It's unconscionable: at my Washington State Executive Agency, we're supposed to identify our unconscious bias.  Curiously, the un-leaders who promulgate this policy poppycock are lacking self-awareness.  The trifecta of Gov. Inslee, Washington State Agency directors, and their H.R. minions who foist unconscious bias workshops on trapped employees are suffering from debilitating cognitive distortions.  They need their heads examined.

Without intervention from psychoanalysts, it's tricky for the conscious mind to know the unconscious mind.  Even Freud couldn't get it entirely right, and modern-day neuroscientists also struggle to understand the unconscious mind's mysteries.

The modern view of the adaptive unconscious is that most information processing resides outside consciousness for reasons of efficiency.  We are wired to recognize sudden changes in stimuli, but not what is common.  For example, we usually don't notice the hum of our fridge, but we do notice when our doorbell rudely interrupts us.

Inslee's misdirected intrusion into our minds' inner sanctums serves only to perpetuate the sense of victimhood of supposedly marginalized state employees.  Mollycoddling the imagined victims of "oppression" (a word in their policies) overlooks that they were hired.  Perhaps they were given preferential treatment over other applicants.

At work, I consigned a series of re-education emails from the oppressive trifecta to my "pending" folder for fear they'd suck me into the H.R. abyss.  When I finally reached a moment of Zen, I dared to read them, only to confirm my concerns:  the cretins concocting these divisive policies barely know what's going on in their conscious minds, let alone their unconscious.  In fact, there's plentiful research indicating that "leaders" lack self-awareness.

Perhaps it's the Peter Principle at work, but they're often cloistered in their fetid fiefdoms.  Surrounded by sycophants, they often overestimate their skills and self-knowledge, while relying on their obsolete experience rather than seeking disconfirming evidence.  As we've been reminded from Biden's policy fiascos, experience and competence are different things.

Troublingly, few people dare provide candid feedback to these unaware un-leaders for fear of reprisal.  Their loyal H.R. servants have long memories.  Lacking creativity, it's what they do — memorize negative stuff for retribution purposes.

Imagine the unconscious bandwagon bias:  In 2018, Inslee directed state agencies to adopt DIE policies.  Dutifully, agency directors regurgitated his contorted sentiments before a captured audience with emotionally laden calls to end systemic racism.  Because it rolls downhill, specific agency H.R. directors were soon concocting policies detailing efforts to identify unconscious bias.  In one of the emails I ignored for as long as possible, I finally discovered that "employees must complete training on diversity, inclusion, cultural humility, oppression and equity." 

Enforcing cultural humility is a bit paternalistic, and oppression within our workplace is farfetched — under existing policies, it wouldn't be tolerated, unless sanctioned on behalf of minorities by H.R., that is.  

But it gets worse: apparently, to be less white is to be less oppressive, and at my state agency, white people have to attest to their privilege.  Huh?  We're a bunch of work martyrs who sacrifice vacations in order to get ahead.  We've been generous in trying to help marginalized groups narrow the achievement and other gaps.  Given their jealousy of mostly benign whites, I'm not as sanguine about their cultural humility should they ever become a ruling class now that the illegal alien floodgates are open.

You see, in Washington State executive agencies (and replicated throughout the country as woke capitalism festers), we have a bunch of unaware leaders-cum-morons trying to solve an intractable conundrum that has eluded brilliant minds for millennia: how the unconscious mind relays thoughts and feelings to our conscious mind. 

We'd need philosophers, scientists, and well-trained shrinks to reveal our unconscious processes and how they interact with our conscious minds, not a bunch of overpaid H.R. diversity coordinators with low I.Q.s.  Even that probably won't work...

While today's neuroscientists may be able to partially explain the materialistic mechanics of some of our brain's functions, identifying the root cause of our feelings, experiences, and emotions is elusive.  What stimulates emotions like disappointment?  Where does love come from?  Turns out that interpersonal attraction develops away from the conscious mind.  Why do certain colors and smells affect us in certain ways?  These are perplexing questions that are related to the "hard problem of consciousness" and best explored outside the creepy crypts where cultural cretins crawl.

Instead, to promote workplace engagement, focus on what we can identify, such as conscious bias.  Turns out that the Washington State revisionist trifecta of Inslee, agency directors, and state H.R. managers have that in abundance.  Their unfounded disdain of productive white employees is palpable and only serves to encourage minorities to wallow in victimhood.  One wonders: if they are so oppressed, then how would one describe the more qualified applicants who were shunned because they didn't fit the favored affirmative action profile? 

The effete elitists in Washington State are committing employment prejudice under the guise of social justice.  Their DEI agenda has morphed into Diversity, Equity, and Ex-clusion — of whites and sometimes Asians.  Rather than exude self-awareness by questioning prevailing orthodoxy, they flounder in an echo chamber of "wokeness."  Their neurotransmitters are misfiring.  Their synapses are clogged as they ping around their homogeneous safe zone.

They need to rejigger their cognitive pathways on the way to self-awareness.  Actually, they need their heads examined, and the shrink who does it may never be the same — there're a lot of dark progressive instincts being repressed in there.

Image: Andy Witchger via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

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