Mixed Messages from the same Institution
It’s a delicate balance to try to maintain.
Almost paradoxical.
Seemingly impossible.
National corporations, in their endless attempts to sell us things, almost always try to appeal to our feelings of individuality, reminding us constantly how their products will make us unique, different, one of a kind.
Everyday, we’re bombarded by messages, encouraging us (with the help of specific products) to go our own way, blaze a new trail, stand out from the crowd.
And yet, at the same time, everyone working inside these companies is reminded on a daily basis to work as a team, a finely-tuned machine, with cooperation and collective effort rising up as the group’s powerful rallying cry.
So, how do we balance the two?
How do we reconcile these bipolar ideologies, which are provided to us by the very same companies?
As an individual walking down the street, with little or no knowledge of the widespread interconnected network of incorporated institutions, the world seems unimaginably chaotic, functioning miraculously on mere coincidence, with each person’s survival and success dependent solely on their intelligence, hard work and ingenuity.
But once inside the corporate structure, the benefits of cooperation are seen almost immediately.
Lawyers, tax attorneys, accountants, marketers, software developers, advertising agencies, public relations firms—everyone working tirelessly under the same protective umbrella, like bees inside the infrastructure of a highly organized honeycomb, with honey production for the entire colony up 3% from last quarter, and 8% from the year before.
In daily memos and weekly meetings and company retreats, the message is always the same.
T.E.A.M.
Together Everyone Achieves More.
And it’s true.
We can see that in the stock reports and the Christmas bonuses and the company-paid vacations.
When people work together towards a common goal, more often than not, everyone within that group does, in fact, achieve more.
Yet many of us, the moment we step beyond the threshold of those sparklingly clean sliding glass company doors, rip off our suits, get in our cars and try to race home like individual superheroes, inevitably getting stuck in traffic in the process, sitting miserably in a four door, four passenger car, all alone, wondering why the commute gets worse and worse every single year.
And eventually, when we do make it home, into our suburban neighborhoods, (those vast havens of anonymity where people smile and wave politely, but no one really knows each other) we shake our heads at the road construction or the latest development in progress—a team of bulldozers razing a field where flowers used to grow and kids used to play.
And for some reason (perhaps because the radio is on, distracting us with commercial messages, reminding us to be an exceptional individual with this product or that one) we feel completely helpless, and without any say as to the decisions being made in our towns and cities, forgetting, it seems, about all those other teams out there, working tirelessly to raise the production of honey in their own honey pots; separate colonies of bees, specializing in finding different sources of pollen, all of them buzzing in unison—land developers scouting out locations, PR firms paving the way with special events and public relations, legal teams writing up favorable new legislation—everyone working to achieve more for their specific corporation, which has no particular interest in the general needs of the community that you live in.
So the question is, “Why don’t we apply the lessons that we learn from inside our companies—lessons of teamwork and cooperation—to our communities?
And of course, the more difficult question that inevitably follows is, “If city council meetings are taking place and decisions are being made during the standard business hours of 9 to 5, while we’re off at work, spending all of our energies somewhere else, how can we?