Happy thanksgiving. We stayed home this weekend to focus on relaxation.
These days I'm under a lot of pressure from home to succeed at work. I was offered a promotion should I stay in AZ. My transfer to CT came with the understanding that my new boss would have to re-evaluate me for the promotion. My wife really wants me to get that promotion, and my predecessor is said to have desired it for many years without any gains. I'll be honest: if I don't get promoted, then it will be a major blow to the impression I have that I can make a long-term career here and grow in it. Therefore, I have to make the most of these times of relaxation, using them to plan my approach. I have to find the energy to do my best here, so that if I don't get promoted, I will have no negative feelings about the decision my wife and I will have to make, whatever the result.
The work environment in CT, as I mentioned in another post, is very different from phoenix. At first, the differences struck me as an excess of practical inefficiency. Whereas I used to get a few emails per day, most directly relevant to me, thus giving me plenty of time to indulge in HR updates and internal newsletters. I now get about 30-40 emails per day, most of which are sequential messages in threads about my projects, projects which might become mine, or miscellaneous service issues, in most of which only the first and last email are relevant to me (if any) -- crosstalk. About 0.5% of the HR emails and newsletters are actually very important: "time to renew your benefits", "we're implementing a vaccine mandate", etc.. I'm so overwhelmed with emails now that the only way I notice important company bulletins anymore is when they appear as reminders in the daily morning meeting, and that one time they mentioned the vaccine mandate was literally the only time that meeting was useful for me in an immediate sense. For the rest of those meetings, the only value was in the exposure -- I'm hearing recipe names there, and slowly becoming comfortable with them; I'm learning the names of people, and becoming known as a solver of problems. But I don't have time to solve their problems, because they call me too often for things which aren't actual problems; for example, one day (true story) I spent 4 hours walking back and forth between the line and my office for service calls, and each time, the problem was solved by maintenance or operations either while I was in transit or soon after I arrived. So, their actual problems are deprioritized in favor of expensive projects. I'm also being asked to produce documents quantifying progress on my projects, which takes up time I could be using on the project itself, and honestly strikes me as odd, seeing as my progress is readily quantifiable in terms of the POs which have been cut (which I expect we should have in a database somewhere... right?) and the actual project materials (drawings/code) I've produced. Moreover, the union is a constant source of problems -- not actually because of their rules (I haven't had any problems with union rules, necessarily, as far as I can tell, and everyone told me that would be the source of my problems), but with their attitudes. The unioneers literally ignore me and cuss at me when I approach them for information about an issue; they call me and demand that I come to the line with my laptop to examine their issues, and then hang up on me when I ask them for details like, "what does the alarm on the display say?". Their attitude is totally inexplicable! And, we're in the midst of, what seems like, a plan to perform an endless series of major upgrades to our SCADA/MES system; these updates are performed in a way that prioritizes speed over correctness, because it's impossible with Wonderware to understand the consequences of a given change you make to the server, since they're so deeply in bed with Microsoft and their software is, like Microsoft's, a rat's nest. So every change brings with it an immediate loss of functionality which occasionally takes weeks to figure out. Our goal is to get our software completely up to date, but by the time we get there (give it a couple of years), the next major upgrade will be rolled-out and we'll be pushed to implement that instead; this isn't hyperbole on my part -- we already know what the next major upgrade will be; it was released already, and it's hanging in our periphery; we just say, "we'll install that after we're done with the current changes". I'm put into the middle of this and expected to learn our current Wonderware system -- maybe I could do that if it was my only responsibility. There are people in the company talking about bringing in Ignition instead; they're going about it all wrong, shouting buzzwords and trying to push redundant solutions out to corporate audiences who haven't asked for it. Sometimes my boss asks me, "what can Ignition do that Wonderware can't do", and the answer is, technically, nothing, except that it can do all the same things easier. Well, "easier", if you are willing to learn Python and eliminate the system that you've already dumped 30 years of frantic upgrades and boatloads of currency into, and the America team is willing to do neither.
At first, I thought this was all reckless inefficiency. But now that I've had a day to rest, (even though I have had the opportunity to sleep-in a few times in the past year, this feels like the first in several years; but I'll try to spare you much more of my self-pity), I realize that I'm being treated as a Project Manager, and I haven't been keeping a good attitude about it.
I did the same thing with emails to my project manager. He asked me to keep him apprised of all my projects and to CC him in emails. Project managers are expected to be content while inundated with large quantities of meaningless information about their projects, picking out the meaningful parts, which makeup a large enough quantity of information as it is -- to sort through technical data and discern meaningful progress. This is the task I have to set my mind to.
