Control and the illusion of it.

 I’m reading this:

 The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good (also known as: Shop Class as Soul Craft).

by Matthew Crawford (Author) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003TSDNCM?ref_=k4w_ss_details_rh

As recommended by someone on Neal Ashers Facebook page or in the Space Opera Group page on Facebook. Its one of those everyone should read it books. He’s cut through quite a bit of the smoke and mirrors of modern life to expose some really quite subtle but disturbing changes in our thinking and the way we have been manipulated into feeling we have more control/agency over our lives than we actually do, or it seems actually want (Agency by the way … the new word for control). The sense of agency people believe they have is as much a factor of unconscious training by marketeers, as governments imposing rules. 

During this exceptional time government has used a massive lever to exert control over the many to save the few (fine in the early days). Now we find that control over the many is not to preserve the few, but to protect the many from the few.  Rather than managing the exceptions, the rule is being managed.

I’m going clarify that, by saying that in majority Muslim/Indian/Pakistani communities there are large reservoirs of virus. Because there are shabby working conditions (thinks sweatshops), intergenerational living as default; not as the media would have you believe because of poverty as an exclusive cause. I’ve lived cheek by jowl with this community as its grown in east London, Grandfathers and fathers keep a tight rein on the younger generation to preserve certain desirable traits in their children (especially daughters). This means they all live in one-house/one-street where maximum control can be exerted. I sold my house in Eastham to a three-generation family composed exactly as described above. It was a big house and sold for a lot of money … poverty wasn’t the issue, Newham had some of the highest Covid rates in the UK).

My feeling is that Boris wants to take the reins off and is being cautioned not to by people who are either arse-covering in the extreme, or who are trying to lever society post-pandemic into structural social change.

I also feel that people are lazy and looking for an easy life. The book above suggests the same.

We are in a really difficult position because we have allowed the loony-left PC-Woke brigade to have far too much talk time, because it’s easy to monetize outrage on the back of some of their proselytization’s. Subsequently by the law of unintended consequences we have convinced ourselves that we should all accommodate the lowest common denominator, rather than setting the lowest common denominator aside and managing it in isolation.

The fear of causing offence or creating rifts in social cohesion means that the government is afraid to single out pockets of communities that are acting as reservoirs of Covid. And the longer the situation with Covid restrictions go on, the more habituated people will become to being controlled, which feeds into greater ease with which to exert control (a virtuous circle for those who seek control).

From various perspectives, what I have said could be easily construed as racist and bigoted and overly simplified when you look at the world-view beyond Covid, to climate change, the environment ect. However, therein lies another of the problems, conflation, and cause and effect and the discrimination of those causes from effects, and people not being able to distinguish from one from the other. And there are people far brighter than us with agendas and resources who can muddy the waters and are doing so, to exert control in many and various ways.

I suspect the net effect will actually be less control in the end, as individual factions turn away from government and voices that disagree, and the social-fault-lines of old are just being re-configured. And until those new fault lines fully establish (the new normal … the next normal), it will all feel very uncomfortable for everyone regardless of anyone’s personal position.

Employment Cognitive Dissonance

 A week or so ago, an agency phoned me out of the blue. The recruiter was very young sounding. She told me that she’d found my CV and had a role that I fitted perfectly. I thought: Ok you are crafting and writing but if a job comes up you should at least be open to the path of least resistance, and deal with writing in the evenings and weekends.

 In recent years, on a fairly relaxed trajectory after years working in the City of London, I’ve been doing Order Processing and Estimating. It is quite complex; it involves breaking down often complex data and or information to single items you can make; and then putting those bits together to make something else. You need to be logical, pragmatic, to be able to spot errors, potential crashes between `made things’ once assembled, and take account of fire and building regulations. At the high end of order processing, you need to be a graduate with an engineering degree. Fundamentally, it is a technical role with a lot of responsibility, a high attention to detail, technical drawing, and the pulling together of many strings, while simultaneously breaking those things down to single components … while not losing sight of the whole ... or the expected delivery date. Aside from the above, you also need to cost and purchase materials to do the jobs, produce assembly information, manage production operative and assembly operative expectations, produce certification, and manage your own administration and filing blah blah blah.

