Author Topic: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...  (Read 4940 times)

Logy

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #15 on: June 19, 2010, 12:54:26 PM »
I believe that whenever anyone, from any culture, accepts the position and high pay of a corporate figurehead, they have the resources at hand to make sure they are using language appropriate for the culture they are speaking to.  If not, then they don't have sensitivity, which may not make them a narcissist, but surely makes them unconcerned about others.

teartracks

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #16 on: June 19, 2010, 01:49:07 PM »

Hi mud,

I'd have to say that diagnosing a guy as a Narcissist based on his use of the term "small people" when English is his second language is a pretty thin reed.mud
 
I don't know Tony Hayward.  I agree that it goes against what has been the prevailing guideline in most discussions here, which has been don't label, and that diagnosing narcissism requires more than a cursory observation.  On a personal level, if that guideline applies to one, to be fair, it should apply to each individual.   I also agree with Sealynx that this discussion is more about a corporate entity or corporate entities. The buck has to stop somewhere.  If we focus on the entity rather than the source that promotes it (perhaps in the end, that source (the root crown) is the collective human heart),  we end up the proverbial squirrel in the road.  Road kill.  Or to give it a metaphorical 'greenie' spin  :P, take Kudzu vine, we have lots of it in the south.  It is an extremely aggressive vine that grows at a rate of almost a foot a day and quickly encompasses an ever-expanding area, killing everything as it goes.  Some claim it cannot be stopped. It can, but it often takes a lot of persistence.   Honestly, the way corrupt government systems operate (not just that of the USA) is so complicated, that few of us can hope to understand or make sense of it or know what to do as an individual to stop it.

tt    





 





« Last Edit: June 19, 2010, 02:33:34 PM by teartracks »

teartracks

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #17 on: June 19, 2010, 02:30:07 PM »
I believe that whenever anyone, from any culture, accepts the position and high pay of a corporate figurehead, they have the resources at hand to make sure they are using language appropriate for the culture they are speaking to.  If not, then they don't have sensitivity, which may not make them a narcissist, but surely makes them unconcerned about others.


I believe tht clumsy speak is clumsy speak and that we've all done it.  Tony Hayward had a microphone and TV cameras to assist in delivering his clumsy speak to a world wide audience.  With pay of 4 plus million, it's unlikely that offending the 'small people' was his goal.  I expect pleasing those pulling the strings behind the scenes was.  He has been or is being relieved of his duties as CEO.  Let's see how much SLICKER  this next CEO is.  Let's see how adept he is at avoiding clumsy speak and how effective it is in solving the real problem.  :P

tt







teartracks

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #18 on: June 19, 2010, 02:38:46 PM »


CB,

But does the term narcissism even have meaning if the pool of N's isnt small enough to contrast with "regular" people?

Then there's the problem of defining 'regular people', right?

tt



Hopalong

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #19 on: June 19, 2010, 04:21:13 PM »
One thing that occurred to me was that the media never paused to note, English is not his native language.
"Small people" may have been a terribly awkward choice that didn't quite carry the condescending intent he was blamed for.

Not to say I have instinctive sympathy for a mega-rich oil exec, it would be a challenge...but I think the demonization of him has been pretty lame, sound-byte driven.

Hayward, i don't know. Hell, I don't know whether CEOs like that even feel clearly that they can hang onto their humanity. He probably did need to throw himself under the bus to make the right noises of remorse for the corporation, and he was clearly on the defensive....

But even with all "the buck stops here" invective--I think the buck really stops with the citizens. We (generically) are the ones who don't want to think about our lifestyles. If we demanded a different world, consistently and with conviction, we'd have one. But we'd have to make significant changes and sacrifices. But "we" want it both ways.

Don't dirty my earth with your filthy oil! But sure, I'll take a plastic bag...too lazy to remember my cloth one. (I am guilty as anyone.)

xo
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Logy

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #20 on: June 19, 2010, 10:50:21 PM »
"He has been or is being relieved of his duties as CEO."

