For many months I have received the same paper from HSSC to review and review again. I am not the only reviewer. I do not know who the paper’s author is, only that the paper is written about the Chinese economy and the effect of oriental philosophy in developing data infrastructure, and digital finance. The author does not know who I am, other than that I identify myself as Western when encountering linguistic differences. There is very little interaction with the organization. It is the nature of remote work, as I know it, it takes place in a vacuum.

When I am in an institutional context my primary assumption is that I have no unique value to the institution so I approach my role with reserve. I bring capital to the relationship, signified by the term “psycap”.

Psycap is a form of capital that the corporation needs to mine from the depths of the individual worker’s mind to produce the innovation required in today’s world. financial capital makes exchange possible but productivity makes things happen and that is sourced in the psychological capital controlled by the workers.

I decide how much of my capital to invest in my role working within an organization. Sometimes I offer my capital but the organization refuses to acknowledge or accept it because the organization does not acknowledge distinctions among the masses, but individual distinction is at the root of innovation and that is the psycap that institutions seek to mine among the workforce. However, when the institutions are not seeking to mine individuality, they are busy denying it exists.

I saw things in the paper that I would change that I did not comment about since I did not perceive that to be my role, but the paper kept coming back and so eventually I said that the term “psychological ownership” is a problem. The term implies an intentional delusion that corporate culture seeks to nurture among the workforce to encourage the workforce to use their creative abilities. The phrase draws attention to the fact that the workforce does not possess ownership of its work product, which belongs to the corporate shareholders. It is fair for the corporation to own the property rights over the work product in exchange for a secure wage but how it is handled matters. Encouraging intentional delusions of ownership is a reason to distrust corporate management.

What is wanted is for the workers to identify with the team. Positive teamwork creates a synergy that multiplies the team members’ creativity and productivity. It’s the opposite of working in a vacuum.

After I made my point, the term used in the paper was changed to “psycap”. Psycap represents what the worker owns because it is a quality of the worker’s psychological state of mind.

Stepping into the New World Order

The phrase “psychological ownership” combines two established words into a new meaning. It is a product of an old paradigm that is evolving into a new paradigm. “Psycap” is a completely new word representing a newly introduced concept into the relationship between employee and employer. It also recognizes a new concept of ownership and is an indicator of an emerging new social paradigm.

Here is another indicator of the emerging new order

In 2014, the United States Supreme Court voiced its position in no uncertain terms. In Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the Supreme Court stated that “Modern corporate law does not require for profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else”. source also see

Until I read the above, I believed a publicly traded corporation was legally required to prioritize financial profits. That was the case before 2014, now legal priorities are blending into a new paradigm.

At the time the paper’s language changed, I didn’t believe that the author understood the significance of the change but was going along to get the paper approved. At that point, the paper was poorly written, giving the impression that it was written by someone whose first language is not English. The writing felt as if it was only of secondary importance to the paper, an introduction to the important part, the statistical analysis.

The hypothesis that the statistics seek to prove is stated in general language and so it has to be accurate in general language or else proving it in mathematical language means nothing.

First and foremost the paper needed structural reorganization with thought put into transitions. The meaning of the technical terms needed to be explained in the beginning so that an unsophisticated reader could follow the concept. At times it felt like there were two authors as parts were well-written and other parts were not and the well-written parts might have implemented AI as they were structurally correct but lacking in impact.

Once the structural organization and writing improved, I could tune into the idea advanced by the paper about the influence of oriental philosophy on developing data infrastructure and digital finance. The paper mentioned environmental concerns and the word “heterarchy” appeared, but the ideas were scattered and not recognizable as a consistent theme. There were parts where I identified something left unsaid but I did not comment on the empty spaces until the structure and writing improved. The ideas left out were represented by only a couple of sentences, like dangling threads.

Eventually, I commented on the unassigned categories and obtuse sentences.

The next time I reviewed the paper a strong climate change theme had emerged. I was now hearing the human author behind the paper. Climate finance was introduced but not articulated, like tiptoeing around the tulips, it was interspersed within a general financial discussion.

However, the missing thoughts had been organized in the previous version as categories without assignments. The categories were not yet part of the discussion but it was easy to fill in the blanks. I stepped out of my shoes and assigned Elon Musk’s investment in building EV batteries in China to the negative direct foreign investment category because the most toxic aspect of EV batteries occurs during production and the most significant toxic impact will be in China.

