When I was thinking about what I would do if I only had a short time left until I drop dead (like a week/month/year), one of the things I would not do in that time was:
I would not waste energy opposing the bullshit of modernity.
All my life I have been kind of opposed to the bullshit of modernity. Fighting to expose the bullshit. Fighting to escape from the bullshit. But when thinking of death, the fight seems pointless.
Unless you can somehow change the world (which very very few of us can do), you have to accept the bullshit and go along with it.
I have in periods loved and loathed my current job (which I've had for over 13 years.) I'm currently in a loathing period. I hate my role. The work is so bullshit. But railing against the bullshit zaps your energy. Like I barely do nothing all day but end up feeling totally exhausted at the end of it.
A few examples of utter bullshit in my Enterprise Finance IT:
- I want to spend 5 seconds enabling an AI Assistant on a tool we've been using for over 5 years. 5 months later and I'm still stuck in a nightmare of bureacracy and compliance. It is utter bullshit. I'm a technical guy, I'm not a bureacrat/administrator.
- A company wide "automate everything" mandate, wants me to automate a manual process that takes maybe 5 minutes once a year (it is a DR test), so that someone can press a button to do the same task. Level of effort to create this automation is more like 5 weeks (at 8 hours a day x 5 days a week x 60 minutes in a an hour = 2400 minutes.) Even if it took 0 seconds to run the automation, and even if supporting the finished automation was administration and maintenance free (which it is not), that's 480 years to break even with the effort. There was a time when automation was meant to save time, now it's a management buzzword, and no one challenges the stupid management.
After my thoughts of what I would do if I only had a short time left, now I realise that my railing against the bullshit was getting me nowhere, and simply exhausting me. I have learnt:
Go along with the bullshit with a knowing smile on your face and a laugh. Know it is bullshit. Be honest when asked, that yes, it is bullshit. But do the bullshit tasks anyway and don't fight the system. The system always wins, you just end up exhausted and having achieved nothing.
When you can break free of the bullshit - i.e. retire / quit your role / find a better one - absolutely do that.
Modernity is a lot of bullshit. So many people doing utter bullshit in bullshit jobs.
Don't panic and keep doing bullshit! 😄
