The Office as Utopia

I am quite aware that a professional office in an interesting company with a solid mission is a really nice place to be.

I would not like to live in any part of a neolithic or feudal society. I'll leave it to others to hanker after Viking raiding parties.

I loathe the horsing-around mateyness of the combat-facing armed forces.

I'm repelled and disoriented by overt displays of emotion, emotional appeals which make no sense, excessive moralising on emotional grounds.

No, I am truly a psychological creature of mature-capitalist cool: the NTs bred to dwell in cupboards and back-offices: useful when needed.

Nevertheless.

---

A fragment:

"They talk about the feminisation of society. How in the absence of a mortal, existential enemy the liberal world has become a supersized hearth and home. No room for the masculine virtues of the warrior, or for the disinterested seeker after truth.

Yet this is only half-true. The liberal world is not modelled after the family but from an idealised model of the modern, capitalist workplace, where:

• emotion equates to transactional sociability between strangers
• strong emotional bonds would violate rational outcomes
• interpersonal violence would undermine systemic processes.

The middle-class, professional work-environment is optimally populated by lesbian women and gay men*: personality-types combining diffuse, non-aggressive, impersonal pseudo-warmth together with loyalty to corporate-outcomes rather than individuals.

Think ESFJ.

The office as utopia."

Modern liberal ideology - woke culture - seeks to make this protean, historically-conditioned target-state the foundational theory of normative human nature. A mass exercise in self-delusion, orchestrated by the ideologues who have captured the media in all the advanced western democracies, where an entrenched capitalism has already done its selective work.

---

* In MB terms, people at the centre of the F-T axis: not too feminine, not too masculine. See "Capitalism is for wimps".

Is Theresa May .. Stalin?

Dominic Lawson

Dominic Lawson's op-ed in The Sunday Times today:

"In truth, this secretive, politically friendless and yet virtuous woman has a surprising lack of self-confidence. It accounts for her evident shyness and the lack of spontaneity that so exasperates reporters — not that it matters what journalists think, as long as the voters respect her.

"The lack of intellectual confidence is in some respects a refreshing change from her predecessor’s excess of it: Cameron would make promises he couldn’t keep, in the belief that he could somehow bend the facts to his will — or just busk it.

"But a lack of intellectual confidence in a leader can have the unfortunate consequence that she (or he) finds it impossible to accommodate first-class minds in her top team. May’s replacement of Michael Gove with Liz Truss as lord chancellor is an example. Gove, admittedly, had already fallen out with May when she was home secretary; but Truss has now demonstrated the limitations of craven careerism as head of a judicial system that requires an intellectually rigorous grip at the top. ...

"Theresa May, to her credit, chairs countless cabinet committees and by all accounts does it well, taking account of arguments based on solid evidence and being prepared to change her mind. ...

"... the British public has always liked the idea of a strong leader who says what she’ll do and then does it. Mrs May is gaining enormous electoral traction by appealing to that tradition. Let’s hope such a mandate gives her the confidence not to run a cabinet of fearful mediocrity."

We used to live in Maidenhead, where Theresa May is MP, and once attended a hustings where all the parliamentary candidates made their pitches.

Theresa May - UK prime minister and ISTJ

It was clear that Theresa May was by far the brightest and most competent of those up for election. On the other hand, she did not impress me as scintillatingly bright. She's exactly how you would imagine a high-calibre ISTJ: no surprise that she's patronised by NT intellectuals .. and rather admired by ordinary folk.

It's early days. Too early to determine whether the reaffirmed PM will select a cabinet of the best intellectual talents (those signed up to the mission of course).