Category Archives: Writing

It’s a fine place, an office. It’s a place where the roles are clearly written down, where human relations and resources are planned out and executed. Strategies and capital are handed down and allocated. Directives are made, but sometimes ignored. Politics reins, unrepresentative, undemocratic. There may not be physics or math to rhyme reason into workplaces, but there is one rule that is more Law than Theory: as one ascends the ladder and sits upon higher rungs, one’s awareness goes down. Self awareness and awareness of other people both reach their lowest points in the moment that one ascends to one’s highest bureaucratic apex, and in all the moments that follow. How can one be so sure that this is true? Two reasons: first, it’s easier to rise in a given bureaucracy if one is unaware of oneself (assuming one is constituted in such a way that the bureaucracy will automatically reward one) and two, it’s a power maintenance principle that being aware of the impacts of the wielding of power will reduce power, and so deliberate or accidental unawareness are the key to amassing more. Awareness often results in the expected responses, as one who knows what another expects, might feel motivated to do as the other expects; this is a calcification mechanism that prevents one from moving upward in the hierarchy and ensures relative stability in the social organizational system. Those who acquire power either deliberately or accidentally reduce their awareness of themselves and others and therefore can move around people with relative aplomb. What should one do about this fact, this principle, this Law? Get out of the office. Environments that celebrate and reward a lack of awareness systematically are broken, awful, and bad for the soul.