Evil cannot hear the voice of inner truth because it is
deafened by the noise of its manufactured conflicts. This inner deafness of evil is a function of its fundamental lack of reality-—it is a distortion of
nature, a parallel, artificial construction with no inherent substance. (from The Tao of Hogwarts)
Monday, April 23, 2007
Reach Out and Slap Someone
Cherry blossom season in Brooklyn's Prospect Park
Tyranny survives on excess. When there is so much decadence as to overflow consciousness and the sense of right action, there tends to be stasis in response. Who can possibly keep up with this stream of corruption, this endless line of neocon criminals, without a scorecard and a very strong stomach? How many more neocon Congressmen are facing indictment or investigation now? How many more are already in jail or been forced out of their cozy offices to sit on the sidelines, covered in lucre? How much longer can we assume that the poor dumb brushcutter and the clueless quailshooter and the vapidly smiling sycophant general were mere ignorant bureaucrats amidst all this?
Indeed, who can possibly keep up with it all? How can we possibly fend off the dreary resignation of apathy amid this storm of corruption? The President and his cronies all say they know nothing, did nothing, and that we can't prove anything against them. Who could possibly sort through it all to make a case that couldn't be riddled with the man-made holes of reasonable doubt?
So John Q's natural reaction is to fold up the newspaper with a shudder and turn to his one certainty in life, the in-tray or the next meeting or the round of tasks facing him amid his Monday mental haze. Or else he might simply turn the paper over and check the ball scores and the latest sports rumors, about which a safe and sure opinion may be held. That Barry Bonds, at 740: does he even deserve to sniff Hank Aaron's jockstrap, let alone break his records? The Commissioner must do something, put dark asterisks next to all those 'roided up HRs. Oh, but Bonds has lawyers, too, just like the Bushies—he could use threats and the media in his favor, just like they do in Washington...ugh, doesn't anything make simple sense anymore?
This excess, the profusion of folly and deceit, which distorts vision and frustrates every attempt at redress through its mere overwhelming and ever-expanding insanity, is a daily corporate reality for many of us. Our corporate speech is laden with symbols of excess: we brain-storm a situation for which a brain-shower would be amply sufficient (and, in fact, more appropriate). We try to hit the proverbial home-run with our presentation, when our audience would actually be most comfortable with a mere single. We "get all over" a problem that really calls for more of a gentle brush.
Even our warm and fuzzy, touch-someone metaphors are riven with excess. Consider one of the more currently popular phrases, "reach out." I had the following conversation with an office manager last year, as I was starting a new consulting gig.
ME: Do you think they might get a laptop to me by the end of the week? I'm supposed to be on a conference call Saturday that will require a VPN hookup.
MGR: Don't worry, I think you'll be fine. I've reached out to our IT Manager, and cc'd my boss and his VP on the email. Now he knows that if the order's not done by Friday, it's going over his head. Sometimes you just have to scare people, y'know?
Wow, now that's "reaching out", huh? With a set of brass knuckles, that is.
Fare thee well, American bard (click graphic to view)
Shock and awe.
What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?
Three angels up above the street, Each one playing a horn, Dressed in green robes with wings that stick out, They've been there since Christmas morn. The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash, Then a lady in a bright orange dress, One U-Haul trailer, a truck with no wheels, The Tenth Avenue bus going west. The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around, A man with a badge skips by, Three fellas crawlin' on their way back to work, Nobody stops to ask why. The bakery truck stops outside of that fence Where the angels stand high on their poles, The driver peeks out, trying to find one face In this concrete world full of souls. The angels play on their horns all day, The whole earth in progression seems to pass by. But does anyone hear the music they play, Does anyone even try?
Can anyone guess the author of that poem? I found it in an anthology called The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by James Hillman, Michael Meade, and my personal favorite among living poets, Robert Bly.
This is National Poetry Month, and not everyone in the bard shop is excited. I think that Bernstein's point is well taken: when you confine Christmas to one day a year, it's pretty easy to forget the true message of the fellow from Nazareth, whether you consider him to have been a very wise man or merely a god. When you celebrate poetry four weeks out of the year, the other 48 can become plastic and stagnant.
Here, we're always celebrating poetry, because I think our culture and our politics need poetry more than ever before. As I said last month in our piece on Frost, we need poets in corporate cubicles, on American Idol, in the dull, prosaic and hygienic halls of Washington, on Madison Avenue, and on Wall Street.
The poet quoted above seems to think so, too. He sees living souls in this corporate, concrete world. He hears the songs of the poets, "playing on their horns all day." But he worries that we've become deaf to their music, to their living message of truth and beauty.
Another question we might add to the last one the poet asks ("does anyone hear the music they play / does anyone even try?"), is something we've brought up in our discussion of the iPod culture. I see the people wired to their little drives every day on the subway; often I can hear the tinny fuzz of sound coming from their heads. Yet I wonder: how much are they listening to the songs, and how much are they just tuning out of what's around them?
Poetry—real poetry, that is, not the Hallmark-card pabulum of our age—has always been meant to awaken us to the living present; to reveal to one another the souls still alive in the concrete jungle. It is never about blinding the eye or deadening the senses. If we are to have a true awakening in this era of genocide and global war and crushing poverty and medieval disparities of economy and environmental destruction, then we had better rediscover the poetry that still lives, repressed and caked over with conditioning, within us, and celebrate it—every day and month of the year.
Oh, the poet quoted above is a fellow named Bob Dylan. Pretty good musician, too.
click the graphic to listen to an audio file of today's feature articles (m4a audio file, 12MB)
From the United For Peace and Justice National Steering Committee (Daily rEvolution is a supporting member group of UFPJ):
UFPJ Statement on Impeachment
George Bush, Dick Cheney and other top administration officials have committed impeachable offenses.
These include leading the country into war under false pretenses, ordering violations of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N Charter and International law; violating the civil liberties of U.S. people in an unconstitutional manner; lying to the people of the U.S. and the world; and other high crimes and misdemeanors.
There is growing awareness of these facts among the U.S. people. From across the country there are demands that the Congress act on the principle that this is a government of laws, not of individuals. There is a grassroots movement demanding that Bush and Cheney and others be impeached.
Since its formation, UFPJ’s central mission has been working to end the war in Iraq and other wars of which George Bush is Commander in Chief. We welcome the growing movement to impeach him and others in his administration who have aided and abetted his crimes.
Some of our member groups and friends are already active in Impeach07, an umbrella forum in the impeachment movement. Others may see ways to incorporate impeachment efforts into their antiwar agendas, and we encourage them to do so.
"More Americans agree with the assessment that 'today it's really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.' Today, 73% feel that way, up from 65% five years ago." (from a recent survey cited in Mother Jones magazine)
About Darfur: Is this a hopeless situation, merely because the U.S. can't do its shock-and-awe thing on Sudan or spare 100 (let alone 100,000) troops? Save Darfur is asking Bush to pull out "Plan B," and that's one viable strategy. They're also organizing Global Days for Darfur, a series of protests and demonstrations later this month across the country, to awaken the government and media about the need for international action.
Another potential strategy on easing the humanitarian crisis is to use some economic strong-arm tactics that the U.S. government has used before, but to far less salubrious ends. I was reminded of this possibility by watching this video of John Perkins, the "economic hit man," which was sent to me by our good friends at World Wide Renaissance. If those tactics can be used to help fatten the bank accounts of corporate executives and shareholders, why can't they be used to help the innocent and ease injustice? Just a thought.
