The world of "Admin."

In 1960 or so, C.S. Lewis wrote a preface to the paperback edition of his book The Screwtape Letters. While discussing the nature of evil, which this book explores in considerable depth, he wrote:

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done in even concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaurcracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

Lewis is not the only writer of his time who noted how easily evil can be taken up in bureaucracy, and specifically, in the bureaucracy of business. The original Screwtape Letters were published during the Second World War, at a time when George Orwell worked for the BBC, as that organization engaged in war propaganda. He saw enough treachery there to base the "Ministry of Truth" in his book 1984 upon this experience, describing a well-organized nightmare state run by bureaucrats - a "Party" - who were bent only on perpetuating their own power. Note that in the observation of both writers, there was a mere tiny step between the bureaucracy of business and the practice of totalitarianism.

The "world of Admin." is a world of subjugation and humiliation, and it is reinforced by universal bureaucratic practices. The common behavior of saying different things to different people - the systematic tactics of lies and deceit - is especially easy when couched in acronyms, abbreviations, and catch-phrases, all disseminated in quiet, subtle refrains. Members of a bureaucracy are naturally deterred from seeing a "big picture" when the terms they use are approximate and abridged - much like the "Newspeak" described in Orwell's world. The less talking - indeed, the less thinking and understanding - the better executed everything is. To worry about the more general issues is unacceptable. That is Not Your Job! We are a Results-Oriented Culture! Follow your "PDP", your "PRP", your "EDP", and all will be right!

I do not wish to depress anyone with these observations. The bureaucracy is soulless. It will always be so. You must remember to hold onto yourself. The bureaucracy is at odds with the human personality, which seeks expansion, growth, awareness, and spiritual wholeness, and this is far contrary to the self-imposed blindness bureaucratic organizations require from you. Remember this in the dark moments when you are reprimanded for not readily conforming to these expectations. Management is not paying you to look up, but so what? Imagine how much worse things would be if you actually stayed down.

The arrangement

All of us who work live within an arrangement. It takes a multitude of distinct forms, but at the center of every one is the agreement to exchange work for money.

"If I give you work," you tell your employer, "you must give me money." The converse is stated by the employer - "I will give you money if you give me work." We may need to substitute some of our terms with others to make this picture more accurate for our actual situations, but the theme remains the same. Work is performed by a worker; money is given as compensation.

Outwardly, nothing is wrong with this. Cooperative arrangements of this nature make our society possible. As I said in a previous post, this is substantively how specialization is possible, and this, in turn, is what makes civilization as we know it possible.

Yet, most any working person can tell you that what comes with this arrangement is positively awful. The model here is one of subjugation, not cooperation. Because money commands work of any nature from any individual, the financial resources of the employer - the capital - places the employer at a complete advantage, and the worker with no option but to conform. "I pay you to work," is the unspoken demand of the employer. "Your time is therefore mine." It is in the rules of employment where mistrust of the worker and the interests of the employer are institutionalized. "You will do things my way," says the employer, "since that is the only way I can be sure you will do what we agreed." The worker can object, but the employer does not have to care. For every worker with "problems", there is another without who the employer will favor. In the name of employment - fair compensation for labor performed - subjugation, control, and dominance are the norm.

In previous generations, the capitalist system - a direct outgrowth of the feudal and imperial systems before it - was so brutal that the treatises of Marxism and socialism arose, and many found sympathy. "Give the workers control of the weath, and all will be better." It sounded good, but it was not to be: where a so-called "Marxist revolution" was tried, the situation actually grew far worse. In such societies, there was now a new ruling class - a "party" - in charge of the capital, and worse, their ideals denied the relevance of spirituality. Hence, the history of these Marxist regime had a brutality that actually turned the clock backward from capitalism. They were so certain of their correctness - and so arrogant in their doctrines - that their brutality took on a whole new meaning. Dissenters of any form were not simply dismissed from jobs or forsaken to poverty - they were systematically deported, imprisoned, and murdered. There was no humility anywhere in the regimes of Stalin or Mao, and their legacies are of only heartlessness and horror.

The painful lesssons of our employer-employee arrangements, and of the even worse examples that tried to defy them, is not that capitalism doesn't work. There will always be some who have more resources than others, and those who have will inevitably take advantage of those who have less. The only way it is stopped is through the basic humility that every person must maintain in order to achieve anything beyond mere material gain.

The major difference between an employer who says, "Do it my way, or else" versus one who says "I'd like you to do it my way.... but I am aware that my way may not be what is best for you" is exactly what distinguishes a good boss from a bad one. If employers could simply take on this attitude universally, that would be all the revolution we'd ever need.

