Addendum to pathological projects

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“Pathological projects” original site (March 2001)

OBSERVATIONS ON WORK RELATED STRESS, DISTRESS & HARASSMENT

Warning: this chapter contains massive amounts of “politically incorrect” material. It is recommended that those of you brought up to respect received and prevailing opinions, provide yourselves with a good dose of anti-histaminic before reading this page.

In the previous chapter, we stressed the lack of interest of specialists and academics for the subject of this site. There are other fields in which they plod joyfully together, guided on by what is ever the latest fashion doing the rounds in the United States. We all enjoy the otherwise mundane and popular reading material left at your disposal in the waiting rooms of our favourite doctors. In the last few years you will have noticed an increasing number of articles on problems like the increase in industrial accidents, and related causes, child labour, sexual or mental harassment at work,... so many real issues that deserve without any doubt serious studies. However, they are often dealt with “à la européenne”.

THE SELECTIVE COMPASSION OF THE SPECIALISTS

In Europe when we speak about stress or suffering at work, we speak particularly about the stress and suffering of workmen or technicians, i.e. those workers who, according to specialists (work psychologists for example) have only a limited level of professional autonomy. The stress suffered by management and by those engaged in “intellectual” work (again, according to the terms of reference of the specialists) is dealt with only in passing. We're not saying that no one has never discussed middle management stress ; we simply want to say that little is often written about it.

For example, work psychology professors will provide you in their lectures with many examples of studies carried out on hospital employees (nurses, supervisors), workmen in the building industry, in public transport or in manufacturing industry. At the other end of the social hierarchy, such as these same specialists perceive it, some mention might be made of senior executives. Yes, these fellows do have the right to suffer ! But between the worker and the senior executive there is a wide no man's land that these professors seem to be unaware of.

This tendency to limit the geography of suffering to well targeted categories of workers is rooted in a dominating ideology which gives certain sections of the population a lesser right to compassion and a greater right to responsibility.

CONTEMPT FOR LOWER MIDDLE CLASS (PETITE BOURGEOISIE) : A RACISM THAT DOES NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

Those men and the women in today's society who have unlimited responsibilities, while having limited powers, belong to a social class popularly known as the “lower middle class” (designated by the term“Petite-bourgeoisie” in French). Although this class constitutes the majority of the population, in Europe the dominant ideology presents it as something negative.

This vision has been inherited directly from the right wing, left wing regimes which in the past always classified the lower-middle-class as a lower and despicable race (see the writings of Julius Evola). This “racism” is still to the fore today, propagated by the self acclaimed “intellectual” defenders of the dominant ideology.

One character feature specific to the lower middle class gives a very good idea of the contempt in which they are held. The “lower middle-class man” will never consider himself as such, because he has been taught since childhood to scorn his own class... this often gives rise to the odd laugh. For instance the woman teacher, member of the “lower middle-class” (alas!) declaring her horror of the small middle—class mind under the pretext that she herself is an “intellectual”. (“I'm an intellectual, so I am, Sir”.)

Another characteristic of lower-middle-class is that its members very often aspire to climb the social ladder ; and they are often criticised for this, as if the simple fact of belonging to their social class was reason enough to condemn any attempt of evolution. The lower middle class' natural aspiration to work and progress is obviously neither premeditated nor subversively revolutionary. But in certain circles, which are considered as progressive, but in reality are extremely conservative, people are attached to hierarchies and to well defined social classifications and they do not appreciate others “transgressing” them.

And at the same time the lower middle class is accused of all the crimes of these last two centuries. The most deprived intellectual will give you a list at the drop of a hat, of all the sins of this despicable, selfish and odious social class.

Here in Europe, this social class is generously taxed and so loaded with responsibilities that you may wonder why they bother to keep on struggling: nowadays they seem to fear the future and they are having less and less children. This situation, dramatic in itself, is systematically ignored by the mass media, carefully minimised by the “intellectuals” and otherwise concealed in all possible ways.

Here we have a silent majority, burdened with responsibilities, endlessly taken to task and belittled but which only exists negatively or as a favourite target for blame and derision. Here is a class so deprived of social identity, even in the minds of its own members, that it disappears linguistically into the perfectly vague and unimportant term of “middle classes”. The dominated individual is always invisible to the dominating one. By which miracle then could a non-existent class be really represented politically... who would want to represent the emptiness or the silence ?

If the lower middle-class man prefers to be unaware of his status, those who dominate him are on the other hand perfectly aware of it and delight in this wonderful opportunity.

A LITTLE VISIT INSIDE THE BRAIN OF AN INTELLECTUAL

When writing about the “Thermidor” period of the French revolution, a French historian said that you can not exempt yourself from studying certain historical events simply because you find them repugnant. With this in mind we will now approach that very select community of individuals who hold themselves out as “intellectuals”. We are forced to do this because they are the best representatives of the dominant ideology.

