Richard Lloyd Jones: The origin of the word is negative. In Greek, it means pain and suffering. In German, it relates to the heavy work orphans need to do to survive. The Japanese have three synonyms associated with it. Painful, dirty, and dangerous. Almost always, we hear it used like this. Hey, I'd love to join you for that fun thing, but unfortunately, I have to work. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we're going to look deeply at human work, what it is, what it could be, and what it is in fact becoming through the practical experience of a number of us here in Brazil working with a new type of business organization and structure.
Listen, I'm very excited about this program because I feel that this is one aspect of human social life that we need to improve and fast. And I stress again, and we'll stress later in the program too, that this new way of structuring work is here.
In Brazil, a number of us are having tremendous success in developing trilogical enterprises based on Dr. Norberto Keppe's ideas and practical experience. He has outlined these ideas in a very influential book called Liberation of the People, which I've been giving away for a few weeks now on this program. You can write me if you'd like a copy of this too, rich at richjonesvoice.com.
And if you want to know more about how we're restructuring the workplace, I can fill you in a bit more on that as well. I sat down with Dr. Cláudia Pacheco the other day to talk about business and society and the enormously important field of human work. As always, I found myself intrigued, enchanted, and even, dare I say it, excited about the aspect of work, Keppe's trilogical perspective especially.
It's articulated really well by his close associate, Cláudia Pacheco.
Cláudia, work, What is it really?
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Work, according to the metaphysic discoveries and the physics discoveries, the trilogical physics of Dr. Keppe, action and pure action, which is work, should be the source of all knowledge, development, health, fulfillment, energy, growth, not only individual growth, but also the growth of civilization, humanity, arts, science, everything. But the way work was organized based on psychopathology of human beings and now mostly socioeconomic pathology, which are the laws that individuals created to fulfill their egotism, their megalomania, their theomania, their envy, their dishonest, unethical interests.
So the way society was organized by the smart ones, in a negative sense, of course, has become the biggest source of neurosis, psychosis, organic illnesses, social injustice, wars, clashes of classes, etc., etc.
How has that
Richard: happened, Cláudia? Psychologically, how has that happened?
Cláudia: Yeah, we could consider that there are two main streams of pathology. The individual pathology is treated in our psychotherapy or in our school of thought. We see that the individual pathology, which is mostly based on the inversion we have, envy, egotism, megalomania, this inversion to see everything for myself that works somehow is a sacrifice to benefit other people and to harm me.
So I should, the pathological inverted kind of thinking is like this. I should do for myself. I should take care of myself first. And I should benefit me and use the energy for my own interests and benefits. Because if I do to others, I will spend all my energy and I will be left with nothing. I will just be left aside. And I don't have any advantage in being good and working for other people.
I should work for me and for my family. And this is a very inverted way of thinking because work in its essence is good, beautiful and truthful action, pure energy, pure vibration. And our very essence as human beings is synonym of pure action. And if we are not working for the beauty and the goodness of everybody, I will not benefit myself either.
I will even shrink my intelligence, my feelings, my perception, my intuition. The second stream is what we call like this tendency of exploiting our fellow man. Other people should work for me. They should work for my own purposes and interests. If I stay on the beach, or as you sometimes say, Mr. Jones, how to make money when you are sleeping. This means making money doing nothing or enjoying and having leisure, whatever.
So this mentality, which is the mentality of the so-called smart guys, this mentality created a system of work.
Where the employees, they are like slaves of the organization that they work for or for the individuals that they work for. And this could be capitalistic individuals, families or enterprises and could be even communists. Because in communism you are a slave of the state and you don't work for your own good and for the good of people. And as our structure is a structure of good, beautiful and truthful vibration and good essence, if I don't work accordingly or in accordance to these principles, I become sick, I become ill, I become unhappy, unsatisfied.
I have to take a lot of pills or a lot of drugs or alcohol, drinking, sex, leisure, diversion in order to hide this enormous unsatisfaction. This feeling of being unsatisfied, always needing more and more with this greedy, voracious attitude, eating up the world, consuming the world.
Also, I look for a person and I think, what this person can do for me? What advantage can I have from this organization or this person or this country or this city? And people normally should think of what use can I be for these people, for this person? Can I be useful in accomplishing an artistic work? Can I be useful in a scientific manner?
Whatever useful, you know, useful and good way you can be.
