Posted by trouble on March 17, 2002, at 3:53:17
In reply to Re: train, wreck..alienation? » trouble, posted by Ritch on March 17, 2002, at 2:37:11
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> Trouble, I appreciate your insights working for the "ruling class".And I appreciate you opening your head to me Mitch and letting me take a stroll in there. Did you write your note in one sitting, just ratatatat, freestyle? It's a beautiful outpouring, one spirit to another.
>> Given your personal experience and intuition, do they feel alienated from the rest of society and *wish* they didn't feel so alienated, or can they "afford" to be apathetic? What is the skinny on how they feel about the world? Have you ever had what you considered to be a genuine conversation with *one* who spilled their guts about how they relate to the rest of the world and how it troubles or pleases them?
Well Mitch, this is a book. Or at least it should be. My wealthiest client is one of the most decent human beings I've ever met, I didn't think it was possible, IT FUCKED ME UP, but there you go. He's Greek God beautiful, top of his class Harvard, has seratonin coming out of his ears, big anti-arparthied activist in college years, smells like an enchanted forest, and Decorum? Up the ASS. Civility? Makes Dr. Bob look like son of Ayn Rand and Rasputin. I know the dude as well as can be expected, I've worked 15 hours a week for him for the past 2 years. He's had an unfailing and thoroughly unwarranted faith in me that's done more for my character than someone like me should expect to be borne. He's a venture capitalist, money money money. We are against everything the other person stands for, but I know I love him, and I'm sure he has some appropriately WASPISH terminology to characterize his fondness for me. People want to be near him, he is sincere, and charasmatic, and totally caring, all of which is immediate. He's also tormented in that brooding male fear of vulnerability style we broads find so charming. It took me a long time to get my head around this package, and I never include him in my railings against the elites, I assume he's an exception to the rule, but I have to wonder, how many multi-millionaires do I service? Uh, just him. But I read alot.
>>I know that us worker bees are alienated to some degree every day, I think mainly from specialization of job functions.
Yup, and everyone knows this. But the business of America is business, and if that makes us American machines well, too bad, we have our priorities to consider.>> I liken it to being a decent guitar player, but the fun is lost because you wind up just being a stenographer and that ratatatat programs your brain and turns you into an OCDisordered robot that requires meds to chill out. Eighty percent of the people that I work with are on psych meds to prevent them from either panicking, punching the boss, or crying all day. The meds get added-people can "deal" with the stress better....and MORE gets added on, and you wind up in a similar situation later on. One coworker I know is a very strong person, and the other day he just said-"you know, I just need to get something prescribed so I can get through this every day." Never expected to hear it. Not that I am antimed. I NEED meds. There is just something that is harmful about moving from a situation with lots of control (with good and bad results to take responsiblity for) such as running a family farm and then sitting in front of a CRT tube 50 hrs a week.
This is great rollicking spontaneous writing. Salud!
>> At first I just felt like I was coming out of a movie theatre when I got off work. That lessened and lessened and now I am conditioned to that and do not even notice it. Now, I get all of this PTSD-like ruminations about all of the nonsensical logical gibberish that I went through for the previous day or two while I am trying to sleep-talk to a friend, etc.
Sleeptalk to a friend. It listens.
>> I worked outside my house the other day on a day off and heard the Spring birds for the first time-a wonderful improvisational chaos that completley changed the way I feel.
Thank God you can feel something by hearing birds and then recognize the meaning of its absence in our everyday life. I think it's pretty effing meaningful...
>>Vacations just aren't going to fix it. I have got to get back to athletic/visual/right-brained type work to heal myself up and get back to where I used to be. We are killing ourselves to live in many ways. Gee, "tune-in" and "drop-out" are getting pretty interesting airplay in my head lately.
What kind of work do you do right now?
>>It could be bad judgement-could it be psychosis?
Our environment, Mitch, including most people in it are precursers, if not carriers of psychosis. The absence of psychosis is more remarkable than its presence, everywhere, everyday.
>>Is there anything other than psychosis Anyway,
Whoops, looks like you done already got that covered and in fewer words to boot!>>here is an interesting book that I got a knock-out history professor to break her chalk when I mentioned it. You have probably already checked it out.
"Madness and Civilization" (A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason).
Hmmm...interesting author. My psychologist doesn't want me reading him. He's taken an unusually HARD stand against me reading him. But one of my best and most loving friends is a Foucault scholar, and I wonder what she gets out of him. Isn't he kind of hateful and negative? Let's ask Kid_A! He knows everything!
trouble
poster:trouble
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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020314/msgs/20003.html