In setting up a new-to-her Linux-opsys computer, I installed solitaire games as requested. Function testing with spectators inspired “Move the Queen over to the King” – at which point I shut the game down, having completed the function test.
I cannot imagine playing a game of solitaire under direction or close supervision. Which makes me remember the beauty of The H-P Way and Management By Objectives as practiced by the great Hewlett Packard company where I worked in the 1980s. What made it outstanding was the power, inspiration and freedom for the people therein.
At every level of the company, bosses defined, described, trained and facilitated their subordinates to complete their assigned tasks. Everybody, at their own level of inspiration and competence, gets the job done with as much or little guidance as they require. Innovation and creative power are not harnessed, they are released. The former rarely happens, while in a culture of liberty, the latter is commonplace.
Sadly, for all their genius, Bill and Dave made a massive mistake in choosing an outsider as their replacement when they retired. In comes the infamous “efficiency expert” of the bad-old 30s and 40s management style while out goes The H-P Way. Good people left in droves. Inspiration and self-actualization left too.
My lifetime USofA story is very much like the H-P story during my 12+ years there. The common phrase “It’s a free country” has been replaced with “I hope THEY fix that” and “Too bad we can’t do that”. Centralization of wealth and power is driving our society back in time far beyond the 1930s and into The Dark Ages.
Total control over peasants, land and beast by a ruling elite is an ugly evil. Worse, the new ruling elite is an inbred, closed culture of self-selected psychopaths. Whereas in the old Dark Ages a good king would randomly fall into power, the new selection process assures that cannot happen.
The good news for me is I won’t see that phase.
I won’t live any way but free. For better or worse, some of us are simply built that way. The tribe, the community, the group by whatever name, is and must be primarily comprised of conformists. Harmony and cooperation is a great strength of humans. But so is innovation to the long-term health of the group.
The brave new world will have one brain directing hundreds of hands in lethargic, mindless moves. Somewhere out in the wilderness, pockets of humans will evolve in a liberated culture to eventually replace the remnants of ours as it declines into nonexistence.