Once an Android, Always an Android
Why my friends can't escape the corporate life
The sad truths of the corporate world are so obvious to me, now that I’m a little removed, a little distanced from it. I can observe it from the outside, still near enough the window to peer in, but not in the hot house anymore. I can see that it is a bunch of good people, most with good intentions, who have been [wrapped] by a system that forces them to play their games.
It’s not that there’s no escape. I am escaping. Others escaped. The escape is not about money, either. It’s about mind. Everyone here has enough money to escape. Everyone I worked with makes six figures, and has been making it for years. Sure, it’s expensive out here, but even after the rents and the dinners, they must have $50k saved up somewhere. That’s $50k more than most people -- most Americans -- have, and many of those Americans are less trapped than my corporate peers here. They make. They try new jobs. They take risks.
My friends here are prisoners of their own mind. They are bound by golden handcuffs. The money is too good, and the money has come to mean everything. Everything is looked at in terms of showing value, or job, or never having to work again. It’s very binary. But here’s the funny thing – this ‘something to look forward to’ cannot escape – not the ones who dream about not going to work again, nor the so-called lucky few who have cashed out – Neither one really lives free.
I’ve met people who have cashed out with millions. They had grand dreams of what they’re going to do with all their time. How they’re finally going to be able to do those projects they’ve been waiting on, with no pressures and full creative freedom. But what they really end up doing is nada. One played tennis a few times a week and “advised” startups. As far as I could tell, that meant driving up to their offices in his Mercedes, and shooting the shit with the founders for an hour or two. There wasn’t much advising that happened, mostly hanging out.
Another got his pilot’s license. He has a project he’s been working on, but it’s stealth, and has been that way for years. “Stealth” is a fancy way of saying “secret” in Silicon Valley, which really means “we can’t tell you, because we haven’t figured it out yet.”
They never escape -- neither the six-figure wage slaves nor the so-called free men -- because they don’t know what to run to. They have no dreams, they have ones implanted in them, forced into their minds over years of indoctrination. They’re like androids, doing only what they’ve programmed to do, and when the program runs out, when they’ve finally tried, they don’t have the wiring to figure out what to do with their newfound freedom.