Stressed from value conflict.
Via Chief Happiness Officer comes a link to a documentary 'Our Daily Bread' that I saw a couple of months back. It's a rather shocking reminder of how disconnected and oblivious most of us are from the process that brings a piece of meat to our plates every day.
It can be shocking from two different perspectives -- one if you've never seen or thought about what happens in a modern slaughterhouse. You may be in for a shock how inhumanely modern processing plants still treat animals, despite the PR attempts to make us believe otherwise. On the other hand, you may accept the fact that killing animals is necessary but it may come as a shock the conditions people working at these plants must cope with.
While Our Daily Bread gives an European perspective to the industry in a form of a documentary, Fast Food Nation, while fictional, gives still a thoughtful picture how the meat industry affects the society on the US side. Both works are worth watching.
It can be shocking from two different perspectives -- one if you've never seen or thought about what happens in a modern slaughterhouse. You may be in for a shock how inhumanely modern processing plants still treat animals, despite the PR attempts to make us believe otherwise. On the other hand, you may accept the fact that killing animals is necessary but it may come as a shock the conditions people working at these plants must cope with.
While Our Daily Bread gives an European perspective to the industry in a form of a documentary, Fast Food Nation, while fictional, gives still a thoughtful picture how the meat industry affects the society on the US side. Both works are worth watching.
The blood and gore (and in some cases pain and suffering) of the animals is disturbing. There's a difference in watching a traditional butcherer working on a single animal to prepare it for a meal, compared to watching hundreds of animals getting shredded to pieces by machines. While the former may be unpleasant, you are still able to rationalize it as part of nature. When watching the latter, you're filled with disgust.
The other side of the picture are the people working in these factories. It is hard to imagine it being anyone's dream job. People work essentially at assembly lines, doing same repetitive task all day long. Except instead of assembling a machine, they're cutting animals. And it's the beginning part of the line that is hard to watch when the animals are still alive or recognizable to us all.
The other side of the picture are the people working in these factories. It is hard to imagine it being anyone's dream job. People work essentially at assembly lines, doing same repetitive task all day long. Except instead of assembling a machine, they're cutting animals. And it's the beginning part of the line that is hard to watch when the animals are still alive or recognizable to us all.
The repetitive, dull work of western meat factories is no different from what Jennifer Baichwal shows in her documentary 'Manufactured Landscapes'. This one is a rather bleak view into the manufacturing 'miracle' of modern day China (no blood and gore on this one). What is common with the two documentaries is how they show the ability of human mind to desensitize and adapt to either overwhelmingly unpleasant input or total lack of meaningful feedback or reward from your work. While the meat factories in Europe are still not able to remove humans from the process, it appears in China it is cheaper to hire an army of people to perform mind-numbingly dull tasks instead of investing in technology to do the same.
The work conditions in both examples are something that most knowledge workers would find completely unacceptable. Training humans to become machines seems like a distant bad dream from the early industrial age. The thought of spending most of your life as a machine part seems unbearable. Yet, it is a reality for countless of millions of people in developing economies and for many immigrants in developed economies.
This brings me back to the original blog post, 'Can you be happy in an evil business?', that has great insights into the value conflict that may occur between your professional and personal life. Alexander Kjerulf points out the value stress that people start to experience when they're unable to defend the values the company they work for represents. Value stress can contribute to our overall stress level as much as the commonly recognized busy stress does. And it has much of the same effect on us -- lack of productivity, loss of energy, irritation, and demotivation. While most of us do accept work that causes such value stress at some point in our lives -- due to lack of experience or lack of meaningful choices, or just wanting the money -- it is rarely, if ever, a long-lasting, sustainable position.
The work conditions in both examples are something that most knowledge workers would find completely unacceptable. Training humans to become machines seems like a distant bad dream from the early industrial age. The thought of spending most of your life as a machine part seems unbearable. Yet, it is a reality for countless of millions of people in developing economies and for many immigrants in developed economies.
This brings me back to the original blog post, 'Can you be happy in an evil business?', that has great insights into the value conflict that may occur between your professional and personal life. Alexander Kjerulf points out the value stress that people start to experience when they're unable to defend the values the company they work for represents. Value stress can contribute to our overall stress level as much as the commonly recognized busy stress does. And it has much of the same effect on us -- lack of productivity, loss of energy, irritation, and demotivation. While most of us do accept work that causes such value stress at some point in our lives -- due to lack of experience or lack of meaningful choices, or just wanting the money -- it is rarely, if ever, a long-lasting, sustainable position.
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