According to a survey, the amount of time American office workers say they devoted to their actual duties declined from 46 percent in 2015 to 39 percent in 2016, owing to a proportionate rise in time dealing with emails (up from 12 percent to 16 percent), “wasteful” meetings (8 percent to 10 percent), and administrative tasks (9 percent to 11 percent).
Figures that dramatic must be partly the result of random statistical noise after all, if such trends really continued, in less than a decade, no US office worker would be doing any real work at all-but if nothing else, the survey makes abundantly clear that (1) more than half of working hours in American offices are spent on bullshit, and (2) the problem is getting worse.

Simply consider the figures cited earlier. If 37 percent to 40 percent of jobs are completely pointless, and at least 50 percent of the work done in nonpointless office jobs is equally pointless, we can probably conclude that at least half of all work being done in our society could be eliminated without making any real difference at all.

Actually, the number is almost certainly higher, because this would not even be taking into consideration second-order bullshit jobs: real jobs done in support of those engaged in bullshit. (I’ll discuss these in chapter 2.) We could easily become societies of leisure and institute a twenty-hour workweek. Maybe even a fifteen-hour week. Instead, we find ourselves, as a society, condemned to spending most of our time at work, performing tasks that we feel make no difference in the world whatsoever.

Debaters often express their vibrant personality type differently depending on whether they have a Turbulent or Assertive Identity. These personality traits tend to most affect confidence, self-esteem, susceptibility to stress, and emotional reactivity. How Debaters show these effects can be seen in several areas of life.

Social Interaction
Debaters are socially forward, and Identity can affect how and why.

Turbulent Debaters (ENTP-T) notably seek attention and approval, while Assertive Debaters (ENTP-A) usually show less need for positive feedback. Both personalities enjoy social status, but most Assertive Debaters approach it confidently, with a sense of being accepted. Though outgoing, their Turbulent counterparts often wrestle with self-consciousness when among other people.

73% of Turbulent Debaters say they are often afraid of being rejected by other people, versus 29% of Assertive Debaters.

“Relying on others survey

This difference in confidence affects how Debater personalities relate with others. While Debaters generally aren’t focused on their feelings, Turbulent Debaters are relatively more willing to talk about them with others and tend to devote more effort to actively dealing with their negative feelings.

A notable majority of Turbulent Debaters say they work hard to get their anxieties, worries, and feelings under control, versus only half of Assertive Debaters. Turbulence may open the door to healthy self-examination and growth for this personality type.

77% of Turbulent Debaters say they get angry more easily than most people, compared to 37% of Assertive Debaters.

“Anger Management” survey

However, Identity affects conflicts as well. Most Debaters generally enjoy being provocateurs, but Turbulent Debaters are themselves more easily provoked to anger, jealousy, or envy. Assertive Debaters’ self-assurance helps stabilize them – they’re willingly feisty but less reactive.

Endeavor and Accomplishment
When it comes to goals and accomplishments, Debater personalities are usually optimistic risk-takers with little inhibition. However, when their impulses lead to unwanted outcomes, Identity differences become more apparent.

82% of Assertive Debaters say they feel like they are in control, even when things are going wrong, compared to 53% of Turbulent Debaters.

“Handling Stress” Survey

But while Assertive Debaters may not react as negatively or openly to problems, they also may not put as much effort into self-monitoring or feel as ashamed of any missteps. Their sense of comfort with themselves applies regardless of the results of their thoughts or actions.

64% of Turbulent Debaters say they see many of their mistakes as failures, versus 39% of Assertive Debaters.

“Thought Patterns” Survey

Turbulent variants are also more likely to react to failure with vocal defensiveness or blaming themselves or others and to respond more vigorously to criticism.

Debater personality types, in general, can be quite willful and competitive, though Assertive Debaters are less likely to be annoyed when someone else is better at something. Their self-confidence is more durable, even when their success or superiority is uncertain.

