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Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

vienna.earth

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Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#51

Post by tokai »

DennisP wrote: post #7
HideousKojima wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I have my suspicions but I'm still gonna ask the reason for the chiropractor hate.

Chiropractic is a pseudoscience without any provable benefits. At best its placebo, at worst you die from it. It's literally a big scam made by a serial snake oil salesman, that has embedded itself in our health systems.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#52

Post by creamynebula »

tiahura wrote: post #3

He 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.

Rather than it being greediness by a class of individuals, in my view, it is that capitalism rewards greediness, and sometimes it obligates you to be greedy when you are just an employee or selling a service. People are inserted in a system composed by many layers that incentivize and obligate greediness.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#53

Post by tiffanyg »

the_king wrote: post #42
1970-01-01 wrote: post #32

This 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…

Thus the last and always unuttered slogan of modernity: no lives matter.

Ha! 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

* 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"

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#54

Post by bloak »

bena wrote: post #49
farmeroy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% 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 de…

The other thing is that Josef K seems complicit in this process. At no point is he actively coerced into compliance. The system seems to not even care if he participates. I was constantly mentally screaming at the character, "Why the fuck are you doing this? You have a fucking choice." So yeah, I think there's a degree of absurdity and irony in the works as well. Less, "look at this hellish version of reality" and mo…

That's right! He explicitly says at one point: "denn es ist ja nur ein Verfahren, wenn ich es als solches anerkenne" (for it is only a trial if I recognise it as such). Shortly afterwards he walks out, but the following week he comes to the same place at the same time without even having been summoned. What happens to him then in the roof space is bizarre and somewhat dreamlike but it's the following chapter, with the scene in the "Rumpelkammer" (junk room), that presents Josef K as definitely slipping into madness because he apparently sees and hears things that the "Diener" (clerks) do not see and hear. Josef K seems to have a problem more with society or some inner demon than with any real oppressive bureaucracy.

Perhaps all great writers don't fully understand what they write: a muse dictates to them or they're channelling their subconscious. But I find it particularly easy to imagine Kafka as an extreme case of that phenomenon.

He had plenty of time to finish and publish "The Trial" but he couldn't do it. I wrote above "the following chapter" but the manuscript (which Kafka wanted to be destroyed rather than published) consists of separate unnumbered parts so we don't know for sure what order they should go in.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#55

Post by jprete »

angst_ridden wrote: post #34

My 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.

Since (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.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#56

Post by farmeroy »

bena wrote: post #49
farmeroy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% 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 de…

The other thing is that Josef K seems complicit in this process. At no point is he actively coerced into compliance. The system seems to not even care if he participates. I was constantly mentally screaming at the character, "Why the fuck are you doing this? You have a fucking choice." So yeah, I think there's a degree of absurdity and irony in the works as well. Less, "look at this hellish version of reality" and mo…

To me, it's not even that he is complicit, because it's almost entirely his own doing as he actively makes decisions that lead to worse outcomes, refuses to listen to anyone's advice, and generally digs the hole deeper at every opportunity

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#57

Post by FireBeyond »

woooooo wrote: post #28
analog31 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When each one accuses someone else of gouging us, assume that they're all gouging us.

Doctors are paid the same as software engineers for a job that is like 10x as hard. MBA hospital administrators have greed as their official main job responsibility.

> Doctors are paid the same as software engineers

The average physician salary in 2023 is $352K. I wouldn't say that.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#58

Post by paulnpace »

boringg wrote: post #45
keiferski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good question and I think a good illustration of what I was getting at RE: the problems with branding a writer with a single theme. Because I don't think The Metamorphosis could really be described as "kafkesque" in the bewildering bureaucratic sense, and yet it is probably one of his better-known works.

I mean the metamorphosis describes being broken down into nothing over the life of you career. Sounds a lot like bureaucratic sense of kafkesque though maybe i need to revisit this.

I recommend the Stanley Corngold translation.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#59

Post by The_Colonel »

farmeroy wrote: post #56
bena wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is that Josef K seems complicit in this process. At no point is he actively coerced into compliance. The system seems to not even care if he participates. I was constantly mentally screaming at the character, "Why the fuck are you doing this? You have a fucking choice." So yeah, I think there's a degree of absurdity and irony in the works as well. Less, "look at this hellish version of reality" and mo…

To me, it's not even that he is complicit, because it's almost entirely his own doing as he actively makes decisions that lead to worse outcomes, refuses to listen to anyone's advice, and generally digs the hole deeper at every opportunity

It makes sense if taken as a parable of life and humans seeking rules to live by, structure, meaning. It often doesn't make sense, is painful and confusing, but we still go with it.

Re: Franz Kafka was a healthcare claims administrator and insurance underwriter

#60

Post by keiferski »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #46
1970-01-01 wrote: post #32

This 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…

A good quote, but where did you see it?

It is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Law
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