line between those two worlds. People lost limbs and lives in the attempt to leave one universe and to enter the other. As a general rule, socialist governments and societies had a keen interest for their subjects not to mingle with the enemy, with evil capitalist pigs on the other and naturally greener side of the "fence." Negotiations were political charades, rituals bare of real meaning or purpose. Nobody expected to convince the other guy of anything.
Today, there are still--and again--socialist countries of one type or another. Charley Marx's legacy, as outdated and dusty as it truly is, continues to ail along through the 21st century. But that is not surprising. Interesting is what has happened under the surface. For Mr. Marx, religion was "the opium of the people." Over the course of some 150 years, socialism has become a new religion and the opium of the people. The tool of choice for thugs like Hugo Chávez and sick bastards like Kim Jong-il to oppress their helpless subjects. If socialist economies were ideal environments, you wouldn't need excessive violence to keep your people in your country, putting up with hearty tree bark for breakfast. On the contrary, the masses would be eager to enter your worker's paradise, but it looks as if North Korea is not today's immigrant country of choice. At least not yet.
What about religion, you ask? It has become irrelevant. Irrelevant not so much for believers, but as a dividing force it is significantly less important than it once was. The discussion of socialist ideas versus free market economy separates us more than differing religious denominations or the existence of religion per se.
Let's get to the fun part, shall we?
Socialism--employed here as a general term, including a garden variety of its ideological offspring--used to be at the root of revolutionary movements against establishment and capitalists. According to Forbes magazine, a nest egg worth $900 Million has successfully trickled into Fidel Castro's socialist lap, and Mr. Chávez can't wait to follow into his hero's footsteps. Not bad for a revolutionary and murderer to end up richer than the Queen of England. Who says that socialism doesn't pay? Not only does it pay, but it's the perfect setup for capitalist progress as well. Enter China: more millionaires pop up in China than anywhere else on Earth.
The ideal symbiosis. If you own a company, employ socialists. They will serve you well, and they will hate you more--as a good socialist should--if you don't allow them to benefit financially from your profits. The worse you treat them, the more loyal they will be to your company and to their musty beliefs. If you have socialist ideals on the other hand, seek employment at a capitalist firm who happily finances you and such luxury as your whimsical theories. As a bonus, you'll find plenty of ways to hate your--self-chosen!--"oppressor."
The fight against the outsourcing of jobs proves that today's socialists are not engaged in an uprising against the evil bourgeoisie. Hell no! Marx would drastically increase the rpm while rotating in his London grave could he see that employees, "the owners of labour," are begging to maintain their status quo. Benefit: it allows them to stay socialists a bit longer.
That's what has become of the good old "class struggle:" Capitalists need socialistic oriented employees, and socialists need capitalist employers if they don't want their theory to collapse.
As employers, we run our businesses following capitalist principles and nothing is wrong with that. Strange only that from the largest corporation down to the tiniest mom and pop operation at the corner, employers do NOT care to employ capitalists: employers feed socialist employees who receive a paycheck whether they work hard or hardly at all. Employees expect to get benefits and an occasional pay raise, but neither employer nor the employee's union will permit them to work as efficiently as they could and would. Employees who are eager to work overtime are often considered a burden. The last thing an employer wants is for paychecks to reflect true performance and real market value of the employee. Capitalist employers somehow believe that their profit relies on employees with socialist values.
As employees, we live in socialist work environments. How so? For the average employee, few things matter besides showing up for work. Individuality, character, initiative, and creativity are worthless assets. Even the influence of your performance on your income is negligible. You are "a unit," most decisions are made for you, your responsibilities are limited, your ideas and even high levels of competence can easily turn into liabilities. If you really love your job you are likely to be a sick, twisted individual who thrives on bureaucratic irrelevance, on promotions based on back stabbing more than on cold hard currency paid in exchange for the market value of your productivity.
Employees give up because the very elements that make capitalism exciting and adventurous are meticulously filtered out of their lives. No risk, no opportunity, no freedom. Small wonder employees are bored out of their minds, hate every minute of their unproductive and meaningless lives, while looking forward to retirement. Uh, at least we can blame evil corporations for depriving their poor wage slaves of well-deserved profit and freedom?
No, we can't! Most employees--naturally we must include government employees--despise and condemn profit taking. And nothing scares average people more than freedom. Freedom is the last thing they want.
Conclusion: employers grant their employees a favor by allowing them to live their socialist dream a couple of decades longer than they could realistically afford otherwise. 87% of Americans experience the luxury and the privilege of hating their jobs in monetary limitation, while the rest of us have to make do in freedom and happiness.
And what about the opium thing? Why is socialism the new religion and opium? 'Cause socialists insist to lie and to be lied to. They don't fight to get out. They fight to stay in their universe marked by struggle and limitation. They get teary eyes, for instance, when some prick promises higher minimum wages. Milton Friedman said, "There's a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won't find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs." That was in June 1995. To this day you can gain political mileage out of selling opium to the masses, promising the blue out of the sky.
Nobody will convince a socialist to switch universes and to live happily ever after as a member of a free market economy. Neither will a capitalist eagerly leave freedom--and risk--behind and voluntarily clip her own wings of thought and action. Both appear to like where they are.
Just in case: if you catch yourself bitching about your lot, you gotta choice to make which universe you want to live in. No stupid "class struggle" or fight necessary. Your "oppressors" are imaginary!
Egbert
P.S.: If you are wondering how a bastardized Marx would sound today, substituting "socialism" for "religion:"
"Socialistic suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Socialism is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)