Some time ago, I was reading an article on some great leader at some great company, who spoke about the two strategies to retain employees: provide them meaningful work and provide them with an environment where they collaborate with quality people. It was profound and genius and … bullshit. This is the kind of stuff kings, rulers, governments, religious soothsayers and leaders have been spewing for centuries to meet their ultimate goal: tame enough of the human spirit in volumes to help them meet their own goals.
What every society or company or community wants is to drive enough cattle to do what they want done and the fodder and strategy they use to tame the beast differs in specific content but the general theme is the same: your fulfilment lies in doing what’s good for my business.
This hoodwinking and intellectual proselytising of thinking individuals into homogeneous masses is fantastic. Men have done this to men, communities to communities, men to women, women to women, women to men, companies to employees, governments to the governed … It’s all over.
What history teaches me is that the biggest, most powerful, most hallowed, most mostliest at any given time in history has faded, crumbled, died and the lowly, solitary human spirit has endured.
And so I ask myself always: is there a greater purpose than discovering and fulfilling one’s potential? And if that be the purpose, can it ever be fulfilled working forever for someone else? Can the damage of not thinking be assessed in terms of pseudo notions of fulfilment? Of comfort? Of praise of one’s work against norms defined by others?
These are questions one must answer for one’s own self.
🙂