Oh how the rat wheel spins
How much time do we spend spinning our wheels trying to keep up with capitalism?
To me, being on the rat wheel is:
1. Confusing controlling a situation for greeting it with confidence
2. Viewing yourself (and therefore others) in a form of ranking system
3. Believing in your singular reliability, capacity, and ability instead of what others can add, bolster, and reinvigorate
4. Feeling the inner doubt and turmoil so deeply, validation becomes an externalised thing
5. Admiration soon becomes more important than integrity
6. Measuring growth, motion, ownership, and success in money, prestige, praise, popularity, analytics, and pay off over maturity, confidence, meaning, and impact
7. Chasing the angles and the “what’s in it for me” over generativity
8. Blocking out the inner “are you sure about this?” by recruiting others to your way of thinking for that safety-in-numbers feeling
9. Excusing what others raise about your conduct with derision and dismissal. “Everybody does it”, “If not me, who?” and “that’s just the way it is” justifications
10. Being strategic can write-off just about anything
11. Productivity becomes increasingly a distracting, honour-badge wearing, busyness activity
The rat wheel can spin into even darker territory:
12. Depersonalising people and ignoring impact to justify the sacrificing of one group in favour of the other when really, you’re talking about profit making and power stockpiling
13. Misleading people, obscuring truth, or lying to get what you want while justifying or minimising impact while engaged in othering
14. Investing in “the ends justify the means”, including believing that while past or present actions may be questionable, future acts of ‘good’ or ‘right’ make up for it
15. Manipulating naturally organic situations to maintain power – yet not viewing it as corruption because its viewed through a lens of moral or intellectual superiority
How much of your working life is spent on the rat wheel?
Image: How much of your working life is spent on the rat wheel? with a rat standing on its hind legs looking twitchy.