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We are being trained not to think for ourselves

Last week I did, as part of my consulting service, the translation of a “Manual of the Employee” for a company located somewhere on the East coast. I have read and used similar manuals many times –my own company has one, for example-, but I haven’t seen a manual with so many specific details about the behavior of the employees.

 

From the first to the last page, this manual listed all kind of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and the consequences of violating the policies and the norms established by the company. There were so many details that clearly nothing was left to chance.

 

Chapter after chapter, employees were told what to wear, where to walk once they were inside the company’s building, whom to talk and whom not to talk with, what kind of information can be shared and when, how to use the company’s tools and equipment, and, of course, what to do in case of an accident.

 

There were so many details about what to do in case of an accident that it was also ridiculous. For example, the manual said that, if an accident happens, the employee should immediately evaluate the situation to decide if it is a minor accident and the proper response is to bring the first aid kit or if it something major and an ambulance should be called.

 

If an adult person working at a large company and supposedly well-educated can’t immediately decide if an accident is a minor or major one, that person can’t think for himself or herself. And it is not going to do it just because it is written in a manual.

 

There were also many details about what employees were allowed to do and about what they were not allowed to do outside the company and during non-work hours, and the severe consequences of any misbehavior during the “employee’s own time,” even if the misbehavior happened inside the employee’s home.

 

I wanted to know what’s the word to describe somebody who is being told what to do every minute of every day and whose life is being controlled in all its aspects, to the point that person no longer makes decision about his or her own life.

 

The answer is obvious. That person is an “slave,” in the sense that word had in ancient Greece, that is, a person educated to do a certain job, but unable to make decisions about his or her own life.

 

According to Aristotle, those persons have “zoe” (biological life), but they don’t have “bios” (truly human life). Because they are always being forced to work, because they don’t have free time, because of the busyness of business, those persons can’t think.

 

And because they can’t think, because they can’t do philosophy, because they can’t find anything transcendental, they don’t know they are slaves and they do nothing to be free.

 

More than 2,500 years later, we write manuals to perpetuate that situation. The only difference is that now we write about “employees.”

 

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