sleaze and anti-sleaze (or, soul building to cure a flood of sleaze)

A podcast will come out in a few days to talk about this.  

I am still trying to sort out my words.  (Tuesday is not a good day for word sorting, I have so many meetings)

For the last ten days or so I feel like I have far more sleaze to deal with than most of the time.  Bankers robbing me; tech support providing anti-support; other businesses taking my money and giving me lies instead of what i paid for; ongoing efforts of sleaze-sters to steal from me with words; required web sites having bugs, then more bugs, then bugs compounded by bugs, to the point it stops working; "For help, call us 7am to 6pm mountain time" and at 7:30 "you called us outside our normal working hours" ....

As i am going into a zoom meeting, zoom gives me a checkbox "click here to not see this message again" which I have clicked on about 300 times.   And zoom has become so buggy it is nearly unusable.



(gotta run for now - more later)

As I was feeling around for ways to talk about this, I remembered the stuff about spoons.

In the podcast, rather than talking about the stuff where a bank "lost" $3000 of mine, and is now refusing to talk to me....   or rather than talking about a business that offered $100 worth of service, took my money, and has now gone silent ....   or rather than lists and lists of stuff about taxes and "bad actors" trying to screw me ....   I picked a very simple thing.  Sleazy, but not critical.  


Every 8 weeks I donate blood.  I used to donate blood in missoula, but their computer made an error ...  something that humans used to be able to correct, but now the people at the red cross have been thoroughly trained to not give a shit.  Despite having a bunch of paid employees that are just sitting around.  Talk to the new york office - a person that is paid to care and doesn't care.  After six hours of effort on my part, I am still not allowed to donate blood in missoula.  And the red cross just doesn't fucking care.  I wrote about this a looooong time ago here:

https://permies.com/t/50961/Swords-Iron-Missoula-Blood-Pie

So I started donating blood west of here.  Once every eight weeks I would bond with audiobooks.  Sometimes I would do an extra event there - a potluck or speaking gig.  Sometimes it is on my way to seattle or portland.  

And then the day arrived that i could donate blood again.  Good.  The last week has four times more sleaze than usual.  A bit of a drive with audiobooks sounds like just the ticket.  All I need to do is go to their web site and make an appointment.  


... ....   of course, the web site is broken and i cannot make an appointment.  I try the next day - still broken.  The next day - still broken.  It would be nice if there was a way to send an email and it could be mended without taking a lot of my time.  But because the world is jam packed with sleazy spammers, most companies no longer allow emails to be sent.  

(In other words, the world has kinda gotten to the point of finding ways to be okay with all the sleaze)

The ONLY way I might be able to resolve this would be to call and try to talk to a human.  They offer a phone number and the hours start at 7am mountain time.  I call at 7:30 and the recording says it is outside of their office hours.  So then I think I will call the place I am going to and talk to a human.  Surely they can say "we will get it all sorted out - come on in."  The only phone number i can find is the same 877 number that is having trouble deciding what their office hours are.

So I dropped the donating blood thing.  I am having a super sleazy run, and this is just more sleaze on top of an existing bucket of sleaze.


(time for my next meeting ...)

What is the opposite of sleaze?

Decency?  Integrity?  Wholesome?  Silly fun?



Ten years ago I wrote about spoon theory.  In that is the idea that you would lose spoons with yucky things and gain spoons with lovely things.  

I want to bring the idea of spoons into this stuff about sleaze and anti-sleaze.  Spoons is good because you can guage how big or small something is by the number of spoons.  Little things take (or give) one or two spoons.  Big things take (or give) dozens of spoons.  And there is the idea of things which give you spoons.  So it isn't all negative.  

Plus, the idea of spoons is about the feels of one person.  I want to talk about "the cure" for sleaze.  Or maybe "a cure" or a list of things that will cure ...    I want to heal a person suffering from the sleaze dropped on them.   The spoon stuff is about the suffering of one person, and includes a metric for how to resolve that suffering.  



If the average person gains 50 spoons a day, but is losing 40 spoons a day to sleaze, they might not care.  Health issues might take 40.  Struggles with day to day stuff that is not sleaze might take 40.  Once you hit zero, the day becomes mighty dark - and now spoon math is critical, and sleaze is less acceptable.