A cooperative ignorance

Why can a working life be at odds with a spiritual life? If we analyze work in its most basic description, we may find an opportunity toward, and not away from, the expansion and grounding of our awareness. In our most natural condition, the need for sustenance and protection makes work a constant obligation. The food we need simply doesn't appear in our hands when we are hungry. We must go out and get it somehow, and this takes an effort. The same is true for the clothes we wear, the houses that shelter us, and any other man-made object that is integral to our material lives. Before civilization, the work needed to create these goods was as obvious as it was necessary. Unless we ourselves hunted, fished, grew, and built, the forces of nature would easily vanquish us, and we would not live. Indeed, unless we found in our hearts a humble, adaptive attitude, one that would be essentially spiritual, our very survival might well fall into jeopardy. However, such opportunities are all but extinguished in the world we know today.

Today, in a civilized setting, we delegate most of this basic life support to other people, with the actual production of most goods taken up by machines they run. It is easy to look at the products we buy, none of which were signed by their actual creators, and forget that work was needed to realize all of them. Even the simplest product we buy could be the result of the cooperative effort of literally thousands of people. We do not see this.

Our own participation in the economy is a part of this system. In our jobs, we are not tasked with creating our own next meals; we are instead required to perform some task or set of tasks for an employer, comprising a contribution to the creation of a product or service, all of which is sold to people we mostly likely do not know in any direct way. Our employer, also a stranger, then compensates us with the means to find our sustenance. Here we have the great arrangments of barter, delegation, and finance - the very fundamentals of civilization itself - and though all of it provides the means for a life with riches and results that were impossible in previous generations, it hides from us the direct link between our work and its benefits, and from the people who are directly responsible for these benefits.

Here, then, we have a primary challenge. We focus on getting our own jobs done, because we're not paid to do otherwise, and at the end of the day, we drive cars, eat food in restaurants, and sleep in beds without knowing anything about who actually created these things for us. Most of the time, such questions do not even interest us, which is in keeping with the universal demand of employers to keep us focused on our own responsibilities - a mode that is easy to stay in even after we leave our desk. We live out our working lives in a cooperative ignorance.

A possible step forward in awareness - toward spirituality in our work - might be to take some interest. How did it all get this way? Who made it so? Where are the people who made all that is around me? And were they treated fairly as they did so?

These are not simple considerations.

And just what is "a spiritual life"?

Some might describe yesterday's introductory posting as dismal. I want to say that the intention of these pages is not to bring anyone down. There are many ways to find a spiritual life and still show up at a job every day. My point yesterday was that the very impersonal nature of work may well draw us away from such a life. It will take work of another nature to bring us back. I want to help by giving hope, not taking it away. I am out to help myself, too. While I am not completely sure of where all this will end up, I plan to do good. First, though, we need to understand the problems, and this can have its depressing moments.

For now, let's start with definitions. What is a "spiritual life," after all? I define it very simply: it's a life where we realize that total reality is beyond our grasp, and that despite this, we constantly strive to improve our awareness by embracing reality, in whatever form it takes. This, indeed, opens the door to many descriptions. Certainly, spirituality can be defined as a belief in God and a further belief in God's goodness. Yet, it does not have to be so. An atheist can practice spirituality if he or she wishes to pursue greater awareness and does so with true humility - knowing that not everything is known or even knowable. The motivation to learn and improve oneself is certainly a spiritual quest, and whether our beliefs take a certain form in the process is a secondary issue. I will avoid controversies of this nature and instead discuss spirituality within the definition I have made above.

A Spiritual Life in the Working World

In our culture, where how we define ourselves seems to depend greatly on what we do in our daily job, it is very easy to lose track of one's spiritual development. We can find ourselves lost, confused, disappointed, bewildered - often relentlessly as we speed along from one situation to the next, finding again and again the same patterns of disillusioning experience. The world of business and economy is defined in terms of material gain, without direct reference to any individual's well-being. For this reason, we find ourselves tossed around like a commodity, our value gauged only by some external standard of accomplishment that is set subjectively, in the interest of people we do not know and who do not care about us. We are rewarded when we reach a goal; we are discarded when we do not. In a working world, no matter how high our status, we remain a tool to some larger entity's success. Today, we may be appreciated - tomorrow, we will be replaced.

So what is this all about? Aren't we setting ourselves up for an inevitable failure? Is there any way we can find peace, contentment, and joy in our working lives, without living in denial of the "big picture"? Is there no solution but "going numb"? Where does the spirit come into this mechanistic, brutal enterprise we simply call "work"?

I intend to explore this question in these pages.