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Explaining Corporate Culture Through "The Office"
Writing in the ribbonfarm.com blog, Venkatesh Rao uses The Office to explain and illustrate a theory of management he calls the Gervais Principle (after the TV series's creator). Taking off from Hugh MacLeod's cartoon laying out a corporate hierarchy in layers of Sociopaths, the Clueless, and Losers, Rao riffs on and updates the Peter Principle, in these terms: "Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into [clueless] middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves." Don't know about you, but this analysis suddenly makes sense of much that mystified me in my sojourn in corporate America.
The United States is antisocial. All its residents share in a sort of collective sociopathy where our very lifestyle represents a disregard for and violation of the rights of others. If you could be made to feel the suffering caused by the production of a product when you buy a new car or stereo receiver you'd keel over and die of heartbreak. The country has repeatedly lied to and swindled other nations (look at all the dictators we've propped up, then left to rot causing new problems, *cough*Saddam*cough*Taliban*cough*Khomeini*cough* Which was all done for monetary gain, or to get more power, which always involved assaults and fights, with reckless disregard for the safety of civilians; Let's not even get into financial obligations. Lack of remorse? How long did it take to get a shitty apology for slavery? And of course, it's all rationalized away.
Our nation, and therefore all the people in it: suffering from an antisocial disorder.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"