It's About the Equity Theory of Motivation Thing

Dear America,

is it too late to add to your summer reading list?

First -- as a teaser --  just go to a little something from The Daily Signal,  here.

Alexis de Tocqueville Predicted the Tyranny of the Majority in Our Modern World

Arthur Milikh does a superb job breaking down a few of   deTocqueville's observations and words of warning from his book, "Democracy in America"   -- while he also reminds us just how long ago it was written! In  1831!   Just how in the world could he have ever known?   

Incredible, really, this grasp of human nature, characterizing "the new breed of democratic despotism" which would one day be ultimately, totally, controllable  --  shaped by political correctness, with help from mass media and propaganda, either by a slow nudge by nudge or by force, taking full advantage of the gut wrenching fear to speak out against the popular opinion... as Milikh explains:

That is, the majority reaches into citizens’ minds and hearts. It breaks citizens’ will to resist, to question its authority, and to think for themselves. The majority’s moral power makes individuals internally ashamed to contradict it, which in effect silences them, and this silencing culminates in a cessation of thinking. We see this happen almost daily: to stand against the majority is to ruin yourself.

hello, Spot --   meet  On.

Thank you, Milikh, for the cliff notes on a classic, but with all due respect while revisiting our summer to-do list, the real read is really "Democracy in America"  --  for within we apparently find such a gem as this:

“remember constantly that a nation cannot long remain strong when each man in it is individually weak, and that neither social forms nor political schemes have yet been found that can make a people energetic by composing it of pusillanimous and soft citizens.”

Oh and did I say cliff?  Perhaps the metaphor fits.  Perhaps America is on the precipice of a very long fall.

For there it is, right in front of us -- if not also our friends, neighbors, entire communities --  the unimaginable growth of a certain demographic:  the individually weak.

Here's something funny and totally unrelated (or is it...) --

GOOGLE CAN FIND

YOU 100,000 ANSWERS

A LIBRARIAN WILL FIND

YOU THE RIGHT ONE

Now I love to find examples of people who go against the prevailing wind of the overwhelming majority, and to that end and to my surprise, Salon.com and Camille Paglia join together in the production of a rather fascinating interview.    

Of course, being hardly aligned in her liberal, atheist, experience and world view, please don't misconstrue --  it doesn't change a thing for me other than this;  I find Camille's honesty and candidness and fearlessness such a breath of fresh air.   Especially when she says things like this:

"The resistance of liberals in the media to new ideas was enormous. Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!  Liberalism has sadly become a knee-jerk ideology, with people barricaded in their comfortable little cells. They think that their views are the only rational ones, and everyone else is not only evil but financed by the Koch brothers.  It’s so simplistic!"

Thank you.

Of course, what does she have to fear?
  

Long lauded for her intellectual prowess, who would dare say anything against such a cultural icon, right?   I mean, c'mon, it's Camille Paglia!   [ooh, and happen to love this part, too --  speaking of Jon Stewart, no less, Camille says:  "I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark."]   Can I get an amen to the guest atheist in the house?

The thing is --

in America --

we should all fear becoming one note.

We should all fear social engineering and policy making by facebook, twitter and hash tags.

We should all fear the day we not only stop thinking for ourselves, but with vitriol and brimstone put the fear of God in the hearts and minds of  those who think against the blue tide, the majority ruling class with a smug, sophomoric, tyrannical force, silencing any and all brave opposition, large and small.

We should all fear the day we march to the same beat, crushing the radical thought that breaks away from the popular rhythm according to the law of mass appeal.

We should all fear the day we become one with an often alienating and off-putting "smug, snarky, superior tone."

So here's some Left-stream narratives that seem to run counter-productive to the betterment of the whole to consider, thereby calling upon common sense and individual will to overcome --

• #BlackLivesMatter...um, no, ALL lives matter.   But -- if you want to talk about just the BLACK lives, let's.   What about the black lives in the inner-cities, like Chicago?   Where is the outrage within the community about black on black crime?    And heck, if  black lives matter, how then could anyone within the black community abort their own black baby?  
• #CeciltheLion outrage  turns into # kill the doctor.   Oh okay, that makes a whole lot of sense.   Certainly, Cecil was a gorgeous creature and a legend in his protected habitat, but let's circle back to the hunt in America, shall we?    Enough with the hypocrisy, human lives are lost everyday on our city streets, hunted down in gang violence!  Where is the equally passionate outrage for loss of human life!????

Oh enough with the hash tags!

Newsflash, everything is becoming a politically motivated argument and it is crushing America's true liberty and freedom for all as it simply destroys our Rule of Law by Republic, not to mention a fair portion of our Bill of Rights.

We do not all agree about same-sex marriage --   and the conflict is rooted in something far greater and far deeper than what is paraded in the news; it has nothing to do with being gay.   And it is not up for a Supreme Court of nine judges to decide...

We do not all agree about abortion -- and especially that bit about being partially funded by taxpayers, whether we are discussing partial birth to the birth and salvage of body parts of a 24 week old baby!  See The Patriot Post for more on that.  Or maybe, don't...you have been warned.

We do not all agree about the wide open border and the unconscionable growth of illegal immigrants by Executive Order, usurping the lawful immigration policy and regulations on the books.

AND We certainly do not agree about Left's man-made climate change fraud for pete's fucking sake! [sorry, g thing lost her cool there for a minute...]

We do not all agree on a $15/hour living wage that works against the economic freedoms of a true capitalist, free enterprise economy  -- one that leaves the laws of supply and demand fully in tact, allowing for the market to dictate the proper relationship of production and cost, employee and employer, customer and sale, in proportion, thus protecting the possibility for ample growth and profit all the way around.  

Check out the travesty of Gravity Payments in Seattle on this...um, what,“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump." 

oh really now?  And it's not working out?

And you know what they say:  what goes up ---- un-tethered in reality and purely manufactured out of thin air -- must come down.

wow color me surprised.

David Burkus, who wrote the post for Forbes, cites a theory to explain this disgruntled employee conundrum, made famous by J. Stacey Adams in the sixties; it's something called the "equity theory of motivation."  Now, for another surprise, he sends the reader to a Wikipedia page to explain it.  ???But whatever; whatever gets it done, right, let's not hate.

The theory goes something like this:

According to equity theory, individuals are constantly calculating a ratio of their inputs (time, effort, skills, experience, etc.) to the outputs the organization gives them (salary, benefits, recognition, security, etc.). When their ratio appears equitable to that of their coworkers, the organization runs smoothly. When the comparisons are out of whack, that’s when demotivation and strife set in.

Thus people, long story short, we finally arrive at the main thing on this day. 

Not only do we not agree on many, many things these days -- we have an "equity theory of motivation" setting into our daily landscape en masse.   For the poorly thinking majority is making some grave errors while supposedly speaking for the whole -- or at least, speaking the loudest, the smuggest, the snarkiest anyway.

The BENEFITS are increasing for the uneducated, uninformed, unlawful, illegal, unproductive, unincorporated, un-assimilated, the smug and the snarky, and just out and out individually weak of our citizenry upon the shoulders of the educated, informed, lawful, legal, productive, incorporated, assimilated and just simply out and out individually strong of our citizenry,  We're losing our integrity along with our equity.

And Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming over two hundred years ago; as tyranny reigns, liberty is almost becoming a no show. 

We are out of balance; the exchange of goods and services, costs and rewards, is breaking America's back as the "equity theory of motivation"  shapes our response to the nation's evolution by majority rule.

Have a nice day. 

Make it a Good Day, G