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System Quotes

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System Quotes

“As a manager, I was able to put the USA workplace mental health system to the test. In each of three separate companies there was an employee that was displaying mental health issues and I reported this to the human resources department. The outcome: I was terminated every time. The conclusion: Reporting mental health issues in USA employees will lose you your job!”

TimeIssuesHealthHumanResourcesConclusionUsaDepartmentEmployeeJobWorkplaceMentalLoseSystemEmployeesTestOutcomeEveryManagerCompaniesReportingSeparateEachTerminatedReportedDisplaying
Author:Steven Magee
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“With an evermore increase of industrialisation machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.”

HumansHumanityEconomySocietyHumanCapitalismMachinesAutonomyMarxismModernitySystemCyberpunkMachineMetropolisIndustrialisationNeuromancerFritz LangMachine AutonomySystem Autonomy
Book:Fritz Lang: Filmbilder Vorbilder
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“I am not a feminist, because, in my opinion, this is a political ideology. I am a humanist, and I care about the problems of all mankind, and I wonder how these problems can be solved by scientific methods. In this case, I am a positivist, that is, I think that functional dynamics in a social system can be supported by a rational design, taken in a certain space-time continuum, but not by abstract metaphysical concepts, such as freedom, equality, and so on. If we consider humanism as a whole system, then feminism will be its subsystem. If the whole system - all of humanity is in prosperity, then all its subsystems will be a satisfactory condition for this. If our attention is concentrated solely on a specific subsystem, then we can now relatively regenerate it due to the degeneration of the entire system in the long term.”

ScienceFeminismHumanismIdeologySystemPositivism
Author:Elmar Hussein
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“Ultimately, confinement did seek to suppress madness, to eliminate from the social order a figure which did not find its place within it; the essence of confinement was not the exorcism of a danger. Confinement merely manifested what madness, in its essence, was: a manifestation of non-being; and by providing this manifestation, confinement thereby suppressed it, since it restored it to its truth as nothingness. Confinement is the practice which corresponds most exactly to madness experienced as unreason, that is, as the empty negativity of reason; by confinement, madness is acknowledged to be nothing.”

ReasonHistoryCivilizationMadnessMedicinePrisonPsychiatrySystemConfinementUnreason
Book:Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
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“Be nice,' we're often told, particularly we women-- along with other populations under-appreciated and over-oppressed... Until recently, that has mostly been said to those without power... Because those in power didn't have to be nice, were never expected to be nice. Recently it's being said more often to those with great power, and there is value in that.”

ValuesChangePowerSocietyExpectationsMinoritiesAccountabilityConditioningSystemIs It Nice
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“The Wolf. The single most productive engineer you’ll meet. You’ve heard of the 10x engineer, but I am here to tell you about the Wolf. They are engineers, and they consistently exhibit the following characteristics: They appear to exist outside of the well-defined process that we’ve defined to get things done, but they appear to suffer no consequences for not following these rules. Everyone knows they’re the Wolf, but no one ever calls them the Wolf. They have a manager, but no one really knows who it is. They have a lot of meetings, but none of them are scheduled. Inviting them to your meeting is a crap shoot. They understand how “the system” works, they understand how to use “the system” to their advantage, and they understand why “the system” exists, but they think “the system” is a bit of a joke. You can ask a Wolf to become a manager, but they’ll resist it. If you happen to convince them to do it, they will do a fine job, but they won’t stay in that role long. In fact, they’ll likely quit managing when you least expect it. Lastly, and most importantly, the Wolf generates disproportionate value for the company with their unparalleled ability to identify and rapidly work on projects essential to the future of the company.”

ProcessValueJokeSystemWolfRuleMeetingEngineerInvite
Book:Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
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“After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.”

HeartArtSelfGovernmentSpiritualIndividualBeliefFearFictionAuthorityMurderGuiltEmptinessPessimismAutismAbyssAlienationPessimistSystemRetributionExploreKafkaMaterialHollownessTerrifyingGog
Book:Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι
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“But to me, what the Greeks knew and what these other ancient authors, I think, tapped into is something we’re only now finding words to articulate again, which is that betrayal is the wound that cuts the deepest. You can call it whatever you want, moral distress, moral injury, but really, it’s betrayal — feeling abandoned or betrayed, or betraying oneself and one’s sense of what’s right. And so we had respiratory therapists in some of our early performances during the pandemic, who were saying, “I have 20 patients on respirators in the public hospital in the Bronx, and there’s only me, and I’m left with the guilt of not being able to attend to them all.” That’s an impossible situation. So you call that person a hero, when they’re wrestling with their own sense of betraying their own standards of care and being betrayed by the system that put them in that position, and it could actually hurt them.”

GuiltBetrayalHeroesPandemicSystemCovidTragediesGreek PlaysGreek Tragedies
Author:Bryan Doerries
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“Since the earliest days of our youth, we have been conditioned to accept that the direction of the herd, and authority anywhere — is always right.”

PoliticsEducationKnowledgeLearningSocietyTeachingAuthorityCorruptionAnarchyLearnSheepRightPolitical ScienceConditioningSystemMassesHerd MentalityHerdThe MassesCivil ObedienceMental Training
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Albert had created a currency based on gold bullets and McDonald’s game pieces. He’d wanted to call the currency something else, but no one remembered what. So, ’Bertos they were, a play on “Albert,” coined by Howard, of course, who had also come up with “the FAYZ” to describe their weird little world. Sam had thought Albert was nuts with his obsession with creating money. But the evidence was in: Albert’s system was producing just enough food for kids to survive. And a lot more kids were working. Far fewer were just hanging out. It was no longer impossible to get kids to go into the fields and do the backbreaking work of picking crops. They worked for ’Bertos and spent ’Bertos, and for now at least starvation was just a bad memory.”

KidsMoneyFoodGoldCurrencyWorkingSurviveSystemSam TempleAlbertFayzBertos
Book:Lies
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“Any system that values profit over human life is a very dangerous one indeed.”

LifeWealthMoneyPowerfulRichBloodSecurityHealthCivilizationCapitalismGreedPopulationProfitCorruptionCorporateHuman LifeWelfareWealthyCapitalistCollapseGreedyEndCorruptSystemDemiseGainRuinWhite CollarCapitalismoCorporate GreedPlutocracyProfitsConcernsWhite Collar CrimeCapitalisticCapitalistic GreedCorporate ProfitSocial SystemCapitalismo Salvaje
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Any system that values profit over human life is a very dangerous one indeed. Simply put, it lacks values, and such a system will eventually collapse once its true light is discovered by the masses. Though some say that capitalism is a modern system, corruption has been the source for the demise of every great civilization.”

PowerfulRichSecurityHealthCivilizationCapitalismGreedPopulationProfitCorruptionCorporateHuman LifeWelfareWealthyCapitalistCollapseGreedyEndCorruptSystemDemiseRuinWhite CollarCorporate GreedPlutocracyConcernsWhite Collar CrimeCapitalisticCapitalistic GreedCorporate ProfitSocial System
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal!) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal!). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!”

AmericaCompanyKnownRightsImagineTeamMiddleDangerousHealthFutureDirectorsManagementSafetyWorkersWelcomeManagersCorporateUsaOshaIllegalJailJobAggressiveWorkplaceEmergingNowLoseSystemMakeIgnoreOptionsActivitiesEngageReportInformToldGenerallyRemovedBoardHiredSometimeRecognising
Author:Steven Magee
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