Posted at 9:44 PM PST
Howdy, Pardners…
Retirement is driving to the brink of madness. At least, that’s the feeling that one gets once retirement settles in.
Once the pain of being in the Corporation for thirty years begins to ease a bit, you start thinking in a whole different way. For instance, the need for efficiency and process goes up in a whiff of ridiculousness. In real life, you don’t really give a flying fuck about either efficiency or process, and you begin to wonder why it used to be so important.
It did, didn’t it? I mean figuring out ways to complicate things beyond usefulness used to cause such pride to swell in my Corporate heart. Didn’t it? Yes, it did, but for the life of me, I can’t remember why.
But others do know why it’s important, and they seem to rationalize a great deal of things by citing the process that was used to come to a conclusion (that most likely has no validity). For instance, there are many in the Burning Man community who feel that the whack-job who tried to burn the Man down a few days early DESERVES the four-year jail sentence that he received. Of course the punishment in no way matched the crime, but his absurd sentence is cleanly justified because the process was followed.
……… the process was followed.
………………. it didn’t matter that the man is a nut-case who belongs in a nice padded room.
………………….. it didn’t matter that no one was hurt.
All that mattered was that the process was followed.
And when I tell them that the process is irrelevant, and that the validity of the conclusion being determined by the process is just a form of the Corporate mentality, they go a little nuts. They have no sense of humor about the fucking thing. And these aren’t a bunch of mouthbreathers down in Alabama or Texas…. these are the people who like to think of themselves as “counterculture”. Most are college graduates.
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So, I’ve become a bit insane. I can no longer communicate with the Corporation, and I can no longer communicate with those who identify themselves as anti-Corporate.
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I no longer live with a knot of fear in my stomach.
I didn’t even know it was there.
But I woke up one morning and discovered that I was no longer afraid. I wondered what that was all about. After all, I had never been really afraid that I would be fired by the Corporation. I mean, I knew in the back of my mind that I could always find another job and make it just fine. I knew that. So I wondered some more…………
I had been afraid like a dog is afraid of a rolled-up newspaper. I had spent that largest part of my life learning to be afraid of the Masters… whether I needed to be afraid of them or not. I hadn’t known that.
So now that the knot of fear is gone, people perceive me as kind of insane. That worries me, because if enough people think that you’re crazy, there’s a good chance that you just might be crazy.
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But overall, the end of our humanity came when the Corporations took the baton of cultural normalization from the church. We no longer think in terms of spirituality and morality, but in progress, process, profit, efficiency, and personal greed. We use the same tools to run our lives (and rationalize our behaviors) as the Corporations do.
I spent too many years in the Corporation, so I can recognize the idiotic selfish behaviors for what they are. Many of we Boomers love to poke fun at the Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers. They seem so selfish and over-entitled….
………………. they are the first generation that has been completely normalized by the Corporations, and they have become the Corporation. They can rationalize almost any behavior by pointing to a process followed and “ethics” adhered to.
So here I am… a citizen of a dead culture… insane by nearly every modern standard.
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But I also know that I’m not the only one. I know that there are others like me out there.
Unless, of course…. I really am insane.
Have a day,
Riley
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