The separation of personal and non personal time is evident Part 1

Note: Before starting, I want to define what is personal and non-personal. Personal is something that is more "personal" (it does not mean it has non-personal elements, but most of the stuff are indeed personal). The same is true for the non-personal (it may include personal stuff). How much personal or non-personal it is, I leave that up to your own perception with how the rest of the context I am implying with that word on it.

Personal and non personal time has been split in to half. It is very evident and almost an innate ability of everyone, that it is very hard for most individuals to change their strategy of how they operate their daily life. This is the effect of the transformation of people in a state that I do not find it as ideal. For one, as long we have that split, people will try to "balance" stuff in terms of "time" instead in "wholeness". Instead of integrating stuff, operations are split up in their own divisions based on time. No wonder methods of software development life cycle, such as agile or extreme programming, are more effective than waterfall methods for most projects due to their nature of integrating all stuff at once. Although whether extreme programming practice is done correctly or not, even an attempt to it may be more productive than other methods. That is why I assure you that integrating the personal and non personal parts in a working environment are the most essential a person should do. Most of the time, the individual has to pull the strings correctly to make that certain happen. However, for most people, that capability is not attainable due to the culture organization is more focused on the non-personal elements.

Just think about it. We live in a working environment that at least 10 hours of our daily life is spent there (including commute and lunch time). For most of us, we sleep 8 hours per day. Those 8 hours I refer to as "idle" state of the individual, where no personal and non-personal events are experienced. There are only 24 hours per day. That in result will give you 24-10-8 = 6 hours of free time. You will need at least 2 more hours doing non-personal stuff, such as doing shower, and eating your dinner. For some it is more, for some it is less time spent on those, but on average, let us say you spend 2 hours on those. That will leave you for 4 hours of free time to do whatever you want. Given that the individual already spent most of the time in an environment where almost all of the tasks where non-personal, he will definitely want to spend his own time on some personal stuff. Television, surfing the web, videos, and movies provide entertainment full of non-personal stuff. Have you seen movies or shows that have non-personal stuff talk "on the table"?

For most of those shows, and for the most amount most shows show, they avoid non-personal stuff or offer little content on non-personal stuff matters. After all, this is an entertainment business after all. Its goal is to make money with "personal-stuff", and boy how much personal stuff they have, so much that it does not have non-personal stuff at all (do you see how the split is right now?). The best example is kid animated movies. Those movies provide lessons about the right things to do to fulfil "your personal self" which only stands good as an "ideal", because you cannot implement that in the workforce. The producers of those kid animated movies are more in an ironic tragedy: Little do they know what they show to millions of people in the world through cinemas will never happen in adult life whose working environment is not to fulfil "your personal self", but to fulfil the non-personal stuff, to fulfil the needs of clients or how their mind operates (even when that mind that operates through these clients may not be the correct way!). Do these producers really know or are they just fooling with themselves? It is really disgusting these movies exist just for the people to place it as only a part of their figment of their imagination (as this will never be attainable in reality). Instead, they should ban these animation movies (I am not kidding) and replace them with animations that show the reality of this world instead of just making them "escape it". But you may say, we do not give them a solution to them on how to solve the problem. Then "make" them create the solutions is my response to that issue. Create more animation movies for kids that improves their critical thinking. Add some animation movies that depict real life with no twists in it and without an ending to it. Let the kid imagine the ending himself with its critical thinking. Instead of giving them the answer sheet with all the answers inside, give the content in a way that they will really integrate it in their individuality instead of having blind faith on it. Because blind faith, believe it or not, is not supported with a lot of confidence within the individual itself. It is more of a "trust" because "others" said it instead of a "belief" (where I invented it, I am attached to it).

However, why entertainment does not depict real life or non-personal stuff? That is because entertainment itself is absorbed to survive itself through money. It is not like the old days where art was really an art due to people making canvas paintings out of their own individuality, with their own expression, where they could starve to death and make no profit at all. Today, all the works in the entertainment industry are not for self-fulfilling the individual as it did in the past. It is all based on money. And since people are willing to pull out their pockets to get the most "personal" out of it due to the thirst the working environment made them go through each day, they have no option to create content that is all "personal" (in order to not go out of business due to a rival company that create great "personal" stuff). If you create a work of entertainment that includes a lot of non-personal stuff, guess what it will happen? A good example is: How much people watch autobiographies or documentaries compared to action packed movies? How much will people watch a movie that depicts more to real life without humour, plot twists, or for something unexpected? They will say it is boring! They will give poor reviews of it! People are just watching stuff only to have fun, not to see dry works of entertainment! You can see there is a trend where people will be on the offensive side for works that include non-personal stuff. And that arguably is comprehensible, given how most people are getting sick of doing non-personal stuff on the working environment.

However, do you really see this as a solution, to split up the non-personal and personal in such a way? Right now, it is almost impossible for people to avoid content that is personal stuff in televisions and movies because they really need it. Otherwise, they will be full blown like steam of engines, out of how much restricted they were in the working environment to "play out their role" which composes of "ingredients" of non-personal objectivity. This is especially true for people who are more susceptible on that environment. Some people on the working environment will convert the non-personal stuff "look" like personal stuff by doing personal activities with them. You see, many people misguide personal as "talking with people", "making jokes", and "feeling empathetically for the other". However, for one, you will definitely see those 4 symptoms in my article "People are Emotionally Weak Part 1" (Blog Activity April 2014). And secondly, those acts will be usually out of the source of money which is a non-personal objectivity (see When things go out of haywire in companies within Blog Activity March 2014). Those acts are just acts, you will never know if they are personal or non personal, because "it is easy to act", if you know how to act. In addition, most people as far I experienced, are good actors (maybe many people watch too much movies these days?). To tell if a person involves in personal or non personal matters is by looking at the direction of all those actions source instead of just looking each action as a separate component. In the words in law and order, it is called as motive. Since most people look each action as a separate action, an individual can fool themselves they do personal stuff, when in fact reality, they do not. Most people cannot think intuitively how things are connected, they only see things only on how the external world operates and get annoyed if they see things beyond that. Those people are the most susceptible to be fooled by themselves or to misinterpret the actions of others, as they cannot connect all the pieces together of an individual to see his real motives.