Now the paper was interesting. The empty spaces were revealed to be mutually consistent. and elements that had been scattered around were re-emerging to question the continuous and rapid growth model aggressively pursued by humanity since the seventies. I felt the author’s true voice but it was still obscured by interspersing the climate finance subject with the general financing content and I suggested that climate finance be given a unique focus.

Data infrastructure is built by categories.

There is a common thread between the alternate movements of the past and the emerging paradigm of the present. The paper examines how oriental philosophy influences modern technology development. In the mid-century, there were alternate environmentally-conscious movements predicated on an inner transformation of man that would counter, through a change in fundamental values, the continuous and rapid growth paradigm, that allows no space for reflecting upon where humanity has been and where it is going.

I pushed on what appeared to be small and perhaps insignificant oddities in the paper and exposed a purpose, previously hidden from view. Why was the author of the paper holding back, I wondered, Was it for personal reasons or cultural reasons? The idea is great and right for the emerging world that is being structured by data technology.

I am the observer and the observed

In a mutual process, I had stepped out of the role of the reviewer to engage in the ways that the paper develops, but I am conscious of my position as an unpaid employee of a publicly-owned company that comes across as a non-profit organization with shareholders. Non-profit organizations have been very instrumental in advancing the wealth divide by making it acceptable to not pay workers. As sectors where wealth is concentrated merge, the lines of separation dissolve and their functions and terms become interchangeable as they combine into one unified sector identifiable as the hegemony. Money saved on free labor can be used to purchase land, and real estate while access to property ownership is being lost for the working classes.

The Introduction of a reconsideration of scale resonates with the alternate movement that existed in the fifties and sixties which motivated my parents to establish Andersen Design. The alternate environmental approach was that continuous unlimited industrial growth is not sustainable on a planetary level, Lewis Mumford was a major influence in the movement which was drowned out by the rapid growth paradigm in subsequent decades.

The Third Way

On Facebook, I am in an interchange with a MAGA cultist who keeps calling me a Marxist but I doubt that he has any idea about what Marx wrote about, why Marx continues to be influential today, or what Marxism is. MAGA calling anyone a Marxist is just boogeyman terminology.

So I posted this to help him understand who he is calling a Marxist:

This is part of an Andersen Design brand identification project that I have been developing.

The MAGA cultist didn’t understand and proclaimed that I was raised in a Marxist home, revealing how little he understands about Marx, who articulated systemic insight into social-economic classes but Marx’s conclusions about social organization, left out one class, the petite bourgeoisie.

I never read much Marx because I started with the Communist Manifesto where Marx and Engles rage against the petite bourgeoisie in a similar way that MAGA rages about immigrants. The immigrants are a threat to MAGA as the petite bourgeoise was a threat to Marx and his oligarchy counterparts.

I quoted from Wikipedia’s explanation of the petite bourgeoisie.

The petite bourgeoisie is economically distinct from the proletariat and the Lumpenproletariat social-class strata who rely entirely on the sale of their labour-power for survival. It is also distinct from the capitalist class haute bourgeoisie (‘high’ bourgeoisie), defined by owning the means of production and thus deriving most of their wealth from buying the labour-power of the proletariat and Lumpenproletariat to work the means of production. Although members of the petite bourgeoisie can buy the labour of others, they typically work alongside their employees, unlike the haute bourgeoisie. Examples can include shopkeepers, artisans and other smaller-scale entrepreneurs. Petite bourgeoisie Wikipedia.

My family was not Marxist, they are the petite bourgeoisie, who are excluded equally by Marx’s philosophy and the contemporary oligarchy state that governs Maine and is about to attempt to take total control of the USA and the world under the leadership of a self-appointed king, Elon Musk,

Wikipedia goes on to say this”

Historically, Karl Marx predicted that the petite bourgeoisie was to lose in the course of economic development.

The [petty bourgeoise] sink[s] gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production.

Upon reading that it suddenly clicked why so many large size- institutions discriminate against a small company like Andersen Design, with Wikipedia counted among the large-scale organizations that have weird attitudes toward my family business. Is it any wonder when one reads the entirely negative description of the petite bourgeoise that Wikipedia has published, all sourced outside of the petite bourgeoise class and including no perspective from within it?

A Very Short Outsider’s Take on History

Drawing by Weston Neil Andersen, midcentury

My family business was created with diminutive capital, which was once called pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, and succeeded using an ancient method of production using specialized skills such as designing original ceramic surfaces which is a skill applicable in new technologies used in the space industry.

Continued in Part Two