In any event, neither resignation nor apathy are acceptable responses when it comes to genocide. Use the links above to get involved in a worldwide No to group slaughter and institutional madness, and if you can afford it, give the folks who are organizing these things some money.
And in case you're wondering how bad it really is in Darfur, the geeks at Google Earth have some stuff for you to see.
______________________
What follows is a brief excerpt from the book I'm working on, which is to be a guide for people working in corporate America on how to hold onto one's individual dignity in a time where the pallid corporate values of economic disparity, ad-driven superficiality, and a narrow, punitive group morality are ascendant. Keep in mind, this is first-draft material, so if you have suggestions or criticism, by all means post them to the comments; I'll be very grateful.
The natural society is built upon the individual, and the relationships between individuals. So it is also natural that the individual's interests should lead, and the group should follow. No corporate entity should determine what the individual chooses, how he lives, or what he thinks or feels.
It is the same with national or regional affiliation. Patriotism must be toward the planet we live on and share with all the creatures and things of Nature; we have no other. After and subsidiary to that patriotism comes our love of country, state, region, community, or what have you. There can be no other practical ordering of patriotism, because to put a national in-group's interests ahead of the planet's would be to endanger the lives of our children and theirs.
This is a platform that we will all have to agree upon, if we are to build a viable future for our kids, and give them a chance at a safe and sustainable world in which to live and create their own new generation of youth. How it might be realized or what forms it might take in the fields of action and innovation are as unpredictable as they are diverse. This is fine, because when we allow the individual some primacy in the culture, and put love of planet ahead of love of country, then people will naturally find ways of creating and connecting that will deliver the solutions we need for our world. We would find that the mail room guy has as much (if not more) to offer as the CEO; that there is invention in the heart of the local car mechanic or the construction worker that could help deliver us from the dangers of global warming or poverty.
But the corporate model of society prevents all of this beneficial movement: its strain of elitism tells us that only a few elect people—the "alphas" of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World—can conceive, plan, or recognize the innovations and creations that will best move society forward. It tells us that the vast majority of people are useful only in the role of mechanical parts that move in a forced synchrony to implement the corporate vision for the enrichment and comfort of the few—the executives and stockholders who control the purse strings and hold the power over the organization, which in turn controls the government.
The problem with this corporate model and the elitism that fuels it is that it is impractical—that is to say, it fails, time and again. Indeed, it has been failing for thousands of years, virtually as long as the time for which we have historical records. And it isn't hard to figure out why. Elitism has failed, and continues to fail, because it excludes a vast array of potential resources. In fact, it would be a conservative estimate to say that 90% of the potential for growth and innovation in our culture is suppressed—structurally removed from the creativity-development cycle of social progress—by the very corporate model that claims to have been designed for the good of all.
Imagine if you decided one day that your body would best be served if you appointed one or two of its parts—say the right arm and left leg—to hold supreme power over all the other components of your body. These two parts would make decisions about what the others should do, how much, and how little, to serve what the primary two saw as the good of the whole. This is in fact what we tend to do in our culture, but we usually appoint the brain—specifically the forebrain intellect and left brain verbal mind—to perform the role of the CEO of the psyche. The other organs and functions of the body—heart, lungs, digestive tract, muscles, even the spine—are given supporting roles and clear, limited directives on what they are to do and how much.
The corporate model fails not because it asks people to do too much, but because it allows them to do so little.
The Lesson of 500 Posts
Yesterday, we briefly noted that we'd made it to 500 posts here. The truth is that there are plenty more than that, but when we moved the site over to Blogger in 2005, we could only manually convert, so a lot of the archives from the old home site got left behind.
That said, there is a lesson of sorts in this steady flow of content. Blogging, I have found, is the surest cure for writer's block. I recommend that every writer take up a blog, even if you don't mean to work on it seriously or regularly. I started mine just as a place to keep notes for essays and books, and it evolved by itself to whatever it is now.
One of the personal lessons for me of keeping this blog going these past two and a half years has been about the true source of any creative endeavor. It doesn't matter if the work produced is often of a rather undistinguished artistic quality or questionable social utility (that certainly is true here). What matters is that something gets done at all. A famous novelist whose name I can't recall once said that everyone wants to have written a novel, but very, very few want to actually go through the process of writing one.
I rarely know what is going to go on tomorrow's DR post, because I'm usually too busy during the day with earning my bread in corporate America to think much about it. But I have learned to have a certain confidence, based on recurrent experience, in the invisible, guiding hands that prompt me at just the right time to produce whatever is right for the moment and my admittedly mediocre ability. Briefly put, nothing has to be forced.
One of the things I teach in my counseling practice and my books is that there are unseen cosmic energies that, if allowed, can guide, teach, and heal better than any purely human or mechanical energy can. In the I Ching, where I learned a great deal of this, they are called "helpers." Think of quantum energy with a specific purpose or sub-atomic spirit guides that know what they're doing, usually better than you do. It's not that I believe in them (or anything else, in fact); it's that I have experienced their presence, time and again.
That said, I don't go in for the "Footprints" stuff: helpers are our equals, not our gods. Whenever we make the effort to follow, they will lead; where we put in our share of the work of change, they will guide us in transformation. But if you're expecting to be carried around through life by a spirit, a god, a lover, or a spouse, then I think you're dealing in one of the most destructive delusions of our culture. So I would encourage you to call for help from those invisible energies of progress, protection, and transformation. But be sure that your footprints, too, are left there in the sand.
Yesterday, we had a little fun with the notion of a Blogger's Code of Conduct. Experience has taught me that the code of conduct is built into the very act of creating and presenting content for the public. A blogger is not a journalist, not a scholar, not an accepted member of any social in-group; bloggers are more like voices in the wilderness, feeding on the freedom and the frequent anonymity of their profession and their position in society.
That carries with it, if anything, even more responsibility than the stiff ethical codes of a profession like journalism or broadcasting; because the blogger can't just ask himself, "is what I am doing legal and within the limits defined for me in the code of conduct?" No: the blogger must go a little deeper than that and ask "am I truly serving the natural audience for my message? and am I following the voice of a living truth, or trapping my feet (not to mention my readers) in the concrete of a fixed belief?"
Here, I have definitely found that invisible helping energies make all the difference, and have the capacity to lead us out of the dangerous swamp of belief, whenever we stray into its murky edges. In a darkness such as we have experienced these past six years or so, it is relatively easy to be infected with the demons--thus, we see the shit-slinging and pissing contests that so define our mainstream media (more than they do the blogosphere, by the way).
Coulter, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Robertson, Savage, and Imus are all within the grip of the mainstream broadcast and publishing media. Their feast of hatred is made possible by media giants in cable TV and radio, or the Rupert Murdoch publishing machine. None of these unfortunate people could blog their way out of a wet paper bag. That is because they are showmen first--of the most odious, P.T. Barnum variety--actors second, and demagogues third. Journalists? Please, don't make me puke.
Much of the reason why the work of these people is as dead in its quality as it is shrill in its voice is that they imagine that they are the source of truth and insight. This, of course, is a self-limiting falsehood which actually kills truth faster than a George Bush press conference.