I want to hyper-focus this thread, for now, on sleaze and what might be "anti-sleaze".  What are things that a person can do, for themselves, to add spoons.  Later, I want to expand this a little to talk about choice we make for ourselves that removes spoons, and then how we can do remarkably similar choices, but add spoons.

Start simple:

Plant 20 kale seeds        gain 1 spoon

Observe that many of them are now an inch tall     gain 2 spoons

See they are now six inches tall     gain 2 spoons

Harvest and eat a bit (maybe a little too early)   gain 3 spoons

Harvest and eat a fair bit       gain 3 spoons

Harvest a bunch to feed to yourself and a couple of friends    gain 12 spoons

Harvest a lot, dry them with some oil, salt and flaves, store them in a huge jar for later, damn they are good     gain 18 spoons

Harvest and eat a fair bit in deep winter     gain 6 spoons

As part of an Operations Management course I was teaching, I attempted to go into business ethics using a functional approach.  Such as if I screw over the best suppliers and screw over my best customers, how long can I expect to remain in business?   Silly me. I thought the concept was obvious.   About 50% of the class thought I was speaking a foreign language.  Their concern was only for the short term. Once they had padded their resume they would be with a new  employer.  Now, for the real scary part.  These were healthcare management students, and most of them were already working in the field.

Carve a first wooden spoon where it isn't really a spoon, and has too much of your blood on it:  gain 1 spoon


Carve a second wooden spoon where it is an authentically useful spoon, and has no blood on it:  gain 4 spoons

Every time you use that spoon    gain 1 spoon

Anti-sleaze spoon-generators:
- listen to music
- share a meal
- plant something
- harvest something
- help someone with some trouble or chore
- play a game
- get a little exercise
- engage in satisfying art or craft

(x-posted with stuff above)

Eating stewed jerusalem artichokes & maple syrup! (It finally thawed enough to dig them up)

If I remember correctly, during the podcast, I made up a homesteader named Betty.  

When Betty bought her homestead, outright, about two months ago, she arrived with a list of the things she wanted to accomplish the first year.  After two months, she hasn't even finished with the stuff she wanted to have done on the first day.  Betty is putting in 16 hours a day chipping away at her list.

Betty is pretty exhausted.  Betty has gotten a lot done.  A lot has gone wrong and a lot has gone right.  She keeps telling herself it will get a lot easier when the infrastructure is done.  

Sacrifice.

"I will work harder!"

Obligation is poison - and she set these obligations on herself.

She is going to end up not growing enough food for the year.  Animals keep getting past her temporary fence.  She needs to buy more gear, but she is very worried about finances.  After all, when buying the property, the plan was to have homestead incomes to pay for stuff, but instead she is burning through money way too fast.



In the gardening gardeners program, people do stuff at a pace for an art project.  Most tasks are transformed into art projects.  There is no cost for gear.  There is no money burn.  Food is infinite and free.  And organic or better.  And there are other people.  Any list of stuff to do is a pretty short list.  Zero obligations.  Comfortable pace.


My thought was that Betty should join a gardening gardeners program instead of buying her own property.  Samantha (who recorded with me) said that Betty should start her own gardening gardeners program.

Betty is out of spoons. Burned out. Betty is regretting her homestead decision.  

Many homesteaders bail after a six months, a year, two years ...  maybe six years.  Betty is gonna bail after a year and go back to a city job, apartment living, and eating at restaurants.


I think that the gardening gardeners program is a foundation for homesteading that can last a lifetime.  Higher success.  Less burnout.  Add spoons every day.  

paul wheaton wrote:What is the opposite of sleaze?

I would say a Personal Code of Honour. This is undoubtedly inconvenient and unfashionable. Few are encouraged toward that path today. More's the pity.

It's hard to stand by such a Code unless you have access to resilient resources. Some have argued for a modest house and big garden. They have a point.

I feel like the opposite of sleaze can be "preserving other people's spoons". It can be translated as care, integrity, love, human kindness, affection.

When the person in the hardware store offers to help, even if they dont work there. When my client pays too much for a job and I give him a credit for next time. When someone reaches out to say they were thinking of you, or the guy in the parking garage yells as you are pulling out and points out you left your sunglasses on top of your car.
None of these things cost money or even weigh too much. But they're also not required or automatic. It takes effort, and not everyone does it.  But they all leave everyone feeling better. As you say, they build the soul.