 Back to the plot. Young lady calls, full of enthusiasm and buzzwords. The Order-Processing job she has, is basically taking orders over the phone for domestic `built’ products (too secret to elaborate over the phone to a potential candidate). It is almost a forty-five-minute drive away across country, and it’s only paying £19500 per annum.

Very gently I explained the form of Order-Processing I do, and my level of technicality given my IT background and other experience. I had to draw her attention to my CV several times, proving that she hadn’t even read it (not even the summary). I was starting at this point to seethe, but I thought once I’ve explained things she will have a better understanding of me and what I’d be interested in if something else comes up. And clearly by filling in a few blanks for her, maybe she will be able to extrapolate later, and be able to find better candidates without wasting time talking to all and sundry. I explained that forty-five minutes away across country (country lanes) is hard to justify for the money offered, the hours expected, the start and finish times and the expectation that you would be required to do ad-hoc overtime with little or no warning. I also explained my salary expectations, based on a combination of age, skills and experience and that I would have to decline any further contemplation of the role (I didn’t say contemplation … but you get what I mean).

Her response verbatim was `but you have everything they need’. There was an awkward silence from me as realised I was literally talking to a brick wall, she said `Oh Ok’ and then she hung up.

 For some reason, those words: `but you have everything they need’, keep coming back to mind. This child has been given privileged access to peoples working history, their futures, their now’s, but seems to be totally blind to anything other than what she/the-client wants; and equated my skill set as a perfect match and an easy win for her (I’m assuming based on a job title), without any consideration for any of the variables on my side of the employment equation. And genuinely didn’t seem to understand why it was a `no’ from me.

 I wonder as we come out of the shadow of the pandemic and ride the subsequent economic recovery; how much it will be forestalled by this absence of empathy, understanding, experience, humanity, common sense and the ability to articulate and investigate. Recruitment gets a bad rap, often deservedly so, and yet it is a fundamental interface layer between many employers and many employees.

 I think my question is: Does recruitment understand its role in Other-peoples lives?

 From poorly worded moon-on-a-stick job descriptions to the homogonous buzzword bingo job descriptions that tell you nothing. Job descriptions that dissuade you from applying just because you genuinely don’t have a clue from the information presented what you will be doing, other than what seems to everything for very little.

 I appreciate that is a useful tool to reduce chaff in the sift process. However, when you see the same roles constantly being re-advertised, you have to ask: Who is applying? Is anyone applying? Is the job description so opaque people aren’t applying? Or so open to interpretation that the wrong people are applying? And or is there a huge amount of churn, because you are constantly recruiting the wrong fit for the reasons above?

 My gut instinct says it’s a combination of all these things (Iced with a resurgent post-recession minimum wage culture). And yet, there are millions out of work, the economy is in growth and opening up.

 I’ll append a Wikipedia link to the definition of Cognitive Dissonance below. It’s interesting, because I seem to be suffering from it, from an immediate observational perspective. However, if I step back and look from distance, the dissonance is in systems. And if that is correct, that’s probably a lot worse.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

 

Random thoughts post `Land of Confusion'.

There is so much conflicting information about it is hard to tell what's right, from stupid. 

All of this is compounded by the fact that we now live in an attention economy, which is effectively a time acquisition economy. The whole point of the world inside cyber is to ream your pockets. However, with such easy access to information and such ease with which you can produce passable information, or agenderise it to polarise or advertise, you just don't know which way to jump.

It is an uncertain time and opacity seems to be the norm, so everything ìs opaque, regardless of facts that are just in the mix. Add to that uncomfortable truths or comforting lies and it just becomes a total mess.

Part of me thinks that binning off Social Media completely is the answer because trying to narrow your purview to mitigate rage just puts you in a bubble or an echo chamber, and that isn't healthy, so the best bet is just a position of ignorance is bliss outside.

