User:Srhodes

Smothering a Sense of Purpose by Design

A free person must be able to choose their purpose, to criticize and assess their purpose, and to change their purpose. Only with this freedom can function be created with purpose. A person is the core. Purpose is the intent, and function is the role. Purpose and function are discardable. True purpose cannot be created as subordinate to an unchosen purpose. True purpose cannot be instilled within the confines of hierarchical control, because decision is absent. Purpose is either created with promise of rewards, or coerced.

For example, consider a publically-traded corporation.

Corporations are institutions with function dictated hierarchically from their purpose, which is profit. The workers providing functions are human beings, and have little sense of purpose. Instead, they work for financial reward, and that reward necessarily becomes their purpose. When financial reward becomes their purpose, all other motivation is secondary and irrelevant; no matter what the trick, their purpose remains obtaining financial reward. When that reward is required for the workers' livelihood, as is often the case, financial reward is not a reward at all, because survival. Thus, the workers are coerced, their livelihoods held hostage.

Corporations attempt to create a sense of purpose, but their purpose remains profit, and so the sense of purpose corporations create is actually just the functions they require for profit disguised. A worker focused on a reward does not have to consider whether their corporate function is noble or useful. A worker focused on survival needs not care about their corporate function at all.

Further, the worth of a worker to the corporation is a function, but to the worker, fulfilling that function is an impediment between them and either financial reward, or livelihood. They dream of being rid of that impediment, playing the lottery, and investing in retirement. What pride is possible for a coerced worker? What change is possible within a system where purpose cannot be freely chosen? Has not labour been kept purposeless by design to the worker, leaving them to suffer and endure their way to the freedom of retirement?

In a corporation, a worker that discards purpose or function discards livelihood; the worker is not useful, and so is discarded. If a worker has purpose aligned with the corporation's goals, the worker remains a function to the corporation. The worker is always discardable by the corporation; it cannot be any other way. No wonder that workers feel discardable, then: they are.

These are the realities of any hierarchical organization that restricts human freedom, whether state, corporation, or church.

If we do something that is necessary to live, it does not smother a sense of purpose; the more unpleasant we find it, the more likely we are to look for ways to do it more easily, or not at all. We would rather have an enjoyable purpose, and so humans over time have developed technology and culture that makes living easier. However, some have made living easier through the coercion and manipulation of others, and one of the most fundamental goals of any society should be to eliminate this immoral inequity.