“The history of civilization is the history of the introversion of sacrifice”, Horkheimer and Adorno argued eighty years ago, as a condemnation of the ritualistic tenets of capitalism.
Rewind… A friend of mine was coming along with me for a trip under the ice floes of an alien arctic ocean, retracing the steps of a failed corporate research facility. In a broken down executive suite, we found a recording of the facility administrator Emmanuel sending his love back home…
“Once this mission is over I’ll come back home for a few good months. And then, what do you think if we look at reorganizing our expectations to facilitate longer term separation success? I really think this could be a great model for us going forward, romantically and otherwise.”
Kudos to the game writer for that snippet of text. Delivered with the soulless harmonics of a board meeting layoff pitch, this cretinous approximation of human-to-so-called-human interaction riddled me with disgust.
But what’s so bad about corpotalk? To me, it is a way of communication, designed by committee, to mask the brutality of capitalism with the silken touch of silver tongues. It is intended to make cruelty seem nice and reasonable. It is designed to mask destitution, unemployment, and soullessness for the benefit of making the sale of mandatory overtime, work flow optimization, or sheer layoffs sound downright humanitarian. Corpotalk is a way of speaking, a way of thinking, a way of being, that precludes the importance of the human soul for the benefit of the importance for the corporate bottom line. And though wielding it as a tool in a corporate environment may be problematic, making it into core part of your being, to such an extent that you write love letters in it, is an abomination.
My friend disagreed with me. While I felt revulsion at this corporate mouth-piece of a character, my friend argued pity. Imagine how brainwashed and molded a person would have to have been, imagine how many performance reviews a person would have to endure, to spout such corpotalk in a love letter to their romantic partner.
Here’s the thing though… such a deformation of the human soul cannot (as of yet at least) be forcibly inserted in place of the human psyche. Such a mutilation of the self must be voluntary. To become a mole for the corporate world is a choice a person makes. A little amputation at a time, with the constant push and aim to become just a little more suitable as a target demographic research lead or a middle management puppet. The desire for success within the mighty corporations of our time pushes onto us the notion to replace what makes us human with what makes us productive corporate placeholders. There are thousands of ways they make it sound reasonable. Thousands of ways to entrap us. But the actual act, the mutilation itself, must be done by your own hand. Your own choice.
Which brings us back to Horkheimer and Adorno’s concept of the introversion of sacrifice. A ritualistic dehumanization of the work force. That while the Gods may no longer demand the charring bodies of their faithful to be offered up in ritual sacrifice, Neil Gaiman’s New Gods demand a new sort of sacrifice. The Sacrifice of the Self. To replace what makes you unique with what will make you compliant and productive.
Because capitalism, just like most other ideologies, is just another altar meant for you to cast yourself onto for the benefit of the mighty. And corpotalk is its gospel.
/Sebastian Lindberg 8/6-2021
WastedWords 