How does anyone make a sensible decision? And is the actual biggest worry: Getting into an argument on Facebook? Because we're all just confused? And really and truly Social Media is where we all vent, so it's tense, but I'm not sure it's as tense out in the UK at large. Elsewhere I have no clue. I haven't left the country for over a year, so I haven't seen our nearest neighbour countries, to know if they are; nowhere near as tense either.

We've been mushroomed from all sides, be they politicians, pundits, agitators, vested interests, the media (including the stuff we add) everyone's had a go, even us.

As a world, we all need some headspace and a bit of calm and kindness. And the obligatory, time. However, try getting a consensus on that as an idea.

Covid 19 lab leak hypothesis

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-covid-lab-leak-theory-is-looking-increasingly-plausible?fbclid=IwAR3kSfdFeXTrec4Vy-U7C1wZHiva-v9g28aG4yKvyzndPUbtggFDu4USIzE

A linked Spectator article written by Matt Ridley (blog link here https://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/ ) who has written numerous articles about the progression and evolution of the SARS Covid-19 situation since the emergence of the virus in 2020.

My limited thoughts on the lab leak hypothesis below.

I think from the reaction of the CCP, at the start (in hindsight now). Is that they didn't actually know how mutative Covid-19 was, but suspected it could jump in many different directions depending on the human host affected. 

The CCP was caught on the hop, just the same as the rest of us, and by the time they had finished trying against the odds to suppress the virus and information regarding the virus, it was too late. 

They tried to spin too many plates.

And as our author above has pointed in previous articles; the various ways we have tried to tackle the virus has taught it new tricks. So now the whole world forevermore is going to have to live with a viral pathogen that is transmissible in enclosed spaces where crowds gather. 

The good things (depending on your perspective), is that it's not deadly to most people; which is no comfort to all those people who have lost loved ones. And will be no comfort for anyone who now approaches the last quarter of life, or has an ongoing chronic health condition (fingers crossed the vaccine will mitigate the risk). And I suppose the other useful thing that has been discovered and early on, is this ability to learn new tricks, as it has in long-term patients treated with convalescent plasma, which means that scientists can possibly keep pace with the changes.

The issue or issues with the CCP overall and how it's dealt with, and how it deals with the 6 billion other souls external to its citizens in the world is an entirely separate matter. 

The Chinese people can't be punished for the mistakes of the regime. But the regime needs to take a very long hard look at itself if it wants to stay as the worlds 2nd superpower. Because there are other large emerging economies, Brazil and Mexico, never mind the traditional industrial centres in the west, that could with the right motivation reclaim manufacturing and stall the rise of China. And we can only hope that the top of the CCP realises it, and doesn't dig in any further.

Defund the BBC

I genuinely don't see the point of the BBC anymore.

For every radio station, there is an individual newsroom, for each of those newsrooms there is a subset of reporters, and for each of those newsrooms, there is a different slant on the same stories. The important point being that they are the same stories, the narrative being shaped is the same but clearly at different demographic points.

It is social engineering, not news. Because news is at its core facts about the world and those facts don't change. Therefore re-shaping the way the facts are presented has nothing to do with the facts themselves and everything to do with shaping opinion across as broad a sweep of the entire population as possible.

Underlying this is the cost to us, to replicate the same main news service six or seven (probably more) times (never mind the news channel itself, and then all the regional programmes). I've done the experiment in the mornings, and programed in the four primary radio stations and then flicked through the news, the variation in the facts is minimal, just the presentation changes.

So one simple change: A single radio newscast fed to all stations at the same time would save hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds. The excuse that they will lose the engagement of the younger generation if they make news too highbrow is bogus. When we were kids the news was the news, there was one flavour. And likewise, the argument that if the news is made too lightweight they will lose engagement from the older generation is equally spurious, and at all points in between depending on the station.

You only have to flick to Al Jazeera at 10pm, to realise the narrow band of news you are being fed. The BBC is rotten to the core and no matter how much it tries to self-flagellate itself in the wake of the latest scandal to try and make it appear like it's going to change, it simply won't, it's just more smoke and mirrors. There will be a noisy kerfuffle for a bit, some talking heads will vomit platitudes, time will pass, people will forget, BAU. It's the same pattern time and again.