The Domestic Terrorist - The Work Ethic

The Work Ethic

The Work Philosophy of managers is simple - make money for the fold. But the work ethic of an employee is different - it comes down to basic survival level instinct behaviour. An employee as a human being understands that work is in effect one big "joke" which everyone is in on yet nobody can publically admit, an act, a ritual, whereby those whose have power are treated with respect irrespective of their ability.

Often these people in positions of power - especially CEO's suffer from an Greed addiction (as evidenced by the obscene amount of income recieved by for example, any major Chief Executive) - have some personal flaws coming from a form of insecurity that can only be counterbalanced by overearning.

A good guide to when you are earning too much money comes from UK Pension Schemes, where any contributory pension in a "final salary" scheme discounts any earnings over �90,000 - the implicit statement is that you don't need to earn over �90,000 a year to be comfortable. Even after tax that will probably result in a "take home" income of some �1,000 a week.

There are five psychological levels of need identified by Maslow in his "Hierarchy Of Needs" pyramid -

1. food and shelter and clothing. - survival
2. security and safety - survival
3. love and social needs. affection and belonging - psychological
4. indepedence, respect, status - psychological
5. self-actualisation and fufillment of potential. - potential

These levels can also be broken down by age and career progression. For example, someone between 0 and say 22 years old or on a low / minimum wage income would be primarily concerned with the bottom two levels of the pyramid and be working on a level solely to provide those basic factors. The so called "middle class", which everyone is today, would be more concerned with levels 3 and 4, with the underlying factors of 1 and 2. These people would generally be between 22 and 35 years old for level 3, 35 and above for 4, with an income comparable to lower management to senior management level (joint or individual). Level 5 would generally come to the force later in life, and may exclusively be the preserve of those who have either a large portion of disposable income or time. For example, someone who leave work to take up a career in painting, would not generally be someone with low financial assets and income. Sounds like common sense, but its all documented.

In awareness of these 5 levels, all individuals are aware of those below their current status, but not acting necessarily on those above.

At a certain point then, an awareness of the ludicrous nature of work, and therefore authority, (and as such civilised behaviour), has to be hidden publically in order to play the game, gain acceptance within the system, and progress to a level of financial security. This however does not prevent people paying lip service to the authority structure.

Those who are younger for example, or do not have to pretend to show respect for the institutions that provide financial security because they either do not wish to be part of it or have an alternative source of income, can and often do appear disdainful to the authority structure - telling a manager to "fuck off" for example.

Even those within the beast, so to speak are occasionally openly derisive of the absurd deference to authority civilisation (a.k.a control) can exhibit. Yesterday I sat in a High Level Senior Managerial meeting where myself aside, average earning per person were somewhere in the region of �45K, and more than one of them asked repeatedly when he could go home and play golf. He could be openly mocking the structure, or on the other hand, financially secure so that he doesn't have to take the work seriously. I also knew of more than one person who was so openly dismissive of the authority structure nobody gave him any work to do - however he did have a private pension of approximately �30k so only came into work for the "pocket money".

The again, at a fundamental level, most people shouldn't take work at all seriously, even though they should at least appear to. And whilst doing work, one should always be aware of the fundamental absurdity of working for a living - at least at a conceptual level - and treat it in effect as a big joke. Managers can be bullies - who hasn't personally experienced this? - and work can be just an adult version of the school playground in a lot of respects, with its uniforms, its swots and slackers, its bullies and blaggers.

To know this, and therefore undermine the actual seriousness of work, is to admit that work is an absurd but unfortunately necessary concept, a form of modern slavery, and to then defuse its power and authority. Knowledge, after all, is power.

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