From what I understand, he is still CEO.  Just not in control of the Gulf disaster.  So, as politics and PR goes, BP is hoping this move will placate the U.S. masses while protecting Tony.  And right now, there is not one BP person assigned to be its spokesperson in the U.S., other than the Chairman.  Rather than appointing a corporate spokesperson, someone who we can look to who will let us know the facts, we must rely on either the media for their spin OR the BP ads which now feature the average Joe.  While he sounds believable, how much control does he have over the situation?  NONE! 

Narcissism, in my opinion, is rampant is "for profit" corporations.  The Gulf disaster goes further.  A failure of corporations and government.  A failure of society.   

teartracks

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #21 on: June 20, 2010, 03:08:11 AM »
Just so we're on the same page, it was Carl-Henric Svanberg, Swedish BP Chairman, not Tony Hayward CEO who apologized for speaking "clumsily" when he referred to the families and businesses hurt by the oil spill as "small people".  My version of clumsy speak  :roll:  :oops:.  Glad I qualified my comments early on by saying I was largely uninformed.

tt


« Last Edit: June 20, 2010, 05:27:26 AM by teartracks »

teartracks

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #22 on: June 20, 2010, 03:30:18 AM »


Logy,

I am just one person but when I decide to spend my money, I focus as much as I can on the businesses in my community who are locally owned.  Unfortunately, there are not many of those left.  Big corporation "strong arm" tactics with their suppliers has made it virtually impossible for a local business to sell for the same price.  As consumers we need to make a decision.  Are we willing to pay a little more money for the same product from a local business?  If we are not, then we need to be willing to suffer locally with lower wages working for the executives of big business.  And suffer the consequences when the narcissists make decisions.

It's the truth, Logy.   I see the same thing you describe.  Another of their strong arm tactics is a subtle, unrelenting, well thought out  (nothing incidental about it)  seductive mesmerization of their patrons to accept greed driven tactics without question.  I call it the 'box store mentality'.  

It really bothers me on a personal level to criticize, criticize, criticize when I have so little to offer for solutions.  I would like to patronize local businesses, but Main street has disappeared, they are a dying breed.  

 tt

 
« Last Edit: June 20, 2010, 04:43:01 AM by teartracks »

mudpuppy

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #23 on: June 20, 2010, 11:53:15 AM »
Quote
Surely there is some thousand page document that outlines step by step how to handle an oil spill of this magnitude.  Or a government licensing bureau that requires to have such a plan on file (I have tried to get a food license from the state and there are plenty of such plans required for an operation that simple!)  But, apparently not.

  CB,
  Each company has a large plan for spill containment when they drill. Additionally, by law, once a spill is declared of "national significance", which this one was in April or early May, the EPA and Coast Guard take control over containment operations with their own large scale plan. Obviously none of the entities, private or public, were prepared with the equipment to implement the plans.

  A couple of notes to lend a little perspective:
 1. This is without a doubt a disaster but only 30 years ago a considerably larger and pretty similar spill occurred in an offshore Mexico oil field and the actual damage was failry limited. Here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10310435.stm and here http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/14/the_legacy_of_ixtoc?hidecomments=yes are a couple of links indicating the harm to wildlife is pretty shortlived.
  2. Basin wide, in the Gulf of Mexico it is estimated that natural petroleum seeps emit between 80,000 and 200,000 tons every year. If this well isn't stopped until mid August it will have emitted about 400,000 tons.
  3. We are understandably reminded of the costs of oil in a situation like this, but we seldom consider the benefits. Petroleum has undoubtedly lifted more people out of poverty and saved more lives than virtually any other substance known. On top of that, for the critter lovers, it probably prevented the extinction of the whales by making whale oil an unprofitable fuel for illumination and most other applications.

mud

CB123

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #24 on: June 20, 2010, 01:53:56 PM »
Thanks, Mud...good perspective.

