Sunday, October 25, 2009

New Ethical Imperative

All is well everywhere and you will never
get everything done, since life is supposed
to be fun, dance in the sun, everything you
want right now will never flow to you all
at once; if it could, you would be complete
and you could never be complete because
of eternal infinity

You, unsatisfied, in this place, now, feeling
incomplete, are in the best place you can be
know that you are right on track, right on time
everything is unfolding perfectly, all is well
have fun, no one is taking score, if you stop
taking score so much, you will feel better
immediately - feeling fine

Is all I want – therefore Terry Pratchett is right
bureaucracy, taking score, measuring every step
timing every breath, counting every word in every
document, taking everyone’s blood pressure and
pulse every five minutes, counting every hair,
every finger, hammering on knees to check
knee-jerk reactions

Is a devilish invention to make people experience
hell, if we live in hell on Planet Earth, anything
afterwards will be heaven in comparison, even
or specifically total oblivion, the Aztec and
Maya understood the concept, they sent all
their enemies, even young men and women,
to their death

By order of the priest under the guidance of some
inner vision, now we keep people alive to watch
them writhing in pain by keeping score of every
movement they make, every bowel movement
calling constipation a serious attitude to life
calling a liver complaint a gross violation
of bureaucracy

Where everything has to conform to the norm
the standard of conformity, where everything
only exists if it appears on a list, every action,
every word, every deed, every document, if
not blessed by official encryption in fifty dif-
ferent lists with ninety reference numbers
the thing is outlawed

And the culprit in remiss must make another
list!

1 comment:

matt at shadow of iris said...

"The terms bureaucrat, bureaucratic, and bureaucracy are clearly invectives. Nobody calls himself a bureaucrat or his own methods of management bureaucratic. These words are always applied with an opprobrious connotation. They always imply a disparaging criticism of persons, institutions, or procedures. Nobody doubts that bureaucracy is thoroughly bad and that it should not exist in a perfect world." -- Ludgwig von Mises

http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy/introduction.asp

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