This is the Call, the Rap and RealTalk

about the belief in working hard, earning a living, dis-engagement,

misery and the big footprint commute

formerly Transforming the American Workplace blog.

 

In 2011, right after the publication of 16 Mondays, I gave a talk at the Theosophical Society in Manhattan, NYC. There were “4” people there, all men. Three of them were still involved in the workplace. One of the three was a consultant, devising ways to address job dissatisfaction. He was coming to scope out the competition; the other two said they worked for businesses in the city.  The oldest of the four was retired from a position in corporate America. After I finished a brief talk, outlining the crisis in the U.S. workplace, the retired man raised his hand. He said that he was interested in coming to the book talk because he had thought a lot about his 38 odd years in the workplace; but after flipping through the book and listening to what I had to say, he wasn’t interested in reading more.

He continued that some years ago he had a different vision of how his life would go. That vision didn’t include getting a job and working for the rest of his life. But, he continued, he had a good friend, a psychologist, to whom he explained his dilemma: He now had a wife who wanted to have a family, and he was uncertain how this vision, that did not include a forty hour work week, and a steady paycheck, would affect their future together. His friend’s advice was to forget about the vision, and do what he had to do to put food on the table and pay the bills. Save the vision, he counseled. There would be plenty of time for it after retirement.

He looked at me and said that from what he had remembered about my talk, I had hit the nail on the head, that job misery numbs our true vocation. But he added that he didn’t want to hear it. It was too painful. It seems that he had taken his friend’s advice and worked away his youth at a job that had certainly paid the bills and put his children through college. A job, nevertheless, that all but obliterated his desire and passion for something.

He said that he held out hope that one day he would retire and attend to his vision. The problem now, he told us, is that he suffers from Alzheimer’s and that he could not, no matter how hard he tried, remember his vision. It had faded with the advancement of the neurodegenerative disease. It saddens me, he mumbled, you weren’t the one that I could have asked for advice back then. Shaking his head, he put on his coat and walked out.

I imagine, save for the Alzheimer’s, that there are millions of Americans, who will pass over 96,000 hours of their waking life in the workplace, and who have all but forgotten the passion they carry within. Some are new to the workplace and work life, and then there are millions, like the retiree, who are exiting the workplace.  

Over a 20-year period, 2014-2034, 80 million baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, will retire. Of course some will retire earlier and some will not live until retirement. But that’s roughly 4 million boomers each year, or more than 10,000 daily retirements. This is the generation of U.S. employees who, more than likely, will be the last promoters of the beliefs in working hard and earning a living.  

These beliefs, along with the belief in “doing what you have to do to put food on the table,” are the most pervasive and stubborn beliefs under the system of separation. These are beliefs that in practice suppress our natural vocation to create, gift and share. They are diametrically opposed to, and even warn against, the radical expression of passion, dismissing “follow your bliss” as empty new age rhetoric.

This old narrative avoids looking at the root cause of our growing disbelief in the good old protestant work ethic because it is not aware of the relationship between what we think and what we experience. This lack of awareness of current information and the consequences of not knowing is not new on the planet. How many refused to consider that the earth was round? Or that the planets revolved around the sun? And now, how many resist allowing themselves to experience the relationship between what they believe and what they, on a daily basis, experience?

This resistance to the expansion of consciousness is thoroughly examined in A Course in Miracles. When encountering a problem, in this case workplace misery and dis-engagement, the resistant consciousness focuses on tangential issues, covering over or distracting from the true cause which can only be found in the state of consciousness. Nowhere is this behavior more apparent than in the approaches to solving the issues of dis-engagement and job dissatisfaction in the U.S. workplace.

In 2016 we witnessed the end of a 3-year trend in mindfulness training to address employees’ dis-engagement, frustration and utter disgust. In 2013, Google had sought out the master himself, Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author of The Miracle of Mindfulness. Google executives wanted Hanh to assist the corporation in “connecting the power of mindfulness and meditation to drive sustainability and happiness” (that’s business code for getting workers to focus and work harder, a business code, I might add, that U.S. employees know all too well). Hanh, in his own way and in his own words, made the executives at Google aware that mindfulness training cannot be used to drive workers to do what is not in their hearts to do, work; nor can it be corrupted for business and finance:

“…because even if you are successful in making more money, you still suffer. You compete because you’re not happy and meditation can help you to suffer less.

