Thang Nguyen 555

Proponents of BPO suggest cost-shaving.

Proponents of Automation remind us machine doesn’t take breaks, holidays etc…

Proponents of re-shoring boast the hiring of locals and more taxes to the public coffer.

Proponents of post-Covid era advocate not the return to 9-5 habit.

Workers themselves feel like a yo-yo: school one’s self, train one’s self only to see jobs shipped overseas, then back in different forms and regions wherever the political wind affords them tax breaks. In between, chip set and chip speed have religiously followed Moore’s Law to double every 18 months or so. Hence, devices get smaller, wages shrink and a new industrial complex reemerges on this side of the pond, unrecognizable (WeWork? Indeed).

Who is correct? Who is responsible? How could skills acquisition on Main Street keep up with shorter expectations and cycles on Wall Street?

The answer is You 3.0. Long ago, I presented “You 2.0” i.e. self-leadership, based on studies of success models of Past people, companies and countries (T-formation)…

While I might not be wrong all together, I missed a huge point: the world is changing much faster than our speed of thought. More people, younger, are joining the workforce. More willing and able. More eager to discard “old” models to adapt and adopt new ones, mercilessly. It’s as if You 2.0 finally is put to rest (Rabbit at rest) at an early retirement age. You 3.0 have to deal with foreign workers, emigrant and immigrant workers, and machine workers.

Diversity and inclusion now means working with others not of the same mindset, skillset, but also with machine, which takes no smoke breaks, no holidays and Labor Day. The job of how to make sense, and optimize productivity given the time frame and new structure at work should be cause for concern to everyone. Can’t leave it to leaders to decide the ratio of man-machine at a given work setting. Phasing in and mixing them up etc… Science, Technology and Society. Often times, technology gets adopted first at work, then home. Not to mention ESG (the new ticking point, then counterpoint).

I noticed more private airports, private boats and private security apparatus; stuff once belonged in elite domain. Imagine private golf course in our backyard. Might not be unthinkable, now that deck and swimming pool have been widely adopted. As we share work space (virtual and casual), recharging stations etc.. we might as well invest in private domain e.g. home office, home gym, home charging station, energy generator and home entertainment.

You 3.0 sees a merge of public and private sphere, made possible by faster computing power and more leisure time. It’s up to us to keep up or cash out. Remember, machine also has no work dignity. It just does, as instructed. Agnostically, automatically and for the lack of a third A, arrogantly (“I don’t need breaks, holidays, Labor Day and what not”.

In the future, at some point, we might not have and be given this Labor Day as holiday.

First, they invent the wheel. Then the steam engine, then the flight…..workers were honored once a year, often falls on a Monday, called Labor Day to rest, to shop and to spend. Good luck in the future.

In one of the Rush Hour out-takes ( scenes that didn’t make the grade only to be shown at the end when credits roll up), Jackie Chan, instead of saying “Freeze”, says “Cheese”.

We might consider the option of freezing where we are at this point in history.

That way, all of the recurring shootings, whether on or off campus, are freeze up, on pause.

Providing the tape doesn’t shut down on its own.

The deficit won’t get worse, since interests can’t tick up.

We all cannot get fatter, older and sadder.

Mitch would easily blend in, since everyone else is on pause.

The war in Ukraine albeit doesn’t cease, but at least “cease fire”.

Bullets freeze in mid-air. Labor day weekend will stretch out.

And our Presidential candidates won’t get older than they currently are.

Climate Change cannot worsen. And how the world progresses is everyone’s guess.

But at least, it’s an universal Time-Out. So we can rest, think, reflect and breathe in and hold.

Let there be Light. Let there be clarity. Let there be certainty and confidence that the affairs of this world will eventually straighten themselves out.

With or without our making it worse.

We have made it worse, by our sheer existence and consumption.

We enter the picture, taking center stage and “freeze” there. The world cannot wait for us to unfreeze.

It’s moving. People are dying. Babies are coming and crying.

May I suggest a selective Freeze! No. It won’t work. Then we’re back to concentration camps. To vetting and recalibrating who’s worthy of going on living, and who are to be exterminated.

After careful deliberating, may I propose a return to normal i.e. kids in school, old folks in nursing homes, Congress in session and prisoners locked up.

