Given that using email to er email people and using instant messenger to instant message people rather than risk yet more hysterical verbal interactions are supposedly not allowed at my previous job, I find it hard to fathom how people are justifying using bank resources to repeatedly hit the website.
Also, after a brief respite earlier in the week, I see the perpetrators of the events which precipitated my current project are still wasting their time hitting this website.
What they are hoping to find is anyone’s guess. I am highly unlikely to say anything new when the sheeple are sitting hitting the website every day.
Speaking of sheeple, I had never previously had quite such cynical colleagues. At least two of the people I spoke to referred to banking as being inherently immoral.
“Banking is not immoral at all, it is amoral.” I replied. “Like economics, which reduces people to behavioural units, it is comforting and has no morality at all.”
“But, but, but what about the Rothschilds?”
“What about them? They started out in a ghetto with a box of money under the floor and were very brave. They have always been very nice to me.” I said. This is actually true, the Rothschilds are not unpleasant, either as a company or a family. You may not approve, but there is nothing to approve or disapprove of. They worked very hard, and now they have more money than is sensible or practical.
I am sure even Wolfe has an off the cuff comment about the Rothschilds, but I imagine it will mostly be for effect and he actually agrees with me, as he does about many things. I am trying to get back into the habit of target setting, and the current one involves seeing him the next time he is in the UK, complete with finished game and books.
What effect does this cynicism have on these people? Does it make them more intelligent? No, it makes them frightened. Does it make them think strategically to redress the perceived social imbalance? No, the very thought of losing money or convenience is alien to them. All they really want is someone to blame, whether that is me, because I am not like them, or you, because you have more money than them is immaterial. I see this every day, whether it is someone erroneously referring to Boris as being born with a silver spoon in his mouth (I am sure he laughs at this as much as I do) or people who cannot quite put their finger on why they think my mere existence ‘does something to them.’
Twisty said it best I think.
“You are doing something to them. You aren’t like them, which means they might have to actually use their brains. That is inconvenient, and they do not like it.”
I did not have this problem ten years ago, working in much the same environment. Then, the far more advanced back office bankers simply accepted that I was not like them and asked interesting and pertinent questions. There was none of the fear or suspicion that I got this time.
So much for conspiracy theories. I have written quite a bit on how you change the world without being seen to do so, and it has been largely ignored, as has much of the associated material written by fellow economic historians and economists alike. Nobody wants to hear the truth, because it might cause mild inconvenience and mean that you miss a box set here or there in order to make things better. It is far easier to find someone to blame.
Having watched Wolfe being pilloried for years for stating the blisteringly obvious alongside some more entertaining material he likes to use, I now find this far easier to accept. People are stupid, they like being stupid, and they will continue to be stupid right up until the hypodermic is in their arm. Then they will wonder if perhaps they should have listened. Briefly, before their eyes shut for the last time.
I wonder if it is possible to continue to care about this, when it is so impossible to get the message across to people who don’t actually want to listen. I have seen Wolfe go from angry, to accepting, to acquisitive in the course of a decade. I have watched the decline in moral philosophy in the Labour movement in the course of a lifetime, and I have seen the rise of hypocrisy, waste and dishonesty in business in the course of a few short years.
Once upon a time we celebrated whistleblowers, encouraged people who thought differently and we grew a celebrated economy based upon progression. Now we have cultivated a nation of whinging, self-serving yes-men, and we are surprised at the decline it fosters.
Bring on more rebels. Only by questioning what we are told do we find the truth, and only by actually listening to people. Until we can manage that, we are doomed to the fate of a fallen civilisation, much like all the ones that went before.
Just wait until they get around to murdering you, whether it is literally, your spirit, your work ethic or your sense of justice. You won’t know what hit you. We already live in a corrupt little nest of vipers. I got first hand experience of it twelve years ago, and things are far worse now. The Asean nations will mop the floor with us, probably within my lifetime, unless we change direction now.
