Out of the Box, Cubicles

My six year cubicle nightmare is at end. Yesterday the boxes moved to my new 12x12 window office, and today I made major progress on “settling in”. Having been raised in a small farmhouse, living a lot of time outside in Northern WI hunting, fishing, and generally knocking around, I’ve always prided myself on being “able to deal with anything”. I guess I DID “deal with it”, but it was anything but easy. Today felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders and my steps were much lighter.

Being a solid member of the “Religious Right”, I’m one that believes that there are “absolutes”, but believing that SOME things are absolute, doesn’t mean that ALL are. A lot of human existence is very relative. How bad is it to work in a cube? In the overall scheme of things, not bad, BUT relative to my own office for ME, very bad. Much worse than I would have ever thought possible, and a bit of an exercise in “space based socialism”.

As I’ll cover too many times, one of the cornerstones of the left agenda is “equality of outcome”. Most often they mean “economics” when they think that, but space in a workplace is a pretty good metaphor. When I joined the company I very soon figured out that I would enjoy having my own office … at the time I really didn’t know why. I might have thought “status”, and there is certainly some status involved, but sometimes we “know” more than we think we know. Getting to a position where I would have my own office was a great motivator.

After 15 years in my own office, six years in the cubes has aught me that I’m WAY more susceptible to noises from the environment than I ever dreamed. I knew I had a preference for working on computer terminals in low light (out of the question in a cube). Today I realized that the worst of it for me was the “white noise”, the constant wind-tunnel effect that is supposed to make the din of cubeland bearable. I felt like I was on some good combination tranquilizer / brain focus drug today, feeling both more alert and more relaxed. I walked back over to the wasteland of people stalls, and the feeling of dread returned with the wall-o-noise. Once you have lived in hell, even a whiff of sulfur brings back bad memories.

Is any of this reasonable or rational? Probably not, but it is to ME! For all the liberals claims of “diversity”, “caring for people”, “paying attention to the human side of things”, etc, equality of outcome is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT! I hate cubes, and had I not have spent 20 years with the company with kids in school, etc, I know they would have motivated me out of the company. They DID motivate me to work from home far more than I ever used to. If there was a ghost of a chance to be promoted out of them in the technical ranks at our company, then they would have encouraged me on that path. People are often driven by motivations that are “irrational”.

Cubes appeal to the socialist ethic. Everyone gets the “minimum”, so “nobody can complain”. No matter how hard you work, there is no way to escape … liberal nirvana. Does that really appeal to “human nature”? No, of course not, it appeals to some abstract concept of “fairness”. My left brain can spew out some rational reasons for hatred of working in a sterile box, but it is really my right brain that provides the emotional loathing. Can I “adapt” … well certainly, humans have adapted to concentration camps and still found some joy.“Man’s Search For Meaning”, byVictor Frankel is well worth a read … short, and would help you survive situations even worse than 6-years in a cube.

If the envy of your neighbor is more important than your own condition, or your potential to improve your condition, then you are a likely a socialist at heart. We all have to have a heart, and if that is yours, maybe it is just as implacable as I found my heart’s hatred of the cubes to be. Just don’t mistake such thinking as somehow “caring for people”. It is caring for some abstract view of people that will always have at least one voice in opposition as long as I draw breath.

Lion Hunting in Socialist Computer Utopia

The attempt to create a computer system with better graphics than reality hit a snag last night on the issue of Extended ATX vs ATX power supply. Our ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard turns out to be “EATX”, so our super cool (and super complicated) Thermaltake Xaser V500D case is lacking a couple of pins of connector power. After massive perusal of Web, we have determined that either:

1). It makes no difference if not doing dual processors or graphics, just plug and go.
2). There is a simple “converter” that works just great, now on order for $10 and shipping

3). We need to go get a REAL EATX power supply, of which there are not many.

The “build your own computer” hobby has provided a lot of fun, and occasional significant head scratching over the years. This is one of those scratching times. The ASUS web site is amazing. It seems hard to imagine that we are the first to hit this particular snag on a MB install, yet there seems to be no mention of EATX, either in the manual or on the web. We ordered most the parts from Mwave, which I generally like, but a little bit of “cross checking” about a couple things like “did you really want to order a case with ATX power and a MB with EATX?” Would have been very helpful.

Such things would be nice, but sadly, as a programmer, I also know they are far from free. The specs aren’t well structured data, they change frequently, and the only way the software acquires the knowledge to ask is by an investment in real work.

After reading Zinn though, I now understand that the reason for this is not due to any facility of the universe that makes things complex, but rather due to the wealthy 1% of the US population conspiring to confuse us! In a 687 page death march of a book, Howard finally got to the part about how to do things better. The simplicity of it makes the horror of 100s of years of wasted humanity seem even more tragic.

“The society’s levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state – the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need – by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country – to reconstruct the economy for efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most.

We would start in our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the workforce – children, old people, “handicapped” people. Society would use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone would share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of our money system and be available – free – to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, and transportation.”

