The Lab Rat
I read a funny saying the other day:
"Even if you win in the rat race, you are still a rat."
It was funny at the time that I read it. Only now it strikes deeper chords within me and it's not so funny anymore.
"You're still a rat."
Boy, am I ever! And I'm mad about it, and I'm distraught about it and I'm shaking with these emotions even as I type this. Because I am bound to silence about my rathood. Corporate non-disclosure, don'tcha know. So I can't even blather on in my blog why I feel like a big, hairy lab rat. I'm being asked to sign, yet again, my vows of corporate silence.
(Side joke to myself: Heh, I've become a contemplative nun, whether or not I am actually in a convent!)
For that's what I am now. Yet another lab rat in that big, hairy, on-going psychological experiment called corporate culture. Too bad, just like our very own societal culture, it has no awareness of its culture-hood. So there is the potential for people and other businesses to be ground up in it and remolded by it, just a societal culture does to its members.
I will say this very, very, softly, then I will be silent forever upon that subject, because I do need that paycheck to pay for the very roof over my head: It smacks of fascism.
Perhaps I am being overly-dramatic about this all, but I am, at the root of myself, a singer, a person of the stage. So drama plays very naturally into it. My "selfhood" comes into this; everything I do comes into this, because, even when I'm sleeping, I'm an ambassadress of my corporation. So they tell me. So no farting of corporate secrets or contempt of the corporate in my sleep, no sirree, Bob!
I'm wondering if I should start wearing brown shirts to work, because it feels so...fascist.
There. I've said it again, even though I said I wouldn't. It's the new fascism. It's called corporate culture, and it's coming to a theater near you, son! Your life's theater, to paraphrase ol' Shakespeare.
It's the new way of life as smaller businesses that are worthy are swallowed by these larger entities. Smaller businesses that aren't worthy simply...go out of business. The mechanical dogs are feasting upon the real dogs these days.
For a corporation, for all that it tries to be a culture, is ultimately an artificial mechanism, an artificial intelligence that is trying to come to life...
...Using you and me as the cogs within its driving raison d'être, that raison having nothing to do with the raison d'être that you or I may call our own. It may coincide to some extent with my raison, however that is merely incidental. It is its own entity and what can a lab rat like me do, but squeak every now and again and hope I don't get slain by a passing machine part.
Somewhere along the line, I thought that the economy was going to devolve into lots of smaller businesses, some, like my own little business of making Anglican Rosaries (Hey, I never signed anything about non-disclosure within my own company! I'd never make my employee, me, do anything like that. Thus a moment of gratuitous self-pimping!)
My Big Brother Corporation wants to know if I run any businesses, so that it may ascertain if there is a conflict of interest. Hmmmm. Rosaries. That's the small picture. Here's the bigger one: I'm nominally a Christian, so if you take THAT to its logical extreme, that's a HUGE conflict of interest. So, yes, I guess my wee business could be a conflict of interest. In any case, I find that kind of prying question a huge invasion of my privacy.
Now, I never planned to make a living off rosaries, there's something vaguely unethical about that -- the gift of prayer and meditation is exactly that: a gift one gives to oneself, whatever one's beliefs are. It's just a small sideline, a chance to do something creative, which I'm rarely allowed to do at my real job. And I make a few dollars off of it, enough to cover the cost of the materials and maybe the occasional Happy Meal.
I'm no raving capitalist. In fact if you poke me with enough verbal pins, I'll go off on why a moral socialism is just as hard to achieve as a moral capitalism, but why it is a wisdom we need to achieve to survive as a race. Actually, either moral socialism or moral capitalism would work as effectively. And my usage of the word "moral" encompasses this whole planet, but that's a rant for another time. If I dare.
Oh, wait a sec, today's definition capitalism would state that "moral capitalism" is an oxymoron. However, as usual, I find that I have digressed.
I never thought that I would have to sign myself away so thoroughly to earn an hourly wage. Don't squeak anything bad about your maze, lab rat, you're rendering yourself open to legal action.
Squeak.
A squeak, in this case, is worth a thousand words.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. No more singing for me, I am mute, except for this tiny little...squeak.