Creativity of any stripe or quality is a three-way relationship between the author of the content, his or her audience, and those unseen presences that I spoke of earlier. The absence of any of these will cause the quality of the content to suffer, often irremediably.
So if you are a writer (and even if you're not), I would invite you to try an experiment for yourself, to test these ideas in the crucible of your own experience. Try writing a blog post or an essay or a short story or a book "by yourself"--with no thought of your audience or the quantum source of the energy that makes creativity possible. Then do it again another time, while you consciously call for help from the invisible world and ask that you be brought into an inner connection with the natural audience for your material. Compare those two experiences, and see which you would prefer as an ongoing approach to the creative process. Let me know what you find out.
And once again, thanks as always to our extraordinary readers, without whom this blog would be a pale and solipsistic endeavor.
Atlas and St. Patrick's, Rockefeller Center, New York (click to enlarge)
Before we get to another rollicking—er, excuse me, staid and polite edition of Geek Wednesday, a couple of notes about what's to come this week.
I'll have some suggestions on what can be done about Darfur, and how. Contrary to what my esteemed co-blogger suggested yesterday, I think there is a solution that does not involve Shock and Awe II or the redeployment of our depleted armed forces. We'll have more on that tomorrow.
April is National Poetry Month, for those of you who don't pay attention to such things. We'll be observing it the rest of this month, as we have since we began this blog. More on that Friday.
And as I've just turned 50, perhaps it is appropriate that we have today reached 500 posts at Daily rEvolution. Now, if someone would just drop $5,000 in our tip jar, I'd really be on a 5-roll! More on that 500 milestone tomorrow.
Geek Wednesday
"The miscreants who need their meds aren't going to sign the code, let alone adhere to it."—Jeff Jarvis, professor of journalism at CUNY, reacting to Tim O'Reilly's call for a Blogger Code of Conduct
I think I've made myself fairly clear about where I stand with regard to corporate codes of conduct. But now comes along one of the principal voices of all geekdom, Mr. Web 2.0 himself, the head of the company that produces those excellent geek reference tomes with the critters on the covers—and he's calling for a Blogger's Code of Conduct.
So, does that make it different? Is this supposed to be aimed at preventing folks from writing death threats into comments? If so, then I agree with Jeff Jarvis: there's already laws against making death threats against people, and the nuts who would do it won't check to see whether my blog is carrying the Good Blogkeeping seal of approval before they spout their hatred. Now if it's meant to keep Coulter from broadcasting death-wishes upon New York Times op-ed writers, well then, we may have something to talk about.
Just kidding; I'm against it, soup to nuts. Bloggers who can't keep their own house in order will lose readers, and that's the most effective punishment there is for the likes of us. I've been called everything from a Nazi to a terrorist-lover to a Chicken Little (by a member of the "global warming is a left-wing conspiracy hoax" club). Everyone is allowed their rant until they cross a line that you don't have to be a psychotherapist to recognize. Then they get blocked. But the question is: do I have to sign into some club and carry a badge on my home page to do what I already do, what I already know is right? Mr. O'Reilly, keep publishing those great geek books; but leave us alone with the etiquette club.
100 Million iPods, and how many of them still work? As Donny Rumsfeld would say, it's only a number. But still, an ambivalence-inducing number at that.
The Good: These tiny little music-playing drives dragged Apple right out of the grave, at a time when Michael Dell, Bill Gates, and others had already started gleefully throwing in the dirt. The financial resurrection that the iPod brought to Apple made OS X, the Intel Macs, iLife, and the other great Apple computer products of the past six years possible. As for the utility and pleasure afforded by the iPods, given their lousy record for endurance, I will leave that to each individual to decide for him and her self. For all I know, maybe it's worth paying two or three hundred for a little machine that starts to crap out after a year, for the daily pleasure it brings.
The Bad: The environmental toll that these little monsters are taking has already been discussed here. Disposable diapers may be a necessary evil in our times (I bought them); disposable electronics with hard drives and lithium ion batts are a different story. Also of concern is an issue we've brought up again and again here, the odious alliance with the oppressive labor machine, Nike. Apple needs to dissolve that offensive marriage, and then come up with a truly progressive and planet-friendly plan for the proper handling of iWaste.
Overall, the iPod has been another example of our culture's absorption with the superficial. As I've said before, we have generally forgotten how to make music; but we sure know how to consume it. This consumptiveness has become reflected in the throwaway culture of image and ignorance that surrounds the iPod. I remember once posting a comment (and a very polite one, Mr. O'Reilly) to an Apple blog at the time of the Nike announcement, noting that an alliance with a company responsible for turning 10 year old Vietnamese kids into slaves was not the best move that Apple could have made. One of the responders to the comment (it might have been the author of the post) blandly reminded me that injustice and evil are everywhere, they're a part of human nature, but that doesn't mean you stop doing business. And that was considered a fit answer to my challenge. It's not our problem, we're Americans—we will buy what we want when we want it, no matter who suffers as a result.
Spotlight Rules, Google Drools: But while we're Apple-mashing, let's be nice (in the spirit of the Blogging Code of Conduct): Spotlight is still the desktop search par excellence in the computing world. This week, Google came out with a Mac version of its Desktop Search program. I tried it, and allowed it to fully index my MacBook's drive. After a restart to ensure that the G-Desktop was up and running, I compared it with Spotlight, Mac OS X's onboard desktop search utility. The G-Desktop window opened nicely (with two taps of the Command/Apple key), but the beach balls started spinning once I'd put in a search term. Mind you, a browser window opened almost immediately to show me web results for my inquiry, but Google had some trouble looking over my hard drive. So while it was looking, I opened Spotlight and entered the same term. Instant gratification, organized neatly by file type and category.
Google will eventually get it right, as they always do with their products. But for right now, Spotlight is still secure in its throne as the desktop search king (don't even mention the topic, you Vista users).
Webby Awards Update: The finalists for the Webby Awards have been announced; you can view them here; and you can also vote for the "People's Voice" winners here. The awards show will be in June.
Which brings us to our site of the week, Amy Goodman's marvelous Democracy Now!. Go check out the current issue, and see whether you find anything about Imus or Anna Nicole's love child or the pictures in the love-astronaut's car (all of these are actual headline stories in the MSM today). Nope: Amy Goodman likes to focus on Iraq, Darfur, Somalia, and the ongoing struggle against corporate corruption (don't worry, the Imus story is in there, too, but a ways down). By the way, if you're in the Boston area next week, you might want to see Goodman and Zinn together.
Finally today, a graphic depicting the love triangle among MS, Apple, and Linux, from this site. Make of it what you will (click it for an enlarged view).
Next week, we should have an update on our experiment with MEPIS Linux, which seems very promising indeed; along with a review of Apple's dotmac service, which I am revisiting (they offer a 60 day free trial). You can have a look at my early efforts with iWeb and dot-Mac: I made a version of my I Ching site with Apple's toys.
And if there's anything you'd like to see reviewed or discussed at Geek Wednesday, just post a comment. But remember, be polite.
iWaste and MyCorp: The Corporate Cult of Anti-Sustainability
We have a new banner quote up, and I offered a clue on it in Tuesday's post. The only other hint I'll add is that it's from a book published 40 years ago. Amazing, isn't it? Doesn't it seem like it might have been something from a recent bio-piece on Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld? We'll have more about it on Friday.
