If I am a "communist", it's news to me, cause I sure didn't sign up to be one. I side with no creed.
But I disagree with you about not having enough to eat. Look around. There is an over-abundance of wealth. Sure, there are some homeless, but mostly people have waaaay too much stuff. I have far more than just basic necessities at my home, and I, sir, do not work out of fear.:) Sure, sure, I can decide to quit the "work your ass off" scene and go off on my own, without food and shelter. But that's my own decision, is it not? I don't have to feed anyone except myself. If I decide not to feed myself, then it's my problem. However, if I want to feed myself and you erect some idiotic barrier in front of me, that is based on your personal greed, then you better get the heck out of my way, cause I will just roll over you like a 'dozer.
However, my general disposition is that there is hardly anything worth fighting for.
You might be trying to be funny, but you should think about what you said.
Why is gold valuable? Because it is considered valuable. But just as people consider something valuable, people can also reconsider. If enough people reconsider, then gold would no longer be valuable, and then, those with the gold would no longer have a carrot to wave in front of our currently-greedy noses. This is worth thinking about, in my opinion.
If we don't want the rich people to control us, the first step to freedom is to stop wanting what they have.:) Sounds almost impossible? But actually it's quite doable if you consider that: a) death is certain, b) the time of death is uncertain.
Without this giant carrot, the stick would lose a lot of its power too, as people would have fewer things to gain and thus fewer things to be affraid of losing. Being less affraid, people would be kinder and more relaxed, and people would live and work for reasons other than greed and fear (survival, fear of death, fear of discomfort, fear of losing social status).
Living and working for reasons other than greed and fear is simply bliss.:)
The whole concept of entropy is ultimately bogus, because "order" is a subjective feeling. We say that things are in order if they are easy to find, or if they follow a pattern we expect, etc. Outside of these "expect" or "easy" words, we cannot fully explain what "order" is.
Entropy is a useful idea in science, but it won't pass even a slight amount of critical analysis in philosophy. (I said critical analysis, not just any old analysis...anything can be non-critically rationalized away) In fact, many scientific ideas cannot pass muster philosophically, such as "the big bang", which implies that time and space have a start, etc. It's the same criticism that people levy against God-creationism. Well if God created the universe, what created God? Well, if the universe is the result of the big bang, then what is the cause of the big bang? If it's self-caused, then right then and there science enters into a religious domain of self-causation and faith. So, entropy is a useful idea in science, because it helps to explain away (but not really explain) some of the currently observable external/physical phenomena (it doesn't explain the contents of dreams, etc.. so it can only explain a portion of our experience as a human being). In my opinion, it's not an idea that's worth basing one's worldview on.
So, having said that, I'd say, you have a good hunch there! You should ponder it a bit more, if you have time and desire to do so.:)
Won't you want to get paid for creating content though? I can see creating some content for free, but if you want to make it your day job, you'd probably want to get paid for it. Level designer is a paid profession right now, and probably for a good reason. I said, "probably".
Why should a company enter into every single profitable market? This doesn't make any sense to me. Just do one thing and do it really well, or do few things and do them really well. I think if you try to dominate every market known to man, then you'll just end up with failures and/or mediocrity in most of the markets.
It seems like every 6 months there is a news item about how Microsoft is going to enter this or that market.
If a slave master is willing to feed the slaves and I oppose slavery, it could indeed be said that I am depriving the slaves of their food. However, this is the kind of deprivation that is good in the long run for all concerned.
In the course of correcting some grievous wrong, there is almost always some kind of short-term drawback. For example, right after the slavery is abolished, the condition of most ex-slaves probably got worse and not better, etc. But long term, the effect of freedom is positive. When someone claims that the code is "theirs", they are essentially depriving people of rights to inspect, modify and redistribute the code until expressly allowed. In other words, without the express allowance of the following -- inspection, modification, redistribution -- a claim such as "It is mine" is an expression of forbidding intent. All possessive claims, i.e. claims that deliniate and define ownership, constitute, by their nature, a reduction of freedom. Please note that I make a distinction between ownership and stewardship.