Cheese instead of freeze. Smile instead of shout. Laughter instead of hate.

Our fellow men are suffering, in or outside. In hurting others, we hurt ourselves. Hence, liberation delivers both the victims and perpetrators from the chain that bounds them.

It costs a lot to be free. Freedom is never free. Even the symbol on Staten Island, cost the French years and millions to ship and erect Her here. To engrave beautiful lines e.g. “give me the tired, poor, huddled masses” i.e. Italian, Irish, Polish, Czech, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Cuban, Korean, Iranian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Ethiopian, Ecuadorian, Iraqis, Afghan and Ukrainian.

If all freeze, then who will get the job done. There once was a movie “A day without a Mexican”, or something like it. It’s like a day without the police.

Crime and trash would be rampant. Cities inoperable. Sewage covering the streets. We all turn “huddle masses” in the elevator, only to once again, face the music, like our Falling man of 9/11.

In that instant, that moment, a freeze of moving reality would prolong his life before gravity returns. It would be interesting to view today’s freeze framing from the vantage point of 100 years from now. Archivists would certainly puzzle over so many senseless shootings. Our current obsession of court dates, campaign dates and credit card due dates.

And of course, the dark shade looming over our multi-colored multi-cultural society that supposedly offer us the benefit of having more-than-the-sum value of its diverse members.

Huddled masses. Freeze! cheese. There is the portrait of Labor day 2023, at the beginning of the age of AI, which has no need and knows not what to do with the concept of Labor participation in the workforce.

We’re very mindful of the day, when we end up on the cutting floor , appearing only in outtakes when film credits roll up. Cheese!

We’ve got hurricanes, fire and flood. We’ve got volcanic eruption, nuclear power plant meltdown, sea-water rising, record-breaking heat and freezing temperatures. We suffer, for our comfort and convenience (at other times).

The price is right.

Over consumption (supersizing of everything), overstaying our welcome on Earth and overspent.

The price is right.

We’ve picked up bad habits e.g. others are doing it, much worse, you should’ve seen so and so…We have been racing downhill, he who gets to Hell first wins.

Careful. We might get what we wish for.

The price is always right. What goes up must come down. 1+1=2

No way around it.

In “Ballade des pendus”, Francois Villon was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase) ” Brothers of the future, please do not judge us poor and wretched souls, for God will thank you for it”.

The price is always right. The wage of sin is death.

We reap what is sown. Either by us or our generation.

By today’s standard, those cars in old movies I saw were humongous: long, wide, oversized and gas guzzlers.

Your Honor, I rest my case.

Jury of the future, once you found it’s “Beyond any reasonable doubt”, then pronounce us all guilty.

Of complicity, conspiracy and consumeristic.

We view and value materialism as the ultimate. We hoard, collect and swim in stuff.

Over stuff ourselves with high-glucose, high-cholesterol and high-protein. We sip, snuff and suck.

Like grown-up babies, never want to let go the nipples.

The price is right.

ROW is living on $2 day. So what. That’s their problem. The price is always right.

If they make it over the stormy sea to get here, over the electrified fence to arrive here (then we bus them to progressive cities North and North East), if they were fully vetted and got their own flight tickets to get here, then that’s the price to pay, to be qualified for now-dwindling fast-food minimum wage jobs.

The price is always right.

BPO, FOB, SOB. Learn all the acronyms, learn English. Pass the test, for the price is right.

Work in Dollar Stores. Shop in Dollar Stores. Shot in Dollar Stores. The price is right.

El Paso Walmart. Jacksonville Dollar Store. Nobody target Target. It’s upscale. It’s out of your price range. The price is right. Always does.

The wages of sin is death.

He who sows shall reap.

Your Honor, the Defense has no more to say.

Thank you for a day in Court.

Future brothers, please don’t judge us, poor and wretched souls. For God will thank you.

You who inundated the airwaves, the screen, the internet, the crammed ads, the fake news and fake boobs.

You who pop up, pop in and out of our lives, uninvited and unannounced.

Did we ask for you? Invite you? Allow you to dominate our finite attention span?