(I just read your blood donor thread. I had a similar thing happen- they changed the rules where I live: it used to be that you were banned if you had cancer, except for skin lesions. then a few years ago, they decided that melanoma on skin was bad too. I am a 20+ gallon donor. I was *escorted out by security* like they caught me trying to steal the free cookies. I understand the rules, I can even understand why they changed. Treat me like a human capable of understanding rather than a criminal. Now nobody in my family donates, because screw that noise.)

Your concept of spoons reminds me of the Rae-Holmes stress inventory:
https://www.stress.org/self-assessments/holmes-rahe-life-stress-inventory/

There’s not as much in it about the small 1-2 spoon detracting events, but the takeaway is that the more stress points you garner in a short period of time, the more likely you are to develop health issues.

In my field (counseling) I often talk with clients about having a stress reserve that functions like a bank account. Stress, is a withdrawal, positive things are deposits.If you live with too many stressors it’s best to decrease the stressors to live within your means in the same way you might need to with your finances if spending outrunsearning. If your stress is non-negotiable, your second best option is to up your self-care. Basically the same idea as your spoons, just a different metaphor.

recent podcasts on sleaze and the solution (part 1 and 2)

https://permies.com/wiki/370142/Podcast-Sleaze-Anti-sleaze-Part
https://permies.com/wiki/370227/Podcast-Sleaze-Anti-sleaze-Part


On one of those threads somebody equated the sleaze to ai and i said

I think the sleaze I am suffering from is many flavors of human apathy.  A human doesn't care that there is an error in the (non AI) computer.   Several people involved in the software development and quality don't care. The human that is paid to care, doesn't.  For the newer blood donation organization, the (non AI) computer has several errors.   Again, developers and QA peeps do not care - even though it is their job.  The organization struggles to get donors, yet it is their (non AI) software that impedes this goal.  And their own human created policies and human created mistakes that prevent me from talking to a person.  Of course, they probably implemented these policies because they were flooded by people behaving poorly, because they don't care that they behave poorly to the lowly servants of the blood donation organization.  

Sleaze compounding sleaze compounding sleaze.  

It has nothing to do with AI.  It has everything to do with "gaming the system", rewarding hostility, and people working hard to find a high paying job where they phone it in.  And all of this lack of decency makes things sleazy.  

This is the problem I attempt to explore.  And in the podcast I think the solutions are excellent.

carved from serviceberry ....  now about 20 years old ...

Since permies is an internet space, there is some black hat vs white hat stuff going on here, too.  

I feel like it takes some spoons to do white hat stuff in a black hat world,

But, having done so results in gaining more spoons, and keeping more spoons than you would have lost in the black hat path.  

There is permaculture in that - doing the hard work of creating a healthy online ecosystem that attempts to be sleaze-proof is hard work, and slow work, and constant work, but it is the more spoon-conserving and spoon-replicating path.

Sure, you hit some weeks of sleaze-surge, but the net positive of the small, daily work is exponential over the long haul.

It does seem like we get a few people that use their sleaze tools to get our obedience for some twisted reason.  In the end, I think we have slowly accumulated a bunch of people that appreciate our flavor of decency and are willing to stand up for it.  

And if a decent human has a question or would like help, I think our community thoroughly enjoys the conversation that results.  Spoons for all!

paul wheaton wrote: And if a decent human has a question or would like help, I think our community thoroughly enjoys the conversation that results.  Spoons for all!

I can still remember when a relatively new member posted a question about how to repair something effectively but inexpensively. A bunch of permies put their creative hats on, and made somewhere between 6 and 10 effective, viable options. (this was at least 10 years ago, so I can't remember precisely)

The lady said in response (approximately) - I couldn't figure out a single way to solve this problem and I can't believe that now I'm going to have to choose between so many different solutions. I have more than one to repair, I might just repair each one using a different idea!

Every time I think of that, I gain spoons!

To me, that is what permies is all about.

paul wheaton wrote:What is the opposite of sleaze?

Decency?  Integrity?  Wholesome?  Silly fun?



Ten years ago I wrote about spoon theory.  In that is the idea that you would lose spoons with yucky things and gain spoons with lovely things.  