In continental Europe the notion of “Intellectual” is not as despised as in the English speaking world. The mere fact of using your brain does not mean that you are engaged in intellectual activity, a bit more is involved ! And not just anyone can go about and call him or herself an “intellectual”. As the French comedian Coluche once said, there are those officially allowed to think and then there are the others...Just as there are builders, engineers, electricians, or teachers, there are people here in Europe who take very seriously their self given status of “intellectual”...and believe it or not, nobody laughs at them.

But first of all, where can you find an intellectual? If you haven't any to hand among your immediate friends, simply switch on the television. You have eight chances out of ten of coming across a real live intellectual on his day out. One of those “intellectuals” who roam televisions studios and are always ready, happy and willing pour forth from their inexhaustible reserves of concern (blabla.) solidarity (bla, bla) and humanity (bla, bla, bla.) especially when it's others who have to fork out the money and actually do the work.

Observe him closely, your “multimedia intellectual”, comfortably installed in an armchair gained by the sweat of his tongue, live verbal passing of wind, whistling out his last half baked thought, his mouth full of solidarity, burping with a pensive air the last wind of humanitarian gas which is dilating his diaphragm and sending his thoughts whirling around between his little ears:“Mr. Thingamajig, I believe you are an intellectual...” will ask the officially approved presenter in a measured pompous manner. And there you see Mr Thingamajig, seated upright, visibly inspired , “yes” , he answers in a lofty tone, and off he goes rambling uncontrolled glossolalia, empty words, half baked ideas, cheap notions...while quietly thinking to himself that he'll have to take the dog for a walk when he gets back home.

Between two belches, the humanitarian (hum) and communitaire (hum, hum...) intellectual will call with passion for the mobilisation on the great values which he will have taken as his early morning mouth wash, and from one gargle to another he will spit his long-winded speech on the lower middle—class provided for in his communication script. Small anthology:

It is time that our movement gives up its lower middle—class positions” caution: the tone of voice and facial gestures must express contempt.

This lower middle—class lack of open—mindedness is the sign of a retrograde spirit”: here of course you have to decorate the rest of the speech with some suitably kitsch words like “creative”, “innovating”, “imaginative”, “progressive” or “concerned” ;

Such is the absurdity of the lower middle—class mentality of the lower middle—class”. This is the “coup de grace” : hammer home “lower middle” and use a condescending tone of voice : et voilà! our intellectual humanitarian (hum...) and communitaire (hum, hum...) friend has just given the best of himself !

Françoise, please change the television programme! Why has the 21st century not yet produced a Molière or a Dean Swift to draw the portrait of these people who claim seriously to think in our place ?!

OF SUFFERINGS WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION

We are now confronted with a problem of pure logic that only an intellectual can solve: we all agree that the lower middle class should be defined as a purely negative entity, the question therefore, is the following : is a member of this class capable of suffering ? The only acceptable intellectually Cartesian answer is obviously: no !

Following from this, you of course understand that an humanitarian (hum...) and communitaire (hum, hum) intellectual cannot waste time with such trifles: the suffering of the lower middle class ? Let's be serious!...After all, it represents only the majority of the population...

No, the real issues are elsewhere:

Let's try an outline of work fictional psychologist's report.

The present survey relates to the inter-subjective relationship observed in an animal production plant between the agents (the human beings)...and the animals that they raise, in this case: pigs. In the execution of their tasks, the execution agents suffer from discrete work related sufferings symptoms (such as cognitive disorders) but also from noisy psychopathological expressions (such as acts of violence...in particular on the pigs). Moreover, this clinical framework does not exclude ethical suffering, particularly in relation with work practices aiming at increasing porcine breeding productivity. At the same time, in the development of his inter-subjective relationship with man, one notes that the pig exhibits an apparent tendency to indifference. The pigs observed seem to express a selfishness that one could almost qualify as “lower middle-class”: they have regulated feeding times, and seem happily stress-free, which is not the case of their guardians. But this is more apparent than real. A closer study based on rigorous statistics makes it possible to detect, in particular in the younger pig, clear psychosomatic signs of suffering. Our study attempted to show this point... etc, etc, etc.

Note: Interesting, no ? It goes without saying that neither the fate of the human execution agent, nor that of the pig, really worries our intellectual clinician; who himself does nothing more than execute his own remunerated task. How likely it is that he would ever waste time on the suffering of the lower middle-class man ?! Quite unlikely ! At the very time he wrote his above report, in the real world of pathological projects, thousands of people were being used as scapegoats, or where struggling not to be used as scapegoats. But as we know, this is not his problem.

OF UNINTERESTING SUFFERING ...