We’re numbed, one ad, one headline at a time. And before long, we no longer care. For the right thing in a right way. We no longer feel. Compassion for the neglected, the elderly in nursing home – all locked up, institutionalized and forgotten.

Damn you who think your life matters more than others’, hence exploiting and extracting them for your own end, your self-interest.

You who blame it on “machine”, but actually programmed them to rip us off, at least the productive part of our lives. You play the numbers game and response ratio. Lure us in, and sucker us.

We bathe, feed ourselves, exercise and sleep, just to have those awake time, when we can absorb new things, discover new wonders of life (Congratulations to the nation of India, largest on Earth, who has just discovered the South Side of the Moon. With a lot of typhoon, a lot of displacement and discouragement, they have managed to show us their collective strength and wisdom – besides acquiring their Colonial Master’s Jaguar brand, just for the kick of it).

Back to “damn you”. Who think the mass – from their wretched look – are dumb. And dumber. And dumbest.

Nope. We’re not. But we remain quiet. Observing. Taking it in. Analyzing. Deciding. Voting. We’re the jury of life. We are the 12. We’re the 300. We’re the Billions who were born, have lived and died. Not just to breathe and be exploited. We think, love, hate, discriminate and destroy. But we also are thinking of better days, listening to better songs and admiring creative arts.

We’re the mass. Yes, low brow. But we also can pull together our collective brain power. To cast our collective vote for the one who doesn’t exploit us. Our leaders, our guides.

They might be incarcerated at the moment, might be in seclusion. But they will not disappear because we’re not taking it passively.

Damn you who use technology to push. Emphasizing the upload speed as value proposition. But everyday, we turn on the machine, and there you are, in small ways and creeping ways, invade our space. Our mental space and mental health. By sheer numbers and superfast download speed.

We’re addicted to your sensationalism, escapism. We need the drug you provide. In digital format.

We want happy endings. We desire better abode, our eternal home. So we bought into your very promise, your message. To nowhere. To purgatory. Then eventually, you rename it Hell.

We are no longer susceptible to your rhetoric, your slogan and your selling. Just shut up. Damn you who think by inundating us with repetition, with half-truths, we will eventually succumb.

No sir. The mass got its own brain. Collective one. Who can outthink any crooked individual. Just flip back to the pages of history. You’ll read about stories of hubris, of follies and hypes, of maniac and joker.

We just want to live out this life. Unencumbered by your every wimp and wish.

At the expense of our own. We deserve to think and live for ourselves, first and foremost.

Then if we chose to spare some attention and time for you, we might. But don’t force it on us. It creates natural resentment and counter-argument. It’s human nature. And you who are marketers and ad copy writers should know that. Treating us as intelligent human being, will always pay. End of discussion.

Don’t blame it on the machine, whose thinking all depends on yours. And yours suck!

Keep zooming out.

More, more, more.

See it?

The Greek civilization. Rome and all its glory. England, China and much later the US, CANADA and ROW as seen now. People love, hate and divorce. Kids abandoned, adopted and alienated.

Generations after generations. (personal) History repeats itself. In a cycle of self-destruction. It’s either self-inflation or self-deprecation. Nothing in between. Until one day, it ends after transferred onto the next gen. Then it’s recycled: used, abused and misused.

Give me one person who thinks “macro”, I will name ten who think “micro”.

No wonder we’re in such a mess: burned Maui, shot-and-killed schoolchildren, and week-after-week of self-litigation as a nation and people.

Keep zooming out. See? Those who see in themselves capacity and potential to rise above themselves lived on in history as great. Those who are petty, short-termers, and looters left behind “Amazon” cardboard all over.

Hint: sell those box-cutters. We’ll need them always.

Back to zooming out. See the cover-ups? I refer to the break-in at the psychiatric office of the “most dangerous man”, our “Deep Throat”. What do you think I was referring to?

Through the locks that got picked, we saw ourselves. Our debased and low life tendency to take without giving back, to loot without cleaning up after us, to loiter without wiping after the act.

So here we are. A messy mess. At global scale. Ejected and spent cases. Empty cartridges still hot and barely out of the nozzle. Rambo rage. “Do we get to win this time?”. Short and cryptic lines. All action. The revenge and rage of those who were abandoned, forgotten and turned invisible.

