I’ve been thinking about this for a while; I can’t help but think that corporate capitalism is poisoning our very souls.
I come from a pretty bad background, but I struggled my way into an economically comfortable position. (I really feel for you all who are working your asses off and still struggling because of the greed of the few.) I’m doing okay, but I’ve seen some shit and I’ve seen so many fall on the way. I can’t help but think that the economical system poisons our values and abuses us on a deep emotional and mental level.
When you look at how corporate culture works, all virtues in ordinary life are tools used against people. If you are compassionate and have goodwill towards others, it will be used to manipulate you. You will find yourself doing extra work, maybe work for free, for the sake of the “teamwork”. You’ll find yourself answering work-related communication on your free time. If you are dutiful and responsible, that will be used to pressure you into doing more and more, emotionally blackmailed about how it will affect your coworkers if you don't. If you are loyal and humble, the HR has a term for that – “loyalty discount”. It means you can be paid less and still get better effort out of you than from others. All your good qualities will be used against you, turned into ways to suck you dry for the sake of someone elses’s profit. In most corporations, if you have any kind of ethics, you will feel constant ethical stress because of the shady shit your corporation is doing. (Killing the world with the climate change not being the least of them.)
Your good qualities will never net you any rewards in the corporate world. No, only more abuse and gaslighting.
What kind of qualities get you further in the corporate world, then? They are the very opposite of virtues. If you can lie, do as little as possible while taking credit for others, you will go far. Your payment will increase only by constantly changing jobs. (I’m not saying this is disloyalty, I recommend job hopping, but it sucks that loyalty gets you nowhere.) If you give as little as possible of yourself, you will stress less – just the do the minimum, preferably even less, so you don’t burn yourself out. Work ethics are a weakness, not a strength. The best way to get ahead in a corporation is to drink with the right people, always underpromise and overdeliver and mercilessly backstab coworkers for your own gain. Having the right family connections is a huge plus.
When you look at all those abusive middle managers, some of them are the way they are because the higher ups like having lackeys and enforcers. But others are cruel and tyrannical because they used to be something else. If you are the kind of person who takes responsibility for more than just your own job, it is easy to burn out from that. There comes this illusion that the success of the whole business rests on your shoulders. You feel responsible and that responsibility is abused by the higher ups, who stack more and more pressure on you. It is no wonder people like that snap eventually, turning to alcohol or drugs for solace. Or they might turn into assholes because their good qualities have been spoiled and poisoned.
I’m not telling you to feel sympathy for assholes. I’m saying that there might have been a time when they were not assholes. Maybe the corporate culture turned them into that. (If you are a manager reading this and noticing the signs in yourself; get out before it is too late.)
So yeah, consider how much time people spend at work. It is usually the majority of their waking hours. Consider the kind of culture that pervades many of the work places. Is it then wonder that people are anxious, pressured and snapping out outside work as well? Every good impulse they naturally feel is abused most of their waking hours. At the same time, they see how antisocial and destructive impulses are rewarded economically. I can’t help but feel that affects the society at large, making people less empathic, ruining them from within.
It sucks. I’ve developed two personas, pretty much, to deal with this. My work persona is detached, I never feel anything about anything work-related, I never give anything personal to anyone. I don't give a fuck about the quality of my work; I only give the necessary effort and not an inch more. I leave everything work-related mentally at work. That allows my private persona to retain the qualities I value in myself, such as actually caring about the things I do. It is a coping mechanism, because I’m afraid I’d burn out emotionally otherwise. We shouldn’t need to do shit like this.
We shouldn’t need to sacrifice our souls just for the sake of a comfortable life.