Here in Europe we can count in millions the number of workers, in particular engineers and technicians, occupied in the design, the development and the realisation of projects. The large majority of these people have all the knowledge necessary to carry out their functions but do not have any real capacity of choice or decision. As we already said, the quite fashionable anti-taylorian arguments, of more autonomy for individuals, are more often than not simple lip service, to cover up what is really happening, i.e. management and senior executives delegating only one thing to their subordinates: responsibility for when things go wrong.
This population of engineers and technicians thus cumulates a limited power of decision, based on their status, and an unlimited exposure to responsibilities over which they have no control, based on their education and capacities.

After years of studies and years of work in a company, one day an individual finds himself involved in a project, decided upon, organised and programmed by others...which fails or does not meet its objectives.

Someone naive could think that the researchers on work related suffering should study seriously the problem, but as we know, thousands of much more serious and interesting subjects have caught their attention.

So, why should they waste their time studying the suffering of millions condemned to endure this situation ? Why would they waste time and energy studying the time that engineers or technicians spend avoiding being made responsible for decisions that they never took ?

How dare we think that specialists of “ethics related suffering” should take a look at the self sacrifice and efforts that engineers and technicians must make when they find themselves caught up in ill conceived projects, trying as they might to limit the damage caused by orders that were imposed on them against their better judgement ?

And what for this new school of thought, “work related mental harassment” ? How can we ask these specialists to imagine that mental harassment thrives more easily where time, money and energy are wasted ? How can we ask them to imagine that “mental harassment” is an outward sign of a much larger phenomenon.

Finally, how can we seriously ask these management specialists, these songsters of social-liberalism who zigzag endlessly, with the sense of direction of a ping-pong ball, between right, left and the centre, how can we ask them to calculate the suffering that third rate management inflicts on their subordinates, from projects ill conceived to projects mismanaged.

Let's be serious and go back to the most important things !

When Pinocchio visited the country of the working bees, he was taught respect for those who work. Afterwards he went to the land of toys, away from school, and he was transformed into a donkey. Confronted by today's examples in Europe of self realisation and the dignity in work, you could well wonder whether Pinocchio should not be updated by placing donkey's ears on those simple souls who continue to take life seriously and by showering gifts on those puppets who spend their time in the land of make believe.

A CULTURAL EXCEPTION : SURFERS

Some could say that we exaggerate and that all is not so dramatic in the land of the lower middle-class. We agree: there is a cross functional category stretching form the worker to the high level executive, passing by the mass of middle management, engineers and technicians, who escape these problems by fault or by their own design : they are the “surfers”.

These individuals, confronted with a cataract of waste, disasters and failures are still able to avoid, or at least glide over the mud pit, untouched by the mud, untroubled by the pit. How do they do this ? mystery! All that we can say is that these surfers do exist. All of us have met them, even if we don't realise it straight away... except in certain circumstances:

You are buried under enormous files of work, trapped in ever lengthening programs, submerged under mountains of pointless procedures, endless tests and incompatible tasks, with a manager on your back looking for the work you should have completed the day before for something he gave you yesterday morning, and cancelled yesterday afternoon. At the same time you hear from in front of the coffee machine the voice of a colleague pouring out at length on the inefficiency and the uselessness of others and laughing loudly about condoms found in the director's toilets. He then comes by and pops his head into your office and with a self important and half contemptuous air of superiority asks you “tell me, what exactly is your added value in our company?”

Do not over react to these remarks; on the contrary be content, you have just met YOUR SURFER!
It is a fact, the surfer only makes errors because of the idiots who surround him. It sometimes happens that surfers, experts in the art of discharging their work and their responsibilities on others, fall into traps set for their neighbours. You will then hear them being indignant in their mishap, vociferous in their victimhood, akin to the character of the Zizanie of Astérix, offended and outraged, protesting: “suspecting me, I who denounced everyone?!”

In the case of executive and middle management mental harassment, its often the case that the victims of today were the harassers of yesterday. You may well think that they deserve their comeuppance. However, with a more thorough analysis you will see the perverse workings of a pathological organisation.

HEALTHY SOCIETY AND SICK SOCIETY

Following from the above it could be suggested that we are no more than stubborn defenders of the lower middle class in a revisited version of the class struggle. This of course is not the case.
The dividing line between the various classes of society are in fact far from being as rigid as the intellectuals of the “progressivo-conservative” single thought school suppose. Between a simple operator, a technician or an engineer there are in the fact often mobile and nuanced differences.

It is the dominant thought, on the basis of a common ideological substrate, that imposed rigid theoretical barriers between the various classes of society and pronounced on the negative role of the lower middle class. But it is not simple chance that officially agreed intellectuals, attached to the social order and faithful to the dominant ideology, should prefer to attack this class: they suspect them of being “educated” and potentially more likely to question their verbosity.

In a healthy society to each is given those tasks that he does best. It is a sick society that creates all kinds of obstacles or divisions which complicate life to the detriment of individual self realisation and communal efficiency.

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