God's been sacked
A memo to all staff
“I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889).
To all staff,
To curb rumours, we want to bring to your attention a matter of some importance. As you are already likely aware, we have recently fired God.
This may come as something of a shock to some of you who have not believed that God was employed here. Many of you have believed, in your own naïve way, that God does not exist. In any case, we must confirm that we have fast-tracked the proverbial eating of the frog. God has been sacked and we have sacked him.
We did not do this at all lightly. However, while we saw the laying off of God as a necessary and strategic move, it has only become apparent to us recently that some of the consequences of this may not have been adequately considered. Many of our client-centred core values are now under threat. Indeed, many of our values will need to be repurposed as we adjust to this latest, rather formidable, paradigm shift.
Are we not now, dear colleagues, lost in a simulacrum, plunging continually backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions, without any sense of up or down, and with no clear aim? Are we not now lost in an infinite nothing? And did someone turn the air conditioning to a temperature that no one can handle, or is the air conditioning broken? Gosh, it does feel cold in here right now, doesn’t it? Well, never mind, colleagues. We will have the maintenance team see to that as soon as possible.
Anyhow, to circle back to the pressing point at hand, we are your managers and we will manage. Let’s open the kimono and add some blue-sky thinking to this white-space opportunity. Let’s think win-win and not what-the-hell-now?! We will adopt the best regret-minimization framework we have available to us. Now is not the time to panic.
Surely, after all, this latest tactic of ours is not entirely unprecedented, although we will admit that everywhere anyone has run with it the results have been less than ideal. But there is no need to worry. We are confident that, in our case, things will not go as badly as they have for others who have done the same thing. Rest assured, we have a plan. We have been through trying times before, and a little nihilism is unlikely to do us much harm. We have technology and science on our side!
Already we have employed a massive task team full of engineers and accountants and lawyers to discuss the implications of God’s dismissal and should be done clearing out God’s office in the near-to-distant future. We are in the process of attending to policy and legal details to safeguard our already air-tight and utterly-suffocating bureaucracy.
It is understandable that many of you will have questions about this and that, and we will certainly find ways to avoid answering such questions both now and in the future. What are our policies on atonement, for instance? What sacred ritual sacrifices will we need to invent now that God is not here to forgive us our debts? How will we curb envy and mimetic violence now that no standard of morality can be guaranteed? How should we act now that the underwriter of our duties and obligations is gone? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for mere administrators? Must we, bookkeepers and spreadsheet glorifiers, not become the managerial class simply to appear worthy of it? And, very importantly, how shall we ensure our mental health, we who are the firers of all firers? How can we be sure that this company survives this upheaval?
To all of this, we can only say that we must strive for a higher bureaucracy! Higher-higher, you Überbureaucrats! Just think of the possibilities! In the very near future, we will have AI to help with constructing and filling out the paperwork resulting from this deed. Ah, the paperwork! What a delightful thing to consider all the paperwork. We must elevate even the lowliest to a concern with the tick-boxing of the elite. We must encourage out-of-touchism. We must get our ducks into a row and curate client-focused, buzz-worthy, bespoke solutions. Distractionmaxxing is the way. We must think of the big picture as little as we can!
That is all to say, we must improve all the means and worry about the ends later or—even better—not at all. The key takeaway is that we will be fine-tuning and tightening the grip of every single little micro-managing procedure in the company as much as possible. Don’t ask what your company can do for you, ask what your company can do to you—and, of course, what you can do for your company! Some bureaucratic overreach may happen because we are making things up as we go along. Chances are, the system will need to be a little crazy as we adjust; but there’s medication you can take for that, right?
As you know, we are, as a company, filled with resourceful resources. That is to say, humans like you. There is no need not to trust the system. It is, after all, still here. For now.
Thank you for your attention,
The Propaganda Class.