Change

[Fabio Cecin]

Today's Dilbert: "Change"

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-12-13

What happens when you don't model the whole social arrangement,
pretending that something like capitalism doesn't exist. Dilbert's
mental model cannot conceive of a person that will act with hypocrisy
and yet dish it out with absolute neutrality, as if it was not
hypocrisy at all.

That is the magic of classism. A classist person in an "upper" class
believes they can do whatever with people in a lower "class" --
cultural shaming patterns, including self-shaming, are suspended in
the classist person's brain. It does not require the person to _be_,
in some physical fashion, a sociopath. Classism is a purely mental,
"software" belief that will turn anyone that runs it in a person that
acts sociopathically.

After all, the "more valuable" person is relating to an object. The
object is not a member of their social circle, so it needs no
consideration. The object is capable of _processing_ conversation, and
it should interpret it as a command language, not as a social relation
that involves real peer humans.

Classes are a form of magical thinking, as the objectively measurable
emotional waste from classist social interaction does not magically
evaporate.

Both parties in that conversation are at fault. Both don't see the
problem and both are contributing to its perpetuation.

When a classist "manager" will say that "people are complex" and
"dealing with people is complicated", what he is doing is schooling
other lesser managers that try to control their subordinate objects
like they would do a machine. What he is saying is that human objects
need advanced manipulation tactics -- a sophisticated use of the
"command language" -- to be made to do their bidding.

This can blossom in some "wonderful", complex rationalizations, such
as when a classist person thinks they are "saving" the people they
manipulate, or doing that "rabble" of object-subjects some sort of
favour. So a good people-manipulator will use an advanced command
language to manipulate their object-subjects to do their bidding --
for their *own* good and/or for some other greater good (the company,
society, etc.)

First, classism has to be detected. Second, there has to be refusal to
deal with classist people. They may not be sociopaths in a physical
sense, but they are at least mentally sociopathic, and they need to
learn to stop being so. And finally, hierarchical/power ladders will
attract people who are physically made to be sociopaths. In any case,
as long as one can recognize that pathological mental distancing, it
does not matter if the person has the option to change or not. All you
have to do is refuse and stay away as long as the person is acting
like that. If that is "forever", then so be it.

This explains why some people can be both wonderful people personally,
but act like complete asshole sociopaths when they enter "work" or
"professional" mode. It is a cultural aspect, a mental program that
some people can turn on and off by entering and leaving "professional
mode."

Is there a form of professionalism, of work, of collective
contribution to society that can live entirely without manipulation
and objectification?

Fabio