I want to bring the idea of spoons into this stuff about sleaze and anti-sleaze.  Spoons is good because you can guage how big or small something is by the number of spoons.  Little things take (or give) one or two spoons.  Big things take (or give) dozens of spoons.  And there is the idea of things which give you spoons.  So it isn't all negative.  

Plus, the idea of spoons is about the feels of one person.  I want to talk about "the cure" for sleaze.  Or maybe "a cure" or a list of things that will cure ...    I want to heal a person suffering from the sleaze dropped on them.   The spoon stuff is about the suffering of one person, and includes a metric for how to resolve that suffering.  



If the average person gains 50 spoons a day, but is losing 40 spoons a day to sleaze, they might not care.  Health issues might take 40.  Struggles with day to day stuff that is not sleaze might take 40.  Once you hit zero, the day becomes mighty dark - and now spoon math is critical, and sleaze is less acceptable.



I want to hyper-focus this thread, for now, on sleaze and what might be "anti-sleaze".  What are things that a person can do, for themselves, to add spoons.  Later, I want to expand this a little to talk about choice we make for ourselves that removes spoons, and then how we can do remarkably similar choices, but add spoons.

I think there are a lot of good ideas in this thread, and it's something that I've spent a lot of time noodling on in the past few years.  

At it's base-level I think it is the things that grind me down (sleeze) vs build me up, give me energy, and motivation (anti-sleeze).  This is more than activities, it's all the various foci of attention.  Reading about people doing cool things here can give me a spoon, just as reading or receiving icky news can take a spoon.  It's driven me to become a firm defender of my attention (I had a bit of a rant on that in this JOMO post).

Making a wooden spoon and using it was a great example.  You are 'fed' when you make the spoon, and you're 'fed again' when you use the spoon.  It's like a passive anti-sleeze stream.  "Treating things like art" has a lot wrapped up in it.  It is creating, surely, but it is also limiting the burden of expectation in the outcome.  "I'm gonna try to make a thing", but if it's imperfect 'ok, will the spoon hold soup?'  Probably.  That anxiety of 'is it good enough' is itself a burden.  That's why 'treating things like art' is so powerful.  It's the act of creating that matters, not the burden of expectation in the outcome.  Then I'm fed even more when I make additional spoons and they improve.

When it comes to an art approach, "The end does not justify the means" because "there are ONLY means", the end isn't really the point.  It is the act of doing that feeds us.  

I love this thread. Just what I needed at this moment. It’s hard to fight the stinking miasma of sleaze and keep one’s head above water! Grab every opportunity you can!!! Long line at the post office - I struck up a convo with the elder behind me. She was there to send a fax (remember those?) because she read online that the post office did that. I was pretty sure they didn’t and the line was so long and slow that I showed her how to download a free app and send a fax with her phone. I got a lot of spoons from her big smile and appreciation.

Now, I’d like to learn how to carve a spoon. We recently foraged some walnut logs from the side of the road. I have tools that I bought for my son to use to carve. I even have a special glove to protect the non-carving hand. You get several spoons if you reply with a link that can teach me how to carve a spoon. Go!

Because of the number of scam shots we get in the mail, over the phone And via email, I've begun wondering aloud what percentage of the US economy is fraud now. Which is not exactly the same as sleaze--a lot of what Paul describes is just carelessness, not deliberate deception. But my opinion is that this has gotten MUCH worse over time--this is not normal. I turned 70 this year, so I've seen this change over time. One example is calling a business or government agency. The normal thing when I was young is you'd dial the number, a human would answer and say "XYZ Gadgets, how may I help you?" Now you dial the number and you get a machine reciting a menu, and usually none of the options fits your actual question. After a lot of struggle, you manage to talk to a human, but this person is in India or the Philippines and has no idea how to help you. Eventually they transfer you to someone else, and if the call doesn't get dropped altogether, you're now talking to someone in the Philippines or India who also can't help... if you're lucky, one hour-long series of calls delivers the results you got in five minutes 40 years ago. Some of it IS AI, or automation anyway, the penchant of management to want to minimize employees.

I think this made word of the year in a few places that track such things.

It's Corey Doctorow's term enshittification.

