Lost in Here

Once again this post started with bitching. And it's not like any of you would honestly care how pissed off I am at the latest I.T. sponsored brainfart  - because you are not (except maybe Dragonfly) - but really, keeping me from properly posting Trish' comment, or read her post when I have the time and the energy to do so is a motherfucking abusive thing to do. And what for? I'll tell you what for. It's not stupid controllitis, no. You would think so, but no. This is a plain case of "I won't do my job as I should, because I'll get paid the same whether I do it or not". Yes, it's a self-indulging, incompetence favoring attitude. But not only it's the steal-where-you-can mentality going on, because these same people - and Dragonfly doesn't let me lie in here - actually PRIDE themselves on being "hardworking" and "breaking their backs on the job" and "giving their best", not to mention "being honest, commited and responsible". Dude, you've no shame.

Yesterday I was at the most terrible seminar-workshop invented by men. It was - ALLEGEDLY! - about Strategic Planning and Risk Management. The invitation said that, the facts said different. Two "professionals" -  and this is where I'm so fucking proud of being able to call myself a Scientist, so I won't be put in the same category as them - in Business Administration, one of them from some sorry-ass-big-name private university, presented the weakest, most biased ... program, I guess... where the main topics were cut in half in order to accomodate two more topics, unannounced, probably under the philosophy of "more is better", regardless of the utter lack of quality of the end result. Not like it would have held any water, mind you, as the adding of two more topics could have been the result of the fact that both "professionals" (who also prided themselves of being university professors), probably couldn't say a thing (more) about the main topics. It didn't matter either, mind you, as they came with their neatly pressed black suits and close cropped hairstyles, pretending to be top excecutives and ultimate connoisseurs of the matter at hand, and yet turning the seminar into an entropic clashing of disjoined false-based or biased stories aimed to undermine the image of public institutions and uphold the idea of privatization on wild, grand scale.

Did they know the matter they were talking about? No, and not only because they claimed that "Steven Jobs was the greatest CEO in the planet, even if as person he was terrible" (OK, I'll stay still with Jack Welsh), or because us economists are biased about BAs and think they are our "unhinged, braindamaged sibling", but because for anyone could tell that the throwing around of terms in English that went unexplained, and the grandilocuent way they called on the name of indexes clearly, CLEARLY showed it was all to cover the fact that they have no idea about what they are saying, less even about what they are SUPPOSED to be saying.

Professional papers are filled to the brim with self-help-cut articles that praise mediocrity - openly or not - as the way to do business. The same worn off formulas are passed around like the biggest secrets of Freemasonry, when they don't say much, and skip the matter, the core of everything: You must work hard to get where you want.

Truth is that working hard, being honest, being able to settle, knowing oneself and thus knowing when have you reached your Point of Satisfaction, allowing yourself to be content, are no longer values to hold up to. It's not a virtue to work hard and earn respect for what you do and are capable to do, but instead the promoted new virtues tell you that you must always seek how to pull more profit, either by working less for the same money, or get more money for the same work OR get more money for less work. Back in the day that would have been a SHAMEFULL thing to do. That would have been called "stealing". Today it means being cunning.

You are not supposed to work, you are not supposed to know, you are not supposed to get prepared, and by no circumstance you are supposed to work hard only to be better and be proud of what you do - oh no, that's being stupid - but you are supposed to pretend, and see how can you pull it out with the less amount of effort possible... if any.

So yes, I am blogging from my e-mail account, while the I.T. people act as if every update of the firewall resets the entire system and take their sweet time setting it back. (Sweet time which has been reported to last over 2 months...) And morons charge large paychecks for seminars they are not qualified for, as they can't even be qualified as professionals, and the people attending nod at them like the Taco Bell Chihuahua (I was reading a novel the entire time). And so, are we surprised that the multimillion street recarpeting washed away with the rain? The fixed bridge didn't got fixed? The school connectivity programs don't work? The Enterprise Social Responsability programs drown in a pile of unfulfilled promises while eating up large pools of taxpayer money? Big banks fail and get bailed out only to use the money to pay their overpaid executives? Greece goes down the sewer, Italy can't be held up, Spain is sinking bellow the level of its former colonies and on and on?

Geez, why do you wonder? This is the less effort world we have all chosen, isn't it? And sure, you can say "no, not me", but just look into yourself and judge. Have you stayed true to yourself? Have you willingly chosen the easy over the honest? Do you openly or secretly admire the people who pulls it effortlessly? Do you want to be the woman who marries a millionaire and doesn't have to work anymore? Do you want to be the guy who has a friend who gets him a CEO position or any position with a big paycheck attached? Do you dream with winning the lottery and have all your worries vanished? Dream with being rescued? Dream with having the magical powers to make everything better? Then you are one of them.