Capitalism as your daddy

Submitting to the greater

I was swiping through peoples faces on Microsoft teams out of boredom when the finance vice president started talking about how company couldn't reach the profit goals for the first quarter. He was showing some charts and explaining how they would adjust the strategies and actions from now on. Whenever I see him around he has a specific sad face expression that you can feel he has given up on his dreams. I started paying more attention as he said we should imagine that when we buy a car with a high price, we expect it to work well and go enough milage per day. So we should understand why it's expected of us to work harder to reach the ratios and margin goals. All these metrics started after our company was bought by a Canadian corporation few months ago while the managers were saying with straight face that nothing is gonna change. I found his analogy bizarre, comparing organization of people to a car just to caress capitalism's balls. I turned my gaze to an office crush of mine across the hall in a glassed wall meeting room. She and two colleagues were listening and staring at the screen so seriously like some important or useful information was being conveyed.

I find it absurd that she can bare this boring corporate everyday, while keeping composure and being nice to everyone and showing fake enthusiasm in their boring stories after lunch. Why do I think like that? Maybe for others such interactions are not that cumbersome and are even convenient. On the surface I thought routine and predictability is the appeal of this lifestyle, which is true for many. If you follow the rules you can pass life without anxiety of decisions and other potential pains and more uncomfortable situations. She likes to watch love island and such reality shows in the evenings, watching a little drama in a no drama day is better than none. Speaking of love and drama, I don't think she would desire someone with similar attitudes as her but the absolute opposite. Someone who's not submitting to the system yet is powerful enough to still provide stability for her. Finding someone with one of these characteristics is not that difficult. But in a capitalist world were almost all are on the lower side of hierarchy, finding one who is both powerful and free spirited is not that easy, specially with a very low risk threshold.

After elaborating how we should get the revenue working capital earlier, he rambled on, "We are not the young startup anymore to go buy pizza together in Altstadt". So being mature is integrating in the structure to the extent of neglecting our human motivations. When you set your values to the values of the bigger system it makes sense to think like that. In my experience the more mature one becomes, the less they care about anything other than doing the minimum to reach the quota and go on. When I started working here sometimes I'd get frustrated when people just half assed some implementation that would definitely become problematic at some point of time in future. Over time however, I became the same as others, because I realized in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter and in my personal world and morals it also doesn't matter anymore. I try to keep the job while allocating as less time as possible. When everyone thinks like that in a company on every level, the big picture direction is lost and it gets further away from producing any new value. Not every company needs to be innovative but if not, the whole company is basically acting as a piece of machine that no one cared to invest in to build and replace it with. Being a gear in a machine is a sufficient purpose for "being" but probably not for "living".

The few conversations that I had with her gave me the impression that she had an eventful past and at some point she has brought a new order in her life by letting the routine take over. A totally different life path from mine but still seeming to reach a similar arc. We both want individuality, as long as it's in boundaries of our social safety. Even though our social gender roles put our struggle and approaches in a high contrast, we are both afraid of the mess that comes with diving in the unknown. One tries to become an individual, and another tries to find a strong individual who takes them with. Such a person, or entity, can be referred to as a Daddy. In a cultural sense daddy leads and dominates in tangible and sexy ways, however we might not notice his presence in other contexts. I think when the average daddy experience of someone like her is already intense in every context, she has a high standard and expectation of it that makes playing the role for someone like me much more challenging. Because when it comes the love context, the status game hits hard. But maybe, it's not about that, rather about the unclear reliability and commitment potential of me. If so, who or what can be the most reliable and certain daddy through one's whole life?

What's fascinating to me though, is that to be a daddy one does not need to be literally in a more powerful position. They are in such dynamic because they defined the reality in their own way. There is no objective measure of status to rank people with. Actually, in a capitalism system that fundamentally contains the whole society, the winners who are really powerful and leading are so scarce, that one would be hopeless to find one. Like no one in the middle class would classify as a winner. So if you are wired to want the winners, in a literal sense, the chance of getting them AND having them committed to you is non-existent. So you can measure the criteria from any aspect that suits you. Some aspects become more trendy in different eras. For instance, just not following the rules becomes so sexy as it's less boring. Whats common in all metrics is the individuality. In a rigged system maybe you cant avoid losing but you can still be unique at it. Realizing the authentic and rare ones can be based on shallow or deep measures, the fast paced, number score, labeling society of nowadays favors the shallow ones in the short term. and pretending to be one becomes better strategy as really being. With such criteria's, for some a homeless man can qualify more as a daddy than a company financial vice president.

I was ruminating about these theories while glancing at her from time to time, when a notification popped up on my phone. I got an email for a job interview from a relatively interesting company and I immediately felt good about it. I myself was part of one of the layoff waves that happened after the acquisition, and was actively looking for a new job. Later in the day I recognized my mental bias of getting happy of something that I was disgusted by in my thoughts. I actually thought about this a week before, when I felt so lost and bad and couldn't do anything for weeks. I could spend my whole day without knowing how I spent it. I wanted to do my business, I knew that to reach somewhere interesting you have to jump off the cliff. But then based on the situation and probabilities I made the decision to stay employed and follow own projects on the side at least around two more years. I still can't get along with feeling of being lost, and getting my direction from the system at least makes that feeling less intense.

Is our main struggle in life finding a purpose to our existence? Contributing to the system of society is one of the easiest ones to pursue, however it's the least exciting and fulfilling one as it doesn't care about you at all. The system is getting more and more dominant with technology that its crushing our agency. The system is the only one surviving. None of us can go up against the biggest daddy. It's not as tangible or caring as a weak human daddy or babe though. So we selfish creatures become hopeless romantics in pursuit of a strong exclusive connection thats independent of the system and makes us forget about it. No matter of our progress in the journey, we always have his shadow over us.