Well, the thing is, that in this case I think they mean that now I was granted the right to pay my own bills because they still have may name spelled wrong and they thing that I'm this other person with the name spelled the other way. This is causing me all kinds of grief and I've spent hours and hours trying to gain access to the Internet. Now I have it, with the wrong name, but it bugs me to have that wrong name. And I can't change my user name, so if I were to send people an e-mail from that account everyone would point out that my name is spelled wrong... I have to actually physically go to one of their offices, undoubtedly with i.d. to prove that I am who I say I am with the correct spelling. What a mess. As if I didn't have anything else to do with my time.
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Anyway, you'll be glad to hear I did well in physical therapy today, but now well enough to be released. I'm supposed to get a new script from my neurologist. We're working on torso and arms, mostly one day and legs and balance more the next, although I do the treadmill 10 minutes every day. Today at the end she wanted me to do an exercise where I was supposed to be kneeling, but I can't kneel well, because my right knee has a killer spot where my rheumatoid arthritis has set up shop big time, so I can't even kneel on a very soft pillow on that knee without sharp pangs. But she quickly came up with an alternate exercise for the same purpose.The other big news is that I spent about $500 on supplements and over the counter medicines that I take. The supplements I get at Vitamin Shoppe and I try to stock up during their semi-annual store brand sale. It really saves me money and helps me know how to budget better than just having to wait for some ad hoc sale and not knowing how much you'll end out spending. This way I pretty much know and it's a good deal. It's a lot of money, but the ones I take really do help and I know that when I've run out of certain ones I can really tell, so they help me be functional.
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This next text is:Schneider, Benjamin. (1975). Organizational climates: an essay. Personnel Psychology, 4, 447-479.
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The first quote is in the first section after the introduction, "The Nature and Function of Climate Perceptions."
"Much climate research has been accomplished on the basis of some infrequently specified assumptions. These assumptions may be stated as follows: (1) humans attempt to apprehend order in their environment and to create order through thought; (2) humans apprehend and/or attempt to create order in their environment so they can effectively adapt their behavior to their work environment. Broadly speaking, the first assumption is associated with the Gestalt school of psychology while the second assumption is representatative of the kinds of questions associated with the school of Functionalism." (p. 447)
I'm not going to address the two schools of thought yet, because that's addressed more later in the article, so I'm sure I'll pick another text to comment on in that regard. So I'll just limit my comments to the first half of the text here, but I wanted to include the whole paragraph so you'd see where we're going here.
Let's say that I'm the human plopped in the new context needing to apprehend. Coming to the Vienna mission I most definitely did try to do #1, but I often found it incredibly difficult. At some point I just sort of quit trying and just sort of stuck to what I knew and what I was supposed to do. The things was that, in my opinion, to outsiders, things could look chaotic, but to those who understand what's going on it's not chaotic. That was a security trait in my opinion. Since I was not completely trusted (at certain times more than others maybe though), I might have been treated somewhat like an outsider.
I think I did this also, but maybe somewhat less than the first one, because I got stuck on the first one. It was difficult for me to to the second one with the first one weas so messed up. My attempts to create order in my workplace were pretty minor, I think, and only involved my work space.
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The next section: "Gestalt Psychology"
"The major contribution of Gestalt psychology was its emphasis on the organization of perceptions; the whole bing something special and not definable by its simple examination or some of the parts..." (p. 448)
In folk parlance, this is otherwise defined as "the whole is greater than the parts."
It is no wonder that I might have bent more towards the first way to apprehend the Vienna mission, because I tend to prefer taking on major issues with the big picture first, and then moving in towards the details. So, I suppose that might look a bit like taking a Gestalt take. The only thing, is that, for me, the Gestalt is not the end all, but I just prefer starting with the big picture and then once I feel reasonably confident with that then I'll start filling in the details, like painting broad brush first and then details after.
As far as the my experience with the Vienna mission was concerned, I think there were a few times while I was with them that I felt like I sort of understood them and could fill in enough details to start to feel a little bit more comfortable with them, although that doesn't mean I ever agreed with the things I've discussed here that I disagreed with them about. These were times, though, that they gave me interesting work to do, so those issues sort of got put on the back burner. But those assignments were always temporary and I'd go back to my regular work and nothing would change. Maybe they thought I'd change or something, I don't know. Maybe they didn't know what to make of me. So, if I generally like to try to start with the big picture and then fill in the details, in the Vienna mission, I had a hard time figuring out the big picture enough to fill in the details.
I should explain something here. That sounds a little funny and you might be thinking, "Then how can you write this?!" The thing is, that the stuff I'm writing is not the kind of information that would help me actually survive in the organization. That's the kind of information I needed. The kind of information I'm writing about here in this blog is more the kind of stuff that I really disagree with - because that's what stuck with me and why I had so much trouble submitting and why I didn't want to be open and vulnerable. (I know my limitations and I'm not that stupid.) So I needed a specific kind of details that would help me function in that environment and I didn't find it; maybe it didn't exist. Or maybe the details I found worked just great for that purpose for other people but with my conscious and thinking processes they didn't work that way.
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The author has gone on in some detail to discuss apprehending meaningfulness and behaving meaningfulness as the two major parts of Gestalt psychology and ends with this:"...[W]e may conclude that people (a) apprehend order in their work worlds based on perceived and inferred cues, and (b) behave in ways that fit the order they apprehend." (p. 451)
I've discussed (a) quite a bit, but I might add that I think that there might have been perhaps more social engineered cues in the Vienna mission because of the whole security system, which was a lot more than they like to let on because it's even a protection to have people not know and, besides, they're masters of deception anyway, so it'll be a cinch to deny it.
I think (b) is mostly relevant during the socialization process. I think that this could also be true if someone moves to a new position in the mission as well. Missionaries internalize the values and norms and they learn from each other as they go along as well. More seasoned missionaries give tips and mentor newer missionaries. I might have been the only one to have been so contrary, I don't know. I never did anything wrong, though. It's just that I didn't break down and completely submit. I insisted on keeping my free will. I think that's the only thing I did wrong, basically. So that's why I say I only give that kind of submission to God. Nevertheless,
I guess I didn't behave according to their order, if that's a part of their order. But that's not a part of God's order, so I'm not sorry.
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The next section is "Functionalism" so we'll discuss that next time.
