This is an excellent piece!
I agree that some (many?) corporate settings are like mini-feifdoms. I
don't know the numbers. I have seen some amazing stuff at some of my
jobs. And yes, the people who work the hardest often get little or no
credit.
And continually obsessing is an unhealthy trait, which some people,
cults, religions, and governments will do. Atheistic governments
especially can be accused of being religious, in their own way:
In 1985 when I was in the USSR I saw Lenin's face everywhere. Though
my Russian guides boasted there were no tacky advertisements, banners
were plentiful, saying "Long Live the Communist Party of the USSR",
"Lenin - a Friend of the People", and my own favorite, "Glory to
Labor". These beautiful colorful banners were mostly on top of ugly
crowded apartments which looked like they were about to fall apart.
All the newspapers had Lenin's face on the cover, and boasted about
the 'great achievements' of the USSR. On almost any subject, it
seemed, we would always return to how great the government was, how
great Lenin was, etc, etc.
John
--- In OliveStarlightOrchestra_at_yahoogroups.com, "debadger"
<debadger_at_p...> wrote:
> There are a lot of folks who do their best to use any and all tools
to keep
> the sheep in the pen - in the CorpRat world the worst are the ones
who keep
> insisting on 'this is a family' and other buzzwords all designed to
try to
> keep that warm fuzzy "wooly blinkers" feeling while extracting as
much work
> from the underlings as possible. Naturally the head CorpRat likes
to think
> of his/herself as the daddy or the mommy and the senior execs believe
> themselves to be the elder sibs who can of course demand their due
from the
> younger ones - like forcing them to do the onerous chores and
hogging the
> credit and the goodies. I'm not sure this is quite a cult in the usual
> sense of one though, despite the very real similarities.
>
> Could we say a cult is a religion in its earliest stages? I'm not sure.
> I've met fans, SciFi and Fantasy and SCA who were unhinged in a way I'd
> actually call cultish despite the fact that I too have a lot of fannish
> interests. I am profoundly nervous around someone whose entire life
> revolves around only one or two things - whatever they are. I
almost wrote
> "one or two things that aren't real" but then I realized that while
unreal
> interests - fantasy, SF, religion (if it takes over a very significant
> portion of your mental and physical resources) are indeed dangerous
but so
> is investing a great deal of one's self in only one or two 'real'
pursuits
> too - work, children, spouse/lover, hobbies, volunteering... if they
are the
> only thing a person ever does and all resources are focused only on
that one
> thing, there's something wrong.
>
> Are cults part of some sort of obsessive/compulsive streak in some
people?
> Maybe. We all want to belong, we all want simple answers, to feel
> absolutely right and at ease. Ok, I like it for a while, but then I
start
> to wonder what I'm forgetting or leaving out. But I know I'm
peculiar and I
> know very few people actually cannot be sheep or shepherd. I wish I
could
> remember the title of a really good book about Fuzzy Logic which really
> helped me see how much of our thought patterns are binary, thanks
not just
> to Judeo Christianity but the old Greeks. Yes/no, black/white, with
> me/against me... Binary is a useful tool, we couldn't have invented
> computers without that logic pattern. At the same time, almost this/not
> quite that is also valid and true - the world is not really, after all,
> black and white. It isn't shades of grey either, it's in color; it's
> analog. But if you spend a great deal of time staring at the marvels of
> color and form in a single rose you won't notice the other flowers.
>
> Meanwhile, I gotta clean up the kitchen - the contractor has found
he needs
> access to a wall which is, of course, above the ONE counter I did
not clear
> yesterday. Sigh.
>
> Elena
Received on 2004-07-27 10:54:08
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