This may appear to be an overly-abstract approach to the problems of our current moment, but bear with me a second.
We all talk about "they" all the time. I've commented quite a bit about this on this site. This post is just my latest on the ongoing theme.
The people we are viewing as our "enemies" (liberals for those on the right, conspiracy theorists for those on the center-left and the left) are suffering under the same impersonal framework as we are. We are all calling businesses and being de-humanized by intensely impersonal computer systems: "We appreciate your business", etc. We are all dealing with workers only slightly different from these computers, trained in precisely the same mode of thought. It's driving us all insane.
We need to keep in mind that it is the tolerance/promotion of these systems of interaction that is the true enemy here. To different degrees, almost all of us are permitting these systems to continue and to grow. Forget the "people" you think are on the "other side" of whatever distraction is in front of us at the moment. They don't exist. What is the idea that is driving us crazy? What is the life structure which is driving us nuts?
These impersonal modes of communication are our common enemy. We all know it. The problem is that while we are all infuriated by these systems, we simultaneously understand and have some sympathy (sometimes even admiration) for where they came from.
I argue (I had a long post about this) that our true problem is promotion of corporate culture. We allow corporations (who have literally zero humanity in them) to drive our culture forward. Corporations have one goal: financial profit. There is inadequate profit for them in treating humans as humans. It takes time and effort that is "inefficient" according to the corporate incentive structure.
All these systems that drive us insane as individual humans, on the other hand, are beneficial to corporate entities. That's why they are there. These systems are how they extract the maximum financial gain / unit. The units are you and me, and the corporation's goal is to maximize corporate income per person the corporation interacts with. De-humanized systems are the most efficient way of doing this; that's why they've developed as they have.
This goes beyond the individuals working within these corporations. It happens over their heads.
It begins with the thought process "This will make [X] corporation, for which I work, money. Then [X] corporation will reward me." It becomes a shared culture, from top to bottom. The people at the top are as much slaves to this thought process as the peons at the bottom, perhaps more so. They give up their humanity for purchasing power.
This is the enemy. Not the poor unhappy people on whom we choose to take out our growing rage. We and they are both being fools when we don't see this.
When faced with the true decisions in life - business or personal - real progress will be made when we make decisions which celebrate and acknowledge the actual human being in front of us, not the avatar we have created in our mind of what a "customer" or a "political enemy" is. Only when we start shaping our systems like this in real time - i.e. each system we set up, we ask ourselves "Is this an interaction I would feel completely human engaging in?" - will actual human progress be made, not just corporate mindless-production and humanity-destruction "progress".
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