Actually, this is the most encouraging report I've seen on the oil spill:

http://thebubble.msn.com/#/video/?id=9ec7554a-0030-4132-8dd5-346c5b95bf6a

CB

PS...its a joke.  Enjoy the laugh.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2010, 02:59:11 PM by CB123 »
When they are older and telling their own children about their grandmother, they will be able to say that she stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way -- and it surely has not -- she adjusted her sails.  Elizabeth Edwards 2010

Hopalong

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #25 on: June 20, 2010, 02:43:03 PM »
Have to say, I'm not looking for rosier predictions. I think the only thing that can save it for our children and their granchildren is if we are all willing to feel the pain of pure stark shock and grief and massive accountability right to the level of taking it very personally, as our personal consumption and our personal commitments to action and advocacy and radical change, fast, are the only things that could really turn it around in the long term. Soft-pedaling what we've done just means we'll keep doing it, imo.

Last weekend I went to witness MTR (mountaintop removal mining) in West Virginia with a small group. Looked first hand at where my electricity comes from. Met a brave man, Larry Gibson, who lives with a gun in every room of his cabin, and his bedroom door is on wheels it's so heavy, for protection... He would not sell. His family's mountain land has shrunk to 50 acres, from the top of which he has been inviting people to view the moonscape that's been created around him for the last 20 years. Recently, it's gotten so there's enough interest that he built a picnic shelter in his meadow and brought in 2 portable toilets. His family cemetery used to be a small sweet knoll with beautiful mountains rising on each side. Now, half of it's gone, the ancient headstones of his kin tossed down with the valley fill...old Appalachian bones ground through by the dozers. (They just put a road though it one day. Some other relative had signed papers with an X.) The cemetery, what's left of it, now sticks up in between two truncated, amputated, permanently flattened, chopped-off ridges that will forever be gone. Like 500 other Appalachian mountains so far. Because there's a lucrative form of purer coal in seams near the tops, and the coal companies have figured out how to blast off the entire top of a mountain with 9 men and advanced equipment, rather than the hundred or so that would've worked it beneath the surface. So, their jobs have shrunk, their streams are full of acid runoff, and people in the area who've never even set foot in a mine are being diagnosed with black lung because the blasts send so much debris and dust through the air. And the beautiful mountaintops and ecosystems that took millenia to form are...GONE. Permanently. To fuel a couple years of our energy consumption.

They're only uneducated Appalachian folks, though, so they have a hard time being heard. The Gulf is acute and visible and we watch it spew on TV...MTR is chronic, ongoing, and hidden from us as much as possible. Clean coal? A foul lie.

MTR sites are hidden behind the pretty mountains right along the interstate, so tourists driving through won't even have to think about it. His home, Kayford Mountain (center of the largest MTR site in W.Va.) is 30 minutes from Charleston.

I'm ashamed, and agonized, and angry, and grieving, and my life must change. The only way I can feel okay is to keep telling myself, stay turned in the direction that me witnessing, me speaking, me changing, is the right thing to do. Instead of feeling powerless or waiting for corporations or even fellow citizens to have an epiphany, I've just decided to accept that I've had my own. Science helps, religion helps. All that's in between, all the minimizing and rationalizing, will be things there's time to discuss after the refugees from coastal cities have been safely settled. They'll be hungry and thirsty.

I brought home a pocket full of coal. I'm going to use slivers of it passed around in baskets during a lay sermon I'm doing in July. Kind of a coal communion. I hope everyone will tape little slivers to their light switches. Touch them each time. Think of the miners. Think of Larry and his blasted home and history, and his tears.

Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Sealynx

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #26 on: June 20, 2010, 03:34:52 PM »
The sad thing is that there are clean energy alternatives. Look at www.ballard.com . We keep poisoning the world because it is all about existing jobs and who buys up patents to clean energy alternatives i.e. oil companies. Until our representatives work to invite in clean energy companies, we will believe that we have to work in coal mines and on oil rigs.

People here are still chanting drill baby drill because even as big oil kills our culture and the old bumper sticker "Oil Feeds My Family" could easily be replaced by "Oil, Try and Eat it!", they can't see any alternatives for themselves. 

With oil and coal comes low self-esteem, diminished interest in education and the feeling that people can do nothing else. These energy forms are evil to the core. They kill not only wildlife and people, but the human spirit.

Hopalong

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #27 on: June 20, 2010, 03:49:12 PM »
Hi CB,
I know, light bulbs are my voice, my way to say, I know this choice has impact. Butterfly-in-forest impact, maybe, but I need to do it because I can no longer pretend. It cuts me in two when I pretend it doesn't matter.

