| Why must bureaucracy rule the world?Everyone bangs on about equality - but in my experience the world is 1?ulture, and 99?umber-crunching: even the Arts have been colonized by parasites obsessed with money and figures, number-crunchers who stick their stinking fingers into every pie, to quantify and split everything into profits and losses, data and statistics - maintaining the stats but destroying the soul.
No, it is not true that we need these people for society's good - they only do the jobs to keep roofs over their heads and could easily be replaced.
As children we are imaginative, at what point do we become robots? School children do not fantasize about becoming payroll managers or data input clerks - they dream of being singers, footballers or Hollywood stars! They do not have posters of Local Government officials on their walls - but of popstars or historical icons. Does this not tell us that boring grey-suited morons are not to admired? Does this not tell us that the dull and ignorant bureaucrats are second best? Who decided that bean-counters should be well paid? Why not discourage pen-pushing just like drug-dealing or house burglary? It causes more problems than the two combined - and for every criminal s*****g we can be sure there will be a pen-pushing solicitor working out ways to defend them.
Even bureaucrats, when they get home from work, will watch films or sports, or even read books - do they not see, then, that it is the Arts, and the imaginative pleasures of life that are important, not their soulless bean-counting?
Why should civil servants dictate school budgets? Why should efficiency count more than cultural worth? Why can it not be artists and poets who enjoy influence and freedom, while nit-picking statisticians are trampled in the dirt? It cannot be said that figures and bureaucracy have benefited the world - all our institutions are outdated and corrupt, and have led to financial collapse! Ever since Ancient times expression has been stifled and distrusted, and life has been sliced and segmented into graphs, charts and numbers. When people talk about the Holocaust, one of the most horrific elements is almost always acknowledged to have been the notorious efficiency with which it was administered - as with all horrendous dictatorships. Why, then, should this pedantry be admired when it appertains to thick, mumbling, monosyllabic clerks and tax inspectors? Why are people unable to attend drama school and arts classes due to prohibitive costs, whereas any oaf can clamber into admin? Why must hospital clerks often "earn" more than nurses - even though the clerks would ditch their jobs tomorrow if they won the lottery, while nurses are often loyally committed? Why must people who are educated and intelligent take instructions from bean-counters who have never even read a book? Why must vital care homes and dialysis units be closed down on the orders of bean-counters, when the great figures of humanity such as Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King have shown that it is quality, not quantity, that matters - and decency, thought and love, instead of cold efficiency, that make the most positive difference?
Why must the world be strangled by bureaucracy?
Asked By: Z - 5/24/2010 |
Why must bureaucracy rule the world? Because we are no longer small tribal communities that directly barter the products of our livelihood for the products of others' livelihoods. I could do a whole history lesson of agronomy based cultures and the rise of accountancy and banking, but I don't think that is what you are after. Suffice it to say, we now live in a world where we work at jobs because we must earn something (can't even call it cash anymore, but the more nebulous "money"). Like it or not, we have grown to such a level of disconnect from each other. Few people are employed in jobs they love to do, or want to be great at. We can't feed ourselves, we must depend on grocery stores, which depend on corporate farms and factories, which depend on oil wells and mines to plant, fertilize, harvest, process, package, and deliver the crops. We have been deluded into believing in the "American dream" -- that we can become rich and live a lush life, while at the same time trying to live that dream on minimum wage. The corporate marketing firms have succeeded in making us spend more than our income, because we MUST own a house, we MUST own that Nintendo, we MUST own that car, we MUST eat that beef. Our own so-called American dream has become our downfall, making us wallow in hedonism, and worse: laziness.
Humans have both a psychological and sociological drive to be "useful" -- preferably in a manner that is enjoyable. Many (most?) nowadays equate that need to be useful with a desire to be successful, and thus the grand drive for riches. Even if they fail on the drive to being rich, they think that ought to be the goal, that all would be better if they were, and that is the sad part, because being rich isn't a sure path to happiness. Far from it, really.
A couple of my favorite quotes, both from Cornel West:
'I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful," as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great." There's a qualititative difference.'
'The fundamentalism of the market puts a premium on the activities of buying and selling, consuming and taking, promoting and advertising, and devalues community, compassionate charity, and improvement of the general quality of life.'
Answered By: golgafrincham - 5/25/2010 |