The morning meeting serves exactly the purposes I mentioned above; it makes me mutually familiar with the people in the factory. It exposes me to product information, and makes me aware of (mostly inconsequential) problems with production. Most importantly, they talk about things I occasionally miss in emails. Attending the morning meeting is an obligation because my boss says it is, and it's my job to squeeze every last drop of value out of that meeting.
The nuisance calls I get from production are like a reflection in water, refracting and showing me the very same errors, oversights, and incompleteness in our documentation, interface design, and operator work instructions. It is a primary function of mine to analyze these issues and conquer them; to get our documentation up-to-speed.
As far as I can tell, the unioneer's terrible attitude is a function of their feelings about their position (it doesn't matter whether they think it's a superior or inferior position, and the way inferiority complexes work it would be impossible to tell anyway). I have to become one of them -- not by joining the union, but by making myself a member of their class of individuals (I'm not a marxist; give me a break when I use the word "class"). I should involve myself in their work and lighten their burdens, while making my own effort imminently apparent to them. If I can earn their respect and rise above their struggle (I won't bother trying to convince them that it is the struggle common to all mankind), then I can make them useful to me, and drive this factory toward perfection.
Wonderware is the software I'm stuck with. I'm going to take my time on this one. Hopefully there will be some reprieve when the immediately planned server updates local to my factory are complete. While I wait, I'll become competent in what's needed to get by, maintaining a steady increase in competency while I accomplish other goals. And when the moment is right, I'll master it.
God has always been good to me.
"My lot has fallen in pleasant places."
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Today I wanna respond to some statements from TGC concerning religious exemptions to vaccination. But first, I want to thank TGC for referring me to the Ezekiel Declaration, concerning which, while I do agree with TGC that the name is a little dramatic, and that the data concerning lockdowns was off-topic, I flatly disagree with TGC's other remarks on the matter. The Ezekiel Declaration didn't seem confrontational to me at all, and I think TGC's authors might just have been a little triggered. Also, it doesn't need to say anything positive about the vaccine, because we're already inundated by that kind of talk from every other direction, and the suggestion that they have some kind of obligation to garnish their anti-vaccination-mandate comments with praise for the vaccine is more than a little disturbing to me, considering the source.
Mostly I am glad to have encountered the Ezekiel Declaration because it contained a reference to this delicious section from Abram Kuyper's book, "Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto", Chapter 16, II, §203-204. This is from the year 1880.
"And if the government does not wish to stiffen this resistance but cause it to diminish, then as a servant of God it should demonstrate in such critical days that it has a heart. Then it should not, like a violent accomplice of unbelieving science, turn against the nation's religious beliefs that only intensify in times of epidemics. Rather, when God's judgments break out the government ought to share in the spirit of awe that stirs the souls before the majesty of God. Rather than prohibiting prayer services it should itself proclaim a day of prayer. In this way its solemn decisions and actions will underscore the impression that as a government it is powerless to ward off the plague that its visiting the nation and that it knows no better refuge for deliverance than to humble itself before almighty God.
"For this reason alone, compulsory cowpox vaccination should be out of the question. Our physicians may be mistaken and government may never stamp a particular medical opinion as orthodox and therefore binding. Moreover, compulsion can never be justified until the illness manifests itself and may therefore never be prescribed as a preventative. A third reason is that government should keep its hands off our bodies. Fourthly, government must respect conscientious objections. In the fifth place, it is one or the other: either it does not itself believe in the vaccination, or if it does, it will do redundant work by proceeding to protect once more those already safeguarded against an evil that will no longer have a hold on them anyway.
"Vaccination certificates will therefore have to go—and will be gone at least from our free schools. The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation's spiritual resources as a small pox epidemic itself."
Fascinating to see that vaccine passports are not a new idea, and were previously proposed in response to a disease (more harmful than COVID?). Mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports were rejected back then, in the 1800s, when technology was more than 100 years removed from its current state, and they were basically successful in eradicating cowpox! How silly of us to think that we're now better off restricting our freedoms, more than they did, if (and because!) our ability to fight infectious diseases is so much more potent than theirs was. How absolutely stupid of us.
Here's the music I'm listening to rn:
Now let's get into the objections from the various TGC articles. Here are the articles themselves. I'm just going to paraphrase and list the objections in no particular order, without saying which article they come from, because I'm lazy. You can read these yourself.
1. Aborted fetal cell lines are used in all kinds of other drugs and medical services. If you're going to reject the vaccine on these grounds, then you also have to reject Tylenol, Claritin, and some anti-aging skin creams.
OK, yeah, this is an easy one. If other drugs (claritin, tylenol, etc) were also developed using unethically sourced immortalized fetal cells, then I'm opposed to it. I don't want to receive those medications or services either, and perhaps I have some homework to do. If I find out about other brands involved in the same practice, I'll stop using them, too.
