My head feels about to burst, so let’s ironically discover I’ll be out of things to say after 2 or 3 paragraphs. I had a meeting today. My normally scheduled supervision was superseded by a regional director, HR, and compliance person Zoom calling me to discuss how I might elevate concerns I have. This is the kind of thing that happens to me semi-regularly in “professional” environments. For some gosh-darn reason, it does not sink in that I’m supposed to, by default, defer to the people perpetrating whatever I think might be the issue. I stay vocal. I provide reasons, in writing, and until I’m psychologically at a happy place, and if you keep inviting me into the conversation I don’t wish to have a dozen times, you’re going to hear what I think is fucked up.
I call this being a responsible adult. I know, deeper than most things I might
know, the consequences of staying silent. I know being too pliable and
compliant or matter-of-fact in your cliches about how much you “care” or want
to “help” can literally, and regularly does, get people killed or otherwise
destroy their lives. I will challenge even the fucking hint of complacency or
downplaying of concerns related to behavior that spells a recipe for
catastrophe. I can wiggle if you can testify and assert the personal and
developed data that says drinking alcohol plus taking Suboxone is better than
not. I will fight tooth and nail if you tell me you “believe” it’s best and we
should all shut up and keep pumping out the drugs as we admit more and more
severe alcoholics into a program that looks like it might “oopsie!” your death,
but feel pretty okay as long as the documentation was there.
Before I got on my call, I’m talking maybe 60 seconds after it officially
started, the ladies were laughing and discussing their favorite vacation spots.
It reminded me of when I first started at Lifeline and many of the people in
the “leadership” did the same thing when brought in to discuss their various
roles. It’s like a habit or class signifier they can’t help themselves from
engaging in. Oh? We have literally any amount of dead air? The cold weather
makes me long for Cozumel! I’m headed to [insert warm place] for my vacation
[insert time period always somehow within the next 2 months.]
It’s another reminder of class. People of a certain income and preoccupation
they pretend is their occupation aren’t operating at the level that has to be
actually concerned with real lives as such. They have to be concerned with
optics, whistle-blowing problem children, and keeping the capitalist ship
running. By analogue, at the State, you’re looking to protect an infinite
paycheck. When someone dies, they’re a tragedy, not a name and history and
series of small decisions and circling-around-nonsense email chains. The party
line, “We care! Some level of service is better than no service!” will do all
the heavy lifting, just like “I care about children! I want them to be safe!”
justifies lying on paperwork and aggressively threatening scared parents.
Literally every realm where something, besides the individuals involved, hell,
even the idea that there are individuals involved, is the priority, you see the
same dance. How many lies do you have to tell yourself to protect your fanciest
notions of “family?” How many dicks do you swallow to assert the presumed pride
behind your job title or paycheck? There’s no knot the route to the most money
won’t tie itself in. And all along the way, you have people occupying entirely
different worlds in their perception of what’s happening, their responsibility
to it, or remotely grasping what the end game really is.
One of the office managers was apparently “uncomfortable” when my discussion
with another office manager turned to the idea of collecting evidence of
negligence and sending a letter to the, dogshit, attorney general. It was
explained to me that, while it’s perfectly within my right to discuss who to
talk to, they wanted to make sure I knew they were there. You see, there’s
internal mechanisms for this kind of thing and a chain of command. Much better
to rely on “leadership” and discuss whether or not I feel “supported” than to
heedlessly escalate my problems to a realm that could threaten the whole
machine.
Yeah. Go fuck yourselves lol.
In an extremely practical and small sense, I’m accountable
to the entity signing my paychecks. In the larger scheme of things, I need to
sleep at night and trust my perception of this posture inclined to downplay the
reality it wreaks.
So I made one of my groups’ topics today about trust. I trust myself to talk out
loud, often, always, about what I think is fucked up. I trust the vast majority
of my clients to not take themselves or the work it takes to incorporate
addictive behavior seriously. I trust that their ambivalence combined with
corporate greed and chronic conditioning is a story of an ongoing unmitigated
disaster. At any level in which I remain in human services at the behest of an
outside entity, I will be nominally complicit, but especially if I don’t bother
to say anything about it. And especially if I don’t bother to say anything
about it to the people setting the shitty standard and pretending to give a
fuck about rules of human decency when there’s so much money to be made.
This idea of occupying different worlds has been a compelling one for a while.
