Chris Hedges: The careerists [View all]

[Lars77]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_careerists_20120723/

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions.

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This is an excellent piece in which Hedges illustrates how the dissipation of responsibility in corporations and government institutions alike make bureaucrats and apparatchiks willing to do damage, because they are just a "part of the greater machinery". I made this connection myself after doing a course on genocide studies in the university. Adolf Eichmann was an evil Nazi, but he did not see himself that way. He was a honest, hard-working part of the system. The murder of the Jews was made legal by lawyers and so he merely did his small contribution to the greater plan that was created by someone else. In the same way, a person working for a health insurer can deny coverage and sentence a cancer patient to death. "It's according to the guidelines, it's my job, i am merely setting in motion something that is inevitable and would happen anyway".

Morality dispersal along with responsibility in large organizations, but a democratic government is at least somewhat responsive to the demands of the people. A despotic government however, is just like a corporation.