Self-Perception
Debaters are known for their ready adaptability, and Assertive Debaters are somewhat more likely to say that stress actually helps them focus. Their Turbulent counterparts are much less likely to feel that they can effectively manage the stress in their lives, and they more often take steps to avoid it.

64% of Turbulent Debaters find it hard not to let a moderately stressful event affect them negatively, versus just 20% of Assertive Debaters.

“Handling Stress” Survey

It’s worth noting that these two personality variants have somewhat differing responses to stress. Assertive Debaters are a bit more likely to engage in physical activity as an outlet, while Turbulent Debaters are prone to being even more talkative than normal.

Unfortunately, Turbulent Debaters are also more prone to struggling with negative self-perception. They’re less likely to be satisfied when looking back on their life overall or even just with their physical appearance.

53% of Turbulent Debaters say they are generally happy with the way they look, compared to 84% of Assertive Debaters.

“Body Image” Survey

While the Turbulent personality trait can make some less comfortable with themselves, Debaters of both Identities have roughly similar boldness and optimism overall. Interestingly, it’s the Turbulent ones who are less likely to ask for help, often because they fear it may make them look weak.

It’s also important to mention that compared to Assertive Debaters, Turbulent Debaters are significantly more likely to agree that negative emotions affect their ability to think clearly and significantly less likely to feel like they have control over their emotions.

Summary

• Turbulent Debaters are more likely to seek social approval than Assertive Debaters, who are usually more self-confident.
• Assertive Debater personalities are less easily provoked than their Turbulent counterparts, who tend to be reactive, especially to criticism.
• Turbulent Debaters are more likely to talk about their feelings and put significant effort into controlling negative feelings, while Assertive Debaters are less prone to self-examination or shame.
• Assertive Debaters are less affected by stress; Turbulent Debaters often have a hard time managing even moderate stress.
• Turbulent Debaters are more likely to be upset or assign blame over their failures, whereas their Assertive counterparts are less bothered, even when someone else is superior.
• Assertive Debaters tend to have a more positive self-view than their Turbulent cousins, who are more likely to see fault in themselves and their lives.

Despite these noted differences, Debaters are more alike than not. The qualities that make this personality type stand out are vivid, regardless of their Identity. Some Debaters may feel the effects of misfortune or doubt more keenly, but they usually bounce back in their own way, just as determined to triumph.

In the end, both Assertive and Turbulent Debaters often share similar paths in life, even if they walk with slightly different gaits and falter for different reasons. Most importantly, this personality type can overcome any pitfalls of either Identity trait through awareness and practice.

“In 100 years, we will all be buried with our relatives and friends. Strangers will live in our homes, which we fought so hard to build, and they will own everything we have today.
All our properties will be unknown to those who have not yet been born, including that car we spent a fortune on. It will probably be scrapped.

Our descendants will hardly know who we were, nor will they remember us. How many of us know our grandfather’s father? After our death, we will be remembered for a few years. Then, we will only be a portrait in someone’s library. And a few years later, our history, photos, and deeds will go into the dustbin of oblivion.

Maybe if one day we stopped to analyze these questions, we would understand how ignorant and weak the dream of obtaining everything was.

If only we could think differently, our approaches and our thoughts would change. We would be different people. Always wanting more and more, without having time for the things that are really worthwhile in this life. Legacy.

I would change all that to live and enjoy those walks I’ve never taken, those hugs never given, those kisses to our children and our loves.

Let’s reconsider our priorities and embrace the moments that truly matter. For in the end, it’s not the possessions we leave behind, but the love we share that defines our legacy.”

“You tricked me.”

“No. I didn’t trick you. Problem is, you still don’t get it. The system’s greater than both you and me.

It makes us save banks from going bust just so they don’t repossess our homes.

The system prescribes us antidepressant so we don’t miss a single day of work.

It tells us to travel by airplane, but we should go to work by bike.

To grow crops choked by pollution. Eat quinoa. Use botox. Do CrossFit. Be happy.

The system knows you’re tired, but it won’t let you stop. It won’t let you stop.

And if you get depressed, you can always look at kittycats online.