So help me God. I did solemnly swear…(to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic). What an ideal. By definition, hard to reach, to keep and to maintain. So help me God. Appreciate another day of living. Of wanting and seeing longer-term consequences of inaction.

In the scheme of things. We’re all short-changed. By our very selves. Who alone are our worst enemies.

Get pushed from behind. Driving while looking in the rear-view mirror.

Life itself. Ever since. No choice. No say. Born NOT to pause, but to run. Toward God knows where. But run, we do. We do it well, without thinking, without giving it a single thought. No Pause. No Reset. Those steps are for machine. We’re human. Born to move about, non-stop, given in to momentum of life. No time for reflection. For just “shoot the breeze”.

The guy behind is honking. The gal behind is giving us a finger. Go home to the nursing home.

Put a Handicap sign on your car. Park at the spot nearest to the front door of the store.

Come on. We’ve got to move. It’s not the 50’s on Revolutionary Road. Not the 60’s on Ashbury Road. Not the 70’s in NAM. And 80’s on Wall St. Even the 90’s was way back, with the end of Cold War and the beginning of Afghanistan, and a whole host of countries with “TAN” for ending. Bang! You’ve got mail. We’ve got Y2K. Count down to fear of the future. Of the machine that rules.

All of a sudden, we’re here, now. With a new phenomenon in Politics, in the Media, and on the silver screen. Barbie rules. The whole collection of it. Out of the closet, out of the play pen.

Folks get rich ridiculously. Folks get off with no remorse (the last of the police guys who stood by and watched G. Floyd choked to death…”I was just doing crowd-control”).

Momentum. It carries us forward. Time and places. No choice since the beginning of that moving train. On a track, to success and failure. But no provision for stopping, for getting off and for pause.

Long time ago, there was “Stop the world, I want to get off”. But even that paperback book is now relegated into the far end of history. History itself moves faster now. When I grow up, we learned about “thousands of years” before our time. Now, we don’t even learn about American young history. We repeat the same mistake. Redraw the same map. And we recite the same script.

Not guilty. I take the Fifth. Objection overruled. Let me rephrase the (leading) question.

Forced choice. The answer is binary, Yes or No. No nuances, no if, no but, nor maybe.

The end of mankind as we know it. No leisure, no shooting the breeze, no yellow blinking light.

Just Green, Go. Red, Stop. No in between. No pondering, perfecting and of course, zero tolerance.

What do they expect? A machine, without thoughts? Stimuli-Response. Immediately. High-speed download, high-speed upload. The late Covey of Seven Habits… once said, we’re human and in control, when we PAUSE, or try to, in between Stimuli and Response.

In pause we’re in control and let God-given faculty called Free Will to be exercised.

No need for momentum. It’s always there. Nudging, cramming, spamming, and suggesting.

PAUSE. However long you might need to breathe, to recuperate, to regain self-control and to entertain nuances. Between Context (history) and Nuances (choices beyond bi-nary ones) we should be OK. Much better than today’s prevalent thinking, and the speed of momentum that certainly carries us too far from home. That’s where we might find our very past self, waiting in hope that someday, today, past and present might reunite. You will never find rest until you find yourself, so unique and adorable. PAUSE. Not MOMENTUM.

That’s what we see in the news these days: weather-related content. The heat dome, rare summer breeze and gathering storm.

We have had a lot of warning signs. Signs that say, behave! I can come with forces much greater than yours. Ironically, with so serious a subject like Nuclear Fission, we’ve got Barbillion (new combined term for a summer blockbuster).

In short, the trivia always gets the attention. Temporal over eternal.

I was once asked in class whether “low” or “high” brow will dominate. Not too many agreed with me that pop culture will prevail. And that was 40 years ago. Here we are today, as evidenced at the theatre near you.

The parking lot at the gym filled up at 6AM. We need to do all we need to early in the day. Or else. Hostages in the house, conditioned by air conditioner, restrained by the merciless weather even when we’re all bi-pedalist.

Made to run. Born to run. In place. Stay put. Locked up. No “Last Dance” (Sharon Stone movie, about last-minute clemency, only to have the execution carried out anyway. Put on, take off. Then put on, permanently).

