@slash2k – well said.
Is that meant as a refutation of my claim referring to “most of human history”? Because humans have been around quite a bit longer than that.
For starters, you could read what I write instead of what you hear in your head. I, never said , things are that way because they have always been that way.
Things are that way because they have been correlated with success. These things can and do change, but if you don’t want to do them, you run the risk of not being successful. You also have a chance of recreating the wheel regarding a new and exciting way to do something. (Which one of those do you think has a greater chance of happening?)
They don’t need to make sense to you, as through trial and error these things that correlate with success have been established.
Back to punctuality, you are stuck on schedule. Punctuality is showing up to a scheduled appointment, on time. Scheduled interviews. Scheduled meetings.
Don’t want to be punctual, you will likely not be very successful HERE. Maybe the guys in India can get away with it.
I’m not following your argument? Yes, there is a difference in being run out of town and be disadvantaged, but ?
I totally agree with you. I’ve had jobs where I could leave when my work was done and I wasnt on a clock. And your right alot of time keeping and punctuality and abuse of it has to do with control of the workers.
My problem is the poster implies that being punctual has something to do with “whiteness”.
Sure. I just don’t think competition for scarce resources is some sort of “default” or natural state, and I think that’s something that you’ve got to prove. Why is the natural state not one in which we cooperate to acquire and distribute that which we need for survival?
Not only that, but you’re also assuming that “scarce resources” is a natural state. Which is also not a given. My uneducated take would be that the natural state is one in which the population grows to match available resources, as opposed to one in which the population sits in perpetual scarcity.
As to cause and effect, I tend to agree, in principle, that understanding cause and effect is central to successfully achieving that which you want to achieve. I also freely admit that I don’t have enough of a grasp/understanding of any alternate modes to comment.
And, when you say “there are some things that are objectively better at achieving a goal than the alternative”, I think it’s important to realize that if some things are simply ok at achieving a goal than they’re just as valid. As long as a baseline of accomplishment has been achieved (in this case, survival, I suppose), needing to accomplish the thing the most efficiently or the most directly is an option and not a requirement. Something that maximizes outcomes is only “better” if maximizing outcomes is your priority. Which is not an objective position.
I wasn’t making an argument. I was making an observation. And now I have a follow-up question:
Do you view both as the natural and just consequences of failing to conform?
Since conformity is entirely at the discretion of the person doing it or not doing it, ANY natural consequence rightly falls on the person making that decision.
I think in the real world it is way more nuanced than that. Primarily, like what issues I think we are skirting are the way that millenials see their need to work or be free (they WANT the freedom but they NEED to work)
And the way that some in our thread have decided that it is white supremacy that we have these correlations with success because they were founded upon some previous version of whiteness.
To me, success isn’t a white thing, it’s a tried thing that has correlated with success and then people do them or follow that map. We have those same people espousing that there should not be a need to follow them because it’s whiteness, whatever the hell that even means. It hurts other generations or races to follow the tried methods of things that correlate to success?
To me, their posts read like children whining about things being the way they are. No one is going to make an adult do anything or follow any plan to success, but to choose not to is NOT the fault of the great white people, it’s the fault of the person choosing to buck the system (and failing).
That failure is a key part of this entire premise. If they are successful bucking the system, then society molds itself to incorporate those changes.
You didn’t answer my question. Unless by “rightly” you meant “justly”.
Which would mean you believe it is just for nonconformists to “get run out”.
Only because it requires communication and agreement between parties which is positive action that is not guaranteed to happen.
Without the communication and agreement, a person or subset of the population is naturally in competition with others if the resources are scarce.
For example, two hunters working in the same area in which the resources will not support both people fully would find themselves in competition unless they take action to cooperate.
Things are that way because they have been correlated with success in a world attuned to the rhythms of factory life since the Industrial Revolution. That particular world isn’t the only possible world, and punctuality has not been shown to correlate with success in the post-industrial world.