“The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods – a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name socialist”.

There you have it. We are close enough to nirvana that if we could take the controls away from the evil corporations and military, the basic non-competitive good nature of humans would take over with only the slight complexity of a bit of communication difficulty! I’m sure a tear is crossing your cheek right now as you consider the simplicity of it all, how close we are to bliss, and yet we have been denied entry to this paradise by our corrupt American system.

Power supply mismatches are just one very small example, but it is easy to see how the right thing would happen in Zinnworld. Little engineering conclaves, much like artist conclaves, would see their socialist brothers need for better graphics in first-person shooter games. After their “few hours” of joyful group labor providing “free” food, shelter, healthcare, education, and transportation to themselves and their just society, they would no doubt gather in an earthen hall to reach instant agreement on the proper standards for all manner of connections, voltages, and software parameters. I can almost hear a little socialist hymn to the benefits of agreement and sameness arising from their smiling lips as they power up the ultimate socialist game machine – there is no doubt in my mind it would be completely friendly to the environment and be the ultimate in human factors engineering as well!

It is completely breathtaking to me that after reaching the end of what I was beginning to fear was an endless diatribe against America, the family, private property, western civilization, religion, competition, capitalism, democracy, and countless other elements of our society, that “the answer” to all this is a thinly veiled threat of revolution against the system we live in, followed by two paragraphs of pabulum on some abstract utopia that bears no resemblance to anything that ever has, does, or is ever going to exist as long as nature and humans are involved.

Has Zinn really missed that competition was not exactly “created by man”? We may argue about HOW it was created, but it seems pretty obvious that it exists in nature as well as in human society. There is ONE way to make man give up the idea of personal property, and at least reduce the competition in the masses - it isn’t like it hasn’t been done before; Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. 

Zinn may not like the US, but it isn’t like the alternatives have exactly produced garden spots. It is too bad that Howard can’t spend some time in North Korea. The freedom to be paid by the state to criticize the state (university professor), and be the darling of “the permanent adversarial culture” (those that Howard hopes will eventually revolt) might look pretty inviting from a prison cell were he to try the same line of work there.

I suspect this book will kick me off into a few days of writing on what I consider the “fundamentals” of the left and right. While fortunately, over 50% of Americans would consider Howard’s ideas to be absurd (in the unlikely event that they submit to the torture of reading them), there is one thread through this book that should be taken seriously. Zinn is very much a cheerleader for violence from the left, and found the Vietnam years with their riots and bombings and lack of respect for American institutions to be very refreshing. 

This is a lull in politics, but guys like Zinn, and Chomsky are always out there, and not very far removed from men like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Harkin, and others. If you ever doubt that threats to America from people within our borders are real, and that revolution is still being preached on our own campuses, you need read no further than Howard Zinn. Fortunately, apparently even more than 50% of the teens have a better grasp on reality than Howard.

This is how he closes the book:

“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many; they are few!

Keep the right to bear arms! If the “lions” ever get out, shoot straight, and make sure you have plenty of ammo!

The Zinn of Oppression

The life of the blogging Moose has not been easy the last couple of days with a journey to Northern Wisconsin to visit Mom in the hospital, and then back this AM to attempt to still do justice to work.

I think I’ll refrain from more quotes from Zinn. One of the advantages of reading the blog ought to be that you can be spared such agonies. Suffice to say, the litany goes on … oppression of Indians, Blacks, Women, the poor, the young, in other words “the people”. All by evil private property owning, competitive, white men. So far Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Reggie Fowler (multi-millionaire black businessman trying to buy the Minnesota Vikings), Oprah, and even such folks are Theresa Heinz and Martha Stewart are spared mention. Apparently the net of oppression has a few holes.

I guess I have to put in one more quote:

 “The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of the wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law – all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.”

 There is some liberal gene that just HATES "patriotism" ... one can see the sneer!

It seems that is what REALLY makes Howard sick. America works! If only he could have his way, we would ALL be dirt poor, except for the Politburo, and there would be no evil of “the wealthy”. Meanwhile, rather than squatting over a ditch or living in some concrete mausoleum of state housing and standing in bread lines, we “buffers” are being “exploited” by being fattened up on cruise ships, living in suburbs with SUVs, and watching big screen TVs. All so we can serve our drone-like function of keeping the even worse oppressed … the folks with only one cell phone, a 27” color TV, and a DVD player without progressive scan … away from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. We have been duped!

If it wasn’t for America, many socialist paradises would seem, well, more like paradise, and less like 3rd world hell-holes. Howard is more up front about the basic fact that tends to bother a lot of liberals about America. It is so damned successful in spite of all the extreme flaws that they point out at any chance they get. To see such fair-minded people have such an unfair reality regularly rubbed in their faces is part of the sadness of this country. I’m sure Oprah would much rather go back to Africa, but it is likely hard to find suitable lodging for her Gulfstream in many areas, and thus she is forced to soldier on as an oppressed black woman in this unfair system.

I hope I can sleep with the guilt of our collective sins tonight.