What a cruel twist that the contemporary office would eventually come to resemble the paranoia-inducing open floor plans so prevalent in 19th century manufacturing operations. Uppity white collar office drones were put on notice: despite their banal feelings of superiority over the uneducated masses, they were still no better than laborers on the factory floor. In the first two decades of the 21st century, us lower-rung PMCs found ourselves pining for the cubicle wall, which at least gestured — pathetically — toward privacy and individual sovereignty in the office.
What evil consciousness birthed the open floor plan monstrosity? Did a cabal of sadistic interior designers and HR executives meet one night, brainstorming with manic fervor how to dehumanize us even further? …
At the heart of all tribal affiliation is a deep-seated need to vouchsafe one’s survival. It’s straightforward: you leverage the power of the group; safety in numbers.
The advent of large civilizations and millions of individuals ostensibly tied to the same ideology obscured the pragmatics of tribal affiliation. Still, prior to the industrial revolution, global coordination of resources was impossible. There remained a pragmatic rationale for groups to hoard resources in order to vouchsafe their survival.
We’re now living in a post-industrial landscape with coordinated global communications and vast surpluses of resources. …
They spend most of their waking hours huddled around screens, circles under their eyes, scanning through endless streams of missives, reports, confirmations, and memos. As they drown in reams of endless directives and explanations, the specter of defeat and humiliation lurks behind the slightest turn of phrase, the tiniest indication that the guilt should land on their lap.
Millions of these self-righteous suckers are stuck in cubicles across the USA. They’ve internalized the ideology of capitalism without reaping the benefits of those at the top of the exploitation pyramid. They’ll repress the exploitation being heaped upon them from above and apologize for the exploitation they stomp on those below. …
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. — Hillary Clinton
Millions of neurotic saps toil away in cubicles across America, spoonfed a diet of Chipotle, Starbucks, and NPR. They take for granted that their outlook is rational and educated — they’ll go to histrionic extremes to express their savage hatred of organized religion, country music, and any area of the country with a Republican majority. With guilty consciences, they make sardonic quips about ghettoized neighborhoods. They’ve internalized and accepted the state sanctioned violence of drones dropping bombs on Pakistani children, but will froth at the mouth, in righteous indignation, at the slightest implication of homophobia or racism. …
About
