Corporations as Modern Vampiric Godforms
by Pentilian
In America, being an individual is thought to be extremely important, but what is individualism? Individualism is defined by Webster's as "the conception that all values, rights, and duties originate in individuals." Each person gets indoctrinated with advertisement 24/7 from the radio, television, and magazines and even when they go to the bathroom. Corporations attempt to jam each cranny of our psyche with advertisements that promote a duty to purchase and values of consumption. A person can de-condition those advertisements and clear their head only with the most heroic of efforts. From the standpoint of any magickal philosophy, clearing the parasitic desires created by advertising frees an individual to pursue other options like their own happiness or magickal journey. One of the best joys of magick is to become as free of that conditioning as possible. This process takes time, effort and continual vigilance. This aspect of corporations is entirely vampiric in nature. The goal of a corporation is maximal profits, which means it must clearly work to siphon money from people and convince people their product is needed. In a capitalistic society, this phenomenon is mostly part of the underlying assumptions in the culture.
What is not so talked about is the effect that working in one of these corporations has on the individual psyche. In some cases work is over fifty percent of one's waking hours. Often this can total well over 45 hours for the average salaried person. The average working day is filled with pro-company propaganda as well as reinforcement of a work culture. As many people working in corporations can attest, the corporation asserts its values and culture via very efficient uses of guilt, fear, and negative and positive reinforcement during work hours. In this way, the corporations seem almost alive and larger corporations will inject themselves more and more into an individual's psyche. What most people are unwilling to admit is how pervasive this injection really is. Most corporate cultures are not about merely doing the job, but serving the corporation to the fullest capacity the individual has inside and outside of work hours. The notion that the corporation is something that must be served is not only pervasive and ubiquitous in the workplace; it suggests that the American ideal of a corporation is far different from merely a business. The statement implies a living organism feeding on not only the public who gives it money, but on the employees who feed energy into the beast. When a person does not enjoy his or her job, the job has a very clear draining effect on the employee's psyche that is noticeable to any friend or family member of the affected person. Often, the person must rely on the support of friends and family to improve their quality of life. Unfortunately, too many people fall into this trap. Everyone reading this has probably experienced this in some manner. A common phrase heard is that "work is supposed to suck." One would think that the person would go home and forget about the job, thus enjoying their free time, but most people in this situation do not seem to be able to do this. Instead the person will reminisce about events that make them hate the job, perhaps point out specific examples to themselves that reaffirm the hatred of the job and then often conclude there is nothing they can do about the problem. By the time the person goes to bed, if they can sleep, they are completely drained. What just happened here?
The individual is forced to acclimate to an egregore, namely the corporation, which is not compatible with the core "person" that the individual believes himself or herself to be. The obvious answer to this issue is to find a new job. Leaving a corporation is in no way an easy task. A fast survey of friends and family indicates that rarely will someone leave a job because the job is not what they want to do or that they disagree with the corporation. Even if they are unhappy, most people will often not leave a position. People generally will leave a job when they are completely fed up as far as extra work, pay scale, an unruly boss, a demeaning culture, or for a host of other reasons. Inherent in the process is that something flawed within the job usually pushes them to pursue a job more in line with their core being, beliefs and desires. Why does it take a person becoming "fed up" before they will move on? A good portion of people will stay at corporations and jobs they dislike citing such reasons as:
- "I don't want to lose friends."
- "Every place is the same as here and will be no better."
- "I am not really good enough to get another job."
- "I am lucky to have this job."
- "I am really needed here."
- "What would happen if I left?"
Even people who enjoy their jobs must assimilate the culture of the egregore they serve by working for the corporation. In fact, an argument could be made that the more ingrained the thinking patterns, rules, and culture of the "Corporation" are in the mind of the employee, the better chance that employee will have of promotion. In addition to performance, most job reviews revolve around a simple question of "how well do they fit in with our culture." Promotions are often rewarded not on ability, but how much superiors approve of an individual, and I would further argue that the question is how well the individual fits within the corporate culture, i.e. how internalized the corporate egregore is within them. This thinking may manifest in "how much the person is liked" by upper management or how much they are a corporate man or woman. At first glance, this analysis seems to be beyond cynical, but a simple thought experiment would suggest that the idea is not entirely unfounded. A good litmus test for this idea is to simply ask yourself a few questions, and be honest about the answers. How much time do you spend thinking about work and the corporation you work for, outside of work hours in a week? Then, ask your friends, or a mate, the same question regarding you in a week. Compare the answers. Is there a discrepancy? To further carry the thought experiment, ask yourself how much you thought about the company you work for outside of work hours when you were at a much lower ring of the company. Even outside of work, how much does the corporation insert itself into your private life? How often does it seem to interfere with your ability to be with your children because you have work to do, or make love to your wife or husband because of how stressed you are working on this "big deal?"