The big changes to save it all? HAS to be regulation. Fierce, bold, aggressive take-charge, hell with politics, regulation.

So...that means political action and advocacy, my least favorite thing. But I do think regulation is what has to happen.

Meanwhile, as a personal compass, we have choices not only about our personal consumption/assumptions...but also about the message we carry in the way we live our lives.

I'm pathetically inconsistent, drive a guzzler (all I could afford at the time), feel like a first-world queen compared to those who really struggle.

All of it. But in spite of that, I want to just turn in the right direction in more of my actions and keep finding meaning in that. Find happiness in having a lighter footprint and emitting less carbon.

It's like a victory one may never live to see. People walked in Birmingham and stood before dogs and fire hoses--for justice, not because they thought they'd be welcomed and agreed with. Just came a time when history said, now or never. How long?

I think we're there about the environment. I don't have all the answers but just knowing or believing that, gives me a kind of clarity I hadn't felt before I went to Kayford Mountain.

love,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

seastorm

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #28 on: June 21, 2010, 12:58:05 AM »
I saw Tony on the TV last night. He was going on vacation for a few days. He looked unfazed and was exuding well being and happiness.  Arguing about his diagnosis is maybe not the issue here. I live in Canada and I think he is a bottom feeding, scum sucking, pot licking dickhead who doesnt have the brain power to realize the enormity of a catastrophe that he has a great deal of responsibliity for.  The fishermen are what the heart of America really is. They are the heart of any country. They are probably the guys who get used as canon fodder in the big wars that are initiated by narcissists. They have huge knowledge and ingenuity and would not stand around doing nothing. They are independent starters. A dying breed. 

This is such a sad, sad thing that is happening.

I am encouraged because at least we are talking about leadership and narcissism. This is a start.

Sea storm

Sealynx

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Re: Narcissists climb the corporate ladder...
« Reply #29 on: June 21, 2010, 11:03:36 AM »

I think it is wrong to compare this spill to the one in Mexico, why? Because our coastline is not one of pretty beaches, it is made up of marshy estuaries that literally hold the spawning areas for much of the marine life  in the gulf. This is not just about dirty fish and beaches, this is a huge ECOLOGICAL disaster the results of which we have yet to fully know. We also don't know what the effects of millions, perhaps billions of gallons of dispersant will be on fish and the people who eat them since the government is not requiring that marine life be tested for Corexit.

Things like cancer and liver failure are hard to relate back to chemicals, even if tests show your body is full of a suspect chemical. It takes long term studies to determine that and you probably won't have that long to live.  As for the oil rising from the floor, I wonder who came up with those numbers and how much has been added to that by poorly capped wells or failed drilling efforts. After all, we now know that oil companies use numbers for their own very selfish purposes.

The people of Louisiana have traded their way of life for oil and now they are forced to work for the company that destroyed it and pray they even get  a paycheck on time. Louisiana has a long toxic history with chemicals and oil. If any of you saw the CNN series Toxic America it started in a small Louisiana town with a huge cancer rate whose water has long been poisoned by the chemical plant next door.

That isn't all. Use google earth to zoom in on the marsh near Grand Isle and you will see the entire southern part of our state is criss-crossed with straight lines. Those lines are numerous canals dredged to the gulf by big oil so they would have a quicker way to reach their rigs. No ecological studies were required. The result was salt water intrusion that killed much of the vegetation holding that fragile land together. We don't have just one ecosystem in Louisiana, we have three, salt water marshes, brackish water (a mix) and fresh. Each has its own animals and vegetation.  Enormous coastal erosion was caused by those canals that makes us much more prone hurricane surges..

To make matters worse, the gulf is heating up and it looks like we are in for an early and extended tropical season. I predict that little oil condom they've slapped on their big mistake will be ripped off within the next month as everyone flees boats and rigs for higher ground. What will be left of their those secondary rigs is anyone's guess.

As for those wonderful contingency plans they had for a spill like this...I'm still waiting to see one of those Walruses they are working so hard to save.