Watching The Crown has given me an infusion of thoughts about it. The
institution, the system, of monarchy subsumes any individual desire. The
intransigence of their divinity is a noble distinguisher, not a mark of shame
or antiquity. Do you want your god changing the rules every few thousand years?
The language of that institution is of a “keep steady” realm. Youth and
modernity want change, inclusion, and growth. The “conservative” has the
argument that, “Well, we’re still here, so obviously something has
worked or is working.” The enlightened ideal is that you will forever reach a
happy middle ground through ongoing open and honest debate and reasonable
concessions. Ha.
The monied bureaucrat does not speak the language of the working-class moron. The
exhausted temporarily-embarrassed aspiring rich person pretends to speak the
language of both. Rarely, if ever it seems, do you find someone that wants the
same thing. Do I want to go on vacation every year? Not as much as I want to
feel as though I’ve earned a vacation through meaningful work. Does my concept
of “meaningful work” ever match your story of what feels and sounds meaningful?
Hardly. I also have no interest in protecting any organization that sees me as
lesser than anyone else in it. I wish I had a savings AND could enjoy indulging
myself with fun self-care things AND have adequate health, car, and home
insurance. Right now, I get to pick 1, pay down the debt it still throws me
into, and refamiliarize myself with poor-people habits that include excess
alone time with TV or books.
What can you make of “trust” in that environment? If you’re me, you default to
the “trust people to be what they are” sentiment. I know what each class and
style of person is likely to do, so I do what I want both in anticipation of
and in response to. It’s not an accident I’m open, honest, and ongoing about
shit that pisses me off. It’s deliberate practiced habit. You’re going to come
at me sideways dancing around “the issue,” so I’m going to assert the issue in
as many words and languages that it takes to teach you I’m not the one to play
your stupid fucking game with.
I don’t identify with the characters in The Crown. I have no institution or
tired parochial standard to defer to. I have myself and anyone else willing to
continuously poke at the disingenuously and incidentally powerful. I have all
of the capacity to carry the pretensions and expectations of someone who
pretends there’s a “proper” way to exist independent of mutual acknowledgment,
celebration, or solidarity. I’m not so blind as to genuinely believe any
catchphrase or edict I conjure to desperately mask my intentions usurps common
decency and sense. No, I don’t feel supported in this endeavor to maintain
certain sovereign conceptions of dignity or accountability for their own sake.
I do not trust the institutions I feed on like a baby suckling a drug-addled
mother. It knows not its plight, but I do.
One of my office managers is struggling with her boyfriend being “almost” a
cheater. In her words, “I don’t care if you want to fuck someone else, just
tell me about it! We’re basically in an open relationship as it is.” He was
on Bumble and I guess doing other sketchy things, generally hiding it from her.
He’s reignited wounds from her traumatizing past related to infidelity. They’re
22 and been together for a year and a half. She regularly discusses her general
hopelessness for the future and the difficulty of even conceiving of herself in
a stable and healthy place financially. She’s lived in Bedford her entire life
and is deeply burnt out by her social work responsibilities often very unfairly
imposed on her. She can’t trust her country, the company she works for, her
boyfriend, or even the woman sitting next to her. Where do you think she’s
going to find someone that wants the same things in life anymore than you or I
can?
Who’s speaking the language of the aggrieved with any real capacity to do
something about it? Who has the emotional awareness and salient argument that
compels deliberate open and honest exchange? Who is “managing the best
interests of the company” with any remote clue how an individual is actually experiencing
said company? Richard Wolff remarked that facebook is laying off 11,000
employees after a disastrous miscalculation about shits the world has for the
Metaverse. 11,000 lives, plus families, plus the communities they’re plugged
into, because a power avatar gets to gamble where none of us can. Choosing to gamble, verses being forced to,
are entirely different universes.
Our lives are not guaranteed in the same way that there will always be an eager
demigod looking to preside over them. We adopt their language and set our
expectations in ways they deem fit. We insulate ourselves from the precise ways
we would otherwise criticize, as getting too exacting would betray why we find
their influence necessary and regal. The illusion of stability and order is
preferable to observing and owning our inherent chaos. Now, you don’t just
occupy a realm of social strata, you deserve it and belong.
You’re entitled to protect the money, your small cut-out caricature of a
worthwhile existence, or anything else you like provided it doesn’t disturb the
god from which you all draw power.
I will continue to cause calculated chaos.
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