MEET THE
DEMONOCRACY
When
organizations become empire-builders
We feel something that our
culture no longer gives us the vocabulary to express. (Andrew
Delbanco)
Bureaucracies use their members;demonocracies abuse them
Bureaucracy happens, but creating
a demonocracy takes real diabolical effort!
Bureaucrats are incapable of anything; demonocrats are
capable of anything.
Bureaucracies are structured in strange artificial boxes that
make people do strange artificial things.
Managers love bureaucracies because people are easily
controlled.
In bureaucracies people look for a comfort zone.
Few things in bureaucracies are important enough to do
anything about.
You know you're in a bureaucracy when no one is in charge, no
wants to be in charge, and no one is capable of being in charge.
You know when you’re in a demonocracy when those really in charge are
invisible.
An organization becomes a bureaucracy when it digs itself a
hole too deep to get out of.
Bureaucracies are littered
with paperwork, job descriptions, & rules.
Demonocracies feature mine fields, quicksand, & black holes.
The function of board members in most bureaucracies is to sit
there and say “yes.” In demonocracies
board members are executive exploitation enablers.
People who know how to play games in bureaucracies get
promoted. In demonocracies, people who
don’t know how to play games are squashed.
Politicians in the demonocracy never say anything that could
be used against them--especially the truth.
Demonocracies have an organization chart of dispossessed
souls.
What demonocrats mean by the word loyalty: lack of personal
accountability
How long can the people stay innocent when the leaders are
corrupt?
If they
pay you, they own you.
Demonocracies eat people for lunch!
You know you’re in a demonocracy when…
It’s business as unusual.
Charles Darwin is running
the show & even the strongest don’t always survive.
Merlin the Magician is CEO.
The corporate culture has
turned into an extended
What used to be an
organization is suddenly the
What used to be a job is now
the
Exploitation rocks.
PR is truth, deception the
soup d’jour.
People’s personal values are
strip-mined.
Sizzle outshines substance.
The rules keep changing.
Who’s in power keeps
changing.
What you do is more
important than how you do it.
Bodies keep washing up on
shore.
Power is cocaine.
The organization is nothing
more than a giant holograph.
VOICES
Every revolution evaporates
and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. (Franz Kafka)
I have powerfully
assumed the negativity of my times. (Franz Kafka)
Leaders have followers; dictators have subjects. (author ?)
Things have gotten pretty weird pretty fast.
It pays to figure out what's happening. (Larry Keely)
Evil is like a small
fire. First it burns weeds and thorns. Next it burns the larger bushes in the
forest, and they all go up in a column of smoke. (Isaiah)
Prisoners,
abuse victims, addicts, and the mentally ill experience involuntary
solitude. Hermits choose isolation for psychological reasons. Both
types of solitude make a statement about culture. (Sue Halpern)
The
first casualty of war is truth. But also consider context. Demanding that
troops, who are subject on a daily basis to roadside bombs, suicide attacks,
ambushes and rocket-propelled grenades, should respond without any cruel or
unprofessional incidents would be a demand for sainthood. (Barbara Amiel)
"It won't be the same without you around
here." "It's always the same around here." (Frank
Sinatra upon his retirement from the bureaucratic NYPD in the movie, The
First Deadly Sin)
All truth in a fallen
world is vulnerable to distortion. In fact, each truth has its own foreseeable
distortions that are its shadow side. (Os Guinness)
The voyage of my life
at last has reached across tempestuous sea in fragile boat, the common port all
must pass through to give cause and account of every evil, every pious deed.
(Michelangelo)
Ty
Cobb would have climbed a mountain to punch an echo (author?)
Yesterday's lies and
tomorrow's promises (author?)
Beauty is a flower, fame a
breath. (Latin proverb.)
There is often a great difference
between what is meant, what is said, what is done, and that which is believed
to have been intended or stated, and that which actually occurred. (Roger
Zelazny)
How
come when I need a pair of hands in the factory, I always get a human being as
well? (Henry Ford)
Subtitles from the soundtrack by Philip Glass of The
Fog of War (about Robert McNamara): 100,000 People;
Target Destruction; Revolution in the Pentagon; Low Evil; Blind Moles; Behind
the Moon; IBM Punch Cards; The War to End All Wars; Statistical Control; Damned
if I Don’t; Dominoes; Rolling thunder; Data; Across the World; Golf of Tonkin;
Unilateralism; Why Are We Here? Evil Grade; Body count; the Light That Failed
If
misery loves company, misery has company enough. (Thoreau)
The
repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our responses
been so weak. Evil tends to recede into the background hum of modern
life. We cannot really see the perpetrator, so the work of the devil is
everywhere, but no one knows where to find him. We feel something that
our culture no longer gives us the vocabulary to express. (Andrew
Delbanco)
Every advance in
communication brings us closer to people far away from us, but insulates us
from those nearest to us. (Daniel Boorstin)
Objective reality is
a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a
multitude of subjective realities. (Philip K. Dick)
A
bad cat deserves a bad rat. (author?)
We
usually know what we are doing, we sometimes know why we’re doing it, but we
almost never know what our doing does. We had, I should think, damn well
better find out soon. (Clifford Geertz)
Isn't it a pity
Now, isn't it a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity
(George Harrison)
Been
working everyday since I was twenty.
Haven't got a thing to show for
anything I've done.
There's folks who never work and
they've got plenty.
Think it's time some guys like me had
some fun.
(Merle Haggard)
Bad
Moon Rising
I see the bad moon arising
I see trouble on the way
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today
Don't
go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
I
hear hurricanes ablowing
I know the end is coming soon
I fear rivers over flowing
I hear the voice of rage and ruin
Don't
go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
Hope
you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we're in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye
Don't
go around tonight
Well, it's bound to take your life
There's a bad moon on the rise
(Credence
