Mobbed Again

 It is no secret to anyone that knows my work history that my radical individualism always puts me in conflict with the business hierarchy that I am currently working for. Yesterday, about 5 cleaners were giving me static, as the lone maintenance engineer on, and because I am an individualist resisting pressure to join and conform to the whimsical dictates of their little clique.

This ancient group against the loner fight goes back 50 years in my work history.

What fascinates me is that one or two of these cleaners are snitches, troublemakers and seek, self-motivated and encouraged tacitly by upper management, seek to extend their reach and power, seeking to dominate me and engineering, seeking to know what we are doing, when, and what we are not doing, and to boss us around. 

They have less power and prestige than I do, and I should be bossing them around instead of vice versa, but seeking power over others has no allure for me. I just practice live-and-let live and go my own way and send clear signals to be left alone, and for them to do their jobs, mind their own business and stay away from and out of engineering as is proper. They have their job to do and I have my job to do.

Well, that is not how it works in reality. In reality, we are all in the basement, and four or five of them do very little after supervisors leave after 4 pm, so they are grouped, bored, looking for victims, and seeking to expand their reach.

Jordan Peterson advises us to man up and accept responsibility for our lives as mature, adult individuals. Cleaners not working, not minding their own business, not taking advantage of their downtime to study to get technical licenses and certifications, hanging together smoking, on their smart phones, or hiding in cliques--they are so bored, they come to link me to their dull lives, so that more people are sucked into the pit of nonindividuation, group-living and enslaved by the power of powerlessness.

When we do not man up, embrace the exhilarating power of powerfulness (individuating), act responsibly and embrace liberty and self-improvement, then we seek power over others, and that cripples and enslave both the tyrant and the subjugated one on many levels.