And you, you think you’re outside the system, but you’re a part of it.

That’s why you do what you do. That’s why you keep your mouth shut.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Precisely. I also do all this because they leave us no choice.

Because a police officer earns €1,400 a month in 15 instalments but they risk their life every day.

It’s not fair. We can’t defeat the system, but we can take advantage of it. Your choice.

Destroy it all. Our life. Our love. Our family.

Or get in the car and enjoy the vacation.”

“This employer may use an artificial intelligence algorithm to provide an initial comparison of an applicant’s education, experience, and skills against the education, experience and skill requirements in the job description.

This analysis produces a Profile Relevancy score, which is intended to be one of many factors that a potential employer will review in making its interview decisions; there are no cut off scores and all applications are visible to employers.

Read more about how these tools collect, store, and retain information and the results of the most recent impartial evaluations. The Profile Relevancy score for applicants who opt out will be listed as “Not Available.””

Fuck you too, my friend.

Strikingly, it is among the young in particular, among those most thoroughly inculcated with the ideology of anti-hate, that social mercilessness reigns supreme. The ‘cold-blooded grasping’ in certain youthful circles – ‘a hunger to take and take and take, but never give’, ‘a massive sense of entitlement’, ‘an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care, ‘an astonishing level of self-absorption, language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence, ‘a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter, but not in the intimate space of friendship’.
And, of course, ‘an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others’. They will ‘demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class’, says Adichie. They will tell you to ‘educate yourself’ while ‘not having actually read any books themselves’. They will ‘wield the words “violence” and “weaponise” like tarnished pitchforks’.

The end result? A new generation that is terrified of saying the wrong thing, of entertaining the wrong thought, lest they be ‘attacked by their own’.

The assumption of good faith is dead. What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness. We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.

Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, has described it, homosexuality is suspect now, because in acknowledging the reality of same-sex attraction’ it also ‘indirectly (acknowledges] the reality and importance of biological sex as a driver of attraction. And this contradicts the ‘quasi-spiritual’ crusade to ‘replace biological sex with gender identity’, she says.”
The homosexual is offensive because in only feeling attracted to people of the same sex, he or she implicitly rejects the rules of gender identity, the modern commandment that says people are whatever gender they say they are. So the lesbian that feels no attraction to a man who identifies as a woman – on the basis that he is male – is a living, breathing affront to gender ideology. She is inherently transphobic. Her refusal to accept that this man who identifies as a woman really is a woman is sacrilege, a thoughtcrime against one of the key religious mantras of the identitarian era: ‘Trans women are women.’ Her sexual preference for women – not trans women, not men, but women – is an intolerable defiance of that mantra. Her homosexuality is bigotry. Her innate being is an outrage against the new dogmas of identitarian thought.

Same-sex attraction really is being redefined as bigotry. New slurs have emerged to brand and insult homosexuals. As a columnist for the National Post says, efforts have been made to ‘brand homosexuality as a “genital fetish”‘? Kathleen Stock, a philosopher and lesbian, describes an experience where she was pointing out that lesbianism is the love of women for women, not for men, even when men identify as women, when someone said to her: ‘What is this genital fetish?”®

A BBC investigation spoke to young lesbians who said they had been branded ‘genital fetishists’ for refusing to sleep with ‘trans women’ who have penises. One was told that she owes it to her ‘trans sisters’ to ‘unlearn my “genital confusion”. In short, learn to love penises, learn to take dick. This rehabilitates the old homophobic prejudice that lesbians just need a good ‘seeing to’, that that will sort them out.

Dr Veronica Ivy, a former competitive cyclist turned author on trans issues, has openly said that “”genital preferences” are transphobic’. In other words, sex-based attraction is transphobic. Homosexuality is bigotry. Lesbianism is hate. Homosexuals who reject people of the opposite sex genuinely run the risk of being thought prejudiced. As a writer for the Observer says, ‘We are in the extraordinary position where lesbians are now being told by some activists that it is bigoted for them to say they are not attracted to trans women who are biologically male’.

