The Wealthy Have 'Worked Hard' And Deserve To Keep Their Money

[freshwest]

33. Years of psychological manipulation is almost impossible to overcome. I was startled years ago by...

Last edited Sat Jun 9, 2012, 07:51 PM - Edit history (1)

One of the series of tests that my soon to be large corporate employer asked. I felt there were a definite statements made about what we call class warfare.

I missed two questions. I passed the test and all the other days of testing required. But I never forgot how wrong I thought the 'correct' answers for two were.

The first one I missed was a question very close to your OP. It was entitled, 'Who is dressed for work?'

There were images of five men dressed differently. One was a man in carpenter overalls with a hammer to one side, one dressed as a cook with an apron, another like a farmer with a shovel, another one looked like a sailor. The last was a man dressed in a business suit and tie.

My answer was the man in the overalls. As I was applying for blue collar job and was thinking of that. The 'correct' answer according to the corporate psychologist, was the man in the business suit.

I saw bias there. My father had in his life dressed for all those things, but as he got older he wore a suit as he owned his own business. It could be argued that the first three could have been at home and that the fourth was in the service. Only the suit had no other purpose to be worn, except at the office or maybe a pulpit.

So the carpenter and all the others were not considered be to going to work in the real world of serious people. Perhaps it is the attitude of the managers that those beneath them, doing that kind of work that we do with our bodies and sweat, is like a child playing in the dirt, that we are childish and we allow them to treat us that way, and we think they are being the adults.

That type of thinking was reflected in one manager who referred to us when doing our jobs as nothing but 'assholes and elbows.' In other words, the fact that we were not only doing physical work but technical work, that many of us had college, our work wasn't that valuable to him. We had a union and we told him where to put that attitude.

Later, the company used psychology to break our sense of camaraderie in the physical sense. We originally all met early in the morning in a common room before getting our work assignments from the different crew bosses in their shared room with the clerks. We discussed our lives together and felt ourselves to be a separate group from management, arranged for our next union meeting, discussed greviances and bidding on jobs.

The company then remodeled the place to separate us into teams, where we were with just our crew and our boss, to change our focus in the physical sense. This kind of change in physical environment has a bigger impact than many of us want to admit. You go from being free range to being confined...

The common area was totally eliminated, which is what the corporatists are doing to us right now by destroying public education, taking away all those places where people of many levels and social grouping can find a bond. They will funnel us into ever smaller groups to control, if we let them.

A sense of competition was encouraged as each work group had specialties. Individuals were then reflected by the personality of the different bosses, taking on those identities and attitudes. It was easy to get people to divide into teams, like sports franchises.

When the company came around and wanted to give the heavier and dirtier part of our work to unskilled contractors, mostly to immigrants, the guys saw that as a move up the social ladder. I was the steward and argued in our meeting that we would lose work, that eventually the higher skill jobs would go with it. But the guys went along with a few of those ego boosts and I was stuck arguing the other side.

The third line manager and I exchanged knowing looks at each other. He knew I recognized the technique, but the guys were thrilled getting that little pat on the head. We used to have a joke about the pat on the head for being a good boy, but when the big boss did it, they didn't see it.

Eventually, all their jobs were contracted out as I predicted. It was so very easy, to stroke those egos and get people to go with what was against their principles or even their best interests in the long run.

The egos of those who we see who are voting for the GOP are being stroked by the politics of division, better than gays, blacks, liberals, single mothers, sick, less educated, sinners, immigrants, etc.

It works so well because we accept that.

Okay, back to the test. The next question I had trouble with was more troubling when I realized what it assumed would be the reaction of a free people with self respect. It was pretty direct and I thought a shocking question with some situations described. It asked How do people react to having their rights denied?, and what it said as background reminded me of the struggles in Latin America and other places.

I thought the answer was obvious, being schooled in the American Revolution, the civil rights and labor rights movements. So I picked the answer that after being abused, They will resist and fight back.

The 'correct' answer was, They will be discouraged, give in and accept it.

Images and symbols are more powerful than words and reasoning in this world. Just as word document, a picture and a moving picture with sound take up differing amounts of space on our computer hard drive, so they do the same in the brain. The right has used all the Hollywood techniques to persuade, but laws and governance are not so easily explained, requiring examination of boring details and philosophical points. This is one of the problems progressives face with our piles of facts and charts that are not as tantalizing and easily absorbed as a meme.

Most who have seen and heard the doctrines of the right, keep these memes a level that has great staying power. You cannot reason with the subconscious, it is reactive. What is programmed there, is the master filter for the conscious mind. People are much like dogs, they run with the pack and accept the pecking order to survive when they don't have the luxury of time to think these things out.

As far as the religion angle, it was once taught in churches that the laborer must be paid quickly and fairly for the man employing them to be found right with God as it was said He hears the cries and prayers of the poor and will punish their oppressors. The right does not regard those verses seriously.

Also that a man's work is all that he has in life, to work and eat and rest is his lot in life, and it is a good life to live. It is good to have done with one's work for the day and then wake up to a new day refreshed and feeling healthy after using one's body well. And to care for each other is commanded, as well as paying one's taxes. Not with in the right's Bible.

We have decades of prosperity doctrine, a form of Calvinism closer to Ayn Rand than anything else. I recently stumbled onto some words by Derrick Jensen I saved some time back, about how hard the world will be, for good or ill, that I've been thinking on:

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work...

Casey Maddox wrote that 'when philosophy dies, action begins.'

I would say in addition that when we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we're in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free — truly free — to honestly start working to thoroughly resolve it.

I would say when hope dies, action begins.

~Derrick Jensen, in Endgame Volume I: The Problem of Civilization, p.330.

Don't mean to be depressing, as he is, but we need to explore both the best and the worst and keep at it, is what I'm trying to say here, as we learn the problem.

Sorry to have been so long in my reply Rozlee, but that was what your post made me think. I understand your deep frustration, and tried to offer reasons and a solution. I'm not sure how to do it.