Ah, corporate culture, the beast we go to bed, eat and shower with every morning. That lowly thing we engage in communion with because by now it is so intricately woven into our lives, we don’t know where we begin and where it ends. Go to any blog questioning, for example the corruption of tech companies, and try as you might to be just as critical, you feel you cannot because you are typing your messages of protest in a machine sold to you at a considerable markup by one of these companies. You feel like the most primordial slime, the ultimate hypocrite. Alright, perhaps that was a bit dramatic! But you get my point. Though you do your damndest to be an ethical consumer, corporate products are simply too tied in with your very survival for you to ever mount a successful opposition. Or is that really so?
I actually have suffered greatly as a result of my own personal protest against a high tech behemoth (which you know by now is Apple) that almost seemed to go out of its way to abuse my rights as an employee. I had been misclassified as self-employed and worked for them full time for three years without benefits. I am hardly the only one hit by this awful ‘Permatemping’ phenomenon, and it is indeed a rather long story. But the end result was that because I had my say-so regarding some very basic labor rights, they laid me off; sent me packing and did not even allow me to retrieve my things from my desk. I was notified on a Sunday, and the following Monday, my personal effects were shipped to me via FedEx, mostly broken. A nerve was definitely hit there, but I paid the price. And there was a real arrogance on their part, to think that a ‘little person’ like me would just go away like a tiny kitten with its tail between its legs and have nothing further to say, or that an ‘average’ person would not have the chutzpah or the resources to fight their considerable empire and influence.
Now I have a relative who works for them under the same exact conditions. She is just as angry, but somehow has maintained her composure, perhaps out of fear she could not find another gig in this piss poor economy. Should I have done the same? Because I spoke out, I am still living like a madwoman in a rent-controlled shoebox, in a poor neighborhood. But if I had sucked up, could I have looked myself in the mirror in the morning? There is literal whoring of the body and then there is whoring of one’s very soul and convictions. The latter is the smelliest and most infernal beast by far. So I made a decision to take what little dignity I had left, and run with it. And here I am, just another poor person, but at least keeping my principles inviolate, aside from owning the machine I am now typing this entry on.
Corporations have had us in bed with them for quite a while now. They have taken that old adage, ‘Know Your Friends Well, Know Your Enemies Better’ and twisted it around so that now we are the enemy being preyed upon, while offered all kinds of ‘new and improved’ products to lure us further into the maw of the beast. This false friend knows us so very well, from our deepest lusts and cravings, to our most unspeakable fears. It puts these up to us as though in a mirror and reflects them back in the most irresistible forms, in whatever flavor or shape we desire.
Are we simply our own worst enemy? If that is the real issue at hand, this beast can indeed be slayed, but only with considerable sacrifice and detachment from our former ways. Rise up and fight it, before it morphs into a different form altogether, as it inevitably will without intervention, stealth and awareness on our part. This new master has a subtlety of mind that we must also cultivate, if we truly intend to fight the good fight. Power knows exactly what it is and how to maintain and perpetuate itself. We must also learn the same skill if we are to keep it from infiltrating our lives and undermining everything we stand for as human beings.
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