I kind of like this latest wrinkle in the Popular People’s Liberation Front of Judea:
Protesters speaking out against corporate greed and other issues in New York City are dressing as corporate zombies and greeting Wall Street workers as they head into the office.
Patrick Bruner, a spokesman for the group, says Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are being urged to dress in business wear with white faces and blood, and will march while eating monopoly money. He says financial workers should see them “reflecting the metaphor of their actions.”
It is, of course, a most excellent point to make with respect to the people who are responsible for the mess we are in, and have been for thirty-odd years.
See, it’s not just the CEOs of Citibank or Goldman Sachs who bear sole responsibility for this mess, although they bear a massive amount of it. And it’s not the heads of the trading desks, or the quants who developed the new casino games of derivatives, or the floor brokers who cynically sent grandma to the poor house.
Altho they too bear a large amount of the responsibility.
It’s really all of us: from the people who believed a home was a speculative investment to the secretaries who took dictation from the aforementioned asshats and pleaded for a bigger bonus, to the guy who charged $2 for a soda that cost him 50 cents.
Indeed, anyone who’s found a way to game the capitalist system for a few pennies, or a few million. Blame doled out on a proportionate scale.
It’s the people who nodded quietly during Wall Street when Gordon Gecko intoned “Greed is good.” It’s people who cheer (or boo) an athlete who makes a quarter billion dollars a year playing a kid’s game. It’s people who believe a miniscule, incremental tax hike on genetically lucky Americans is a bad thing because, there but for God’s hatred, go I; I could be earning that $10 million compensation package. Stupid parents.
The responsibility lies with people who believe the only measure of a nation’s net worth is its monetary wealth, not the well-being of its citizens and those who aspire to citizenship. It lies with people who believe that big government is an obstacle but that big business only has our best interests at heart.
The responsibility lies with churches and sinners, with black and white, with men and women. We sit by and cheer those who would lead us into the abyss, all the while believing the abyss is a bad thing.
It lies with all of us who remain willfully ignorant of the world around us, from the high schooler who can’t find England on a globe to the bloggers who deny climate change to the people who somehow believe we can emerge from this financial crisis a better nation.
Maybe eventually, but it will require a massive alteration in the perspective of the American people who remain inundated on a daily basis with urges to “Buy! Buy!! BUY!!!!”
We are all insane. We think working for fifty years enriching someone else then spending the last decades or even years of our lives in futile pursuit of something called “relaxation,” while sweating out whether we can stretch our life savings out far enough, and “oh what if I get really sick?” is a full life.
That may have been true, when we made things, and created things, and could find a truth in our work, once upon a time.
But once upon a time only works in fairy tales.
Now we are drones, and even if we do still create some value in this world, its been snapped up, marketed, massaged, and cheapened all in the name of “maximizing profit.” And yet, we get up every morning, put on the same damned uniform, be it an actual uniform, overalls, a suit and a tie, or “business casual” (an oxymoron, that). We travel the same road most traveled to find our places in the interchangable corporate cogs, and sit in our cubicle farms, poking our heads up like prairie dogs when something unusual happens (usually, someone runs out of creamer for the coffee.)
We are all zombies on this bus.
The recollection brought to you by the team of folks that I spent an excavation season with one year who played Monty Python every single night and spent every day rehashing routines to one another over the baulks. How I did not render someone dead is a mystery to me.
Took me literally a decade and a half to be able to watch Monty Python again…
“In combat one should be very suspicious of painless moral choices. When you are confronted with a seemingly painless moral choice, the odds are that you haven’t looked deeply enough.” ~ Karl Marlantes
may be a good definition of most of the developed countries, simply because ‘development’ was achieved by turning people into cogs. That is, depersonalizing persons. There has always been a lot of this – it’s not limited to capitalism, by the way – but when the Personnel Department became Human Resources, it marked an unapologetic acceptance of that attitude.
On an personal level, it’s the difference between having a Job and having a Calling.
And the System consciously takes advantage of the good will and dedication of these people by underpaying them.
There are many people with very human/humane views, who want to teach, create and help/serve others. We give them public praise but not a living wage. We applaud poets but how many make a living on their volumes of poetry? One of the finest artists I’ve ever known works as a mechanic because he can’t make a living with his marvelous paintings. We value the services of nurses but pay them as little as we can possibly get away with.
There are people who DO THINGS and there are people who manipulate others.
What really pisses me off is that those who actually accomplish things – who fix my car, build my house, pave my roads, grow my food, get necessities to me from afar, fix my power lines; these people are on the bottom of the reward chain while the top of the ladder is occupied by people in expensive suits who wouldn’t know how to grow potatoes, fill a pothole, rebuild my engine or roof my house – and even if they did know, they would consider it beneath them.
If the day ever comes when the Suits find their money is useless, I will greatly enjoy watching them unsuccessfully try to do the simplest tasks of real living. And when they try to buy the goods and services by offering more money, I will enjoy hearing the mechanic, the farmer, the electrician, the nurse telling them, “We have no use for your money. You’re on your own.” But then, I’ve always been a dreamer….
I’m human. I sometimes misspeak by accident.
You’re a Republican. You always lie on purpose.
single night with daily rehashing is amazing. Your survival is also amazing. I enjoy Monty Python, but viewings must be widely spaced.
people who enjoy their work or craft enjoy being a worker bee as opposed to being a Queen–zero desire to mirror them!
It seems to be fairly common for folks to work decades until retirement (if they’re lucky) and wonder “What’s it all about, Alfie?”. And a lot of those wondering are ‘successful’ by contemporary standards. Midlife Crisis, anyone?
In the last nearly-50 years, I designed, coded and implemented some exceptional software systems and got a lot of satisfaction, not from the plaudits or promotions but from doing something difficult and doing it damn well. I am about to be retired, but one way or another I’ll probably be programming for another 20 years and be buried with my fingers on a keyboard. For me, it’s not a job, and I was lucky to find people to pay me a living salary while I did what I would gladly have done for free (if independently wealthy).
Today I get equal satisfaction from a well-tended garden; a beautifully woven tablecloth; a well-crafted poem, a nicely built piece of furniture, a well-told story.
I may never be famous as a Master Cabinetmaker, Master Weaver, Poet Laureate, world-renowned novelist. I couldn’t care less. I do what I do because I love doing it. IMHO, the world would be better off if more people behaved the same way.
I’m human. I sometimes misspeak by accident.
You’re a Republican. You always lie on purpose.
when I was a teenager or pre-teen. We’re all sponges for repeating phrases, ideas, music, etc. around that age.
But now… no way. Although the other day I woke up with Lenny saying “Thank you for bein’ a friend” over and over in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04tzPnug6N4
No idea why. I saw that episode a year ago.
great idea and may be some could have a mask of a congresscritter since it’ all theater
hasn’t been a corporate zombie, check under the bus.
on Occupy Wall Street, but I think that they will get kicked out as soon as the Patriot act is invoked to get them out of there; just a matter of time. And I don’t think the americans have the courrage of facing that prospect. The few that will will be branded terrorists and that will be the end of it.
Those are two of the best comments I’ve ever read. Bless you for being who you are.
I wanted to echo Life of Brian without getting hit with a lawsuit.
….in college I had nearly every episode memorized.
Between that and Nick Danger, I used to drive every date nuts.
I guess I could have drawn a distinction between people who are happily working a job and drones. I kind of alluded to it when I talked about making things. I meant to include “making a difference,” but got caught up in my rhetoric.