“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness”
The normalization of the corporate mindset
The insanity behind the term Human Resources is overlooked. Yet, it encapsulates how we perceive our human nature. How we accept to be used by the inverted society we live in. As a resource.
Originally, a resource is a beautiful thing. Especially when it is offered as a natural exchange based on mutual free will. However, with corporations, the language is slightly twisted around. You are a resource to a company that extracts your time and energy and gives you enough money to exist. It is an exchange based on a non-choice, since you are a prisoner of a wage-economy created for corporations to thrive . Your only choice is between working to survive, or starving to death.
Now that you have to pay to exist on a planet that originally provided everything for free, corporations take on the role of the masters and providers that allow you to become their human supply and capital. Cattle on a paycheck.
“My pleasure to connect you”
Human resource. Aka “HR”. By the way, have you noticed how they always use initials to make something sound official, taking its meaning away from it? Forever changing your perception of the meaning of a word?
Let me tell you about my own experience as a human resource. I once worked for a corporation. The job was expectingly tedious and uncreative. We were encouraged to be ourselves, yet we were constantly asked to use specific sentences and behave a certain way. “Be you, but not the real you, please.”
One morning, as I was visibly worn out, the lead manager tried to motivate me through barely covert emotional manipulation. With a forced and poorly acted frown, she shamelessly cried “Times are really tough, you know. The future is insecure, people are suffering financially and morally. Even me. I mean, I had to cancel my summer vacation this year.” -this quote is 100% accurate.
Ironically, the very same day, she had decided to charge our customers for the water bottles we used to give out for free. These plastic bottles were now to be charged $6 a piece. And we needed to make sure to bill them all.
Of course, being an obedient good little employee, I immediately understood this was probably done in the name of helping those struggling guests in a time of scarcity. To relieve their anxiety, they needed to stay hydrated. The new company policy made perfect sense. Because what better way to help them, than taking more money from them?
“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.
To keep them in control was not difficult.”
The corporate logic in a nutshell
Pretending to care is better than caring. Being fake is politeness. The cognitive dissonance of the people serving the corporate monster defies common sense. Their thinking aligns with pre-determined standards that have nothing to do with objective morality. They follow subjective guidelines that only protect financial interests. It’s all legal. But in this corporate world, legal is the exact opposite of moral.
I wonder why people don’t feel good inside after spending their days pretending. Why they can’t sleep well without a pill. Or why their backs and legs hurt. Could it be because they wear a social mask 24/7? Maybe it is their soul screaming through the bs. But most people won’t address the elephant in the room. They never look for a cause. They never take responsibility. No time to reflect. Money never sleeps and the show must go on in this corporate cycle of abuse.
the price of freedom
Corporate “culture” is the main religion of a corrupted world mostly focused on the material aspect of life. It has its own Bible. The company policy is filled with rules/dogmas, and regulations/commandments. All based on the belief and the fear of authority. Like organized religions, it uses moral concepts but without their true moral substance. Everything is conditional and the condition is dictated by the rulers/managers/owners. It asks you to give what you have the most precious -your time, your life force and your energy, to nourish its own artificial soulless body.
Born and raised in France, I have spent many years in the US. I believe the entire country is run exactly like a corporation. The binary political system of democratic and republican parties is just a phony facade of the same entity. A mob-like system that makes us believe there is such thing as choice and freedom. A system that is rooted in compliance enforcement, and threats of violence.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not being an ungrateful immigrant, here. This isn’t a rant about the USA, in particular. Things are actually more blatantly honest here. But globally, and under one system or another, everything works the exact same way. The corporative mindset has infiltrated all human societies and rules over our collective perceptions of reality.
“To believe in authority is to condone slavery.”
all pictures by Francois-Xavier Noah