Amnesty International is having a membership drive this month. I'm a member, and I encourage anyone who longs for some greater measure of peace and justice on this planet to join now. Why now? Here's AI's explanation, from Larry Cox, the Exec. Director of AIUSA:
It's astonishing how dramatically and quickly things have changed. Our America - once a beacon to the world and the standard bearer for human rights - is now a major perpetrator of human rights abuses.
Take a moment to read that sentence again - and let it sink in.
Ten years ago, if you had told me what was down the road, I would have shrugged in disbelief. But today, Amnesty needs committed human rights defenders like you more than ever.
Next, a follow up to our Geek Wednesday piece yesterday, in which I bashed Apple again over the iPod, which I think is in the same class of dysfunctionality as MS Windows. In an article in Mother Jones, Giles Slade details the cult of disposability that has grown around the iPod and its product ilk, and the threat this poses to our planet.
Yes, the secret is out. After 13 months of heavy use, the lithium-ion battery of the iPod can lose more than half of its functionality. You'll find that even though you recharge more often, your iPod can fade out by the end of a long day. Simply put, even though an iPod can cost you $350, these digital music players are designed to be disposable.
Perhaps even more simply put, we are a culture that has forgotten how to make music; we only know how to consume it. In the piece that follows, I've tried to indicate some of the forces behind that mistake, so that we can the more easily and quickly clear them out of ourselves. _____________________
MyCorp: Corporate America and the Pandering of Ambivalence
Healing is, by definition, transformation: something new, fresh, and regenerative grows to replace death, malignant division, and corruption. What is true of bodily cells is also true of institutions like government and corporations.
Immediately after 9/11, corporate America (like the government) had a golden opportunity to make some internal changes that would naturally become manifest in a global transformation of its values and behavior. These changes could have moved our society forward in a quantum leap of growth and well-being for all. In other words, they could have helped us all to heal, by beginning the work of healing themselves.
But instead, the cry went out—from politicians, corporate leaders, and an answering chorus of media pundits—for a return to "normalcy." By this was meant, "let's all hit the switch of our treadmill and get back to the round of accumulation and denial." The politicians brazenly ordered us to go shopping; the investors cried for an ideologically contrived bull market; the corporate kingpins and the media cheerleaders urged us to get back to work, just as we had done before.
It was, in short, a return to the same old grind. No changes were made to the structure of the workday; the sardine commute in big cities; the herd mentality of indentured servitude and consumption (conspicuous or otherwise); or the general cult of conformity. The only clear changes visible were an increased militarization of the corporate workplace, again particularly in urban areas. We saw several obvious signs of purely outer change, viz:
◆ There was ramped-up security: barriers, guards, cameras, fences, dogs, and other marks of institutional vigilance sprang up around our workplaces. ◆ There were "forced troop movements" among the workforce in America. Many workers were made to relocate or transfer to new offices, often in more remote areas that provided significant financial savings for the corporation. Needless to say, none of this money was ever shared with the inconvenienced workers. ◆ Also in the name of security, more invasive protocols for worker identification were speedily executed (it was almost as if they had been on the drawing board for some time already). Fingerprinting, face recognition technology, and vigilantly granular background checks, complete with urine drug testing, were forced upon both current and new workers in corporate America.
Lots of changes: a re-ordering of the furniture, the cubicles, of our working nation; but not the slightest evidence of a transformation of principle, a fundamental change of attitude. Everything that was done was a superficial, defensive response that, far from bringing anyone a feeling of protection, actually elevated the anxiety level of all. This, after all, was not a "return to normalcy"; it was the introduction of a police state, with a focus on the American workplace.
Meanwhile, the marketing division of corporate America realized that, in the midst of this iron descent of rigid uniformity and hypervigilance, there must be some positive reinforcement offered to a confused and alarmed populace. So they brought us an ingenious advertising campaign devoted to the person in the context of his place within the group. This was necessary to make us feel better about ourselves, and to give us some superficial sense of our individuality even amid the oppressive lockstep march of forced conformity. They invented a new consumer cult of "My": My Points, My Bank, My Card, My News, My Team, and, of course, myspace.
This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the individual; it does not speak to each person's true self, but rather to a group self: the pebble in the concrete block. The campaign is the corporate marketing department's grudging nod to individuality, even as it promotes and enriches the Corporate Person. Thus, the various financial incentives offered as "my" rewards/points/cards/etc. are in truth created to further a culture of consumption beyond both need and means. The information that is delivered as "my" news/weather/sports/sites/etc. is really a spin-washed veneer of pabulum.
It should come as no surprise, then, that we remain trapped inside thickening cages of accumulation, beneath a revolving, gleaming white monument of debt. Nor should it shock us that, years after 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq War, significant percentages of Americans still believed that Iraqis had committed the atrocities of 9/11 and that Osama bin Laden was an intimate ally of Saddam Hussein's: this is what the cult of "my news" had fed them. This vein of the info-advertising culture has seeped into the very buildings of corporate America, in the form of the news screens visible in many elevators—the muzak of the information age.
Meanwhile, myspace.com is an artificially personalized web portal that beckons to youth at its main entrance, even as it opens its back door wide to sexual predators, pornographers, and the other corporately-approved agents of consumption and titillation. Believe me, if there were a true will on the part of myspace to stop this infection of our teens, the technology is there; it could have been easily done. But where would be the profit in that?
So is it time to resort to further government regulation of such sites? Will that solve the problem, or simply redirect the energies of the poison-pushers into other avenues of infestation? Before we answer, we should be clear about the dilemma that our corporate culture has forced upon our children.
Most kids are taught principles of frugality and thrift from an early age: a penny saved...waste not...and the like. As they grow, however, they are welcomed into the culture of consumption: more is better, bigger is better, the more you get, the more you save. To have a "mycard" or "mypoints" is to have a "mylife." And who would want to miss out on life?
Or again: kids are taught principles of moderation, restraint, and even some measure of contempt for their bodies and bodily functions; and then they are fed into the cult of the extreme, the self-indulgent, even the perverse, by our advertising-rich media. If your sports and games aren't "extreme" (as in extremely dangerous), then you're a wimp; if you aren't covered with the chemical body-washes, toxic makeup, tattoos, and garish, faux-ghetto clothing that is all over the TV and myspace, then you just don't get it, you're lame.
If you are sensing a forced ambivalence here, a conflict-by-design, then you have arrived at the black heart that beats within the corporate troll; the fuel that runs the massive machinery of corporate America. This is the heart we have to cut out of ourselves; the force we must reject; this is what we have to deprogram from within ourselves, as true individuals. In a future piece, I will offer some suggestions on how this may be done; but the real answer lies, already formed and waiting, within yourself.
When I got my first job in corporate America, I was pretty excited. It was a low-level management job for a big developer, supervising construction crews in the field—the field being the construction of a massive skyscraper in New York City. But when I told my old man, he smiled and took me aside. "Brian," he said, "congratulations. Now remember one thing: as long as you're working for the Company, it's going to demand your loyalty, 100% and full throttle. Just keep in mind that it doesn't work in both directions. The Company will never return your loyalty. Whatever you give them of that will be your gift, so don't expect anything in return except your paycheck, and keep your eyes open, because the Company will always drop you like a hot rock as soon as they can profit by losing you."