He explains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2e-c9SF5nE

I like Mo Bitar's take on it too, particularly his last comment here where it gets down to...it's who you can know and trust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_2YN1MungI

When this cultural mess runs it's course, the decent humans will be the only ones left standing, but that's a ways in the future.

In the meantime, as a friend jokes, it's time to go "full Amish."

Sign out of or quit/never patronizing all the bad and incompetent players to the greatest degree possible to accelerate their demise.

John F Dean wrote:As part of an Operations Management course I was teaching, I attempted to go into business ethics using a functional approach.  Such as if I screw over the best suppliers and screw over my best customers, how long can I expect to remain in business?   Silly me. I thought the concept was obvious.   About 50% of the class thought I was speaking a foreign language.  Their concern was only for the short term. Once they had padded their resume they would be with a new  employer.  Now, for the real scary part.  These were healthcare management students, and most of them were already working in the field.

It sounds like many of your classmates would fit in perfectly at the company in this humorous public service announcement from the Norwegian Consumer Council. It's calling out the increasing ensh*tification of everything. They even touch on Paul's issues with web pages and calling for customer support. Truly, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Warning: If you are offended by the use of the word sh*t, just use "sleaze" and DO NOT click

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Upf_B9RLQ

Reducing sleaze is where I put the emphasis. I relate to spoon theory because of my history of crohn's. Putting high quality food in my body felt utterly pointless when it was all flying through me quickly due to a crohn's flare. Whatever stopped the flare was of significantly greater importance than eating high quality food. After all, the inflammation was harming my body far more than some hypothetical junk food that would allow me space to get into remission (not that I had to eat junk food, I'm just making a hypothetical situation).

Likewise,  I think that sometimes adding some sleaze into your life can reduce greater sleaze later. I have an annoying primary care physician right now. He doesn't like to run any labwork without a visit, but then the visits never add anything to his plan.  I'm considering going through the sleaze of getting a new doctor because I think the sleaze required to get a new doctor will be less than the sleaze to deal with this guy over the long run.

I really like Cal Newport's book Slow Productivity and I think it applies heavily to the concept of spoons and sleaze. He recommends taking time out to consider the downstream tasks that may accumulate when taking on a new project before committing to it.

As for adding spoons, nothing adds spoons for me better than breathing exercises and qigong. I've stopped flare ups, gained focus, energy, and improved my mood in massive ways by taking time out for breathing exercises and qigong.

In summary,
1) Sleaze reduction is my top priority
2) Some strategic sleaze can reduce greater amounts of sleaze
3) Making a habit of predicting future sleaze before taking on tasks can reduce future sleaze pathways
4) Assessing your sleaze points and spoon revenue activities on a routine basis (like a daily, weekly, or monthly review) can help to find flaws in your routine and increase spoon net profit.

Go to bed early / at same time each day
Get up in morning and go outside immediately each day
Exercise - at least a walk every day, if not farm-related
Cut out sugars and all refined foods
Don’t overeat
Drink clean or filtered water
Interact with ones animals in real ways
Pursue a bit on one's goals each day
Creative meditation daily, be that gardening, walking, sitting, shelling nuts, or napping.

These are all positive spoons that take no spoons away and provide more spoons for the future.

Some days my life feels like the movie Office Space.



Other times it feels worst. I have found when dealing with governmental authorities or bureaucracies. Getting things to happens take a little pushing and pulling. Case in point, when I was having storm damage fixed on by home and needed a person in a office just sign a check. I said the following:

So when the companies calls me and wants to be pay. What should I said to them?

Long story short the company got paid and the office got there stuff together.

In the case of Red Cross, email them and see how long it takes to get an answer. Sometimes email is faster than calling a number trying to get a real person. If you do get a real person from the email just say "call me at ____".

As for the others sleaze ask for poof or ask to see the records. Yes this does sound like a lot of work but if they asked just say maybe one of the following: "On advice of counsel...", " I can not talk about this without my lawyer", or "I need this information for my records".

If that is too much Drama! Well, you could try my way to deal with stress, sleaze and other shitty days.

1. Play heavy metal music, any of the following but feel free to add other: Rammstein, Ale Strom, Dethklok, etc.
2. Relax in a good chair and let the music work.
3. Repeat, in less it is not working then goto 4
4. In a room by yourself or in an empty field use the full beauty of the English language to tell the world what is going on.