Punctuality is more than just showing up to a scheduled appointment on time. It is inextricably linked with ideas about time management and schedules and being at the office every day. For example:
Punctuality ensures employees attend office daily and also complete their working hours. Punctual employees seldom take leaves … –Importance of Discipline and Punctuality at Workplace
Punctual and regular attendance is an essential responsibility of each employee at [Company Name]. Employees are expected to report to work as scheduled, on time and prepared to start working. Employees also are expected to remain at work for their entire work schedule. Late arrival, early departure or other absences from scheduled hours are disruptive and must be avoided.–model attendance policy, https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/policies/pages/cms_006834.aspx
Look at what is implied in that model policy: it doesn’t really matter whether you have meetings or appointments during your scheduled hours or not. What is important is that you are present for your entire scheduled shift. Taking an unscheduled break or leaving early on a day when you aren’t very productive is inherently disruptive and must be avoided.
This is the rhythm of the factory and the front-line service industry (retail, restaurants, and so forth). Increasingly, however, workers aren’t in those kinds of jobs, so the old rhythms and standards aren’t necessarily applicable.
Look at the references to “island time” or “Africa time” or @Kearsen1 sneeringly asserting “Maybe the guys in India can get away with it.” The default view is that of course you will adhere to a rigid schedule and perform tasks in a very prescribed order, and that view is derived from the Industrial Revolution as it occurred in Britain, Germany, and elsewhere in western Europe, eventually extending to the United States. Countries that did not have that exact same Industrial Revolution tend to be the ones with different cultural ideas about time and time management, especially polychronic time; those tend to be non-white. Even in the US, there is the old pejorative about “Colored people’s time,” with the built-in assumption that whites are punctual and African-Americans aren’t.
Slash2k,
Ok, that was all well wrote out with good citations. I agree with most of it.
BUT, with all due respect, we arent living 300 years in the pre industrialized world are we? We live in the west and we must live by the rules of the west and for many if not most of us that means living by the time clock.
If I’m a business owner and I need people to be at work by 7 am BUT they show up an hour later with the excuse “but my ancestors 300 years ago didnt live under a clock” what should I do? If they dont show up at 7 am because “this doesnt harmonize with my natural rythyms” or “I only work under polychronic time” what should I do?
What if they say “my BIL the computer graphic artist can set his own hours, why cant I”? or “my cousin in XXX non-european country doesnt have to hit a time clock, why should I do”?
I will fire such a person because this is THIS business and THIS job at THIS time and I need people to be punctual and do the job assigned. If you want a job with more flex, go find one.
Yes, I will admit it sucks to have to live by the timeclock. At my work I have to punch in and out for beginning of shift, end of shift, and in and out for an exact 30 minute lunch. They nail us big time if we mess that up. I cant clock in early or leave late. I worked for 6 years in computers where I never had to do that and I hate the time clock. But its the job and I deal with it.
So again, while all the things you say are true and yes, many people work jobs that allow more flexibility, others cannot. If one wants to be successful in our 21rst century western culture you have to follow the rules, not make excuses.
Yes, if a particular job demands showing up on a regular schedule, then that’s what you have to deal with or find a new job.
What I’m talking about mostly is “because we in this factory have to live by the time clock, then those same rules absolutely must be applied to the graphic designer,” or “respectable people keep to regular schedules, so you are a lazy worthless person because you don’t.” There’s still a mindset in many quarters that a “real job” means showing up for eight hours each day according to a pre-set schedule, and if you have the sort of job that does let you set your own hours, then that’s not actually a real job; you’re just playing around.
Look at one of the repeated comments in this thread: if you want to be successful, you must be punctual, because that is one of the objective measures that correlate with success in this society. Well, if you have a job in certain industries in this society, that is true. However, there is no room in that statement for the kinds of jobs that are not ruled by the time clock, or for people who are highly productive on island time or polychronic time.
This is true only if you define “21st century western culture” as synonymous with the rhythms of a particular kind of job. When you were working the computer job and didn’t live by the timeclock, were you part of western culture then too?