So here's my "pay it forward" moment for members of the younger generation, perhaps getting their first jobs in corporate America. Everything my father warned me about in that moment, everything he said, turned out to be the unvarnished truth, verified by my own hard experience. The Company owes you nothing but your paycheck, whatever measly benefits it might have, and the tools of your trade—a desk, a computer, whatever. It doesn't owe you its loyalty.
Sure, you'll meet some great people in your journey through corporate America; maybe people who, like you, missed the bus of their natural calling and wound up pushing the paper and the gears of insurance or banking or the retail sector. Maybe one of these folks will be your boss (lucky you); and you'll be tempted to think that the Company really is your friend, that it loves you and will always be there for you.
Bullshit, I tell you. The Company is owned and operated by myopic, leering bean counters—people who would scratch you off a ledger sheet and out into the street faster than you could say "outsourcing", if doing so translated into an extra dime's profit for The Company. And that cool boss who takes you out drinking after work and looks the other way when you show up late the morning after a really hot date—he won't be able to do a blessed thing to save you when that bean counter has made that scratch on his ledger.
You're never out of the job market in corporate America today, my young friends, remember that. And it's never too late to check back regularly at that bus stop where your destiny passed by without you once before. Whether you once thought you could be a filmmaker, a writer, a journalist, a builder, a mechanic, or a housewife (that's what I always wanted to be, from the moment my kid was born)—keep coming back to it. See how it has changed, that old dream; find out what you now have to give to it; listen for the sound of its voice, its call. Because no matter how deeply you bury it amid work and business and family and circumstances, it will still be audible; its heart will keep beating for you. The more you try to forget it, the more insistently, pervasively will it call.
Though it may seem as remote and untouchable as a distant nebula, Destiny will never drop a pink slip on you. It is waiting, dancing on the single point in the vastness of space where the quantum particles of will, energy, coincidence, opportunity, and effort will meet in a single radiant moment.
A. Median Salary for a CEO of an American corporation: $680,077
B. Average CEO salary for an S&P 500 company: $13.51 Million
C. Starting salary for a New York City Police Officer: $34,970
Ratio of A to C: 19.5 : 1 Ratio of B to C: 391 : 1
Many of the corporations headed by the characters in categories A and B pander slow death to an ignorant public. Death on a bun, death in a fizzy plastic bottle, death in a vat of deep fried gluten. In a recent column for SF Gate, Mark Morford wonders how these guys can look themselves in the mirror:
It all raises the perennial question, one I've often wondered at as I see CEO after CFO after nasty politician after corrupt misogynist Supreme Court justice march across the face of the planet without so much as a glimmer of a hint as to the pain they so casually, effortlessly inflict.
Here is the question: How can they not know? How can you stomp through life and attain a position where you provide a product or service to the nation that literally poisons its very heart and still go home and play with your kids and smile and not beat your dog or drown yourself in Prozac and cheap whiskey and bloody ritualistic self-flagellation?
The fact is, Mark, that these guys generally will live an entire fat and wealthy life off the lives (and deaths) of countless others until, one day near the end, the great moment of inner reckoning occasionally arrives, and they attempt to wash away their karmic rot in one fell financial swoop of remorse—the modern version of the medieval practice of purchasing an indulgence. History is strewn with such efforts at cosmic reconciliation.
Alfred Nobel is perhaps the most famous of them all: a techno-genius who built an armament empire during his life and gave the proceeds away to the foundation that bears his name and awards its Peace Prize. Another instance of such johnny-come-lately moments in ambivalent philanthropy came from one of the most despotic corporate tyrants of American history. He was a man who made a massive fortune on the lives, sweat, and blood of untold numbers of nameless people. One of the most feared and hated corporate predators of his day, Andrew Carnegie is remembered today as one of the great benefactors of society.
Does it work? I mean, is the karmic balance sheet squared by such munificence after death, following a life defined by the pursuit and practice of the most decadent, soul-chilling evil? Can we then look forward to an era when the wealth of the CEOs of Exxon, Coca-Cola, Nike, McDonalds, Union Carbide, Monsanto, Bechtel, KFC, Halliburton, and so many other corporate killers and global agents of oppression have their own day of contrition and decide to purchase their indulgences?
Perhaps these are questions that have no answer, though I suspect that Morford is right on target with his:
It's a question that's occasionally worthwhile to dip back into now and then, if for no other reason than merely to check our progress, to see if there's been any change in the spiritual barometer. And the bad news is, in most cases, the needle has barely twitched.
We pay a lot of attention here to the exposure of fundementalist religion and corporate greed because, under a fascist tyranny such as we have now in the White House, these two demons tend to march in lockstep (just check out the salaries that the godly pull down). The motivation that fuels both is the compulsion for control and conformity, which is in turn powered by a cynical fear of natural human freedom. Call it, if you will, the Dick Cheney syndrome.
We had a glimpse of this yesterday when our rightful, elected President appeared in Congress to speak about global warming. He told his former colleagues, “There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis.”
Naive? Maybe, but I think we can forgive the man: after all, he's been out of politics for awhile. He was reminded of the myopic reality of Capitol Hill soon enough, when the Republicans were allowed to take their potshots. Rep. Barton of Texas told Gore, “You’re not just off a little, you’re totally wrong,”
Congressman Barton will be dead and gone (though not for long) by the time the cosmic bill for greenhouse gas emissions comes due. His attitude is a typically corporate one: let's keep the profits going strong now, and if there are long-term consequences, that's why we have children. They'll deal with all that. Meanwhile, let us tell ourselves and the people some comforting lies. (Our friend Tom over at Current Era has more on the delusion being received and perpetuated by people like Barton).
In corporate America, the impulse for profit and conformity today and the hell with whatever comes of it tomorrow has never been more ascendant than it is now. I was recently reminded of this myself, when I had to go and pee in a cup for my next job. It's a requirement: no urine drug screen, no job. No job, no rent for April. No rent for April, I'm out on the street by May, June at the latest.
So I consented to what is truly, at best, a practice of questionable ethics, and in reality, a form of tyranny in itself. The issue is something I've been thinking a lot about lately, since I'm working on a new book about maintaining one's human integrity amid a corporate culture. The following is to appear somewhere in that book; it's a reflection on the Bill of Rights and its absence in those places where most of us spend a third of our lives—the workplaces of America.
Many of us wonder and lament, "where has our democracy gone?" It is, to be sure, a legitimate question in an era of abusive, profit-drunk, deceit-driven government. Yet perhaps we might be further asking, "where else have we lost democracy?" For example, at work. Have you ever seen a Bill of Rights—or anything like it—at your workplace? We have mission statements, employee handbooks, codes of conduct, corporate vision documents, and security manuals in our corporate workplaces; but we have no such thing as a Bill of Rights.
Let's review a few of the Constitution's principal articles and see how or whether they are followed in a typical corporate American workplace.
Article [I.] Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Well, do you feel free to speak your mind at work? Is there a free press at your company, where people are allowed to write critically of management or its policies? The proverbial watercooler aside, is there anytime or place where you are free to gather with others on company time to evaluate and discuss corporate leadership, strategies, or employment practices? Are those compulsory staff meetings a forum for debate and free expression?
So much for Article I.