Well I hope a few of you found my way to deal with stress entertaining!

I wonder if - to part of the original conversation - if fighting "The System Sleaze" (e.g. bad business practices, people not caring, etc.) is simply to invest your time and money in places that do care.

For example, purchasing something you need (coffee for me, for example) from a small roaster online for which I pay a slightly higher price but from which I always get a little "Thank you" on my receipt.  Or shopping at my smaller local hardware store rather than the Big Box stores because I get personal attention every time I go, even though the selection is not as broad.

Maybe I pay a little more, but I do not reward bad behavior.

YES, Terry! I do the same, and urge others to in my garden column. There is a one-off hardware store with a wooden floor, where the clerk may ask if your mother's doing any better now; there's an auto parts store with barstools next to the counter so customers and clerks can shoot the breeze while someone's being waited on--I'll go to those places first, rather than Walmart of Advance Auto. I don't like the politics of the one-off farm supply family, but I like supporting my local community, and the owner once said he couldn't seem to get any decent thermometers so he wasn't recommending what he did sell. Our farmer's market ain't much--it's a very rural area and most people just go to WalMart, and others grow their own veggies and fruits (including me, but I stop by anyway because I do find things I want and it's a much more enjoyable interaction).

In the case of Red Cross, email them and see how long it takes to get an answer.  

Email sent a week ago.  Still no response.

Dethklok

Brutal.

:)

Reducing sleaze is where I put the emphasis.

as gardeners, i think this two minute video is crticial



What sleaze is woven into grocery store food.  Or food at a restaurant.  Even what is labeled as organic.  


And if you grow your own food, you know the full story.  And growing your own food is a powerful anti-sleaze.  While simultaneously reducing interaction with sleaze.


Gardening ...  community ... natural building ...  bodgering ...   these things are the cure for sleaze.

paul wheaton wrote:

......What sleaze is woven into grocery store food.  Or food at a restaurant.  Even what is labeled as organic.  

Gardening ...  community ... natural building ...  bodgering ...   these things are the cure for sleaze.

Wife and I were having coffee and watching Franklin catch up on a wee post-breakfast nap.  We were discussing how pigs (Sus scrofa) had sold their souls into domestication with unfortunate individual consequences but a pan-global population expansion.  We tend not to view humanity as engaging in similar contracts, but on a large population point of view, hard to argue otherwise.

"Domesticate is a transitive verb meaning to tame wild animals or cultivate wild plants for human use, companionship, or agricultural purposes. It involves adapting species to live closely with humans, often creating dependence. The term can also mean adapting to home life, or adopting foreign customs/ideas."  -Merriam-Webster dictionary.

As the bold text notes, becoming domesticated can mean adopting foreign ideas, --in the current discussion ideas that clearly are unhealthy to individual and community...e.g., potentially nutritious food, but laced with preservatives and growth enhancers....ultimately contributing to poorer health and deeper sleaze.  I suspect this to be a crucial factor in the counter 're-wilding' movement and living 'with' vs constantly seeking to dominate the natural world.

I suppose this is off topic, but the video of the little girl talking about sprouting sweet potatoes--you don't have to stick the entire sweet potato in water. My home-grown sweet potatoes, on a shelf in my pantry, start sprouting in February, sometimes even January. I can cut off the sprouting end, an egg-sized piece, and put that in water with toothpicks--and have the rest of the tuber to eat.

Enshittification is definitely the word I use for this general decline in functionality in society.

I just posted a thread in tinkering with the site because I didn't immediately find this one and I was impatient- oops!

anyway I feel like people concerned with this topic should be informed, to whatever degree they feel they'd like to dig into the numbers past this headline, that young people are drastically less conscientious than they used to be: https://ifstudies.org/blog/conscientiousness-is-declining-among-young-americans-why

Basically because of phones and tiktok and the like


so anyway I'm sure everything is going great and there's nothing to worry about (... in a world on the verge of social collapse ...)

I was just talking with melissa about something else and ....  

people in the "gardening gardeners" program ...   do a bit of gardening, then a bit of buildy-build, then a little whittle ...   next to friends five days a week.  And most do it on the weekends too.  But without a thought for money stress, workee-job, getting food and shelter ...

They have cut out the sleaze.