"That said, if the damn linux kernel accually had a real architecture, it could support an ABI, and even isolate itself from rogue drivers. As it is, the kernel arch is pretty much non existant and just a pile of code that tends to behave like a real kernel, except when you try to do something a little outside of the mainstream desktop or small web server enviroment."
This ad-hominem hugely detracts from your message. It sounds to me like you are a bitter and/or suffer from a case of "sour grapes".
Wrong. It is closed source companies who put the code before the user. They protect the code more than they protect the users. Open source is about protecting the user by allowing unhindered access to code for modification and redistribution.
It would completely devalue everyone else's property and massively increase the value of its own.
awww, shucks...
In related news: Walmart devalues mom-n-pop shops.
I consider this to be a bad trend, but I find it very annoying that those two folks are only screaming when it is their own toes that have been stepped on, and not when the toes of their neighbours are crushed. But I am not surprised.
I used to be very pro-science, but not so much anymore. I still like and support science, however what I no longer do, is I no longer let science define my worldview for me.
The problem for me was that science was teaching me that I was just a bag of meat, and not really a person. Since I am just a bio-robot, there is nothing in me that's any better than, say a chicken, or a clod of earth. If I have an issue, instead of thinking my problem through, I could theoretically swallow just the right kind of pill and my issue would go away, since pretty much any negative life perceptions these days are considered brain imbalance. Depressed? Brain imbalance. Unhappy? Brain imbalance. Solution -- "happy pill".
NO! I said, no, that's not what I am, and I refuse to seek solely physical means to solve every problem in my life. I am not a bio-robot. I am not a meat machine.
I am not telling you the whole story here. It's not that I just didn't like how science made me feel and rejected it based on some sentimental reason. Not at all. My feelings caused me to examine the issues seriously and I came to realize that the hinging point is the issue of identity and the nature of cognition. Essentially science and maths take identity as an axiom, but it's not an axiom. If examined, one can see how and why it doesn't make any sense. But this can be difficult to explain because most people are not used to questioning axiomatic beliefs, and so react negatively and aggressively to such ideas (thus no useful discussion can take place).
Briefly put, science is dehumanising. If scientists could somehow address that, I feel that science would experience a revival. However, I am affraid that it's not going to happen, because scientists pretty much refuse to challenge the "everything is matter and energy and mind is just an illusion" view of materialism.
(yes I am accusing the scientific community of being aggressive and hateful toward any non-materialists, with the possible exception of quantum mechanics people who are a bit more open minded usually, since they are not as stuck on the classic ideas of identity, matter and energy)
Hell, even with a raise there is no insentive to work harder if all you do is excel spreadsheets (as a senior developer), and all you hear at each company meeting is more news about the company's successes in their outsourcing, and then, right after that, they tell you that they have no plan to lay anyone off.
My boss told me he had to fight hard to get me a raise. Nice to have a boss like that, but on the other hand, this tells me that upper management doesn't give a shit, and that's not exactly a morale booster. In other words, while I appreciate my boss sticking up for me, ALL IN ALL, the fact that he had to fight for it, and that it wasn't given gladly and happily does not raise my morale one bit. Meanwhile the middle-upper management positions are revolving doors -- people come and go about every 6 months or less, and I imagine there is no trouble with $$$ at that level. Oh, and half of my teammates quit...and the upper management is silent about it. Middle management doesn't say much either. There are quite a few empty cubes. (and by the way, there is a TON of work to do! It's not like we have nothing to do.. but now there is triple the beurocracy, and less genuine communication. before when there was trouble, I could call someone I knew personally in another department, but now it's like... "oh.. you have problems, then open a ticket, pfftt.")
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no desire to go anywhere else, simply because I am not young and idealistic. I've been around and I've seen more than one company now. They are ALL THE SAME. The only differense is how badly they suck. Either they suck terribly or pretty bad. There is not a single company out there that is truly all-around great. The only good job is when you can get other people to work for you and not have to come in to work (you can still do what you love in your free time, only minus the stick and double the carrot) -- essentially this is exactly what happens if you break a certain $$$ threshhold.
