..academia is an alien world…We’ve been lied to (is that even news?). I used to despise my corporate life, as I yearned for a place where intellectual work took place. What I am finding is, the narrative doesn’t fit. Like an ex-Christian looking for this supposed evil they warned about, I kept looking for the wolf of wall street at work, that stereotype of the psychopathic corporate culture. Dog eat Dog, etc.. climbing, climbing the corporate ladder…A proletarian who won the gender lottery and white enough not to stick out, put the suit on, everyone is Patrick Bateman..Are not the master’s gadgets desirable, for one coming from nothing? Only an academic would condemn this career path and sheer luck. farmer family, grandparents who’d lived through WW2, were so proud, me being the first to get a degree in the family, to work overseas, to become.. one of ‘them’? No, the internet happened, and the sacred castes of knowledge: the doctor, the lawyer, the notary, the intellectual, their secrets were laid bare. The smoke and mirrors evaporated. Don’t preach to the peasants about revolution if you are surprised to find that the peasant googled that stuff and can debate with you on the latest left heresy. Doctors, don’t try and lecture on health when the peasant is busy reading up on neuropharmacology, has hacked your diagnostic triaging procedures and the sacred formulas you used to mystify the uninitiated with are now on wikipedia and the object of a 200 page edit discussion. The ivory tower is empty, the emperor never had any clothes, etc…And I am still looking for Patrick Bateman in the corporate world. Unfortunately I’m just finding lots of nice people, similar story, “tech is the future” their family said, while being mystified by it, so me along with a multiplicity of others got grey corporate jobs and did boring degrees in business and management and IT to get visas for places where salaries were good because the affluent WASP children believed their own fairy tales about creativity. while WASPs critiqued other WASPs about capitalism and entrepreneurship and libertarianism, we ran your systems, did your accounting, implemented complex systems, the ‘means’ which the WASPs ignored in their quest for ends. It wasn’t glamorous work, it wasn’t work you’d brag about at a party in the new country, but back home, for your families, you were heroes. The WASP kids spoke of radical ideas and collectives, you, they said, your corporate work, is part of the problem. Except our dads don’t live in Mosman.

So it’s just us, not Bateman, and no one has a fucking clue as to what’s going on. the bureaucratechowhitecollarwilter class. We muddle through, sit in boring meetings, help each other out and there are more nationalities in this meeting room now than people. We come from everywhere. Just ex-peasants in the information age, and when the others figure out that the cheat codes were always there…

But please, do keep up the fairy tales about the corporate world..academia is going the way of the priest, the video rental store, and the typewriter. You might as well play WoW if you want levels and quests and fancy titles.