Article [IV.] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In corporate America today, we have thought police, speech police, email police, and click police. Every movement you make on the Internet, every email you write, every word you say, is monitored and recorded. Your identity is captured in a laminated badge; your movements tracked; your communications watched and heard. I was once fired from a company over an email containing a fairly bland criticism of management—an email that I presumed at the time was confidential to the person I'd sent it to. Perhaps you have your own stories in this vein. In short, there is no such thing as being "secure in your person" in corporate America. Once you walk through those revolving doors and swipe your badge at the gate, you are owned; you are a property of the corporation; and everything you do, say, write, and even think can be monitored.
Article [V.]...nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...
This is the language of the famous Fifth Amendment, which protects individuals from providing testimony against themselves. Even when you are arrested for a crime in this nation, you must be informed by the police or other arresting officer that you have a right to remain silent. The law compels no one to deliver information against himself, no matter the circumstances.
But does this apply at the workplace? Well, it all depends on who you are, what you do, what position you hold, and who you know. Article V, in fact, is probably the most blatantly abused item from the Bill of Rights in the American workplace.
We could go on (how about the 13th Amendment—you know, the one that says, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States..."?); but the point, I think has been made. The foundation of our democracy, the Bill of Rights, is arrogantly ignored or blatantly violated in the corporate American workplace, every single day. Why, then, should it be such a shock to see a definitively corporate government, the Bush administration, consistently violating both the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights? After all, it happens every day at the workplace—why not make it official?
I have a strange feeling that we're not likely to survive as a species on this planet another five or six generations, unless we allow for some ideas and perspectives that we ourselves might have dismissed, some ten or twenty years ago, as "just too strange."
For a living example of what I'm talking about, click the graphic above and watch the film of this historian/comedian at work. The piece is hosted by our friend Tom over at Current Era.
Now this picture to the left is the result of a survey I took at a BP site that I reviewed for the Webby Awards. Think of it as the equivalent of those Philip Morris ads that counsel parents on keeping their kids away from cigs: this is one of the monsters of the oil industry teaching us how to reduce our carbon footprint.
This is why the message that my cat gave us last night is meaningful (for real: she transmits the content, I just type it out and then open a can of tuna). You are surrounded by slick advertising, and the verbal, PR slick is as poisonous and as deadly as the other, Valdez-kind of slick.
Example: on a day where the EU Parliament released a report that virtually closes the case for impeachment (on both sides of the pond, mind you), the Rove spin machine went into distraction overdrive—once again with the puppet sounding another note of provocation toward Iran. All this on the day after the head of the Joint Chiefs—you know, the military expert—had weighed in with an opposite opinion.
The mass media, of course, are reporting it all; but as always you have to read everything in order to discern the truth. Buried in the last paragraph of the New York Times' report on the Bush provocation today, is this:
Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said. “And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested in.”
Well, as long as Bush is in office, we'll never find out, will we? It's Karl-22 all over again: we refuse to resort to diplomacy because we know it will never work; and we know it will never work because we say so. But if it ever does work, you can be sure we'll take credit for it somehow.
Our world today: where Wal-Mart produces ads that tell of "Sam Walton's dream" come true—of a charitable, generous, community-minded empire; where BP with its pockets stuffed with burning lucre says, "let us help you measure your carbon footprint"; and where the Rove machine spins fiction into fact, tragedy into victory, abject failure into Mission Accomplshed.
Ours may be an indolent culture, but let it not be said we do not love our action figures. True, we're raising increasingly obese kids with x-box eyes and cheetoh lips; perhaps it is also true that heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure comprise the silent tsunami of our era here in the land of plenty, where exercise is clambering into the Hummer to go get a Big Mac and a double Slurpee.
But we adore action, and we are repelled by the merest suggestion that reflection, rest, or—God forgive—meditation may provide more for our lives than our bombs or our armies of occupation or our extreme sports.
This is one reason why science has been given such short shrift in Busherica: science has a troubling way of undermining all our most cherished assumptions about the inherent value of incessant action. It has demonstrated, time and again, that people who meditate are healthier, saner, and ironically, more active, than folks who cry for action from the couch in the living room or the television studio.
Now science is showing us something that our ancestors knew well: that sleep at midday is one of the greatest boons to health known to humankind:
A six-year Greek study found that those who took a 30-minute siesta at least three times a week had a 37% lower risk of heart-related death.
The researchers took into account ill health, age, and whether people were physically active.
Experts said napping might help people to relax, reducing their stress levels.
Now, go and tell your boss that you are nearly 40% less likely to fall ill, and that you can be far more productive if you're allowed to take a nap during the middle of the workday. Once he stops laughing, he'll tell you to go back to your desk and "get something done" (the most common phrase for action in corporate America—note the passive voice).
After all, how can you be "proactive" when you're sleeping? Where's the value proposition in that? Face it, nothing happens when you're asleep—let's go do a power lunch instead. What'll it be, cheesesteaks or burgers?
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that dull echo you faintly heard Monday night and Tuesday morning was the sound of the Vista release parties—half a billion dollars' worth of marketing glitz met with relative silence—where, according to the geek press, one might have found more reporters than customers attending. On the east coast, in New York:
the launch itself was a quiet affair in a midtown CompUSA store (the chain had organized midnight events at several of its stores), where it seemed like there were just as many reporters and camera crews as there were customers hoping to take home a copy of Vista.
...And even where Steve Ballmer was gracing the retail stage, the indifference was only cloaked by the presence of reporters:
The event, ostensibly aimed at showing the retail excitement around the new products, drew a crush of reporters.
That made the considerably smaller number of store customers at 10 a.m. PST on Tuesday nearly as popular as Ballmer, with video crews lining up to get their thoughts on the new software.
Here at the Donohue Camp for Unemployed Geeks, I spent a few minutes Monday night removing XP from my MacBook. Honest, I didn't even realize the timing of what I was doing until much later. It's just that I wasn't using those precious 12GB of hard drive space, and finally decided to re-run Boot Camp and remove the partition (that's all you have to do to get rid of a Windows install on a Mac, by the way: it takes about five minutes and the Mac then restarts like a rocket, as if it had just thrown a gorilla off its shoulder). Then I saw the C-Net poll featured in this graphic. My only question about those results is: "where are the Linux users represented?" (for more on that, see below).
So much for Vista, except for...um...one more thing. About three months from now, or even less, Mac OS X Leopard arrives to take another bite out of XP/Vista; after a year in which sales of the Intel Macs helped shoot the value of Apple stock well beyond Dell's.
Curiously, the only question mark for Apple's future is another really stupid, Martha Stewart-style piece of corporate greed. The Apple stock dating scandal is yet another example of how wealth can turn smart people into absolute idiots. If Steve & Co. survive that bit of folly, their products and their geekery will only grow in popularity, even--gasp--in the enterprise realm, where MS dominance is already being weakened by another UNIX-based OS, Oracle-Red Hat. Gartner is already calling this one for Larry Ellison, and the uncertainty over Vista will only make it easier for Oracle. Your average enterprise desktop lacks standalone video, sound, and sufficient RAM to run Vista, and the cash required to upgrade thousands of boxes to accommodate Vista will be nixed by most corporate bean counters.
But people like having MS-friendly hardware and software, and Red Hat might not be the best solution for many. Enter the Mac Mini running off an xserver network, with windows XP, UNIX compatibility, PERL, Apache, Java, you name it, the Mac can now run it in 64-bit mode on Intel-powered hardware.
