Sunday, January 29, 2017

Command, Control, and Compulsion

I was thinking of Derrick Jensen's book "Walking on Water," which does a really good job laying bare the effects of compulsory schooling, yesterday while sorting mail. Compulsory schooling, which almost all of us reading this has experienced and champion, prepared me for working in a command and control buisness like the USPS. One parallel between the two structures is there is very little, if any opportunity to offer feedback to change the structure. You're expected to show up, listen to authority, and do what you're told. Because look around you, there are people more than willing and happy to do what you do. Both structures are far from being democratic, and they operate on this assumption so eloquently laid out at the beginning of the 20th century by the founder of scientific management, Fredrick Winslow Taylor:

"In the past man has been first; in the future the System must be first."

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