The reason this split is bad is there is too much specialization. This environment will create people to be very specialized on something, but they will not be able to connect the dots with others because they will know little of other segments of life. For the whole system or the company itself, this is profitable. But for the individual itself, it is the worst. They will never have an enriching life in this universe where he can explore his individuality through more dimensions. Think about it. If the individual had a working environment which was balanced in non-personal and personal matters, then when they come back to their house, they will be "energetic" to learn non-personal stuff as much as personal stuff. They will not see dry subjects or topics boring or complicated, but interesting, curious, and fascinated. It is normal for the average individual (you the reader I guess), that this direction or perception of such subjects will rarely happen with the working environment most of us live today. But for the sake of it, let us assume, that this ideal world existed. If it existed, our free time could spend on non-personal stuff that is beyond the scope of our current job environment. Thus, over our life time, we will be not only specialized on our current job and be happy with our individuality which we can easily express it, but have some general knowledge of other subjects as well which we can easily communicate with others. If each individual has some general knowledge of each profession, our jobs would be easier, our demands would be easier to handle. That is because we will not expect when we buy a service or product to be perfect or treat the individual as a supernatural being that must help us no matter what. Instead, we will have real expectations due to our general knowledge of it. In return, our own jobs will be easier, as most of the clients we will work with will have a general knowledge of our own specialization. However, this will not happen in our current environment, as most of the people spend their free time on personal matters. So expect for clients to have exaggerated requirements, not only due to their lack of knowledge, but also to the symptoms of our environment being more non-personal.

Most educational system start with generalization instead of specialization. This is the correct way for an individual to attain that general knowledge it requires. However, it is useless, if the individual does not grow on it. One, if the individual does not exercise it after school, he or she will not be up to date of the general knowledge in the world we live in and two, the individual will forget them over time if he is always focused on his specialization skills through his work force. In other words, the general education learned in school will become useless if it is not practised after graduation. Schools now are becoming obsolete or more focused on giving classes that are specialized to the workforce. This is natural. After all, the general education in our current environment becomes useless to these people as they cannot practice it after all due to the split of the non-personal and personal environment we encounter every day. What matters , unfortunately, with the current unemployment rate and hard economic times is to be the most non-personal way to market yourself and to be specialized by having a set of "specific skills". Now anybody can learn for free those "specific skills" on-line (and they are in great demand) just so they can get that non-personal job they want (most working organizational cultures do not care if the employee really likes what the company does, but whether they can use their skills to really implement it). In the same way I would ban those animation courses that do not depict real life, I would have banned those general education classes schools offer. Because in reality, they do not give a real taste of how the world is. They do not give time for the young adult to breathe and critically think whether the real world is correct or not correct. They learn the real world when it is too late (after graduation). At that time, you most have to live alone all by yourself. You will not have the "space" to object or critically think whether you work is the "correct" or the "wrong" thing to do. This is why I hate the method educational systems and animation kid movies incorporate. They are too soft! Giving an answer sheet of what an ideal world and just hoping one day people will be more responsible to themselves (many forget their own individuality) and others is only blind faith. They have to find it out of themselves, through their own reason and commitment, on the problems that we face in society everyday, which the young adult should be aware of it through its full transparency.

We explained already that people cannot live without some personal content. However, is it correct to have that split of the personal and non-personal in our world environment? And the answer is definitely no. They must be integrated. Why? First of all, people fight to balance their time. It seems that people in the end will want for the work norm to be 4-5 hours instead of 8 hours, in the same form a kid goes to school or an individual works a part time job. Is that solution? No. It still separates things. It will not solve the issue of specialization. People will be more demanding in their other half time for the personal stuff because they already did a lot of non-personal stuff. Secondly, this will be at the expense of the work productivity of the world. Even if this was the ideal solution, it will not be accepted unless it gave a lot of positive effects. In addition, there may be more symptoms of that split besides specialization, which will ensue. One of them is the hypocrisy of being two people you definitely not are. In half of the time, you will act more non-personal. In the other half of the time, you will act personal. Both do not fully depict your true personality of what you are involved when you separate things that way. I will have to think and discuss this and other issues more on another topic if I have the time.

Integrating the personal and non personal in both our working environment and free time is the ideal solution. You may think this is crazy and it is very hard to imagine how it is going to be, but it is the only way for our civilization to advance in a more happy and harmonious world where it can be more independent itself. Just like in the old times where slavery was a normal norm in the real world, now it is perceived as the most corrupted and immoral thing in the world. Do not believe and always question the authority of this world, as whether what they think now as immoral or moral may be a moral or immoral on the future. Whether you believe it or not, we still have challenges with ourselves, the same as the times when people had the issue with slavery. It is critical to solve them. Once we solve this issue, remember that there will always be more upcoming new issues and challenges in order to make our life better. The direction our whole current society is going right now is wrong. Due to the symptoms they are not aware of from the causes of our current environment, they are generalizing and blaming the problems at the wrong source. I am pretty sure the next revolution of the world will be in this one (but not in a way people expect it to be due to their exaggerated generalizations).