Even the UK’s largest LGBTQ charity, Stonewall, now seems to believe that same-sex attraction can sometimes be a borderline hate crime. Yes, ‘sexuality is personal’, it says (very gracious, ‘but if, when dating, you are writing off entire groups like people of colour or trans people, it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attraction’.
Let’s leave aside the cynical inclusion of people of colour alongside trans people, the low aim of which is to liken homosexuals who dare to criticise gender ideology to racists. The more important point is that even Stonewall seems no longer to understand what homosexuality is. Of course lesbians and gay men ‘write off entire groups’ when they are dating. That’s because they are not attracted to people of the opposite sex. For a lesbian to refuse to date a ‘woman with a penis’ or a gay man to refuse to sleep with a ‘man with a vagina’ is not proof that they have been infected by ‘societal prejudices’ – it’s homosexuality.

Homosexuality risks being redefined out of existence. Stonewall was founded in 1989 to combat Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1988, which forbade schools from ‘promoting homosexuality’ – that is, same-sex attraction. Yet now Stonewall avoids all talk of ‘same-sex’. Instead it defines a homosexual as ‘someone who has a romantic and / or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender (my emphasis).” But then Stonewall describes as ‘transphobic’ any ‘denial [or] refusal to accept someone else’s gender identity’. So if homosexuality is attraction on the basis of gender, but it’s bigotry to question a person’s professed gender, that must mean homosexuals are expected to feel attracted to anyone who claims to be the same sex as they are, even if they aren’t really. As Joyce says, the ‘logical consequence of these distorted definitions is to define same-sex attraction as bigotry’. In the past, it was ‘conservative homophobes’ who claimed that ‘homosexuality was a dangerous, counterfeit identity’, says Joyce: now that’s done by the ‘progressives running organisations that claim to champion the interests of lesbians and gay men’.

In 1984, George Orwell coined the term thoughtcrime. In the short story “The Minority Report,” the science-fiction author Philip K. Dick gave us the concept of “precrime,” describing a society where would-be criminals were arrested before they could act. Now Canada is combining the concepts in a work of dystopian nonfiction: A bill making its way through Parliament would impose draconian criminal penalties on hate speech and curtail people’s liberty in order to stop future crimes they haven’t yet committed.

The Online Harms Act states that any person who advocates for or promotes genocide is “liable to imprisonment for life.” It defines lesser “hate crimes” as including online speech that is “likely to foment detestation or vilification” on the basis of race, religion, gender, or other protected categories. And if someone “fears” they may become a victim of a hate crime, they can go before a judge, who may summon the preemptively accused for a sort of precrime trial. If the judge finds “reasonable grounds” for the fear, the defendant must enter into “a recognizance.”

A recognizance is no mere promise to refrain from committing hate crimes. The judge may put the defendant under house arrest or electronic surveillance and order them to abstain from alcohol and drugs. Refusal to “enter the recognizance” for one year results in 12 months in prison.

Just countries do not punish mere speech with imprisonment, let alone life imprisonment. Just countries do not order people who have not committed and are not even accused of a crime to be confined to their home or tracked with an ankle bracelet. 

Jolene Dawson says she’s had to come out to her parents for a third time after realising that she is a lesbian.

A transgender woman who spent thousands of pounds transforming her body has revealed the reason she’s kept her penis – because she prefers sex with women. Jolene Dawson says she’s had to come out to her parents for a third time after realising that she is a lesbian.

The first time she came out was as a teenager was as a gay man, the second as transgender. Her discovery comes after saying she dated one hundred men she met on Tinder and matching with more than a thousand potential partners.

But now she has said she “can’t wait” to start dating women. Australian Jolene says she spent more than £50,000 on four nose jobs, a boob job, jaw slimming and forehead fillers. The 21-year-old from the Gold Coast, told the Daily Mail: “I’m glad I’ve kept my penis now, that really helps.

