WriterGuy2021

Does it alarm you? That's what I really want to know.

There's probably a "domestication gradient" or something like that. I can sense it when I talk to people. Some people are like little children. They haven't thought about their own safety ever. Others are literal wild men who believe every conspiracy theory out there because they are practically traumatized and are always seeking out potential threats. And yes, there are people in between that worry about their own safety, but also have enough faith in the system to function properly.

I must admit... I have fallen in love with my own term because it really does seem to describe some of the human diversity I've encountered.

If making $10 an hour as a retail employee when you have an advanced degree is what you were talking about when you spoke of the non-linear careers people have today...that seems a little facetious to me. I guess if I make some money panhandling, that's also a career change too....right?

There's no feedback mechanisms which penalize the university for turning out unemployable graduates. Peter Thiel actually talks quite a bit about this. I think you're right on the money.

We must consider the increased cost of a university education and how its function has shifted in society. The university, for the most part, is now a training ground for corporations. We can see this in the dramatic shift away from the humanities and intense focus on STEM. STEM is essentially a corporate career path -- especially science. So we have a strange situation: universities are acting like job training institutions, but they are not directly coupled to industry. They want to maintain their ivory tower aloofness, but they lost their ivory tower status when they opened up the floodgates and became part of the cooperate pipeline. I think the university system is having an identity crisis.

This wouldn't be the first time it has changed what it is. We must remember that the prototype of the modern university was a semi-religious institution used to train the clergy. Funny that you speak about the ideal of education being sacred...at one time it literally was. And perhaps the secularization of the university system is also a symbol of losing that sacredness. Certainly, the demands of the earth are more important to the university of today than the demands of those platonic realms home to pure intellectual curiosity and moral transcendence.

It happens a lot. I've seen it first hand and I've also read plenty of horror stories on the internet. There's definitely a shocking disconnect between the education system and the job market. Many people are becoming qualified for jobs that simply aren't there. What a nightmare.

Here's a concrete example. There was a guy that had a PhD and worked for big pharma as a researcher all his life. The company he was working for downsized and he was left unemployed at 54. He looked for another position somewhere else, but he could not find a position at his pervious level of seniority: he had fallen off the career ladder. He was thus stuck in a strange limbo: he was capable of doing things below his level of experience, but companies were looking for someone at the right level of the progression system to fit the slot.

The worst thing about this case is that his wife had multiple sclerosis, and so his health insurance was of the utmost importance to him. This caused him incredible stress as he continued to look for work to no avail.

The problem with the modern workplace is specialization. Some people are extraordinarily specialized. The man I spoke of was highly talented, but also highly specialized. It's hard for someone to adapt at 54 to another specialization. I actually helped him pick up python, and he learned quickly, but it was clear that the man was not in his spry years. Any college kid could beat him in productivity in some code monkey role -- which is what he eventually started trying to hunt for.

I could also tell you about a guy that had a masters degree in chemical engineering working at Best Buy alongside me when I was in college. I've met so many people in my life that have not been privy to the dynamically lateral career system you seem to be aware of.

I know from direct experience that some people do indeed fall off the ladder. To me it isn't a concept: it's the reality I've observed.

I've seen a few people fall off the career ladder to their doom in different fields. I once was a member of a local hackerspace and the place was like the Island of Misfit Toys. So many interesting and talented people biding there time there in between jobs and struggling to get back on the ladder. Lots of horror stories -- a homeless mechanical engineer, a couch surfing old programmer, etc. I think most of us are quite insulated from what really goes on around us, and the people that fall down hard often aren't heard from ever again. As Bukowski wrote:

"... our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us about the gutters or the suicides.

or the terror of one person aching in one place alone

untouched unspoken to

watering a plant."

Amusingly said. I agree that the most docile tend to have the greatest fitness in society, but I don't think it is all a matter of genes. I once had a near death experience and it really woke me up. I think anyone that has been close to death realizes that most people never think twice about their mortality till the very end...and this creates two very different types of psychological species: those who carry the weight of their mortality and those who fly around like little birds who think they will never die...tweet tweet...I will live for ever. The former we may call the "undomesticated" and the latter we may call the "domesticated." At least this is how I've come to understand things.