Many of us think you can only be happy when you leave other people behind; you are number one. You do not need to be number one to be happy.

There must be a spiritual dimension in your life and in your business, otherwise you cannot deal with the suffering caused by your work or your daily life.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

This Buddhist approach comes on the heels of several other last ditch efforts to address the $500B yearly losses in productivity facing U.S. businesses, due to workplace misery and dis-engagement.  These other efforts include color therapy, empathy training for management, office feng shui, buddy plans which pair dis-engagers with dis-engagers, engagers with engagers (for fear that the dis-engagers will actively disrupt the actively engaged).  Creating a more diverse menu for those businesses that offer lunch meals. Maybe a little Italian, Vietnamese fusion? Or how about this one, painting employee lounges a different, more cheerful color and hanging some Diego Rivera’s paintings. If you know anything about Diego Rivera you can just imagine his outrage from on high in using his art to motivate workers in the name of capitalism.

As more people begin to recognize the unsustainability of our economic system, an alternative view of work has been steadily gaining traction. The purpose of work, according to this emerging paradigm, should not be subverted to the demands of a constantly expanding economy—growth for growth’s sake—but should be dedicated to enriching the social fabric, natural ecosystems and public infrastructure that sustain us. ~ Robin Tennant-Wood  

Furthermore, most businesses have made it impossible for employees to use office computers for social-networking. Employees, for example, who work for federal and state government agencies, can no longer log into their personal emails, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram accounts. But to counter this minor inconvenience, employees, engaged and dis-engaged, simply use their cell phones and tablets to check their email, to Facebook, even to watch movies on Netflix.

The research findings that drive the efforts to alleviate workplace misery often originate at the Harvard Business School (HBS). Teresa Amabile, professor at HBS, and Steven Kramer, researcher, offered the following conclusion in the article “Do Happier People Work Harder?” (New York Times, September 3, 2011):

“As long as workers experience their labor as meaningful, progress is often followed by joy and excitement about the work.”

This is the classic error in confusing “cause and effect,” the classic error to be found in all defensive arguments of the belief in separation. We already know that joy and excitement are states of consciousness that “create” meaningful experiences. If the opposite were the case, the enslaved would have been skipping to the Mississippi fields to pick cotton.

As an interesting side note, and just to offer some insight into the cutting edge research that HBS is known for: In 2016, it was given a grant of $10M to conduct a study on Black poverty in the Boston area. Meanwhile, the dining room staff at HBS, almost all Black, were on strike for decent wages.                 

Now I am not saying that dis-engagement in the U.S. workplace is “special.” Disengagement and workplace misery is a global experience of which I am fully aware.

In the so-called “developed” world, the U.K. has a one-third engagement rate; Canada had the highest engagement rate of 57.5% in 2015 (one may tend to get excited by those stats, but it still suggests that almost half of Canada’s employees are dis-engaged).  By far the U.S. has the lowest engagement rate at 17.5%, as of 2014.

In its 2012 State of the Global Workplace report, which included 142 countries, Gallup, who provides analytics and advice for business leaders and organizations, revealed a mere 13% engagement rate. That boils down to seven out of eight employees, globally, are dis-engaged. I am all too familiar, for example, with the state of the U.S. workplace, with U.S. businesses reporting that Monday is the worst day to conduct business in the country. I discovered, however, that the U.S. is not alone. In 2012, I talked with a Cuban migrant who had recently opened a bookstore in Toronto. In the discussion about workplace misery, he commented that, in Cuba, Mondays were such a disaster that the government was considering making Tuesday the new Monday, creating a three-day weekend, to “alleviate” the crisis.

Gallup conducted a study of the state of the Cuban workplace (September, 2006) and what I found the most revealing, among Cuban workers, in the findings is “about one-third (32%) say they currently have a plan, idea, or invention in mind to improve their standard of living…” Gallup concluded that the reason why so few Cubans are willing to act on “entrepreneurial” desire is because they don’t believe that they have the necessary control over their lives to do so.  (http://www.gallup.com/poll/25942/urban-cubans-optimistic-about-schools-about-work.aspx.)

