OK, let’s start out with a hat tip to Julian O’Dea, who made a comment at SSM’s which led to me finding Lena’s blog (by their gravitars you shall find them). She’s now on the weblist, because she can write like this.
A man who positively gloats over his higher rank is suffering an excess of pride, no less so than a woman who refuses to accept her place in the hierarchy. This is our condition in our fallen state, and if we all do not guard against our own pride, we will make life miserable for ourselves as well as the unfortunate people we marry. It is much easier for a woman to accept her inferior rank when a man does not lord it over her in a domineering fashion.
Domineering behaviour is a sign of weakness, not strength, and women are naturally repulsed by this. Granted there are women who seem to like that sort of thing, but it is my opinion that in the absence of real dominance, women will accept a facsimile, but that doesn’t make it any more than an act on both their parts.
I have another word for this behaviour. It is that of a bully, and bullies are generally unattractive, because their cowardice leaks: they can give a punch but not take one. Verbally or physically. Songtwoeleven is absolutely correct when she discusses confronting these things in her life and in her attitude to her husband: we are all fallen and we all have to deal with the whsipers of pride on a daily basis.
I don’t know where we got the idea that men are not human beings. My husband and I are so close now, and so very much in love, and our love has matured since the days of his depressive extended unemployment. I would go so far as to say that I am THANKFUL that I saw him like that and God revealed my sin to me that I could repent. Perhaps I was raised by a feminist as a typical little princess and hadn’t any idea what a real man thinks, feel, endures, etc. It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.
We want these uber-masculine men with “frame” and “alpha” and all that, and then we become disenchanted when something happens to them that takes them out of their element as “strong” men. I believe it is difficult for a woman to see her man injured, unemployed, depressed, ill, etc., but I do not believe it has to be repulsive and divorce-worthy.
I would not be so arrogant as to try to add to your essay; it is excellent. I did find in my experience, under the category of “pray without ceasing”, that it helped me to pray against and constantly repent of pride, spiritual pride, etc., in thinking that somehow I was “better” than my husband, or more resilient, or able to carry more than him, or closer to God than him, or whatever other hideous, wicked thoughts that may have entered my mind at the time. Self-righteousness is such an ugly beast and is to be plucked up at the root and cast into the fire of God’s holiness and burned beyond all recognition.
You cannot argue with that. Time for the first video: the theme is Cohen, because he cheers me up.
Charles Stross is going to take the Vampire mythos to the cleaners in the next Laundry Book, which has to be good: the Twilight series needs to be hung, drawn, quartered, then buried at a crossroads, in a reinforced concrete coffin, with stakes through the heart and medulla oblongata. But enough on that. His comments on cheap patriotism meet my approval.
Only a small fraction of Eton’s 1914 class survived the war without physical injury. Lest you assume the death toll was confined to gung-ho officer chappies leading their men over the top, even for the non-commissioned ranks it was a brutal war: around 5% of the total male population of the UK died on the front line, and another 10% were damaged, wounded in body or mind. (As a reference point for foreign readers, the death toll among the British was considerably worse than that of the American Civil War—and among the French it was bloodier by far.)
This is the event that Call Me Dave, our inexplicably ignorant excuse for a Prime Minister, thinks is a suitable subject for a commemoration that says something positive about the British people: a teachable patriotic moment for the masses. Only a second-rate reject from the marketing industry could come up with such an abjectly peurile pile of shrapnel-severed bollocks: that, or a fool who has swallowed Michael Gove’s conveniently patriotic educational myths without so much as a pinch of skepticism or introspection. The first world war started as a family scrap driven by the bloated egos of the richest, most powerful family in Europe—lest we forget, Kaiser Wilhelm II was closely related by blood to both Tsar Nicholas II and King George V of Great Britain—and ended up as a nightmarish industrialized slaughterhouse. It was a mincing machine into which the menfolk of entire towns vanished, a Pals Battalion at a time: a death factory that manufactured an average of a thousand British corpses a day for years on end.
They said at the time that the British soldiers were lions led by donkeys. And it seems that as a nation we are still led by donkeys …
While I am thinking about self defeating behaviour, let’s consider HR. I know of a series of cases — none as egregious as this one of Bill Price’s — where HR have acted to worsen disputes.
The real reason HR has grown so much over the years is legal and regulatory compliance. HR is all about following the rules from on high, including affirmative action quotas, policies regarding discrimination and harassment and other ideological matters.
In this way, HR closely resembles the old commissariat of the USSR and other Communist countries. Commissars were a fact of life in Soviet factories, each of which had at least one “politruk” (political officer) who would enforce the rules and ensure adherence to Soviet ideology. In the final days of the USSR, the politruk was seen as something of a joke not to be taken too seriously, but for a long time people genuinely feared them.
In the US, people have good reason to fear HR, because they do exercise authority, and your job relies on being in good graces with the department. I learned this the hard way. …
Since then, I have assiduously avoided working in a corporate setting, choosing instead to work in small businesses or freelance. Sometimes, you have to be honest with yourself and know your place. I simply can’t survive in an environment that requires conformity and slavish obedience — it isn’t in my nature. But that’s what HR wants from its workers: silent, drone-like behavior
The rules, as Opus points out, cannot be kept.
I know nothing of HR personally.
This is what happens. One is instructed by a famous organisation who are being sued by an aggrieved employee. One is apprised of the facts and then one compares what is alleged to have happened with the voluminous Code of Practice implemented by the Organisation (doubtless settled by learned Counsel). Of course, at every stage, the Organisation (HR) has contrived to breach every single material part of its Code, and thus one advises as follows:
“I am indebted to my Instructing Solicitor and having carefully considered all relevant papers laid before me and for the reasons as set out hereunder I am of the opinion that the aggrieved employee will be successful in every one of his/her claims.”
Like having a machine in the back room that prints money.
The HR department will not survive. For the regulatory state is inefficient: this has led to manufacturing being outsourced to China, Pakistan and Taiwan, where you can just do the job and not worry about the EPA or politically correct shibboleths. HR forgets that they are not a profit centre but a cost centre: it’s the people who make and sell who generate profits.
So, young person, be one of those. Go small. Live frugal. Do not get into debt: for if you are relying on that fat salary to make the mortgage payments you are just another servant of the corporation.
And we were called to freedom, not slavery.
So… two women who back Lennie: he has always had excellent (musical) taste when it comes to women (even if he went all Zen for a while), and I guarantee no HR department was involved in hiring them.