“It all started four weeks ago when I started dating a couple and found myself enjoying the sex with the other woman more. “I realised I didn’t want to be a man, why would I want to be with one?” She’s updated her setting on the dating app, and says she can’t wait to find a woman. Jolene says she is also always “100% open” with people she meets.

So transgender ex-man with penis (so still man) likes women, like most men do? What’s wrong with the world?

The constant churn of political correctness – or cancel culture or wokeness or intolerance or whatever we’re calling it – represents not just an over-the-top clampdown on speech, but a crisis of Enlightenment.

Every enlightened idea – science is real, race is not, women should have rights, freedom is good, reason is the best tool for making sense of our world – risks being crushed under the forever spinning wheel of correct thought.

Our curse is not just to bear witness to the intermittent silencing of controversial commentators, but to watch as liberty, objectivity, democracy, equality and the other great gains of the modern era are sacrificed one by one at the altar of new orthodoxies that pose, so falsely, as progressive thought.

We are living through a war on heresy. No stakes are being assembled for the burning of witches, sure. No pillories are being constructed so that we might throw tomatoes and insults at the eccentric and unorthodox. And yet, the atmosphere of the witch-hunt, the vibe of it, lives and breathes today as it did 500 years ago.
The new heretics are JK Rowling, gender-critical feminists, populists, climate-change ‘deniers’, people who bristle at the diktats issued by the learned as to how we should think and how we should speak. You won’t be set on fire, no, but your life will be, your career will be.

‘Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.’

Heresy is the perpetual New World. There it is. The invitation to daring that heresy issues to us all. Rarely has the need of heresy been as great as it is right now. In this book you will find not just analysis of the suffocating orthodoxies of our right-thinking era, but also the furious inspirations of heretical thought.
They can cancel our speeches, our jobs, our respectability, sometimes even our rights, but they cannot cancel this – the freedom of every person to think and believe as he sees fit. Heresy always finds a way.

It can only be discarded

I received an intriguing notification in the Microsoft Outlook 365 web interface:

This message can’t be saved because it no longer exists. It can only be discarded. Make sure you copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want to use them later.

I have some ontological questions.

* * *

This message can’t be saved because it no longer exists.

Sensible enough. Only messages that exist can be saved; an inexistent message cannot be saved. But what about that indexical, this?  This message does not exist. Huh.

* * *

It can only be discarded.

We soon learn that we can do more than refer to a message that does not exist: we may also discard it. A message must exist to be saved; but it may be discarded without such a constraint. In fact this is the only thing we may do with it; it can only be discarded.

Perhaps this can be justified. Let’s treat discard as the action of making an object cease to exist. Applying that action to an object that already does not exist can be considered a no-op. By contrast, any other action (save, say) requires the object to exist.

* * *

Make sure you copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want to use them later.

We learn a final affordance, which complicates the story. An inexistent message has contents, which may be copied – but only if the message has not yet been discarded.

This is troubling for our hypothesis that discarding an inexistent message is a no-op. A no-op from the perspective of its existence, perhaps – the message does not exist either before or after – but not, apparently, from the perspective of its contents. Undiscarded inexistent messages have contents that may be copied, while discarded inexistent messages do not.

The act of discarding a message that does not exist must therefore do one of two things. It may cause the message contents to also cease to exist. Alternately, it might not affect the existence but only the accessibility of message contents. Perhaps they continue to exist, but discarding the message (which already did not exist) causes the copy operation to cease being invokable on the message contents (even though they do continue to exist). The story of existence has many mysteries.

After eight months of working in her new role as a senior associate, Sarah begins to notice a change within the organization, and it’s making her very uncomfortable. Now, if you know Sarah, she loves her job; she is the spark and energy of the room, going the extra mile and dedicated to ensuring that the company fulfills its purpose and achieve its vision. But something was changing, the leadership made significant changes within the organization without any input from staff, and this affected Sarah immensely.

She tried to offer her feedback, but no one took her seriously. As a result, the organizational culture was slowly shifting from one that was very inspirational and motivational to one that breeds toxicity. Sarah, sensing that the organization did not value her work again, became very disengaged; she kept her head under the radar while she looked for a new job, losing all enthusiasm for the job.