[eta]After I wrote the above paragraph, I was told by a friend that several companies have the following strategy to handle requests for religious exemption on these grounds: They will show the employee a long list of products (reportedly over a hundred commonly used products, including some popular brand names such as Pepsi and Nestle) and say that these products and brands are all affected by research involving fetal cell lines, and then tell the employee that he must sign a paper promising never to use these products or else he will not get an exemption.
A Christian hearing about this test might find himself feeling indignant, and yet at face value, might be tempted to say that this is a fair test of the employee's resolve. It seems that if he refuses to sign, then his religious convictions are not stronger than his desire for comfort, and so they are not strong enough to warrant a religious exemption to company policy (and what a demeaning prospect, to once assert a real religious concern and then find yourself doubling back on threat of losing Pepsi products). But a careful thinker will find that the Christian's initial feeling of indignance was entirely warranted; not simply by the insult this test makes to his sincerity, but also because the test itself is poor, unreasonable, threatening, and underhanded, if not outright dishonest. I'll explain.
First, if I am not getting the vaccine, then it is apparent that I hesitated during the time between the release of the vaccine and the popularization of the information concerning aborted fetal lines. If I hesitated, it is because I prefer to do my own research, rather than trust the CDC. If I do not trust the CDC, then why would I trust without question a list of hundreds of common products which are offered to me as a threat to my religious convictions?
Second, since some of the line items are companies and brands, and those brands are not always labeled plainly on the product, but sometimes "Nestle" and "Pepsi" can only be found in the small print on the side, it is not always obvious whether an item on the shelf falls into the category that should be avoided. I am sincerely unaware of how many Pepsi products I use on a day-to-day basis. Keep this in mind for the proceeding sections below.
Third, there's a difference between ethically sourced and unethically sourced fetal cells. As far as I know (and I haven't seen the list, but only heard about it), it does not differentiate between the two. Unethically sourced fetal cells come from elective abortions. Ethically sourced fetal tissue would come (for example) from a child who died of natural or unavoidable causes, and whose parents chose to donate the cells for research
Now sure, I would gladly take the list home and study the products, but this kind of research takes a lot of time (especially now that popular search platforms are filtering out websites which present data contrary to the left-wing narrative which is both pro-vaccine and pro-abortion), and so a man can't be expected to discover the means of research and development for over a hundred consumer products in any short period without compromising other responsibilities either inside or outside of work. Will the employer allow this employee a month or more of work-hours in the office to sift through research articles concerning each and every product listed, and become an expert in the role of fetal tissue in their development? Not likely.
So, even if a Christian person conducts research with more than reasonable thoroughness, (considering this is an extremely broad study), and if he signed the paper, and then gets caught by a coworker, unwittingly using a Nestle product which was made with unethically sourced fetal matter, because he didn't read the small print on the side where the "Nestle" label was printed, or he hadn't yet researched that particular product, or he mistakenly understood it to have been produced or researched using ethically sourced fetal tissue, or the product was somehow necessary for his wellbeing and he hadn't yet found an alternative, then what will happen to the signor? Will he be fired and lose his livelihood? Will he be subject to some kind of legal pursuit? Is that document binding even if he quits that job and finds another later? Who is policing this, and why is it any of their business, when this is a matter of religious conscience? Do the drafters of this document expect to gain contractual authority over the consistency of religious observance by their employees?
The paper (as it's been described to me) is overwhelming by design, and as such it presents an unreasonable burden of proof, with no time to discern it. It's a poor metric for resolve, because no person can actually meet its demands. This whole matter of aborted tissue in products has only just recently come into public view, and we haven't had time to figure it all out and draw out distinctions between products (like we have with GMO/Non-GMO etc). Yeah, I intend to switch over entirely to products which were developed without fetal tissue, or only with ethically sourced fetal tissue, but that's gonna take a lot of time, and this test, at this time, is what I'd call underhanded and dishonest.
2. The people who gathered the fetal cells didn't have anything to do with performing the abortion, and did not cooperate (they cooperated materially, not formally) in the abortion process. They're just disinterested parties who took the cells afterward intending to do some good with them. It's like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim into a Christian patient -- we wouldn't have any objection.
Here's the thing: it's not like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim. Because in the case of a murder victim, the murderer is going to get the death penalty, and the doctors all agree that the murderer deserves it. Police are out hunting for the murderer, or he's facing trial. Justice is being done for the victim.
It's more like if a doctor were to transplant a kidney from a murder victim while nobody cared that he was murdered, and everyone thought it was a good thing that he was murdered, even though it was plainly murder and the victim had done nothing either good or bad to deserve it. And more people are being murdered in the same way all day long, even though today's victim's body parts aren't being cannibalized in this way. And, if anyone speaks out saying, "hey that's a murder victim", they get ridiculed, and if anyone goes and tries to stop the murders which are continuing to happen, they get imprisoned by the very same police who should have been stopping the murders in the first place.