It doesn't have to be like that, and I don't think it will be like that forever (I'm an optimist). I do think it will get better, but first, people have to learn that life is more than just money, and that having happy neighbors and coworkers is actually worth something. I am affraid this learning process will take about 100-200 years.
Why don't we outsource CEO's? I mean sheesh, 400 times average worker salaries? Don't they have MBA's in India? We could save a FORTUNE if we simply shipped the CEO's and Boards of Director overseas!
Good thinking! With this logic, I suppose we should outsource the shareholders next.:)
Or how about this, why not just gather up 5 good guys and in-source ourselves, away from the rest of the scum. That way we can outsource the whole world. Think of the possibilities.
Its far better to threaten a wage reduction for poor work than to offer a raise for good work, instead just tell them that you're only paying the Pakistani kids half the price and that will get them feeling pretty good.
LOL
BINGO!
Thank you! Someone is paying attention after all...
Self-respect and self-empowerment are diametrically opposed. The more you respect yourself, the less likely you are to take risks. The more you respect yourself, the less likely you are to challenge your own worldviews. The more you respect yourself, the more likely you are to let your emotions disturb your perception. The more you respect yourself, the more you are affraid to die, or to suffer a loss.
Just for a second, imagine this. You're playing a hockey game, but none of the other 9 people seem to play by the rules. So, you want to do a sanity check and try to make sure you have the same understanding of the rules as everyone else. You ask around. Some describe the rules that make it sound like your own idea of the rules, but funny, they do not obey them. Others tell you flat out that the only rule is to win. Some others tell you that they'll just do anything to piss you off, whether they win or not. Some others are apathetic either way. And on and on like that for all 9 people.
At this point, what are your choices? 1. Start complaining. 2. Start lobbying the other 9 players to abide by your idea of the rules. 3. ???
I don't have the answer! So why am I telling you this? My only point is that the old, "obvious" answers do not work and cannot work. I say all that stuff, to hopefully get people to think and to pay attention.
Isn't it getting old now to wake up, brush teeth, take shower, work, eat, sleep, movies on the weekend, book a month, living a zombie life? It's a zombie life. It's not like you have to go rock climbing or go to Europe or whatever. It's a zombie life because we just move like robots, one motion into the next motion and that's how our entire life ebbs away...and then we die. Some die richer. Some die poorer. But very, very few people have even budged slightly their own understanding of the world. Why? Because everyone just takes everything for granted and accepts all the old answers.
It's absolutely useless to criticize me. If you think I criticize anyone, you're wrong. I might make a tongue-in-cheek remark, etc., and make a little bit of noise, but putting people down is not my goal at all.
By all means, if you are happy with your life, then my posts would be entirely useless to you, and that's great! If you are content, just move along.:) No big deal.
The point is, the stock price is not always the complete objective value of the company. In fact, it never is.
No kidding??! Thank you. Next time they mention poor stock performance as the reason for letting people go and/or for not giving them raises, I'll be sure to speak up with this new information.
Because during the years when revenues drop, those same employees will fight like hell against taking a corresponding pay cut.
Wait, are you saying that CEOs gladly take pay cuts and lead by example?
(yea, I know about 2-3 oddball CEO's who took a pay cut from 4 mil to 3 mil a year, or took a pay cut to $0 while having net worth of 100 mil or something like that, please don't bother to mention them)
We have crossed into the realm of counterproductivity
Are you saying that the productivity of the CEO's is continuing to skyrocket, despite all this? This would explain why CEO's salaries rise like crazy and the gap between the rich and the poor keeps increasing. I didn't realize it was all the poor people's fault.
It's kinda like copyright infringement is on the increase, but the media industry is having another record breaking year, while laying off employees at the bottom level. A bit like that?
Once I know myself and understand the psychodynamics of my brain I'll be able to kill the power elite with nothing more than my mind! Thanks for the tip. I'm off to go know myself. Hope I don't hurt anyone I like in the process...