I know it sounds kooky, and I don't pretend to claim that Apple will take significant market share away from MS next year or the year after that. But 5 years down the line, Red Hat and Apple combined could account for 40-50 per cent of the enterprise IT base; and Microsoft resorting to its old market dominance tricks will only accelerate that trend.
The amazing piece to this Vista release is how Gates and his cronies could have missed the obvious, which is that this OS will further endanger their stranglehold on IT in the enterprise realm. But in corporate America, it is as in corporate government: dissent is considered treason, even—or especially—if it contains truth that will help the company (or the republic). Thus, executive row lines everyone up and delivers the edict: you will aggressively market this impactful new product (note to all corporate dweebs: "impactful" is NOT a word); and if you have any questions, there's the door and here's your pink slip.
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Finally for this Geek Wednesday, a few more gems from my Webby Award reviewing pile.
Activism Down Under: This is a terrific site with a focus, spirit, and research base that makes it the equal of any MoveOn or AfterDowningStreet on this hemisphere. I've now got it bookmarked, and I would recommend you do too.
I also went through a few science sites, and this one stood out: BBC's Science of Memory. Take the test yourself and see how you do; you'll learn a lot in the process.
And if you'd like to learn about population and living standard trends on a global, 3-D matrix that offers a lot of perspective, try Google's Gapminder tool.
Now as long as I'm not painfully employed for the moment, I'll probably have lots of time to survey more Webby entrants, so there may well be more to come of these.
One last note to all our readers: January brought us 2,000 unique visitors and some 14,000 pageviews (one of these Geek Wednesdays, we may take some time to explain how to accurately interpret web usage statistics, which is a wildly twisted and abused metric, especially in the corporate realm). For us, that's a really solid month, and I'd like to once more thank you folks for coming by and reading our stuff. I'd probably do this on a deserted island with not a soul to see it, because I'm just that kind of nuts about writing, but knowing that you're all out there makes it a lot more fun.
Today's graphic is something I found all by itself on an Internet page. I think it's great, so if anyone knows the source that I can credit for it, let me know.
Anyway, it's a timely picture to show today, now that Dennis Kucinich has tossed his hat into the ring again. Could he beat Hillary? Like a rented mule. But Obama? Doesn't look like it. Doesn't matter: Kucinich's voice is one we need to hear plenty of in the 2008 campaign. Click that link and watch how he handles the Wolf-man, and I think you'll agree.
Medicine and politics 1: Funny, I never read any headlines about power-shifts when Dick Cheney's doctors were wondering whether the man's ticker would withstand the VP-stress. But today, power-shifting is all the rage in the media, because a Senator from South Dakota suffered a stroke. This is what happens when your media are themselves infected with that solipsistic corporate frigidity: the impulse becomes the product. Pretty sad stuff.
Medicine and politics 2: If I wrote a blog that somehow caused people to want to kill themselves, do you think I'd get off with putting a warning label in the header? (don't laugh—a guy named Goethe wrote a book called "Sorrows of Young Werther" that reportedly incited a wave of youthful suicides in the Europe of its day). Well, the drug companies are being told to put a warning label on certain anti-depressants that have a similar effect. The problem is that some docs are siding with the pharma companies on this one. This, by the way, is another demonstration of the urgent need for experts in the research methodology known as "naturalistic observation", which has been somewhat demonized in modern science as too New-Agey. Guess what—you can't design a double-blind, laboratory-style, randomized control study on this sort of thing. Not unless you don't mind much of your control group winding up dead, that is.
To my mind, this situation represents another call for a fresh look in this society at how we use medicines. I've written some thoughts on that point, with a focus on anti-depressants, here.
Medicine and politics 3: Circumcision is a good thing. It's front-page, headline news today, and until I've read the studies, I have only one comment. This doesn't change my view on the practice of slicing a newborn boy's Mr. Happy—it is one of the truly decadent and primitive practices left over from our evolutionary past that's still commonly done today. If the findings of this study are validated and circumcision is found to be a small component in preventing the spread of AIDS, then maybe it would help to educate young men on it and offer the option in the context of a voluntary program of adult circumcision, perhaps supported by government funding and with some sort of carrot tied to the scalpel (a tax break or even a small payment for young men submitting to it). The message could be, "hey tough guy, you handled getting that tongue-ring like a real trooper; now go get this done." But I'm still uncomfortable with even that: there are alternatives to managing the spread of AIDS that do not involve surgery, and I feel strongly that we have to get beyond this societal obsession with solving all problems with a knife, a pill, or a bomb.
But let me repeat one basic point about which there should be no debate: to do this to newborns does damage that we can't even measure yet. But I'm reminded of a story that Robert Bly told in Iron John: he said that during one of his men's seminars, he had passed around a sword through the group, and found that many of the men in the group cringed even at holding it. Well, I'd like to know how many of those guys had been circumcised long before they had any choice in the matter. If your dick had been sliced up when you were small and helpless, but acutely aware, wouldn't it be natural for you to cringe from knives for the rest of your life?
I thought I'd continue with my ruminations on the intersection of corporations and government, in light of the news that Bush is putting his finger far enough up his ass to check his own prostate, re. movement on a decision for the future in Iraq. Hmmm...I wonder if that's even possible...it would certainly be preferable to having it done to you. If any of our readers are urologists, let me know what you think.
So the Chimpster from Crawford, the Great Decider, can't make a decision, even though hundreds will likely die horrible deaths while he sits on the can over the holidays trying to figure out how to achieve "peace with honor," to use an old Nixonian bromide.
Well, if you work in corporate America, are you surprised? There's a TV commercial that I laugh at every time I hear its slogan: "moving at the speed of business." In corporate America, there is indeed a lot of busy-ness: people rushing around, clacking away at keyboards, buzzing impolitely on the telephone or the wireless set, scanning the Blackberry, oblivious of their surroundings. But how quickly do things really get done; how fast does accomplishment of the remotest stripe really happen in corporate America?
In my book, The Tao of Hogwarts, I discuss the true workings of the corporate body in the context of Ms. Rowling's metaphor of "the troll in the dungeon."
What’s big, ugly, smells really foul to anyone in their right senses, and can’t seem to move without stumbling or locking up in confusion? Well, if you work for a big corporation, you might have answered, “my department” or “the company I work for.” And you might be right.
In fact, you could take your pick: the mountain troll that corners Harry, Ron, and Hermione in a girls’ bathroom in Sorcerer’s Stone could be a metaphor on the monster of the modern corporation or the government. Since the government comes in for enough rough treatment from Mrs. Rowling in “The Ministry of Magic” (see Chapter 9), I prefer to think of the mountain troll as a massive corporation whose various parts can’t communicate or coordinate with one another. It stinks horribly, meaning that it’s offensive to people’s most basic and feeling-oriented senses: every time I read about another company downsizing (that is, ruining the lives of) its workers, I sense that same repulsive odor that Rowling’s children smell as they encounter the troll. The corporate troll solves every problem by trying to stomp it into oblivion or by trying to eat what’s in the way of its lumbering, juggernaut movement. But for all its vast physical size and the ungainly length of its various parts, it is only part-being: its intelligence is blunted by its massive, organizational-chart body, and therefore it can act only through domination—swinging the dull club of Power onto anything and anyone that comes within its myopic visual scope.
