Currently, there are no rungs and no ladders. People cannot climb or pull themselves up in any sort of significant way. My current employer has gotten on a kick that “perception is reality” and therefore whatever conclusion someone comes to, regardless of its accuracy, it must be handled as if it’s the truth. That means that if someone doesnt think you’re working, you arent, and regardless of the proof contrary, you will be “counseled” or “coached” (corporate terms for written punishment) as if it were.
So, if perception IS reality, then whose perception is real? Obviously this seems a green meme (as wilber would call it) fallacy because not all perceptions are equal. So what the company, which is not alone in its new initiatives, is saying is that “any accusation of negativity against you is an immediate sentencing of guilt with no recourse for you”. In other words, what they’re really saying is “everyone elses perceptions OF you is who we take you to be”. Now, where is the gain for a company to be a dick like that?
Well, I can only assume it’s really a further extension of “the customer is always right” with a new age spin on it. This means that the customer gets retribution or justice from the corporation and the individual bad apple is removed from the group, therefore strengthening the batch in the observers eyes.
Unfortunately for myself, this was what life was growing up in my household. My parents were infallible and anything they even suspected of happening must therefore be happening and you were punished for it. I could write many pages of examples of this but I’ll give a very small one for understanding:
Being a picked on nerd in school meant that bad shit happened to me and kids messed with me a lot in my earlier years. In one school in particular, we were required to put our backpacks under our desk while in class and werent allowed to go into them at all. I always sat in front of a kid who didnt like me, and most days they would slide my backpack from under my desk with their feet and open it up without the teacher noticing and either pull things out or put things into it. Many times my backpack and its contents were on the other side of the classroom by the class’ end and I’d have to scoop it all up quickly and run to my next class.
So, one day, I had done that and when I got home, my parents had received a low scoring report card so, in typical fashion I was to clean out my backpack and they were to search its contents entirely. They looked for homework incomplete, tests that were not high scoring, notes to or from people, and when they got desperate for something to blame my low scores on, they’d look for doodles in the margines of papers or simple disorganization of my work as evidence of my lack of focus or care or want to succeed.
So, in my hurry earlier that day, I’d scooped up or maybe had placed into my bag (not uncommon at all) a note from a girl. This note was not to me at all, was addressed to someone else, and talked about the “great night” they’d had with the addressee. At 10 years old, I never went anywhere without my parents but down the road on my bike if I was lucky. But they were certain at that moment that the name mentioned was simply a code name to throw them off and leave me blameless, and that I was in fact having sex and probably doing drugs or drinking, all of which was the proof they needed as to why my grades were poor. The next few weeks I was forced to read, see and recite facts about every STD, drug addiction, and vehicular accidents by DUI that my parents could find on the internet. One morning shortly later I woke my mother up on the weekend and the first thing she said when looking at me was “do you know what a cold sore is? Do you??? thats mouth herpes! You get it from sucking face with slutty girls.”
At the time, it was still another 3 years before I’d get my first kiss, and another 6 before I had any sexual interaction with a girl or consume alcohol and drugs. At the time, other than at a dance two years earlier, I’d not ever been within even physical closeness with a member of the opposite sex.
So, regarding my job this is a prevalent atmosphere, one of which I am quite familiar. At almost 24 years old and having not been in that kind of environment for more than six years, it’s quite startling to see it thriving and making a CEO quite rich. I had always thought my parents an anomoly, but maybe it’s actually something more generational as the “perception is reality” is coming from the administration that is exactly the same age as my parents.
I might not know a lot about business, but I do know a lot about power. Power comes from control, and with such an overarching ideology of never being wrong prevailing one’s every thought and action, it’s clear that my generations parents were power hungry bastards. Which allows me to assume that their parents, the pervious generation, were more than likely a simply dominating group. They probably used physical punishment more and didnt want to see or hear their children, and when asked for an explaination for any action, they would likely only ever respond with “because I told you so” or “because I’m your mother/father”.
Being able to look back and see and guess that, what does that say for my generation? More than likely we’re thinkers and recluses, we dont want to harm or dominate anyone, we simply want to do the best we can and move on. There are likely a large portion who will repeat the pattern of dominating the world that their parents did and unfortunately that means that mentality will still be around for a few more generations. However many will just completely withdraw from society seeing it as alien and oppressive, hoping to forge our own meek existence in solidarity. Sounds about right for the World of Warcraft, technological generation.
So what can we divine of our own children from that generation? Well the future is uncertain and I am an idealist, but I think it is the first generation not to be assholes, for the most part. Spoiled maybe, priviledged or self-entitled even, but I think that they may be one of the first generations to care. Their parents having not wanted to pass on the negative traits will try and instill love instead of fear. This is probably why there are so many bratty kids when one goes out and about, whose parents will say no a dozen times to a request and then finally give in. We’re a rather broken generation, but I feel that maybe in our defeat, our kids will have a better chance at making a positive change in the world, even if only in their treatment of others.
This goes back to my previous blog on parenting and is a great place for me to say why I wont be a parent. I’ve never seen or been exposed to enough of what I’d call good parenting, and I know how broken and deficient I am from my upbringing and I refuse to pass on that broken to the next generation. Granted there are many others who would be far worse parents I’m sure, but there are many more (I hope) who would be far better.
