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Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter
- jbarrow 3y agoThis explains a lot; I’ve been thinking for years (ever since being diagnosed with a chronic health condition) about writing an essay likening the American insurance system to Kafka’s _The Trial_. The bureaucracy is absolutely soul-crushing, and has left me in tears on multiple occasions. While nearly no individual person you deal with is at fault or malicious, the whole experience ends up being something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoThe Metamorphosis always read (to me) as the dread felt by a society as it unwittingly becomes increasingly bureaucratic and atomized.
- hutzlibu 3y agoYeah, it is probably helpful to be aware, that quite often the person you are complaining to, knows the flaws of the system way better than you, but is equally powerless to change anything about it. But sometimes they can do something that helps you, so it often helps to not treat them like they are personally responsible for everything, just because they work there.
- version_five 3y agoYes, it's important to remember that Kafka didn't invent "Kafkaesque" - it's literally just an artistic description of bureaucracy. So when people talk about Kafkaesque interactions with government or large companies, that adjective is generally redundant.
- tiahura 3y agoHe was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. This was before doctors became incurably greedy - so a bit early for first party health insurance.
- HideousKojima 3y ago>He was a work comp claim administrator - in the US, they are some of the worst people on the planet. Whoah now, don't talk about my dad like that! In all seriousness though, my dad said that all the places he worked at over the years generally accepted over 99% of the claims they received. My dad did develop a visceral hatred for chiropractors over the course of his career though.
- DennisP 3y agoI have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoChiropractors learned their trade from a ghost Science research fraudsters could learn a lesson from them in how to get away with it
- gnu8 3y agoSome Chiropractors and their patients are under the impression that actual diseases and injuries can be cured by performing the manual adjustments of the body, which leads to people dying of untreated cancer, or orthopedic injuries being aggravated instead of treated properly. Not to say that there aren’t good Chiropractors who recognize their limits, but they all tend to get painted with the same brush.
- analog31 3y agoFor my neighbor when I was growing up, it was diabetes.
- LanceH 3y agoIn a discussion around worker's comp claims it would be about the chiropractor's who make all their money from worker's comp claims and accident settlements. Every person who walks in that door will need unending treatment at the chiropractor. They walk hand in hand with the ambulance chasing lawyers. For some people this is their only experience with a lawyer and chiropractor might be when someone walks in, "slips" in their store, and they get sued. The chiropractor is one method the lawyer uses to run up the total. It's always a back pain that can never be fully diagnosed or treated. Over the years, the chiropractic field as a whole has backed off from curing everything to being split between something in the neighborhood of a massage including joint mobility (which is fine), and the fraud.
- biesnecker 3y agoI was fully expecting this to be an article showing how Kafka-esque the American health insurance system is.
- keiferski 3y agoI somewhat dislike the line of Kafka commentary that focuses on The Trial and The Castle and then associates their bureaucratic themes with his own life experience working various office jobs. One, because his writing is about much more than this theme (in which kafkesque is too frequently confused/mixed with Orwellian) but more because it pushes away his short stories and aphorisms, which I think are much, much better than his longer works – and more mystical and mysterious in nature. I'd take A Hunger Artist, In the Penal Colony, or some of the aphorisms from the Zürau book over his more famous works any day. It's unfortunate that writers tend to be known for a single "brand" which causes off-brand works to be pushed to the side. This is all a long way of saying that if you associate Kafka entirely with insurance administrators and oppressive bureaucracies and don't find this compelling, check out his shorter works.
- farmeroy 3y ago100% agree. I think it does so much disservice to his work. But I also don't think The Trial is primarily about bureaucratic themes either. To me it is much more about K not being able to understand the society he inhabits and the rules which govern it, and that can be extended to bureaucracy, but also obviously religion and morality, and just a blanket search for meaning. I also have read both the original German der Process and the English translation, and I feel that, even though German is my second language, the original has so much more terror and humor than the English version, which largely reads like a bureaucratic text itself. Understanding that Kafka would laugh out loud while reading his texts to his friend, I like to imagine his works to be a kind of interwar Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I love to imagine Josef K as Larry David.
- staamen 3y agoI had not made the connection myself yet but having just finished the german version (the only one I read), I now can't unsee Josef K as Larry David, it fits perfectly. I was very surprised, given it's reputation, how funny the book was. In the book it is also pointed out more than once that Josef K's trial is not held in the "regular" court. Which to me indicates that the convoluted nature of the trial doesn't necessarily reflect on all bureaucracies, even if it's tempting to interpret it like that.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoNot even Kafka got to write full time. Even the famous artists had to work a job and yet we still see posts every day about how greedy the art industries are
- 1970-01-01 3y agoThis was worth the click A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to it through an open doorway, but the doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says it is possible "but not now". The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man he only accepts them "so that you do not think you have left anything undone". The man does not attempt to murder or hurt the doorkeeper to gain entry to the law, but waits at the doorway until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why, even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years he has been there. The doorkeeper answers, "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it"
- the_king 3y agoThus the last and always unuttered slogan of modernity: no lives matter.
- tiffanyg 3y agoHa! Dark, comparatively, I like it. Of course, this is also wrong. Just as "X lives matter"* is wrong. I doubt there's any pithy slogan that quite captures the reality of "what matters"**. Best I can do, personally, is point you towards the type of person who might be able to ... coalesce the vapor ... in such a way as to possibly produce a momentarily renewed sense of enlightenment***: https://youtu.be/tl4VD8uvgec https://youtu.be/tl4VD8uvgec * For any given value of X ** That may seem kind of absurd and stupid, but, I'm serious - there is complexity to the topic in part simply because a given human (and likely beyond) can generate / experience / believe that some "X matters", and we ARE a (miniscule, in multiple ways) part of the universe *** Left "timestamp" off so setting / framework of scene is more comprehensible, skip to ~33s for "the meat"
- barbariangrunge 3y agoA good quote, but where did you see it?
- angst_ridden 3y agoMy English teachers always taught Kafka largely on the depressing negativity of his writing. Yet he’d hold salons to read his work to friends, and they’d all roar with laughter (Kafka too). Absurdism can also be cathartic humor.
- jprete 3y agoSince (the public image of) Kafka seems incredibly depressing today, I’m very curious to learn more about what they found funny and what works were read.
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- elon_moist 3y agoI didn't know this Vienna website. I scrolled through the author's profile, and it seems very cool - here's another blog from him about nurses - https://vienna.earth/plate/russell/nurse-shaddowing https://vienna.earth/plate/russell/nurse-shaddowing
- pjungwir 3y agoWallace Stevens, perhaps America's greatest poet, also had a successful career working in insurance for decades. [1] is a nice short biography. It sounds like he was a committed & involved writer already before that though, and even he took some years off when he started the job and again after his daughter was born. So wherever you are, don't lose hope, but persist. [1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens
- mvncleaninst 3y agoMetamorphosis was always particularly upsetting to read. Someone loses their ability to produce economic value and is portrayed as a literal insect It reminds me of a cousin of mine who was struggling through some drugs and mental issues, hearing immediate family make a bunch of shitty remarks about him Kafka is one of those authors that I try not to read because I'd prefer to have a rosier picture of human nature