I hear the sound of death-row tin-cups, first just one, then more and more join in that marching rhythm to send one of them to eternal rest.

The Gathering Storm. It comes for you and me. With ample warning. To remind us we need to behave. Think clearly. Speak clearly. Embrace tightly. For there isn’t much time before the clock strikes 12.01. Appointed execution time.

From the viewing chamber, we see ourselves reflected on the partitioning glass. Tears well up. Last chance for last dance. To eventually swing away in fixed three-dimensional universe, to end in a high note.

” Then one by one the stars would all go out
Then you and I would simply fly away”

Chapter seventeen of Ralph Ellison‘s 1952 novel Invisible Man includes a literary device related to the Saul to Paul conversion: “‘You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a young gun, you Saul, but let life whip your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Saul around on the side.'”

From the standpoint of going across the cultures, and becoming a great influencer, I turn to St Paul once again…”…faith, hope and love. The Greatest of these is Love”….”without Love, you’re nothing”.

We live in a society that is obsessed with being right, being politically correct, socially proper and prosperous.

We look down on the outcast, the marginalized and underprivileged.

Don’t blame you. We’re all conformists. To the current “blow of the wind”. After all, it’s the Machine Age. Gotta prove we’re not a robot.

When robot remembers. When we forget. Where we have been, what we have been through and who were at our aid.

In the age of AI, there will be justice via data, transparency, precision and tons of processing speed.

Train, plane and automobile will arrive without further delay. People will write and hopefully speak their minds. No rooms for error, for grift, for corruption. All transparent (we wish).

Medicine will be prescribed with accuracy. Media will tailor-fit to our likeness (we told them to, in so many Likes of the past).

That’s left relationship and love to be pondered. Sadness and boredom. Loneliness and suicidal thoughts.

Doubt, betrayal and trust. All the stuff that made us human in our short life span. We barely make friends, then to see them went off to war, to far away places to avoid war, and sadly, died in war.

We’re a society of electricity and electric shocks, administered to healthy and unhealthy adults alike. We think we’re free but we’re not. Repetition, repetition and repetition. Same old. Like the anthem played to lead-in propaganda broadcast. Sense of urgency. Of utter importance for viewers eye-balls (translation: ad billing).

So much for lies, lies, lies. Yet we allow. Make room for more “dreams” (lots of zeros after the number). Reality is too painful (just take time, look in the mirror – the magnifying one).

Growing old. Some were never young to begin with. We had a classmate who got married in 10th grade. We were all quiet, not knowing how to greet his newly wed, since she was some years our senior.

Now we actually grow old in age. I wonder if that friend is married still to his first match-made wife.

Reality is often painful. By definition. Hence, dream, dream, dream. Big and small. Mega Millions and MAGA millions. Will we someday be bigger, better and more becoming than today.

Just wait, watch and dream on. Meanwhile, just add more zeros behind the string of numbers. Before we realize, zero times millions are equal to zero still. That’s how math works. That’s how we all turn out to be, nano particles, with no luggage on that final journey. Might be on the road to somewhere or nowhere. But we might at some point, consider a re-branding of the Self. An U-turn.

Invisible Man is better than inhuman man.

As I grow older, I move closer to being Paul than Saul. Less faith and hope and more Love.

After all, the greatest of those three is Love. Charity, compassion for the downtrodden, downcast and damned. We used to laugh, we used to cry….I need you. Even when society seems to move more toward being right, correct, and proper. It ain’t cool to even mention Love in the age of Greed and Corruption. Of law and lawlessness. What happens to being good, loving and forgiving.

I got it when the machine can’t “get it”. But you and I. Aren’t we still breathing with each beat of our hearts! So much education and information were catered to the head. And how does it work out for us, so far?

That’s the title, the sentiment and the undertow.

Not just the broken system, but individual as well. I couldn’t buy a cough medicine without the intervention of a “cashier” (we ‘re de facto cashiers in our new era of pro-sumersim).

Fentanyl at the individual level, fantasy at system level. Why the trend toward Far Right? Has our memory failed us? Amnesia and Alzheimer?

