HR 3 (Childhood’s End)

Pioneers, Conquest, Commerce, Affluence, Intellect, and Decadence.

Western culture has bulldozed its way through the first six stages of Empire, and is now busily nosediving into the seventh.

The Age of Decline and Collapse.

It’s a simple recipe really. Start with a base of Pestilence, throw on lashings of Famine, (of the economic kind if needed), then garnish with War. For the most part, the rest will take care of itself.

But humanity can always be trusted to add additional ingredients to the mix.

Behind the four primary “Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, trot the minor pony-riders of humanity’s creation.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusivity, all trying to steer the same blindfolded mount.

Narcissism, virtue signalling, wokeism, delusion, extremism, and entitlement, breathlessly scamper along, clacking their coconuts together.

All with one purpose, destroy all that has been created for humanity’s benefit.

From the Roman Republic, and the Grecian concepts of Democracy and Philosophy; Through the Middle Age’s slow unification of cultural and religious sensibilities, and the birth of the university system; Via the Renaissance era of scientific, intellectual, and global exploration; By way of the Industrial Revolution and its pursuit of invention and the subsequent, endless, conflict of the 20^th century;  After over two millennia of effort to build a working civilization, it has taken a mere hundred years or so to destroy it.

Whilst it would be unfair to place the collapse of western society squarely at the feet of Human Resources, HR’s existence has been part of a process of societal development that has resulted in our current impasse.

It started out with good intentions of course. HR was borne out of efforts to prevent the exploitation of women and child workers, morphed into labour management and a way of removing, if not the need, then the desire for unions, then turned into something called “People Management”.

This idea that people are something to be managed, found its impetus in the political influence and lobbying of increasingly powerful corporate bodies, monopolies, and hedge-funds. If this seems conspiratorial, consider how many politicians and senior officials end up quickly transitioning to the private sector after their time in office in a glorious display of conflict of interest.

If the peoples of the west don’t think that they are being “managed” right now, then they are sadly mistaken.

“Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius.”

That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above.

Generally paraphrased as, “As above, so below.” This concept originally ascribed to the mythical sage Hermes Trismegistus may be antiquated but, can be applicable in modern terms.

A functional business or company will commonly be made up of three distinct tiers.

The Workforce, Management, and the Executive. If a company exists as a microcosm of the societal macrocosm, then the similarities are there.

It’s easy enough to replace the words workforce, management, and executive with Proletariat, Enforcement, and Elite.

The word “enforcement” might seem overwrought, but as a synonym for management it is appropriate.

In the corporate body, the enforcement of Health and Safety, Disciplinary and Grievance, Anti-Harassment and Equality policies that foster a safe and inclusive work environment rests largely in the hands of the HR department, as a subfunction of middle tier management.

In the societal macrocosm, the middle tier can be interpreted as the education, medical, and justice and law enforcement systems.

As below, so above.

Slowly, over decades, the social mores of “everybody must win prizes”, “everybody is special”, and “everybody must be nice”, have worked their way up through educational systems into the middle tier societal and corporate processes and from there, up into the elite top tiers.

The elite tier then, in a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing, then modifies and bolsters these concepts and sends their new edicts and policies back down the chain of command for enforcement. Creating a self-perpetuating feedback loop that multiplies and multiplies and multiplies until it comes to its inevitable conclusion.

Standstill.

The end result is a system that cannot possibly break out of its own stultification. A system, crippled by its own creed. Futilely doing the same thing over and over again without ever being able to break out of the insanity cycle.

Competency is replaced by ideology. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the free-flow of information are restricted. Basic rights for the proletariat are desecrated. Justice and Law enforcement, is pressed into service to political will. The most avowed of external adversaries, are allowed in through the gates in the naïve hope that they will be our friends. All while the chosen indoctrinated, obsessed with their own genitals and how they feel about them, and blinded by their own light and self-indulgence, shout down even the most reasoned of arguments.

The political class, having reached their level of incompetence, demonstrate the nadir of “diminishing returns”, and prove themselves to be inadequate to even the most basic of their own duties.

Our minor pony riders and coconut clackers could not exist without a sophisticated, advanced civilisation. A civilisation they served no part in creating. The very civilisation that they are now determined to annihilate.

If nothing else, humanity has provided us with their solution to the fermi paradox. In the absence of a globally destructive conflict, we simply submit to the most basic of thought. We pull down educational levels to the lowest common denominator, and history is rewritten in the process. Crackpot ideology replaces rational thought. Hard won rights for all, become rights for the select few. Biological fact, becomes personal choice.

A once intelligent and thoughtful society, is forced to acquiesce to primitive, tribal, uneducated, aggressive philosophies and dogma.

And so, the seven stages of empire are complete. Yet again. Because we didn’t learn anything from the previous collapses.

Eventually the lights go out on the species formerly known as Homo Sapiens, because, in an uneducated society, there is no one left who knows how anything works anymore. Manufacturing and productivity stall. Public services and utilities collapse and breakdown, and the streets fill with rubbish. And the species now known as Homo Stultus, slowly drools and inbreeds itself into extinction.

Intelligent life has destroyed itself.

Poor HR. They tried to apply a framework to the human condition. Instead, they helped bring about the end of humanity. Not bad going, for a department that can be outsourced.