We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
http://poetry.poetryx.com/...
The Hollow Men. The Stuffed Shirt Men. The Corporate Men. The Grey Men. The Colorless Men The Men Sans Feelings. The Unemotional Men:
Climbing the corporate hierarchy can keep a man's focus and his adrenaline high for years. But a time may come when he cannot continue the climb, or when he finds that he has other needs that he has been too busy to learn how to fulfill, or when his company lets him go. Then the depth of emptiness and depression can be devastating. Vitality and personal pride can be lost.
Ironically even the coveted top of the ladder of success, CEO, can be a dangerous and lonely place of crippling isolation. Too often CEOs are secretly driven by fear of failure instead of the exuberance of competence and success. Rather than being filled with the anticipated joys and richness in life, without personal support and inner development, the top rungs of the ladder of success can bring a significantly greater risk for depression.
Sometimes a seemingly strong and powerful man's feelings have been so assaulted that he recoils, hiding from vulnerability -- seeking protection at almost any cost. Paradoxically, the cost of protecting that vulnerability can be the loss of your connection to the rich and spontaneous enthusiasm of life. When you are disconnected from your feelings, you lose your ability to respond to life and to others with curiosity and exhilaration - the very connections and responses that are needed to nurture and strengthen that tender core hidden deep inside.
http://www.waysofknowing.com/...
The rigid narrowness of the Corporate Mentality:
Leaving Wisdom Behind: Corporate Mentality Seizes National Consciousness
by Heather Wokusch
A pumped-up corporate definition of intelligence is making headway in US society. CEOs are regarded as experts on political and sociological change, and excellence in public education is defined in terms of its service to the private sector. Equating intelligence with conformity to corporate values is not a new concept, but the extent to which wisdom is being confused with business savvy is an increasingly insidious trend.
A popular magazine recently surveyed "some of the smartest people we know," .... This same "smartest people we know" attitude echoes in "No Child Left Behind," the sweeping educational reforms signed into US law January 8th. Having said, "If you teach a child to read, he or her will be able to pass a literacy test," President Bush helped push through the mandate for annual standardized testing of all US students from the third to eighth grade. But while parents and teachers argue against the diversion of already tight educational funds into dubious new programs, the testing and textbook publishing industries have settled in for the kill.
Small wonder. The necessary expenditures for mandated testing have been estimated to run $2.7 to $7 billion annually, and Harold McGraw, the CEO of McGraw-Hill and a long-time friend of the Bush family, is one of those few poised to make exorbitant profits from the new law.
.... So what's the most intelligent path forward? Does it really lie in standardized testing and escalated consumer demand, or rather in tearing down walls of inequity? If we allow our government to focus on short-term profit for a few, while ignoring both the lessons of history and the needs of the majority, isn't it tantamount to complicity in creating an increasingly unbalanced world? Long-term global sustainability will be reached only by laws and decisions of wisdom and insight. We should expect - and demand - no less from those who call themselves our leaders.
http://www.commondreams.org/...
Corporate Culture and GroupThink:
WorldCom, Inc. perpetrated the largest accounting fraud in U.S. history. WorldCom, now called MCI, emerged from bankruptcy protection on April 20, 2004 after being fined $750 million. In total, WorldCom reported accounting irregularities of $11 billion. While employees and investors look for individual culpability, much of WorldCom's organizational structure and culture potentially contributed not only to the fraud but also to the length of time over which it occurred. In many ways, groupthink may help explain some of the issues and fraudulent activities at WorldCom as well as the pressures that were placed on employees extending the period over which the fraud occurred.
http://findarticles.com/...
The hollowness of British Petroleum PLC, this scenario in assessing the cost of human life vs. profit:
Attorney Brent Coon represented families of the workers killed, and discovered internal BP documents that showed the oil giant had chosen to use trailers to house workers during the day, rather than blast-resistant structures, in order save money at the refinery.
Throughout his work on the case, Coon used a Three Little Pigs analogy to illustrate the cost/benefit analysis that he believed BP used to choose the less expensive buildings, with the trailers representing straw or sticks, versus stronger material the lawyer said should have been used. But whenever Coon brought up the fairy tale, he says that BP’s attorneys objected.
Then Coon received a set of documents through discovery.
"Right there we found a presentation on the decision to buy the trailers that showed BP using "The Three Little Pigs" to describe the costs associated with the four [refinery housing] options." Says Coon: "I thought you’ve got to be f------ kidding me. They even had drawings of three pigs on the report."
The two-page document, prepared by BP’s risk managers in October 2002 as part of a larger risk preparedness presentation, and titled "Cost benefit analysis of three little pigs," is harrowing:
"Frequency—the big bad wolf blows with a frequency of once per lifetime."
"Consequence—if the wolf blows down the house then the piggy is gobbled."
"Maximum justifiable spend (MJS)—a piggy considers it’s worth $1000 to save its bacon."
"Which type of house," the report asks, "should the piggy build?"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
The hollowness, the pure banality of evil:
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Soul.
The Soul.
The Soul of Hollow Men.
No Soul.