Finally, as in the story, the corporate troll is inevitably knocked out by the wooden immensity of its own size and force: how often do we see the company that yesterday was bludgeoning other smaller firms into bankruptcy or submission suddenly subjected to the same treatment by another, larger “troll”? Or worse still, consider the fate of some of the ugliest of corporate behemoths—those that fell under the weight of greed as well as incompetence. The trolls known as Enron, Worldcom, and their like, collapsed amid their corruption, poisoning an entire nation with the foul stench of their depravity, while leaving investors and customers robbed, broken, and destitute. Ron, Harry, and Hermione were lucky to escape the mountain troll with only a brief scare and the vague breath of its odor in their memories; the investors of the corporate trolls of Greed and Excess are often left with ruined lives and uncertain futures.
So as it is with our personal lives and relationships, seeing clearly the reality of the Bush administration and corporate America is all about looking beyond appearances. We have to stare past the superficial hubbub of activity and rhetoric and ask, "what's really being done?" The answer, for a culture so obsessed with action, will only be surprising for a moment: very little, if anything, gets done—and what does get done happens with a positively reptilian sloth. That goes back to the nature of the beast, the troll: its movement is all veneer, so when you seek substance or real accomplishment, there's nothing there. For all their jerky, compulsive activity, government and the corporate body are dead from the neck when it comes to results. That's because all that action lacks the guidance of the clarity born of reflection. Our banner quote author has plenty to say about that, and we will meet her tomorrow.
What's the worst thing about corporate America? What does corporate America have most in common with our current government?
Got it in one: falsehood. Lies. Deceit. Both are fed by a culture of deceit, and both are ultimately false to themselves. In fact, throw in the mass media and you've got a holy trinity of deception.
We've tapped away at this theme in a variety of ways here at the blog, and tonight I'd like to offer an object example of the kind of Rovespeak you find in both government and corporations. It's a single word: team.
Athletic metaphor is, of course, inordinately popular in government, the military, and corporate America. If you're a corporate worker, think back over the past year and see if you can recall how many times you've seen or heard the word "team"—on cubicle walls, on promotional or motivational posters, or from the lips of CEOs and their ilk. To what extent do you think you are part of a corporate team?
The "team" metaphor is certainly ubiquitous in Washington: check out the results from a search I did at whitehouse.gov.
Let's examine the metaphor, back in its natural place. Does the shortstop pull rank on the catcher, or the linebacker on the safety? Does the center demand mute obedience from the point guard? Are World Series won and lost by Chief Executive 2nd basemen or presidential left fielders?
So there are coaches or managers on the bench, in the dugout, or on the sidelines, directing things, giving orders, and changing players. But are these "chiefs" in a corporate sense? Their authority is delimited; they cannot go onto the field except when play has stopped. Their pay sure is plenty less than that of nearly everyone out there on the field of play: in big league baseball, an old, steroid-drunk outfielder and an old, once-great pitcher can still draw $16M a year while their managers will be lucky to pull down a tenth of that—exactly the opposite of the corporate model, where the CEO makes about 300 times more than the working stiffs on his "team."
Try this experiment, sports fans: see if you can make a corporate-style org chart out of your favorite team. I'm betting you won't get very far. That's because when a team is out there on the field, there is no room for the rigid and punitive corporate structure that many of us are familiar with from our own jobs. The hierarchy is absent, and it must be, since any fixation over who's in charge or whose power is paramount on the field would instantly lose the game.
So examine now the old bromide that "there is no 'I' in 'team'." I would disagree: there are plenty of 'I's' in team; it's just that they point in the same direction, they flow toward similar goals. But a corporation is different: it tries to put a 'C' in team, as in Chief (Executive Officer, Information Officer, Operating Officer, etc.). I've written about that aspect of it elsewhere; the point here is that this obsession with position spills downward through the ranks, until you see the familiar battles, struggles, and competitions all the way down to the mail room.
The attempt to put a 'C' in team turns it into a tribe, a cult.
There's another point to this, which brings us back to our government. Putting the 'C' into team led to the Katrina debacle, the continuing morass in Iraq, and the swindling of the American middle class. Putting the 'C' into team led to the laughably ambivalent and ineffectual performance that the Iraq Study Group gave us (as Jon Stewart remarked in the video above, it's too late for a study group now—the test was three years ago). Frank Rich made this point with his usual eloquence on Sunday.
On a truly functional team, there is no "decider," only decisions. The fact that I called you off that fly ball on the last play doesn't mean you can't do the same on the next. There has been some tortuous effort in the MSM over the past month to single out a "decider" in the outcome of the recent elections: it was the "Clintonistas"; it was Howard Dean; it was the Democractic machine.
I would suggest that it was simply millions of "I's", lined up at polling places in states both red and blue; and that together, they made a team.
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Site Note: Sometime last week, we uploaded our 400th post here. Not bad for a couple of working stiff Irishmen with nothing to motivate them except white-hot anger and a steadily increasing community (or team) of visitors. My thanks go out to my partner Terry McKenna, all our occasional contributors, and most of all, to every person who stops by to read our content. I hope it's made a small difference for you, and we'll keep trying.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice. “That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?” “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,”
That's an exchange between the new Senator from Virginia, James Webb, and the leader of the free world, excerpted from Paul Krugman's Monday column in the Times. It's certainly representative of the nasty, mean-spirited arrogance that we have noted in this Bush administration time and again here. I also hope it's representative of the character of the 110th Congress to come. Mr. Webb, I think the people of Virginia made a very, very wise choice.
More cause for muted celebration (muted, that is, while we await hearing who's next): Bolton is out. Bush and Co., of course, blame it all on the Democrats, though the opposition to Bolton was led in part by a GOP Senator, Lincoln Chaffee. I call this response a "mind-jerk reaction." Knees, of course, are made to bend; but the Bushian mind is made from reinforced concrete: as Stephen Colbert has observed of him, on Wednesday he will spit the same rhetorical spin as he spat on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday.
It is a recognizably corporate habit of perseveration: you have your Message, which is inscribed as indelibly and immutably as the Ten Commandments themselves, and no force of events or public opinion will change the Message (unless, of course, there is sufficient profit to be made from the revision). The Message appears in identical form across every public relations and advertising venue available to the corporation, and all that P.R. isn't cheap. Any refutation or disavowal of the Message, the Plan, and its proven value proposition, will meet with the same bitter and infantile reaction that Bush delivered to the media on the occasion of the Bolton resignation.
So it's not merely that corporations have, as Terry McKenna pointed out last week, bought the government; they have also infected it with their own peculiar model of fear-based conformity. Believe and repeat, and you will be retained, maybe even rewarded. Question or criticize the corporate Message, though, and you will be fired, ostracized, browbeaten, or otherwise punished. That's the way it works.
Well, maybe those are realities of work and politics that we just have to accept. But it goes further than that—in fact, it goes right into our daily lives, even into our family, personal, and individual psychological lives. Yes, I'm saying that the game of corporate conformity actually gets inside our minds, whenever we allow it to.
As Terry suggested last week, it derives from our false use of language. Whatever is wrapped in the stiff forms of corporate verbiage infects our relationships—our professional and personal relationships, and even our relationship with ourselves; the interactions amid the diverse functions of the personality.
It is, I suspect, a pervasive danger of our time. Later this week, we'll also hear from the author of our banner quote, who was delivering a similar warning some 50 years ago. Until then, I would merely ask you to just p
Cherry blossom season in Brooklyn's Prospect Park