There will be no killing involved. You can't kill shadows.
And if you can hurt your friends by actually paying attention to the contents of your own mind, then I am really worried about you. Perhaps you are better of remaining as a mindless zombie. It might be safer that way for us all.
Well, since I know a thing or two about Buddhism, you're wrong about Gotama. He renounced worldly life and more or less didn't accept any help (like money, shelter, clothing or food) from anyone for about 6 years. After that he consented to some alms. When he accepted alms, he made it a point to eat only once a day before noon. If Gotama's example is not good enough, there were many others equally as pure in conduct. But anyway...
I am not out of touch. I disagree with the commonly employed methods that most people use. I too have suffered. Sure, not as much as some, but more than some others. Now, I am not saying you should go into a forest or cave, am I? I am just saying to PAY MORE ATTENTION, and look at the silly replies I get. It's obvious that paying attention is not a fashionable advice these days.
What I talk about is not some feel good phrase. It is an actual and real power, like fire and wind. Ahh, but that's not going to be easy to believe for you, is it? How often do you question your own worldview? I am saying these things in hope that there is someone out there who questions their own personal views on a deep level and not just flailing their arms and gnashing their teeth and/or "feel-good volunteering".
Let me tell you about something. Imagine there was a slave master who beat 100 slaves senseless?? And you volunteer as a nurse. You patch them up, but they will be lashed and broken up again by the slave master. Volunteering is NOT the answer. The answer is to teach slaves to not be affraid of the slave master, but that's not easy to do, especially not with a "know it all" mindset like yours. But, whatever, feel free to disagree. Learn what you must your own way.
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If I am a "communist", it's news to me, cause I sure didn't sign up to be one. I side with no creed.
:) Sure, sure, I can decide to quit the "work your ass off" scene and go off on my own, without food and shelter. But that's my own decision, is it not? I don't have to feed anyone except myself. If I decide not to feed myself, then it's my problem. However, if I want to feed myself and you erect some idiotic barrier in front of me, that is based on your personal greed, then you better get the heck out of my way, cause I will just roll over you like a 'dozer.
But I disagree with you about not having enough to eat. Look around. There is an over-abundance of wealth. Sure, there are some homeless, but mostly people have waaaay too much stuff. I have far more than just basic necessities at my home, and I, sir, do not work out of fear.
However, my general disposition is that there is hardly anything worth fighting for.
Awesome quote...(first time I see it)
Thank you.
You might be trying to be funny, but you should think about what you said.
:) Sounds almost impossible? But actually it's quite doable if you consider that: a) death is certain, b) the time of death is uncertain.
:)
Why is gold valuable? Because it is considered valuable. But just as people consider something valuable, people can also reconsider. If enough people reconsider, then gold would no longer be valuable, and then, those with the gold would no longer have a carrot to wave in front of our currently-greedy noses. This is worth thinking about, in my opinion.
If we don't want the rich people to control us, the first step to freedom is to stop wanting what they have.
Without this giant carrot, the stick would lose a lot of its power too, as people would have fewer things to gain and thus fewer things to be affraid of losing. Being less affraid, people would be kinder and more relaxed, and people would live and work for reasons other than greed and fear (survival, fear of death, fear of discomfort, fear of losing social status).
Living and working for reasons other than greed and fear is simply bliss.
The whole concept of entropy is ultimately bogus, because "order" is a subjective feeling. We say that things are in order if they are easy to find, or if they follow a pattern we expect, etc. Outside of these "expect" or "easy" words, we cannot fully explain what "order" is.
