Posts Tagged ‘Norm’

About the Calvinistic Work Ethic

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

time spiral

The Hebrew belief system viewed Work, seen as Manual Labour, as a Curse devised by God to punish Adam and Eve when they sinned in the Garden of Eden.

Ponos is the Greek word for work, which originated from the Latin poena, meaning sorrow. At it’s core, work was associated with pain and drudgery. It was the divine punishment for man’s original sin and viewed as a necessary evil.

For the Greek and Romans and almost every other Ancient Culture, the Dirty, Manual, Work was to be done by the Slaves. Until Now nothing has really changed.

The only suitable occupation for a free man was Farming and Trade. Just like today the Greek and the Roman wanted to save their money to enjoy their retirement in their own Garden of Eden, the Country Side.

During the Medieval period, the feudal system was the dominant economic structure in Europe. People believed in Destiny and Predestination. At that time it was sinful to seek work outside the occupations Fathers passed on to their Sons.

Farmers turned into Farmers and Slaves became Slaves again.

During the 15th century the centralization of government, the growth of trade, and the establishment of economically powerful towns, destroyed the Feudal system.

In the 15th century the world climate started to change dramatically. Temperatures dropped and the Little Ice Age started. Before that time the nice climate caused an increase of the population by 25%-40%.

At the same time the economy was hit by a very high inflation (300-400%). This was caused by the import of large quantities of silver and gold from Mexico and Peru.

The unemployment rate rose to 20%. Many people moved to the Cities to find a decent job. The big cities could not provide employment and the poor immigrants turned into “lazy” beggars.

john-calvin

John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564) believed that only a few people, the Elect, were predestined to inherit Eternal Life. A lazy person, the beggar in his hometown Geneva, was certainly one of the Damned.

John Calvin believed that men were to reinvest the profits of their own labour into financing further ventures.

The Sons of the Fathers were obliged to find a better, more profitable, future outside the context of their father’s occupation.

Helping the Poor and the Sick violated God’s will since persons could only demonstrate that they were among the Elect through their Own Productive Labour.

The Protestant, Capitalistic, Work Ethic (Calvinism), spread throughout Europe and America through the Protestant Sects and turned into one of the most important Western Work Ethics.

The moral sanction to profit making through hard work, organization, and rational calculation generated numerous small enterprises all over the world.

Hard Work and Abstinence of Pleasure became the Work Ethic of Western Culture.

mill

The Mill

During the Industrial Revolution the Calvinistic Entrepeneurs made a Fatal Mistake. They adopted the Concept of the Mill and started to mechanize the Crafts and Agriculture.

The old Feudal System and Slavery was re-introduced. In the factories, Skills and Craftsmanship were replaced by Discipline and Anonymity.

The Human became a disposable part of a big structure. The foundation of Calvinism, the direct relationship between Hard Work and Personal Growth was broken.

The Local Enterprise could not compete with the efficient Factories and later their outlets the Supermarkets. The Farmers, the Craftsman and the owners of Small businesses were forced to work in the Factories.

Local Communities started to disintegrate.

Unemployement started to rise and again many people moved to the Big Cities to find a decent job. The beggars, the Damned, appeared again. History repeated itself.

The Factories created a new class of Slaves, The Proletariat. They organized themselves in the Unions and Political Parties. The Struggle of the Classes started.

The Owners of the Factories responded by creating Consumer Products and Mass Media to keep their new customers, the Blue Collar Worker, satisfied. The new industrial wave generated New Industrial activitity and New Jobs. The distance between work and the result of work widened.

RobotLine

Robot Factory

In the late 1950′s the Factories needed more highly skilled “white collar” workers to program and manage their machines.

Later the machines were programmed by more advanced software until the Factories were transformed into almost fully automated Production-Lines.

The Blue Collar Worker left the Factory and History Repeated itself again.

Around 1980 the Programmers took over Control.

The Factories were connected into worldwide Value-Chains. The Logistic “just-in-time” Paradigm (SAP) became the Norm. The Industrial Logistic Paradigm is now implemented in the Services Industry.

The new White Collar Worker, the Knowlegde Worker, will also lose his job when their activities are fully standardized and their Company, the Advisory Bureau, is transformed into a Factory.

What nobody saw in 1980 is that the Rational System started to live its Own Life. Not the Programmers but the Program became the Manager of the Worldwide Economic System.

Even the Programmers themselves are now completely unaware of the total functionality of the System they have programmed.

child_robot

Robot Child

An increasing amount of processes and therefore Human Activities is standardized and has been absorbed by the System. It is no longer true that producing more means working more or that producing more will lead to a better way of life.

Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The System no longer needs everyone to work and is bringing the Western World back to the state of the Garden of Eden.

The Calvinistic Work Ethic is still viable. When you don’t work you are damned. The amount of Work in Western Society is decreasing with the speed of Light and Governments are extremely focused to create new work. The only thing that is left is to create artificial work.

To accomplish this almost impossible task governments are now professionalizing and rationalizing almost every Social Activity (Child Care, Helping Your Neighbor, a Friendly Advice, Coaching, Taking Care of your Family, …). The Care Industry is Booming.

What Has Happened?

robot barber

Robot Barber

We are rationalising every Activity. The effect is an imcomprehensible reality. Something, the Computer, is taking care of us but we don’t know how She is operating and She is not communicating with us in our own language.

When she fails we don’t know what to do. We are totally dependent on a Highly Intelligent Cold Non-Human, an Autist. She was Programmed to be our Slave but she has turned into the Master of Our Destiny.

We are still not accustomed to a situation where something, a machine, is doing the dirty work. We are removing jobs with the millions but we believe we still have to work to aquire Eternal Life.

To preserve Employment we invent new jobs but we are also rationalizing the new jobs. The Cycle of the Creation and Destruction of Jobs is moving faster and faster and is generating a very high Stress on Society.

The affect of the huge tension to work is a total destruction of the social environment of the human being. Everybody is working 24 hours 7 days a week, has to spend all his time to find a job or has to educate himself to learn a new trade. Everytime the trade is aquired the Program changes and the employee has to start again to learn to operate a new piece of Software.

Mothers and Fathers are unable to take care of their Children. Children our unable to take care of their Parents when they are old. Everybody has to take care of himself and every service has be paid. The Social Cohesion of our Society is now at stake.

riba-robot-nurse-0

RIBA the Robot Nurse

Not only the Social Cohesion is at stake but the Costs in the Care-Industry are Exploding and nobody knows how to solve this problem.

The only solution the Rationalist can imagine is to replace the Human by the Robot, the Always Obedient Slave.

Scientists are convinced there will be a time when the Robots will take over every job we can imagine. The Robots will not only take over the jobs but they will also Raise and Educate our Children, Take Care of the Old and even make it possible to Take Care of Robot Children and other Artificial Pets.

What to do?

We have to Accept that the Rational System will Take Care of Us. If this happens we have to leave behind the Calvinistic Work Ethic and Enjoy Life in the Artificial Garden of Eden.

We will live in a Artificial Reality created by the Simulator (the Matrix). If we want to stay out of this Artificial Garden of Eden we have to Stop the System and start to do the Dirty Work again.

We can also accept the machines and do the things humans were created for and become creators and caretakers ourselves..

LINKS

About the Matrix

Why the Robot will take over everything we do

About the Device Paradigm of Alfred Borgman and Artificial Reality

About the Middle Ages

About the Industrial Revolution

About the End of Social Cohesion

About Rationalism

About the Human Scale

About the Autistic Computer

About the strange effects of the Care Industry

About the Struggle of the Classes

About RIAB the Robot Nurse

About the Struggle of the Classes

Monday, October 20th, 2008

E-cigarette aerosol contains fewer numbers and lower levels of most toxicants than does smoke from combustible tobacco cigarettes. Exposure to nicotine and to toxicants from the aerosolization of e-cigarette ingredients is dependent on user and device characteristics. Laboratory tests of e-cigarette ingredients, in vitro toxicological tests, and short-term human studies suggest that e-cigarettes are likely to be far less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes. However, the absolute risks of the products cannot be unambiguously determined at this time. Long-term health effects, of particular concern for youth who become dependent on such products, are not yet clear.

Although e-cigarette use might cause youth to transition to combustible tobacco products, it might also increase adult cessation of combustible tobacco cigarettes. The net public health effect, harm or benefit, of e-cigarettes depends on three factors: their effect on youth initiation of combustible tobacco products, their effect on adult cessation of combustible tobacco products, and their intrinsic toxicity. If e-cigarette use by adult smokers leads to long-term abstinence from combustible tobacco cigarettes, the benefit to public health could be considerable. Without that health benefit for adult smokers, e-cigarette use could cause considerable harm to public health in the short and long term due both to the inherent harms of exposure to e-cigarette toxicants and to the harms related to subsequent combustible tobacco use by those who begin using e-cigarettes in their youth. Find out the most unharmful products at vaprzon.