When passionate employees become quiet, according to Tim McClure, it usually sends a signal that the work environment has become very dysfunctional. Suspicion and insecurity clouds the culture and employees retreat into self-protection behavior patterns to protect themselves from the forces within the company. According to Jonathan Mills, the growing unease disables focus, breaks trust in leadership, and a wave of negative energy ripples through the entire organization with the same force that their previous positive energy induced. 

What are the causes? According to Mills, it may be any one of the following.

Breach of trust

Leadership integrity is paramount to maintaining relationships and keeping people focused and energized. Not living the company values and leading by example inevitably leads to distrust. 

Lack of leadership consistency

Fairness, consistently applied, leads to growing confidence among staff. Employees feel insecure when there is favoritism, nepotism, or irregular behavior on the part of leadership.

Being overlooked

Not being listened to, being ignored, or contribution not being recognized all lead to apathy. Energy gets sucked out of the system, and people lose heart.

Dishonesty

Leadership untruths breed distrust. Employees easily perceive dishonesty and hate any attempts at being conned.

Insufficient information and communication

Where managers withhold pertinent pieces of information for power purposes or fail to communicate adequately with employees, staff feel neglected and worthless.

Leadership selfishness

Big leadership bonuses with small pay increases for employees, benefits, and values being ‘customized’ to suit leadership desires, etc.

Lack of vision and purpose

 When leadership operates out of a vague sense of direction with little or no communication of an expected future state, people within the organization will eventually become very disengaged. 

 To prevent your most passionate employee from becoming quite, you need to look at the leadership of the organization as the first order of business because the problems usually start from there. Ask yourself these question 

 Has the company moved away from its purpose and vision? Is there open and honest communication to reinforce the company’s purpose, vision, and values. Or to ensure that the entire company is informed about any changes taking place.Have the leadership stay true the values of the company and leading by example; What about empathy? Does the leadership value empathy and recognize this as a critical aspect of their leadership. 

 When your most passionate employees become quiet, it’s a signal that something is out of alignment, and as the leader, this is something you must observe and act on immediately. People don’t lose their motivation and inspiration overnight; it’s always a combination of small and big things that creeps into the organization slowly and consistently over time.

When you have a team passionate, inspired, and motivated to help the company achieve it’s vision while fulfilling its purpose, you must do everything in your power to ensure that this team keeps this vibe. Otherwise, you run the risk of pushing away great talent while settling for mediocrity.

——————————————-

Prestige and dominance behaviours are ‘underpinned by distinct psychological processes, behaviours and neurochemistry which were selected for distinct evolutionary pressures. We tend to hold ourselves differently when inhabited by each version of us: when in a dominant, second-self mode we take up more space, hold our arms away from our bodies, smile less often and maintain a downwards head tilt; when in a prestigious state we embody our status in subtler ways, expanding our chest, pushing our torso out, tilting our head upwards.
Studies show even children younger than 2 can differentiate between players using strategies of dominance and prestige.

Both work. Dominant and prestigious players alike have more influence over co-players. Dominant men, like prestigious men, have greater reproductive success. One meta-analysis of over thirty studies found dominance to be one of the most robust predictors of leader emergence, outperforming myriad others including conscientiousness and intelligence.

This is despite the fact that dominant-style leaders are usually less effective than the prestigious, being more likely to put their own interests before the group, less likely to seek advice and tending to respond to criticism with ego defensive aggression.
They’re also overbearing, like to publicly credit themselves with the success of the group, tease and humiliate subordinates and are manipulative, compared to prestigious leaders who are more likely to be self-deprecating, tell jokes and publicly attribute success to the team.

The critical difference between dominance and prestige is that we don’t give status freely to second-self players. Typically, dominant players take it from us. Psychologists describe dominance strategy as entailing the induction of fear, through intimidation and coercion, to attain or maintain rank and influence.