Hope in Hades...

I come to work six days a week, work roughly fifty hours a week, and accomplish a net total of nothing. I am told to write code to analyze tables of data containing millions of records indexed by a pin number and make predictions based upon past numbers of how well the company may perform within the coming week. If my predictions are off, I am scolded and told to improve my forecasts, which brings me back to coding a program to analyze... The performance is really due to the effectiveness of the salespeople, the weather, the time of year, attitudes of the prospects and a million other reasons that cannot be easily captured and measured to produce a trendline. So I continue this cycle of creation, production, ridicule and destruction. I will no longer complain about the futility of my cycle, for management has informed me that there are thousands of people that would be more than pleased to slip into my position. My predictions will continue to be off most of the time, but I will survive by those rare days that my predictions are honored by chance, and that is all that is needed to keep the thread I am clinging to strong.

The only benefit working for my employer is the opportunity to explore the world without limits while I am waiting for queries to finish and reports to generate. I can post blogs, read online material, and most importantly, pursue those aspirations that are not of a tangible benefit.

There is no window in my office, only a poster of the Chicago lakefront pinned to cork board. I have a consistent buzz of white noise produced by a server behind me and a ventilation duct above me. Outside my office is a copy machine that whines, clicks and purs from the time I arrive fifteen minutes late to the time I leave and hour and a half ast my scheduled departure.

I often wonder is what I experience at work would be considered sensory deprivation. Will I regress into a proto-human? (Ha, a little Altered States humor... not funny... I know) Seriously, the nine hours I am here a day seems to go by faster and faster. I wouldn't have much of a problem with this characteristic of a work day if it only remained in the realm of the office. Unfortunately this effect of sensory deprivation is leaking into my personal life. Each day I wake up and before I realize the significance of the day, it is time to go to sleep. My only pleasure is Sunday, when I get to see my family and get caught up on all the negative aspects of their lives.

This can't last long. I believe in Karma, and I have been a good person, for the most part. I don't pollute, I am frugal and efficient, and my life's work is being as small of an inconvenience to everybody else as possible. I pay my taxes... Maybe that is the problem. Could I be receiving punishment for my passive support of an administration that exploits human lives? No, even though I say I believe in an underlying order, I really can't believe that rises above the biochemical levels when it is in regards to mankind.

I could start to make a greater effort to succeed. I could become a better networker. Call people that give me their business cards and chit chat about how their work is progressing, act interested in what they have to say, smile nod my head and say "really, that's interesting" over and over again until I am ready to vomit, only to swallow it and make another phone call, send another email, meet someone for lunch at a restaurant that serves hot bread and cold butter delivered to you by a hispanic that doesn't get a tip but rather the tip is destined for the gay waiter that pretends that he gives the smallest shit in the world about whether or not you want a slice of lime in your diet coke. I could sacrifice my nights that I currently spend watching reality TV shows with my girlfriend, for nights filled with pretentious laughter, fictitious smiles and counterfeit friendships all with the sole purpose of obtaining a more lucrative position with their firm one day so that I can pay a daycare center to watch my kids while during the day I go golfing with people that I curse during the night for stealing my time away from my family.

Poverty is better... Maybe one day I will give up the rat race and retire to a basement apartment where I can rue over my lack of ambition as a youth. I can point the finger at the past for my problems in the present. My dinner will consist of rice cakes and peanutbutter and a gin and tonic, that I will devour alone in my corner as I listen to the blood-curdling sounds of children fighting over who has the next chance to play a video game.

At least with poverty my day is my own, but I would let too many people down if I simply gave up the fight. No, I will not let this happen. Why should only the wicked enjoy the luxuries of life.

Institutional Marionette...

As children we never realized that we were being attached to strings; the fun, games, television, arcades, and sports all provided enough distraction for us that we never noticed being bound. The television provided us with a model for appropriate behavior and thought, our parents imposed upon us guidelines for beliefs, and school prohibited any deviation from the norm. As we continue our "education" we become a manufactured product that serves a purpose in society. We learn to desire expensive cars, clothes, toys, homes, etc... We also learn that the meaning of life is to satisfy desire. So when we choose our paths in life we take into account the satisfying of our desires and thanks to mass media those desires are prescribed for us. We downplay our dreams so that we can fill that void of possessions that is most prevalent in the youth. We commit our lives to the pursuit of a lifestyle that we feel destined to enter. We ignore the temptation to do as we dreamed as a child because our society doesn't easily allow one to veer off the beaten trail. It is a shame that in this common era, it is sneered upon to search for yourself. Why reinvent the wheel they say. But what if the wheel is flawed? We will continue to travel with it until it is proven flawed, and nobody will prove the flaw unless they try to reinvent the wheel again. With some ideas the reinvention of the wheel is pointless. For instance, if we try to reinvent mathematics once again, or the foundations of logic, or even scientific method, there is probably little room for improvement. Even though simple ideas may be sufficient there are complex subjects such as the God question, the nature of man, the role of society, government and they are all in dire need of revamping. Unfortunately, there are social mechanisms to maintain the current order of things. Lets try to imagine a revolution in an advanced society. Rest assured, the rebels would be crushed; they would lack numbers, supplies, information, support, propaganda, resources, to mention the least. There is no changing the new modern governments from the outside. It all must be accomplished from within, however, that will never happen because while a person works within the system to rise to a position of power they will be unknowingly brainwashed and corrupted ever so subtly. They vicariously learn that conforming is beneficial and the contrary is disruptive to what the system considers progress.

How could there be progress with such adherence to the status quo?