tales from the ditch

I’m more addled than usual today so I’m about to spew out a bunch of stuff and see what sticks.  Nobody flame me about how this is incoherent, because I know that.  I’m not pretending like it is.  Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, here goes.

I’ve heard the theory posited before that apathy and love are opposites.  I’ve also heard that the opposite of faith is fear.  I tend to subscribe to both of those theories.  I’ve felt a lot of fear and apathy lately, also despair.  Over the economy, over my personal life, and even over my professional life.  Some of these feelings are warranted, some are not, but the bottom line is: these feelings suck.

Which got me to thinking… why do so many employers use a fear-based management system?  When I teach 101, it is natural to me to use a respect-based system, because fear has never really worked on me as a managerial tool… until now.  It seems that when you really need the money, and the economy is so dire that if you lose your job, chances are you won’t be able to find another one… that’s when fear based managerial tactics really become effective.

How do fear-based tactics affect my work?  Well, perhaps they don’t affect my work per se, but they sure as hell affect my attendance behaviors, my level of company loyalty, and my willingness to share ideas for invention and innovation with my employer.  So if you just want me to keep my head down and punch in and punch out and resent every minute I spend at work, fear is the way to go.  And nothing drives fear-based people like desperation – and that’s exactly what poverty instills in people.  Desperation.  I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m guessing most of us working-class stiffs feel a lot poorer than we did two or three or five years ago.

I hate living in fear, and I’m guessing most of you do, too.  Well, dammit, now we’re all in this together, and how are we going to get ourselves out?

Apparently, the Argentinian economy collapsed pretty thoroughly in 2001.  Here’s a documentary on it:

It seems to me that we may be tightening our belts for a poverty stricken two class stratified society very shortly in this country, and the only thing keeping us employed and fed and sheltered will be fear-based behaviors.  Oh, and then there’s always the alternative: crime.

I am not sure how we are going to fix this economic “downturn” (which seems to me to be a euphemism for “fuck up”) but a lot of Americans are crying for the abolishment of the Federal Reserve system.  Others believe that government-funded programs like healthcare are the solution (see below for a video on how public health care has failed Canada’s citizens).

I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m pretty fucking sick of the Nanny State taxing me to death only to regulate my behaviors and give my money to huge corporations that don’t need it and shouldn’t have it.  Did any other tax payers feel a little bit ripped off by the fact that we were forced to buy GM?  Does anybody else want to own GM?  Or am I the only one who wishes I had a new pair of shoes and a few hundred dollars’ worth of doctors’ appointments with my tax dollars that got spent on GM?

I don’t mind paying for roads and schools, but come on, do you really want to own GM?  Do you really want to pay for corporate bailouts of the companies who hold your unsecured debts?  I sure as hell don’t.  How much do you want to pay for universal health care when instead, you could just pay for health insurance that’s actually worth a damn?

This country’s government is out of hand but I must admit, I haven’t got a clue what to do about it.  Does anybody else?  I’m thinking of moving to Mexico… but that doesn’t really solve anything.  Just ask the conspiracy theorists about the New World Order.  That shit follows you everywhere, so moving to Bangladesh or Jamaica or Antarctica won’t help you (well, maybe Antarctica would be far enough away… but it’s pretty desolate there).

All paranoia aside, what is an American to do about our overgrown federal government and the mushrooming income disparity between the upper and lower classes?  If anybody has any good ideas I’m more than willing to hear them.  I am sick to death of hearing that I live in the land of opportunity when the only opportunity I see is to tithe my blood, sweat, and tears to the Church of Federal Government until the day I die of overwork, malnutrition, and cardiac stress.