Richard: We have a saying in English, what's in it for me? This is what
Cláudia: drives people's motivations, changes.
Richard: If people are looking at doing something, they're asking themselves, well, what's in it for me? Okay, there's this advantage, that advantage. And whenever we have these conversations, you're always drawing the circle much bigger to encompass the more spiritual elements of the human being.
How do you see that in work?
Cláudia: And not only this, Jones, but also seeing that this way of thinking not only is restrict, it's inverted. It's not in accordance to ourselves, to our beings. So it's harmful. If we think like this, we will always be unsatisfied. And civilization will get poorer and poorer, more like backward. It. Evolution does not exist in terms of the socioeconomic system, the way they are leading things.
We are heading to destruction of humanity, of nature, of enterprises, inventions. You see that in the late 19th century. You see how many inventions there were, how many scientists, inventors, artists. So humanity was in a much bigger growth. And then the capitalistic minded people took over the situation through money, using money as an excuse. And they not only continued slaving people but artists, scientists, workers, industries, everything.
Politicians are enslaved by economic powerful people and financial financial people. So this kind of orientation is heading the inverted way. The intention being evil, the results are evil. Not only for the people, not only for our nature, but mostly, and this is the big thing Keppe discovered, mostly for the people who are performing this, who are inventing these laws, who are using this to make the false, the pseudo kind of prophets.
Richard: Let's talk a bit. More then, Cláudia, about this bigger circle, the spiritual aspect of work. I don't think we normally think of work as being a spiritual endeavor. How do you see this?
Cláudia: Well, you can see spiritual as psychological. You can identify things. In France, people that call themselves atheists, they call the spirit as l'esprit, which is the same meaning of the psychic, of the psychological life, which is inseparable.
So Henri Laborie, he was a psychiatrist in France that discovered if the person is impeded to accomplish his work, that working is a right of man. It's not only an obligation and should not be an obligation, but it's a right for a person to work. And if they are impeded to do that, they become psychotic. This is his discovery in psychiatry. This is very important.
So this means that when you meet a child, you see that child with plenty of joy and life. And then you ask, what would you do when you grow up? And they say, oh, I'll be an astronaut. Or, oh, I'll be an artist. I'll be a doctor. So they have ideals. They have a reason to live. And the reason for us to be here, to live, the very reason for our existence in this world is a kind of mission, like you could call it a spiritual mission.
For us we were created to accomplish something meaningful that only you or me, only each person could accomplish.
If you do not accomplish your own mission, nobody will do that in your place. Humanity has a spiritual finality. We're not here just to make money. We're not here just to have a family or to grow kids or to build an empire. We are here to really be happy, to really be fulfilled. And this happiness should be so big that we could look around and say, this life is worthy to be lived.
And we normally cannot say that. We could say that we failed. Humanity is a deception, the way it is now. But it should not be like this. It could be different. And this spiritual meaning for the work should be in every person's life. So a child, when they they become adolescent, they start being so like nervous and neurotic because they think oh my god now I will have to serve to be a slave of a multinational company, or of my family, or of a wife, or whatever, a slave, and not be a free person to accomplish my mission in the world.
Because if I do that, I'll starve.
Richard: How do you marry this, Cláudia, with the idea that whatever we're doing has a spiritual aspect? Because I
Cláudia: think many people may interpret this as saying,
Richard: well, now I need to find this special thing that's especially me.
Cláudia: And yes a special mission. Yeah, so according to capi's ideas he says that "work in itself is holy and sacred and healthy and energetic.
That if you sweep a floor with the intention to do something good, which is it could be necessary to improve your life, whatever, because the quality of the work is inside the person. The person gives the holiness or the health or the balance of the work, the value of the work. Whatever you do with a good intention is a good work. You can perform a role of a rabbi or a pope or a president or a doctor with a bad intention and do a lot of destruction."
And you can be a maid or you can be a clerk or you can be a street cleaner or whatever and with a good intention, with purity of actions, and be an enormous contributor for the the society. What
Richard: about the stress that comes from working in work that's for a company or a type of work that's very destructive? Yeah,
Cláudia: so as you said, the person says, "I don't do this because I don't like this that I'm doing.
This is not true. The person doesn't like working in itself, doesn't like action. So this is an excuse most of the time. I should find a better job or I'm not in the right place or in the right job. So if you do something good you will do everything good. And if you do something destructively you would do anything destructively. And this is very important." Now if you have um if you are born and in this sense we can see two also two streams.