:)
Entropy is a useful idea in science, but it won't pass even a slight amount of critical analysis in philosophy. (I said critical analysis, not just any old analysis...anything can be non-critically rationalized away) In fact, many scientific ideas cannot pass muster philosophically, such as "the big bang", which implies that time and space have a start, etc. It's the same criticism that people levy against God-creationism. Well if God created the universe, what created God? Well, if the universe is the result of the big bang, then what is the cause of the big bang? If it's self-caused, then right then and there science enters into a religious domain of self-causation and faith. So, entropy is a useful idea in science, because it helps to explain away (but not really explain) some of the currently observable external/physical phenomena (it doesn't explain the contents of dreams, etc.. so it can only explain a portion of our experience as a human being). In my opinion, it's not an idea that's worth basing one's worldview on.
So, having said that, I'd say, you have a good hunch there! You should ponder it a bit more, if you have time and desire to do so.
Won't you want to get paid for creating content though? I can see creating some content for free, but if you want to make it your day job, you'd probably want to get paid for it. Level designer is a paid profession right now, and probably for a good reason. I said, "probably".
"You have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Good insight.
Why should a company enter into every single profitable market? This doesn't make any sense to me. Just do one thing and do it really well, or do few things and do them really well. I think if you try to dominate every market known to man, then you'll just end up with failures and/or mediocrity in most of the markets.
It seems like every 6 months there is a news item about how Microsoft is going to enter this or that market.
If a slave master is willing to feed the slaves and I oppose slavery, it could indeed be said that I am depriving the slaves of their food. However, this is the kind of deprivation that is good in the long run for all concerned.
In the course of correcting some grievous wrong, there is almost always some kind of short-term drawback. For example, right after the slavery is abolished, the condition of most ex-slaves probably got worse and not better, etc. But long term, the effect of freedom is positive. When someone claims that the code is "theirs", they are essentially depriving people of rights to inspect, modify and redistribute the code until expressly allowed. In other words, without the express allowance of the following -- inspection, modification, redistribution -- a claim such as "It is mine" is an expression of forbidding intent. All possessive claims, i.e. claims that deliniate and define ownership, constitute, by their nature, a reduction of freedom. Please note that I make a distinction between ownership and stewardship.
"That said, if the damn linux kernel accually had a real architecture, it could support an ABI, and even isolate itself from rogue drivers. As it is, the kernel arch is pretty much non existant and just a pile of code that tends to behave like a real kernel, except when you try to do something a little outside of the mainstream desktop or small web server enviroment."
This ad-hominem hugely detracts from your message. It sounds to me like you are a bitter and/or suffer from a case of "sour grapes".
Wrong. It is closed source companies who put the code before the user. They protect the code more than they protect the users. Open source is about protecting the user by allowing unhindered access to code for modification and redistribution.
It's funny how you warp things around.
It would completely devalue everyone else's property and massively increase the value of its own.
awww, shucks...
In related news: Walmart devalues mom-n-pop shops.
I consider this to be a bad trend, but I find it very annoying that those two folks are only screaming when it is their own toes that have been stepped on, and not when the toes of their neighbours are crushed. But I am not surprised.
I used to be very pro-science, but not so much anymore. I still like and support science, however what I no longer do, is I no longer let science define my worldview for me.
The problem for me was that science was teaching me that I was just a bag of meat, and not really a person. Since I am just a bio-robot, there is nothing in me that's any better than, say a chicken, or a clod of earth. If I have an issue, instead of thinking my problem through, I could theoretically swallow just the right kind of pill and my issue would go away, since pretty much any negative life perceptions these days are considered brain imbalance. Depressed? Brain imbalance. Unhappy? Brain imbalance. Solution -- "happy pill".
NO! I said, no, that's not what I am, and I refuse to seek solely physical means to solve every problem in my life. I am not a bio-robot. I am not a meat machine.
I am not telling you the whole story here. It's not that I just didn't like how science made me feel and rejected it based on some sentimental reason. Not at all. My feelings caused me to examine the issues seriously and I came to realize that the hinging point is the issue of identity and the nature of cognition. Essentially science and maths take identity as an axiom, but it's not an axiom. If examined, one can see how and why it doesn't make any sense. But this can be difficult to explain because most people are not used to questioning axiomatic beliefs, and so react negatively and aggressively to such ideas (thus no useful discussion can take place).