"Even if you win in the rat race, you are still a rat."
It was funny at the time that I read it. Only now it strikes deeper chords within me and it's not so funny anymore.
"You're still a rat."
Boy, am I ever! And I'm mad about it, and I'm distraught about it and I'm shaking with these emotions even as I type this. Because I am bound to silence about my rathood. Corporate non-disclosure, don'tcha know. So I can't even blather on in my blog why I feel like a big, hairy lab rat. I'm being asked to sign, yet again, my vows of corporate silence.
For that's what I am now. Yet another lab rat in that big, hairy, on-going psychological experiment called corporate culture. Too bad, just like our very own societal culture, it has no awareness of its culture-hood. So there is the potential for people and other businesses to be ground up in it and remolded by it, just a societal culture does to its members.
I will say this very, very, softly, then I will be silent forever upon that subject, because I do need that paycheck to pay for the very roof over my head: It smacks of fascism.
Perhaps I am being overly-dramatic about this all, but I am, at the root of myself, a singer, a person of the stage. So drama plays very naturally into it. My "selfhood" comes into this; everything I do comes into this, because, even when I'm sleeping, I'm an ambassadress of my corporation. So they tell me. So no farting of corporate secrets or contempt of the corporate in my sleep, no sirree, Bob!
I'm wondering if I should start wearing brown shirts to work, because it feels so...fascist.
There. I've said it again, even though I said I wouldn't. It's the new fascism. It's called corporate culture, and it's coming to a theater near you, son! Your life's theater, to paraphrase ol' Shakespeare.
It's the new way of life as smaller businesses that are worthy are swallowed by these larger entities. Smaller businesses that aren't worthy simply...go out of business. The mechanical dogs are feasting upon the real dogs these days.
For a corporation, for all that it tries to be a culture, is ultimately an artificial mechanism, an artificial intelligence that is trying to come to life...
...Using you and me as the cogs within its driving raison d'être, that raison having nothing to do with the raison d'être that you or I may call our own. It may coincide to some extent with my raison, however that is merely incidental. It is its own entity and what can a lab rat like me do, but squeak every now and again and hope I don't get slain by a passing machine part.
Somewhere along the line, I thought that the economy was going to devolve into lots of smaller businesses, some, like my own little business of making Anglican Rosaries (Hey, I never signed anything about non-disclosure within my own company! I'd never make my employee, me, do anything like that. Thus a moment of gratuitous self-pimping!)
My Big Brother Corporation wants to know if I run any businesses, so that it may ascertain if there is a conflict of interest. Hmmmm. Rosaries. That's the small picture. Here's the bigger one: I'm nominally a Christian, so if you take THAT to its logical extreme, that's a HUGE conflict of interest. So, yes, I guess my wee business could be a conflict of interest. In any case, I find that kind of prying question a huge invasion of my privacy.
Now, I never planned to make a living off rosaries, there's something vaguely unethical about that -- the gift of prayer and meditation is exactly that: a gift one gives to oneself, whatever one's beliefs are. It's just a small sideline, a chance to do something creative, which I'm rarely allowed to do at my real job. And I make a few dollars off of it, enough to cover the cost of the materials and maybe the occasional Happy Meal.
I'm no raving capitalist. In fact if you poke me with enough verbal pins, I'll go off on why a moral socialism is just as hard to achieve as a moral capitalism, but why it is a wisdom we need to achieve to survive as a race. Actually, either moral socialism or moral capitalism would work as effectively. And my usage of the word "moral" encompasses this whole planet, but that's a rant for another time. If I dare.
Oh, wait a sec, today's definition capitalism would state that "moral capitalism" is an oxymoron. However, as usual, I find that I have digressed.
I never thought that I would have to sign myself away so thoroughly to earn an hourly wage. Don't squeak anything bad about your maze, lab rat, you're rendering yourself open to legal action.
Squeak.
A squeak, in this case, is worth a thousand words.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. No more singing for me, I am mute, except for this tiny little...squeak.
posted by Dace | 12:54 PM
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