If you are a capitalist or a financial banker, if you are inserted in a financial world and if you grow up with the mentality that you must be reach in order to be happy, automatically you will be unhealthy because of what you have to do. If you were born and you think that you need to be an employee, and really we need many times to be an employee, but if you need in order to pay your bills in the end of the month to work in a bank and be a cashier and just count money of other people, so this is something that could bring a lot of stress because this is a sick structure.
Instead of doing something for the the benefit of society you are being obliged forced to work for the exploitation of innocent children in the third world for example. And deep down you know that if you work for a military factory weapons this is something that can make you very unhappy and have stress-related symptoms.
So what is the result or what should we do with this situation? Should we quit our jobs and not pay the bills? No. So our proposal is to conscientize this inversion in society, that working is stressful. And there is also this other conscientization that work should be done and organized and laws of the socioeconomic system organized in order to benefit society and individuals as a whole.
What
Richard: about the burnout that comes from, allegedly comes from work?
Cláudia: This most of the time, the burnout syndrome is more seen, is more present in countries where they have this inverted philosophy, Jones, that they think work is stressful. So they don't work in a free way. They work with resistance, with the brakes on. So they think if they work, they will get tired, that working makes you sick, it's a sacrifice, it's a burden.
So this inversion is very present in the first world countries, where they think that if they don't work, they have a better pay from the government than if they worked. So they get worse and worse. So this is a matter of inverted philosophies of life and inverted habits. If
Richard: the society were encouraging true work in the degree that you're talking about it, what kind of work would we be doing?
Cláudia: Oh, my God. Jones, now you touched a very exciting subject because we have this kind of experimental or not any more experimental. They are real trilogical enterprises or cooperatives where people can perform a work for the good of society. And then Richard not only the diseases go away, not only the stress fades away, but you can see people getting enthusiastic and working long hours, much more than this average eight hours a day, in order to accomplish a common goal or even a personal goal.
If you are free to do what you always wanted to do, your dream to do something good, beautiful and truthful. Like if you want to join your expertise, as you are doing now with this podcast, you join, you merge your expertise with your ideals to help humanity, then you end up doing what this beautiful work that you are doing, for instance. Everybody should do that, should have the possibility to do this.
If one of the listeners, they have an ideal. They would like to use their Artistic capacities to make people healthier, to bring happier lives for children, or to increase the perception of executives in a company, or if you have a capacity to be an inventor and having the chance to build up machines, to spend less energy, to pollute less the rivers the air, or to have an organic farming skill or whatever good that you can do.
If you can put together making your living with your ideals then this is heaven in earth and we have companies working like this. I say to
Richard: my lawyers who are idealistic students, I have, I Imagine if you could dedicate every moment of your day to developing good laws, to cleaning up the bad laws, to really working to
Cláudia: make society better. Yes, disinverting laws.
And if you could do this and spend your time and make the living of your family doing this, this is heaven on earth. Imagine if we could do this. How society would be in 10 years. We would have theaters all around, free performances or very low cost. We shouldn't we shouldn't think about having just free things. The problem is not with money but the way we use money.
So low cost affordable artistic performances with high quality, we could have health assistance to every citizen in the world.
People could eat organic healthy food all around the world. They could have incredibly good education, go back to philosophy, to history in a truthful way, and all this general universal knowledge that people are deprived from because now you have to be very specific and very technical in what you do. And all the richness of knowledge in the world is left aside or you have to be deprived from this.
So schools should be universal oriented. People could have access to many, many areas so they could choose what is the best for them to do. And if you want to change your profession you would have a way to change your profession. If you would like to change a country, work in another for another people, or in another time of your life, then you could do that because the only impediments are this inverted laws, everybody working for their own egotism and nations working for their own egotism.
But all is unfortunately the people is always harmed. We see just small groups of individuals that are rich and powerful. These are the owners of the world and they do whatever they please. And unfortunately, what they want to do is not what pleases us. Do you ask me, is this a utopia? No, this is the true reality. And this true reality, we have the embryo of this already going on.
And people should know that this is possible and this is here and this is alive. And this has an address. True
Richard: reality here and now. You can read more about Trilogical Companies on my blog at somebodyelseshead.blogspot.com or email me rich at richjonesvoice.com. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