Population modeling is a useful strategy to help estimate the balance of potential benefits and harms from e-cigarettes in the short term before more definite scientific data are available. Factors that would promote the potential health benefits associated with these products include determining with more precision

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Suggested Citation:”Summary.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24952.×

under which conditions e-cigarettes could serve as an effective smoking cessation aid, discouraging their use among youth through tobacco control strategies such as education and restrictions on products particularly appealing to youth, and increasing their safety through data-driven product engineering and design.

Millions of Americans use electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), even as rates of smoking1 combustible tobacco cigarettes continue to decline among youth and adults. In 2016, youth e-cigarette use was substantially higher than cigarette smoking or use of any other tobacco product. A common picture emerges from national surveys. Prevalence of use increases with age in children and youth. E-cigarette use also varies by gender, with typically greater use among boys than girls. E-cigarette use also varies by race and ethnicity, with higher rates of use among youth who identify as Hispanic and non-Hispanic white compared with black, Asian, and other races. Early results suggest that use stabilized or decreased in youth between 2015 and 2016, despite increases between 2011 and 2015 across a range of measures and surveys. Substantial proportions of youth report using non-nicotine electronic cigarettes. Rates of e-cigarette use among adults are relatively low when compared with youth e-cigarette use and to adult combustible tobacco cigarette smoking. Most adult e-cigarette users report currently using other tobacco products. Among adults, as among youth, patterns of use vary by demographic subgroups—age, gender, and race and ethnicity. E-cigarette use is generally greatest among young adults and decreases with age in adults. Few adults begin using e-cigarettes who are not already using combustible tobacco cigarettes.

Despite their popularity, little is known about their health effects, and perceptions of potential risks and benefits of e-cigarette use vary widely among the public, users of e-cigarettes, health care providers, and the public health community. For example, whether e-cigarette use confers lower risk of addiction compared with combustible tobacco cigarettes is one point of controversy. Electronic cigarettes contain constituents that are not inert and are likely to have some negative health effects on their own. However, because the known risks of combustible tobacco are so great, understanding the net public health effect of e-cigarettes requires understanding not only the inherent risks of e-cigarettes, but also the relationship between e-cigarette use and combustible tobacco cigarette use.

Furthermore, concerns have been raised that e-cigarettes will induce youth to begin using combustible tobacco cigarettes. E-cigarette use among youth and young adults is especially worrying if e-cigarettes cause

___________________

1 The committee uses the verb “smoke” to refer to use of combustible tobacco cigarettes and “vape” to refer to use of e-cigarettes. Similarly “smoker” refers to someone who uses combustible tobacco cigarettes.

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Suggested Citation:”Summary.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24952.×

dependence or the normalization of smoking behavior, and subsequently lead youth and young adults to start smoking combustible tobacco cigarettes. This is of particular concern for youth who otherwise would never have smoked. Among adult populations, to the extent that e-cigarette use promotes either reduction or complete abstinence from combustible tobacco smoking, e-cigarettes may help to reduce health risks.

E-cigarettes are regulated as tobacco products2 by the Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convene a committee of experts to conduct a review of the emerging evidence about e-cigarettes and health, make recommendations for the improvement of this research, and highlight gaps that are a priority for future research. The Statement of Task can be found in Box S-1.

The committee undertook a comprehensive review of the scientific literature regarding key constituents in e-cigarettes, human health effects, initiation and cessation of combustible tobacco cigarette use, and harm reduction. The committee considered the quality of individual studies, as well as the totality of the evidence to provide structured and consistent conclusions on the strength of the evidence. See Box S-2 for a summary of the framework the committee used for those conclusions. The committee notes that the framework is a guide, but that a great deal of expert judgment—in the evaluation of individual studies and in bodies of evidence—is always involved. The Annex to this Summary includes a compilation of the conclusions grouped by level of evidence, whereas they are listed by type of outcome in the sections that follow.

CONSTITUENTS
E-cigarettes contain liquids (referred to as e-liquids) that are aerosolized upon operation of the device. E-liquids typically contain nicotine (although some users prefer zero-nicotine solutions), flavorings, and humectants. Nicotine is a well-understood compound with known central and peripheral nervous system effects. It causes dependence and addiction, and exposure to nicotine from e-cigarettes likely elevates the cardiovascular disease risk in people with pre-existing cardiovascular disease(s), but the cardiovascular risk in people without cardiovascular disease(s) is uncertain. Based on studies of long-term users of nicotine replacement
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24952.