Fouling the Human-Nature

A creative counselor that I still see asked me several years ago why I work for an organization that is managed using the same principles that are destroying life on Earth. I'm paraphrasing, that's what I heard her say and what I ask myself. I work with an environmental program. The program is run in a top-down hierarchical fashion where the vision of one person, or a small politically oriented cadre, dominates. The hierarchy, obedience, and control are enforced in varying ways that amount to bullying. The creative landscape is "harvested" for ideas that are eaten by the relative few with little acknowledgement of the collective source, which is assumed to be inexhaustible and open for use and exploitation to serve the vision set by the people at the top. The ideas they choose don't stray far from the ones they formed back in the 1970s. We are the human resources. I don't actually think this organization will ever be highly effective by measures that really matter (i.e., preventing ecological and cultural collapse) and it's not sustainable.

With such a negative view of the whole thing, why do I still work there? How could I be more useful to the world? I do my job the best I can and try to make things better. We pay our bills. But I'm in contradiction with myself and it lowers my authenticity in the world. This denial feels like a compromise that wrongs my uniqueness and the value of diversity. My discontent is predictably not welcome. Everyone would like a surface experience of congeniality at least. Some I suspect want to keep their own feelings of discomfort at bay, others to deal with them in a less direct way than open discussion of what's wrong about program management and how to improve it. I know from private discussions that they view things similar to myself; it's not that I'm alone in my opinions. It's more that no one wants the conflict and stress that looking publicly and openly into the shadow can bring. It helps me to remember that while "negative" in our culture implies a dark, emotional destructive force, it can also be the result of calm, courageous, and accurate observation.