It is well known, in the U.S. where Americans do believe they have control over their lives, that entrepreneurs take high risks in establishing a business. They work long hours and often do the jobs of several people, and that undertaking translates into stress. This stress and its effects do not remain at the office. It is shared in families and communities.

Now here is a note about Gallup and similar research firms, workplace consultants and their findings. Questions will always reflect the consciousness of the consultants or the research firms who are conducting the studies. They are not going to ask questions that lie outside of their belief system, such as “Do you have an idea or talent that you believe would raise the living standard for the global community, or end environmental degeneration, increase creative expression on the planet?” Their conclusions or results will rest in the belief in earning a living or “profit at all cost.” Keep in mind also, that there is disengagement and job misery among workplace consultants!

In study after study, regardless of the reputation that some have for their progressive attitudes towards work and production, all countries see physical experience as the cause of physical experience. In other words, where there is a crisis condition in the workplace, whether with dis-engagement or job dissatisfaction, consciousness (or belief) is not identified as the cause.  This approach of looking for ways to reverse dis-engagement and job misery, both of which are effects of the belief in earning, is tantamount to shifting around the chairs on the Titanic to prevent it from sinking, as it sinks.

This old consciousness, grounded in the old narrative, was the consciousness of the retiree’s friend, and it is the consciousness of the dis-engaged, the actively engaged, business leaders and their consultants, the 10,000 people each day who are exiting one of America’s most cherished institutions, the U.S. workplace. It is a consciousness that not only feeds the unsustainable bottom line, but also feeds the resistance to the inevitable transformation in consciousness that is creating a New Narrative. This transformed consciousness, returning to its natural vocational expression of creating, gifting and sharing, calls for a radical and irrevocable reformulation of the “profit at all costs” bottom line. An emerging reformulated bottom line is: Passion and talent in service to families, human and animal, local and global communities, the planet and the Universe.

The consciousness of the New Narrative permitted Thich Nhat Hanh to see beyond Google’s corporate mask. We are becoming aware that, under the belief in separation, the global workplace is a normalized and uncontested suffering zone. While no buildings are leveled, no U.S. bombs are dropped or no U.S. tanks roam the streets, there are casualties. In the U.S. those casualties are the dis-engaged, the engaged and the ones that are leaving broken, 10,000 each day, dis-membered, having a faint memory or no memory of the passion that they came to this planet to express and share. They leave in a state of resistance to a New Narrative unfolding on the planet, and as such they leave in resistance to their own peace and well-being.

The anguish, the disgust and the utter disappointment of the retiree I met is an example of the high casualties of passion deferred or forgotten. The crisis in the U.S. workplace cannot be healed by bonuses, more vacation time or redesigning the human resource office. These tangential offerings cannot alleviate the suffering of families, communities, the natural environment or the planet. What can do this is the transformation of consciousness that will allow and encourage the radical expression of passion.

“We are here to contribute our gifts to something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

 

According to the teachings of A Course of Love, talent and passion, when expressed, respond to and fulfill the needs of all life on the planet in an order and of an intelligence that the physical mind cannot fathom. There is nothing superfluous, or new agey, about “following your bliss.” The radical expression of passion is not what we must do to survive; it is what we must do to thrive!  

The New Narrative calls for “doing what brings you the highest joy in service to all life on the planet and in the Universe!”  In joy. ~Akilah

Remember! You can find me and the Call, Rap & RealTalk on Twitter most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

          

More ideas on Jobs and the Job Culture:

RETHINKING THE JOB CULTURE: Radical Alternatives to Conventional Employment: https://radicalunjobbing.wordpress.com/

WHYWORK? Creating Livable Alternatives To Wage Slavery: http://whywork.org/

More ideas on Money and Alternative Economies

An interview with Bernard Lietaer, the author of Beyond Greed and Scarcity and advocate of the creation of local economies and currencies.  http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/money-print-your-own/beyond-greed-and-scarcity