Once I took up Hapkido – a blend of Aikido and Taekwondo. Mom signed the release form, paid up the tuition etc… uniforms, belt (white) and off I went, eagerly for my first day on the mat. The warm-up exercise, the slow-motion demo and of course, practice, practice, practice (Bruce Lee was correct in saying that he had no fear for occasional hits by opponents, but he feared most those who practiced the same kick over and over ).

A visiting Red-Belt stopped by our little outfit. Everyone lined up, bowed, then the Master held up high a 8×11 kick board. My classmates all had their yup cha ki high up. Until it’s my turn: back up, aim, run and jump. Mid air. I saw the Master reposition his stance (he was probably bracing for my obvious all-out attempt). By then, I had already set my aim on a lower position of the board. As a result, my right foot hit nothing but pure air (below the board). Talking about targeting and trajectory.

There was a saying we are all familiar with, both in the East and West: “the higher the climb, the harder the fall”.

That whole summer saw me convalesce – my covid lock-down rehearsal – at home, nursing a broken left arm. Friends felt pity and stopped by to sign on the cast. It was itching to say the least. Broken bone is one of the most painful experiences.

Talking about wise saying in the East. Since it’s a culture of shaming, of collectivism (handed me down since the day of Confucius), I would quote “when one horse is injured, the whole stud stop eating”.

Always be aware that one is watched in the East culture, not just neighbors and people of the same geographical circle. One’s relationship extends backward in time (lighting up incense) or “Chu di tam toc” (kill enemy’s 3 generations forward – to pre-empt a coup in the future) and assure a forever reign of then autocracy.

No wonder Marxism took hold in cultures which extol the virtue of harmony above all others.

The system vs the individual. Equity vs liberty. All that is currently challenged, debated and fought over. The sixties gave us Togetherness, the 70’s Habits of the Heart. Narcissism has no bound: shop until you drop. Me, me, me, me. Just me. Not you. Not us. Just me. Help me. Heal me.

When the Evangelical movement took hold of the doctrine “Priesthood of all believers”, it inadvertently played into the hands of Individualism, of personal faith and a personal God (incarnational theology). “God so loves the world” morphs into “God so loves Me”… Somehow the hand-me down Original Sin (collective sin), gets appropriated and absorbed into one’s personal life.

I take personal responsibility for my actions, under the Law. But I ain’t take the blame and guilt (or shame as in the East) for the in-action or wrong doing of others. The Social Security system and Tax code (from there, FICO scores) validated this social reality: we are individuals, with unique finger prints , DNA’s and intrinsic worth. Jail the individual, forgive the system however unjust (which wrongly convicted thousands in the first place)?

Individual liberty and freedom when went too far, left behind bodies and burned bridges. Who is going to clean up the mess when let’s say, you committed suicide? Parkland (produced partly by Tom Hanks ) touched on this. What happened right after JFK got shot? They needed a coffin to cover up the blood on his ripped white shirt, then they had to rip out Air Force One seats to accommodate JFK’s new seating arrangement ( ” We don’t ship the President back like a piece of luggage”).

Yes, each individual has dignity, however thin his/her wallet. Yes, we might have come about via a spark of the Divine. Yes, we need to love ourselves, to give ourselves to others, and find a solution that works for most of us (Climate Change, Covid and AI).

But each “theory” has its own challenges i.e. the End justifies the Means etc.. Mass extinction of human, of species and of the Earth itself. Individualism must have its limits. Collectivism must also have its limits. The FED needs oversight. So does the Supreme Court (the 9 are not our new Kings/Queens).

I long for the day when we can really talk, of issues that concern us all, Not trivial and procedural debates (at each fork on the road, it takes us further and further down the path of no-return. Down the hole. Hence, deeper divide. Hence, narrow or no compromises e.g. the Far Right in Spain or elsewhere).

I had a broken arm. It reminds me of ” the higher the jump, the harder the fall”. In crisis, there was opportunity (I got to see who my real friends were, since their signatures were on the cast).

I hope on the other side of Climate Change find us smelling a bit fresher and more willing to heal human division. That summer of my broken arm was hot. This summer, however, is the hottest. Still, I am grateful – that my arm is not broken this time. Only The weather that can use some convalescing and nursing back to health.