Briefly put, science is dehumanising. If scientists could somehow address that, I feel that science would experience a revival. However, I am affraid that it's not going to happen, because scientists pretty much refuse to challenge the "everything is matter and energy and mind is just an illusion" view of materialism.
(yes I am accusing the scientific community of being aggressive and hateful toward any non-materialists, with the possible exception of quantum mechanics people who are a bit more open minded usually, since they are not as stuck on the classic ideas of identity, matter and energy)
You cared enough to write your little note. And as I write mine, there are 767 posts on this topic.
Hell, even with a raise there is no insentive to work harder if all you do is excel spreadsheets (as a senior developer), and all you hear at each company meeting is more news about the company's successes in their outsourcing, and then, right after that, they tell you that they have no plan to lay anyone off.
My boss told me he had to fight hard to get me a raise. Nice to have a boss like that, but on the other hand, this tells me that upper management doesn't give a shit, and that's not exactly a morale booster. In other words, while I appreciate my boss sticking up for me, ALL IN ALL, the fact that he had to fight for it, and that it wasn't given gladly and happily does not raise my morale one bit. Meanwhile the middle-upper management positions are revolving doors -- people come and go about every 6 months or less, and I imagine there is no trouble with $$$ at that level. Oh, and half of my teammates quit...and the upper management is silent about it. Middle management doesn't say much either. There are quite a few empty cubes. (and by the way, there is a TON of work to do! It's not like we have nothing to do.. but now there is triple the beurocracy, and less genuine communication. before when there was trouble, I could call someone I knew personally in another department, but now it's like... "oh.. you have problems, then open a ticket, pfftt.")
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no desire to go anywhere else, simply because I am not young and idealistic. I've been around and I've seen more than one company now. They are ALL THE SAME. The only differense is how badly they suck. Either they suck terribly or pretty bad. There is not a single company out there that is truly all-around great. The only good job is when you can get other people to work for you and not have to come in to work (you can still do what you love in your free time, only minus the stick and double the carrot) -- essentially this is exactly what happens if you break a certain $$$ threshhold.
It doesn't have to be like that, and I don't think it will be like that forever (I'm an optimist). I do think it will get better, but first, people have to learn that life is more than just money, and that having happy neighbors and coworkers is actually worth something. I am affraid this learning process will take about 100-200 years.
Why don't we outsource CEO's?
:)
I mean sheesh, 400 times average worker salaries? Don't they have MBA's in India?
We could save a FORTUNE if we simply shipped the CEO's and Boards of Director overseas!
Good thinking! With this logic, I suppose we should outsource the shareholders next.
Or how about this, why not just gather up 5 good guys and in-source ourselves, away from the rest of the scum. That way we can outsource the whole world. Think of the possibilities.
Its far better to threaten a wage reduction for poor work than to offer a raise for good work, instead just tell them that you're only paying the Pakistani kids half the price and that will get them feeling pretty good.
LOL
BINGO!
Thank you! Someone is paying attention after all...
Self-respect and self-empowerment are diametrically opposed. The more you respect yourself, the less likely you are to take risks. The more you respect yourself, the less likely you are to challenge your own worldviews. The more you respect yourself, the more likely you are to let your emotions disturb your perception. The more you respect yourself, the more you are affraid to die, or to suffer a loss.
:) No big deal.
Just for a second, imagine this. You're playing a hockey game, but none of the other 9 people seem to play by the rules. So, you want to do a sanity check and try to make sure you have the same understanding of the rules as everyone else. You ask around. Some describe the rules that make it sound like your own idea of the rules, but funny, they do not obey them. Others tell you flat out that the only rule is to win. Some others tell you that they'll just do anything to piss you off, whether they win or not. Some others are apathetic either way. And on and on like that for all 9 people.
At this point, what are your choices?
1. Start complaining.
2. Start lobbying the other 9 players to abide by your idea of the rules.
3. ???
I don't have the answer! So why am I telling you this? My only point is that the old, "obvious" answers do not work and cannot work. I say all that stuff, to hopefully get people to think and to pay attention.