In the case of aborted fetal cells, the attitudes are, "why is this person so upset that that woman exercised her reproductive rights and I landed some good fetal tissue out of it, which I'm using to help people?" Nobody is hunting down the murderer in this case, and we're all either refusing to participate in it, and speaking and acting against it, or we're complicit in it. "I didn't have anything to do with the death of that clump of cells. It wasn't an infant human; it was more like a cancer that had potential to become a human. I just want its kidneys to make my soda taste better". Makes me literally sick to my stomach to think about this. Let's take a moment to be disgusted with ourselves.
(And, concerning the notion that it's ok because they aren't killing more kids for this, expressed during the same argument in this TGC article -- the established cell line means we don't need to murder more people: see my previous blog.)
3. Exemptions based on the Biblical notion of "personal autonomy", ("God affords me a choice concerning what I do with my Sundays" as opposed to "I am forbidden by God to work on Sundays"), are not sufficient grounds to warrant a religious exemption.
People who read my previous blog might remember that I touched on the personal autonomy argument to some degree. You'll notice, however, that my objection wasn't simply that my religion requires me to have a choice in this matter. My objection (as I stated it) was that tyranny has no place in God's law. That's a similar statement, and it's reasonably unclear how this addresses the above issue. Let me expand on it.
God's law is a mixture of positive and negative law (thou shalt, and thou shalt not). Negative law includes a basic list of every kind of crime. The positive law includes: moral rules for what we should do to love our neighbors generally, civil rules defining specific government offices and their functions, and ceremonial rules describing the means by which we maintain our relationship with God. Among the positive laws in scripture, only the civil laws (which define civil offices) warrant any civil penalty. And, the particular group of people tasked with carrying out that penalty consists of "the people" (citizens).
The rule I'm referring to, generally, is that the people should select individuals to function in government according to the offices found in scripture; and that when those elected officials stop paying attention to God's law, they are no longer acting in accordance with their elected office, and so they should no longer be allowed to retain their title; our fear of them and our recognition of their authority should cease, and we should select new individuals to take their place, who will maintain God's law as described in scripture. This rule is balanced against another command, which is that we should keep the peace, and the qualification that it is sometimes better to endure a little bit of injustice for the sake of conscience. Generally, the Bible teaches us that when we are suffering injustice "for the sake of Christ", (i.e. when we are attacked explicitly "for being Christian", which would make us martyrs), we do better if we endure it. In addition, if our conscience can tolerate a certain injustice, then it is ok for us to tolerate it (e.g. having our earnings stolen from us by taxation on a regular basis).
Well, in this case, if the American Government demands or enforces that I should get a vaccine, then it is not just causing me to endure injustice, but causing me to perform injustice, by doling out a positive law of its own, when it requires that I (a person holding the office of "citizen") act in a way inconsistent with my role, by demanding that I perform an action which violates my conscience: get the injection. This is intolerable to my conscience, and so, as a member of "the people", I am confronted with a responsibility to carry out the civil penalty I mentioned above: my recognition of the authorities perpetrating this injustice should cease, and I should elect new people to take their place. What my position resolves to in practice is this: I would rather work to divide America than submit to a mandatory COVID injection.
Now, I'm not unwilling to change my mind, if I'm given a reasonable argument, which is compelling to me, on the matter. If I encounter a good argument later, then after thinking it through I'll go ahead and get the jab and post here about it. No problem! But no such argument has been offered to me yet, and the situation doesn't seem hopeful. Maybe if the government had taken their time, developed the vaccine with ethically sourced immortalized fetal cells, developed it properly and without rushing trials, and if the government had not tried to force it on everyone in so much of a hurry that the data couldn't be completely and clearly understood, or maybe if the government didn't frequently lie by saying the vaccine was X or Y before they had sufficient data to make those statements (remember how "safe and effective" the AstraZeneca vaccine was before it was actually deployed? The change occurred because the deployment was the test, which is a whole other issue: I'm charged by God to do my best to protect my family, and so as much as it depends on me, I can't allow my young children to participate in this kind of broad public experiment), then this wouldn't be such an issue for me. But the CDC, the WHO, the government, and the vaccine manufacturers messed up, and at the moment I'm unwilling to comply.
Let me make myself clear: I'm not against all vaccines (I get vaccines sometimes!). I'm not even necessarily against MRNA vaccines (although I want more time and research. I'm gonna wait at least a decade, like until 2029 or later, before I say "the science is settled".). I'm against abortion, and I'm against government overreach.
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“Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord; “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.” The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.
You, O Lord, will keep them; you will guard us from this generation forever. On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man.