In many ways, the larger the corporation, the more intrusive the corporation is into a person's life and way of thinking. IBM would for many years claim that innovations or inventions created outside of work hours and developed with personal resources belonged to IBM. Other corporations have similar concepts of owning their employees. If the corporation were considered as a living organism, an egregore, as this essay is presenting, clearly this would be a logical consequence of a larger organism that requires people's energies to live. Amazingly, many of the corporations use techniques that seem to induce the "Stockholm Syndrome" to a degree, albeit a subtle one. This is a situation where people are controlled, intimidated, or forced to suffer on a consistent basis until they begin to love or identify with their captors. How many people are afraid of losing their jobs? Or asked to work excessive hours to maintain their jobs, or denied sick time/vacation time at the whim of a supervisor? I have heard some corporations even deny any requests for time off on purpose due to the belief that "if they want it, they shouldn't have it, since we need to show them we are in control." These blatant aspects of conditioning within corporate life are combined with more subtle brainwashing techniques. Take for instance corporate meetings where higher officials are talking to lower rungs of the company about how the corporation is doing. Inevitably, there are donuts or other sugared offerings present. These treats are thought of as a nicety from management, but white sugar has interesting physiological properties in people. Sugar essentially gets a person high, and puts the person into an altered state of consciousness at onset. Dick Sutphen would claim that sugar puts you into an "Alpha state" of consciousness that makes you twenty-five times more susceptible to suggestion. In most of these meetings, the donuts are followed by a confusing barrage of information and jargon. You can see similar techniques in sales. At this point, the message is delivered that the company is struggling with the "tough" economy and that the company is very grateful to everyone's contributions. Somewhere in the mass of information, people may find out that the company needs "sacrifices" and "more with less." A suggestion is implanted while people are in an "Alpha state" to give more hours, work harder, and forgive transgressions such as no bonuses. If you want to really verify the use of these techniques on employees, listen to somebody you consider a good manager. Try to time the cadence of their speech. Speech around 45 to 60 beats per minute maximizes the hypnotic effect of the speech and increases your willingness to do a task, as if you gave yourself the idea. Corporations put deep hooks into their employees and the 40+ hours a week reinforce those vampiric tendrils. Really, it's for the greater good of the corporation.
Optimistically, I believe Pagans and Magicians should hopefully be more willing to follow their own dreams as they are partially removed from the dominant cultural matrix that these corporations use to control and manipulate their employees. Many Magicians, however, will argue that the eight or more hours of indoctrination five times a week or more has no impact on their psyche. This statement does not seem reasonable to me. Of course, asking these types of questions helps counter the effect that such an egregore can have via the control mechanisms suggested in the essay. Using the model of Corporation as Vampiric Godforms allows us as Magicians and/or Pagans to use our interesting magickal techniques to separate ourselves from that corporate conditioning. Taking 15 to30 minutes after work to formally banish the corporation will produce a psychological effect that indicates a change of state, which mentally will separate the corporate mindspace from the home mindspace, which as many of you know will produce a greater happiness at home. Try it for a week, and see how you feel. In the situation where you unwittingly catch yourself thinking about work during off hours, perform another banishing. If work interrupts your off-work time, perform a banishing of the entity as soon as you complete the required task. Since the goal of the corporation as an entity is to feed itself, break the thoughts of self-defeatism by the same mechanism you would banish any other negative vibration. Banish it out of your thinking process and it should have no power over you. Almost all Pagan and/or magickal traditions have a banishing, prayer or purification rite. The banishing could be as simple as a self- smudging, a grounding/centering, a chakra alignment or any other purification/centering technique the practitioner deems appropriate. In this case, removing the tentacles of the corporate entity allows a person more freedom to pursue their own "Great Work" - whatever that may be - by purifying the mind of those influences and limiting the scope and dominion the entity has over you to just your working hours and no more.
Sources:
Persuasion and Brainwashing Techniques Being Used on the Public Today by and copyright Dick Sutphen
Influences:
Science and Practice (4th Edition) by Robert B. Cialdini, 2000.
Hands On Chaos Magick by Pentilian, self-published, 2004.
Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic by Phil Hine, 1995.
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_article.html?a=usil&id=8839
Related Links:
http://www.occultforums.com/showthread.php?t=10724
http://www.occultforums.com/showthread.php?t=6372
http://www.occultforums.com/showthread.php?t=8819
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