Isn't it getting old now to wake up, brush teeth, take shower, work, eat, sleep, movies on the weekend, book a month, living a zombie life? It's a zombie life. It's not like you have to go rock climbing or go to Europe or whatever. It's a zombie life because we just move like robots, one motion into the next motion and that's how our entire life ebbs away...and then we die. Some die richer. Some die poorer. But very, very few people have even budged slightly their own understanding of the world. Why? Because everyone just takes everything for granted and accepts all the old answers.
It's absolutely useless to criticize me. If you think I criticize anyone, you're wrong. I might make a tongue-in-cheek remark, etc., and make a little bit of noise, but putting people down is not my goal at all.
By all means, if you are happy with your life, then my posts would be entirely useless to you, and that's great! If you are content, just move along.
These people were born to be screwed over. You're only worth what you can convince someone to pay you.
:) Second, complaining is quite annoying, and that's actually one of its major powers, just ask any kid.
Aye! Ain't this the truth? Just don't get in my way, and you'll be fine.
So complaining that you're not being paid what you're worth is a lie unless you've gotten someone to pay you more.
First, not all complainining is whining.
The point is, the stock price is not always the complete objective value of the company. In fact, it never is.
No kidding??! Thank you. Next time they mention poor stock performance as the reason for letting people go and/or for not giving them raises, I'll be sure to speak up with this new information.
I don't think he's bitching. He just shared some information with us.
Because during the years when revenues drop, those same employees will fight like hell against taking a corresponding pay cut.
Wait, are you saying that CEOs gladly take pay cuts and lead by example?
(yea, I know about 2-3 oddball CEO's who took a pay cut from 4 mil to 3 mil a year, or took a pay cut to $0 while having net worth of 100 mil or something like that, please don't bother to mention them)
We have crossed into the realm of counterproductivity
Are you saying that the productivity of the CEO's is continuing to skyrocket, despite all this? This would explain why CEO's salaries rise like crazy and the gap between the rich and the poor keeps increasing. I didn't realize it was all the poor people's fault.
It's kinda like copyright infringement is on the increase, but the media industry is having another record breaking year, while laying off employees at the bottom level. A bit like that?
Once I know myself and understand the psychodynamics of my brain I'll be able to kill the power elite with nothing more than my mind! Thanks for the tip. I'm off to go know myself. Hope I don't hurt anyone I like in the process...
There will be no killing involved. You can't kill shadows.
And if you can hurt your friends by actually paying attention to the contents of your own mind, then I am really worried about you. Perhaps you are better of remaining as a mindless zombie. It might be safer that way for us all.
Well, since I know a thing or two about Buddhism, you're wrong about Gotama. He renounced worldly life and more or less didn't accept any help (like money, shelter, clothing or food) from anyone for about 6 years. After that he consented to some alms. When he accepted alms, he made it a point to eat only once a day before noon. If Gotama's example is not good enough, there were many others equally as pure in conduct. But anyway...
I am not out of touch. I disagree with the commonly employed methods that most people use. I too have suffered. Sure, not as much as some, but more than some others. Now, I am not saying you should go into a forest or cave, am I? I am just saying to PAY MORE ATTENTION, and look at the silly replies I get. It's obvious that paying attention is not a fashionable advice these days.
What I talk about is not some feel good phrase. It is an actual and real power, like fire and wind. Ahh, but that's not going to be easy to believe for you, is it? How often do you question your own worldview? I am saying these things in hope that there is someone out there who questions their own personal views on a deep level and not just flailing their arms and gnashing their teeth and/or "feel-good volunteering".
Let me tell you about something. Imagine there was a slave master who beat 100 slaves senseless?? And you volunteer as a nurse. You patch them up, but they will be lashed and broken up again by the slave master. Volunteering is NOT the answer. The answer is to teach slaves to not be affraid of the slave master, but that's not easy to do, especially not with a "know it all" mindset like yours. But, whatever, feel free to disagree. Learn what you must your own way.