Blue Collar Nihilism

Whenever I look at this picture of a tower worker defying death from high velocity with abrupt impact and splattering, I ask myself a question. Does he ever worry about getting fired?



Some questions are just too absurd to ask. We already know the answers to them, so we don't ask them. But then, there are questions we don't ask because we assume we know the answers when we actually don't. In the case of the blue collar worker, that question is this. What is the motivation for doing your job?



The most elemental answer to this question is that the motivation is a paycheck. Blue collar workers are essentially no different than a rat trained to push a lever and receiving a piece of cheese as a reward. This is the conventional wisdom. This is why management attempts to motivate employees with the carrots and sticks of rewards, threats, and punishments. This is why managers think every employee is some fucktard simple idiot. It also shows in their communication because they never actually tell employees things they need to know to do their jobs more effectively but keep them in the dark at all times. When they do communicate, it is always a command issued with a threat.



Blue collar people know better. They know the managers are the idiots. It is not the workers who are in the dark but the people running the companies. There isn't a day that goes by in a company that some manager or CEO isn't shocked or stung by some new revelation that comes from the bottom up. In fact, lower managers conspire amongst themselves to keep the upper managers from knowing the truth. There isn't a CEO of any outfit that isn't fed a steady stream of lies and bullshit from his managers. The irony is that some lowly worker knows more of what is going on because he sees what is going on, and the scuttlebutt is more reliable and more honest than any official memo. This is why all blue collar workers feel that they are in on one massive joke.



CEOs and managers can always avail themselves of this blue collar information, and they sometimes do. But most of the time, it is accidental. This usually happens when the bosses call a meeting to lecture the workers like they are a bunch of children. Instead, those meetings are almost always reversed on the bosses who end up looking like morons as they get bitched at and laughed at by the workforce when the question-and-answer session begins. This could actually be productive if management actually listened, but they don't. This is because truth and honesty sting, and management exists in a bubble of self-delusion. Study the demise or disasters of any organization from Enron to the BP oil spill to 9/11, and you will see this same scenario played out again and again. How could such smart people overlook the obvious that any fool could see? But as the Greeks said, those who the gods choose to destroy they first make proud. The name for this is hubris.



You can see that the motivation of the worker it not the same as the rat pushing the lever for a piece of cheese. This is because workers have a nasty habit of caring. You can see this in the way they try and make the customers happy. You can see this when they do the little extras on the job that aren't going to result in them making more money. This is the worker who takes money out of his own pocket to buy cleaning supplies for his equipment or even purchases his own equipment even though the company already furnishes this equipment for him. These are the workers who talk amongst themselves and compare notes and strategies for doing the job better, faster, and with greater efficiency. These are the workers who actually defy stupid rules with risk of termination because they want to get the job done. And what is the actual reward for this? Resentment and denigration from the company.



People are not like animals. The more you beat on them and abuse them, this is the less work you will get from them. The example of slavery shows this as slaves did their work with less and less enthusiasm. A paid man who is free will always produce more than the slave. Similarly, treating a paid man like a slave produces worse results. Yet, companies make this mistake again and again.



Workers are not motivated by rewards and punishments. They are motivated by agency. Agency is the capacity to act in the world. It is the ability to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. One cannot impose agency on the will of another which is why managers do that stupid carrots and sticks bullshit. Agency can only be imposed on material reality. This is why a blue collar man enjoys his work so much. He practices absolute agency on a daily basis. It may be fixing an engine. It may be cleaning a room. It may be delivering a package. Or it may be climbing to the top of a broadcast tower to replace a light bulb. The joy of work comes from making something happen.



A leader practices agency in making choices and in communicating those choices to his subordinates. This position comes from the confidence placed in him that he knows what should be done and that he can communicate effectively. This is not such a difficult task. You make a choice and give a command. The leader may choose badly or communicate ineffectively. But the responsibility is with the leader. Bad leaders unwilling to accept responsibility put the blame on the workers and their agency. The response is to limit this agency further and further which diminishes motivation. This results in greater and greater frustration on the part of the sorry leader. This cycle feeds on itself until the operation falls to pieces.



The way to be a good leader is relatively simple. Make good choices and communicate effectively. The way this is done is through integrity. When a leader practices integrity, his subordinates learn his ways. They know what he wants, expects, and desires. They mold their wills to his will. Their agency becomes his agency. This shared agency becomes a juggernaut of effectiveness. As long as the leader practices integrity, he will prosper and succeed. If he is duplicitous, this leads to confusion, the loss of morale, and a decline in the leader's effectiveness. If you want to know where the crack of the whip belongs, it belongs on the leader's own ass. By changing himself, the leader literally changes everything else.



Management rarely produces good leaders since duplicity is a hallmark of their Machiavellian ways. In the absence of good leadership, workers turn to someone lower in the ranks who practices the integrity they need. As they say, men follow courage not titles. The result is that this leader is the one who makes things happen while the poor duplicitous leader takes the credit until something bad happens. Then, he assigns the blame to the true leader that everyone follows. It is sickening to watch this sort of thing happen, but this is how it goes. But all the true leader has to do is stop leading, and this is done by simply not talking anymore. The result is swirling darkness, chaos, and the loss of morale.



Workers hate this chaos. They despise this nihilism. It sucks all the meaning and life out of what it is they do. People call this the "loss of confidence." Once confidence is lost, something has to change. It may be mutiny. Or a new leader may come in.



The thrill of work comes from achieving and overcoming. Consider our tower worker once again. When it is dark and he looks up in the sky that shows that flashing light indicating the tower is there, he can feel good knowing he did that. He defied his own fear and possible death to put that light there. He is a heroic being. Yet, the world considers him a piece of shit. But in his heart, he knows what he is. He knows he has the balls that no one else has. He is the one that makes this happen.

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