Often people who are counting on you, usually family members, will effectively let you know that while they care a non-zero amount about whether your life experience is miserable, or what impact your work has on the world, or what upside or opportunities for personal growth you might have, what they actually care about is whether you are projecting the illusion of security. They want to mentally cache that you/they ‘are going to be OK’ and that ‘everything is all right.’
When I first read this 6 months ago, I thought, “I guess, some people’s family members could be cold like that”.
Then I mentioned quitting my job at mega-tech company to my parents. What I heard was actually “we care absolutely zero amount that you’re actually okay, what we want is to feel you’re okay, how dare you take that away from us”.
One thought I had is many of these causes directly follow from the meme that “Cthulhu Always Swims Left”.
It’s well known that size of government only grows bigger. As you explained above, it’s not surprising that large corporations grows at the same time.
Your “Cause 8” was particularly provoking. I moved from another country to work where I am now. And my observations match almost perfectly with what you wrote. It is an absolutely sad state of affairs; where so much of a person’s identity and well-being is embedded in this organization with sole purpose of profit making; and where so much of a person’s interactions are with people who’s only relationship with you is that you’re both working for the same entity to make profits.
Not sure if you purposely want to avoid potentially fraught discussion with politics, but much of above reminds me of general criticisms towards modern day leftism.
(First comment, might as well say thank you for writing the maze series. Certainly got me to think.)