[quote=“slash2k, post:174, topic:915636, full:true”]
This is true only if you define “21st century western culture” as synonymous with the rhythms of a particular kind of job. When you were working the computer job and didn’t live by the timeclock, were you part of western culture then too?
[/quote]Sure. But that was a different employer. II really miss having a flexible schedule.
But again, my problem goes back to the sign which implies a person who works under a clock is some sort of white racist value.
Again, working under a clock is not a white racist value. Believing that ONLY people who work under a clock can be members of 21st century western culture, or that working under a timeclock is inherently superior in all circumstances to “island time” or “colored people’s time,” is where the racism seeps in.
I am pretty serious about the concept of white people doing right by minorities and the advantaged doing right by the disadvantaged. But I know a losing battle when I see one. I must opine most emphatically that expecting people to take this whole “time and promptness as it relates to race” thing seriously is asking the impossible. “You shouldn’t call other races lazy or imply that they’re lazy” is about all that needs to be said. Making a big meta-issue about it is…a waste of…yes, time.
But that’s dodging the crucial issue of why some particular “tried thing” has historically “correlated with success”. Is it because that “tried thing” was determined to be definitively objectively superior to the alternatives, or is it because the “tried thing” happened to be preferred by the group of people who were pre-selected by a racist, sexist, classist society to be the predominantly successful ones?
To reiterate what seems to be an often-misunderstood point: Nobody, including the poster, is actually claiming that non-white people can’t be punctual, or aggressive and extroverted, or nuclear-family-oriented, or Christian-holiday-observing, or any other characteristic stereotypically associated with “aspects and assumptions of whiteness in the US”.
What we are saying is that the reason those particular characteristics “have correlated with success” in the history of our society is that they happened to be characteristics that were consciously valued among groups of people who have been specially favored in our traditionally white-supremacist society.
We can’t just disregard that fact by batting our eyes innocently and saying “Well gee folks, these characteristics just happen to be some random things that we tried and found to correlate with success, they’ve got nothing to do with being white!” That’s bullshit. Our society is structured to value and reward these particular characteristics (which is why they “correlate with success”) largely because they were stereotypically associated with the cultural self-image of white people. And white people, in their own view (which was reflected in the laws and social mores that they controlled), were obviously the people chiefly and naturally entitled to success.
Again, that poster didn’t just talk about things that arguably are only a question of Euro-American/“white” culture, like the “nuclear family” (Mom, Dad, 2.3 kids, and Rover, but NOT Grandpa or Auntie all living together under the same roof).
“Objective, rational linear thinking” and "cause and effect relationships" aren’t just some things that were consciously valued in our traditionally white-supremacist society. Understanding “cause and effect relationships” is not something that BaKongo or Mandé people learned to “internalize” after they were brought over from Africa. Understanding cause and effect relationships is a very basic skill-set of human beings. It’s appallingly racist to claim that the basics of human thought are a “white thing” that other people have “internalized”. It really does sound like something you’d expect to read on Stormfront, not from the Smithsonian. (Again, from the Smithsonian, it was probably Post-Modernism, not White Supremacy. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.)
So basically, which came first the chicken or the egg?
Did the preferred group get preferred due to their hard work and ethical nature or did they create the work environment so that they would be preferred.
I mean, I can’t disagree with either viewpoint since it is tautological. Maybe in a few hundred years the sociologists will be able to tell us.
I think it’s heartening that other viewpoints are becoming not only accepted but the norm regarding certain successful values. I don’t see punctuality, showing up to a scheduled meeting on time, changing, but the standard work day has certainly adjusted.
I guess the real question is then, who creates or gets to define how to be successful in their nation or area? The founders of that area would likely hold a higher valuation than people who came in later. IN a lot of historical societies, it was a might makes right world. That isn’t so today.
No one sneered at anything, I dismissed it because it has no relevance here. You are leaving out the here, in this country. I am not interested in discussing the world. The “world” is not whiteness.
And yes punctuality means that you get your work done. Taking leave implies the freedom to do so and still get the work done. In some work places that would be fine, in others (probably a greater percentage) requires you to be at work on a normal set schedule.