(cross posted at BuyBlue.org)
I just finished Barbara Ehrenreich's new book,
Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. It was miserable but very interesting, mostly because it describes a business culture that is completely foreign to me, where,
the atheistic philosophy of individual will and the distorted Christianity [Ehrenriech] encountered both offer the fantasy of omnipotence. And if you can achieve anything through your own mental efforts-just by praying or concentrating hard enough- there is no need to confront the social and economic forces shaping your life.
Basically, any failure you encounter is your own fault, so work harder and change that attitude.
The white-collar problems in this book are exactly the kind of trouble that BuyBlue's corporate ratings can expose. The people working for corporations are super-educated, white-collar professionals who have done everything right. Unfortunately, irresponsible corporations find it unfashionable to share the success. Only a few individuals can survive, and the rest are deluded into thinking that positive thinking alone will make everything okay. In reality, the current corporate standard is just lean and mean. In the words of Ehrenreich,
Put in blunt biological terms, the corporation has become a site for internal predation, where one person can advance by eliminating another one's job.
If these white-collar people would shake off corporate Pangloss thinking and face reality, they could look at the bigger picture and possibly find solutions to their collective problems. Refusing to accept the status quo would probably be the positive way to cope with the culture shock of downward-mobility that many inevitably face.
Here's a good Mother Jones interview with Ehrenreich, kind of summing up the book.