My point is: your wife doesn't feel responsible for your personal safety. Here's the difference between a domesticated person who expects someone else to protect them, i.e., do their violence for them, and someone that feels responsible for their own safety.

Domesticated: works for a major corporation in a big city. Has no guns, no means of personally protecting himself, lives in close proximity to strangers, and if the food stores went down, he would starve to death within a few weeks.

Undomesticated: made very anxious by every conspiracy theory because he knows the world is dangerous and no one is ultimately his buddy, lives in a bunker in some undisclosed location, has at least a year of food rations, has more guns and ammunition than a small Latin American nation, makes a plan to kill everyone he meets.

The domesticated believe the undomesticated to be insane because they don't think about their own safety and violence as the undomesticated do. How many people look at the doomsday bunker crowd as a bunch of lunatics? They aren't lunatics: they have no trust in the system and they have taken it upon themselves to secure their safety to the best of their ability.

The fact that you blithely say "we live in an odd 1984 dystopia" tells me, no offense, that you aren't aware of what that means. Perhaps intellectually you do, but because you aren't used to protecting yourself, such a statement doesn't rain down anxiety and paranoia upon your emotional register. This is the strange thing about the domesticated condition: it's a type of blindness.

I'd compare the blindness of the domesticated to the difference between an old person at a funeral versus a child at a funeral. What is death to youth? What can youth possibly know of death? On the contrary, what is death to age? Death is profound and moving to those who have enough experience to know what it is, but it is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to those that have not developed the depth of experience that allows one to register the significance of the grim reminder of our own mortality. The same thing goes for violence and its fruits and our ability to intimately know them.

In any case, good luck out there Winston #room101.

The general population is highly domesticated. The defining aspect of domestication is the surrender of one's capacity to do violence in exchange for peaceful symbiosis. The domesticated are accustomed to filling rigid roles in society -- a society they believe to be benevolent and infinitely stable.

Those of us that are not so domesticated, we wild ones, we who intimately comprehend history because we understand the nature of violence and power, are dying with anxiety as centralized powers gain more and more power over us every year.

Your wife has no understanding of violence and power, i.e., she is domesticated. That's why she has "nothing to hide."

The funny thing is, people have been aware of this property of human nature for thousands of years, but every generation that lives through hard times is shocked when they are forced to rediscover these principles -- as you seem to be discovering. If you continue to investigate why your wife thinks as she does, you'll come to the points I've made above and the behavior of the compliant masses will make much more sense -- and will leave you with quite a terrible feeling if you truly come to understand how most people will pretty much blindly comply with any prevailing authority that has seized the capacity to commit violence.

This could be seen as a metaphor for the practice of public relations. Like when we learn about the president's dogs. Sounds like a strange interpretation, I know, but folklore and various traditions have been known to contain veiled wisdom. Also, the behive has a lot of esoteric associations.

That's not the only collective fiction that's problematic. At this point, the lies are the only thing keeping everything going.

Nobody cares -- that's the sad truth. Most people are just running to stay in the same place on the corporate capitalist hamster wheel. I don't think people are free enough to care about morals and things that matter beyond their own life. I know the bourgeoise on here hate to hear these things, but it's true.

People certainly claim to care about climate change, but most do so only in order to reap the identity benefit. If saving the planet means making less money and living a more modest lifestyle, most people will say no. The outrage is mostly superficial.

"Tired with all these, for restful death I cry."

Presumably, all that Jesus does is a reinforcement of the self-same Logos. There's a lot of repetition of the same principles across different contexts.

Bread has a special place in Christian symbolism because of the Eucharist. The bread of the Eucharist is called "the body of Christ." The ritual associates material nourishment and spiritual nourishment. Epiousios must be related to this idea...that our days are to be used to fuel our spiritual life. I don't think the word is used in the same secular sense as your case.

The function of this adjective seems to be the augmentation of "bread" so that it is interpreted as food to feed the spiritual mission of Christians. The day is to be food for their stated higher spiritual purpose. Clearly, this word means something like "higher-purpose" or something like that.

I think most Christians interpret "Give us the day our daily bread." correctly because the whole prayer is about living a pious life. Even if "daily" doesn't exactly mean what the original text meant, I think the context flavors it well enough.