Outdated
Anything organized requires a strong framework/ structure. When I was in my teenage years I noticed disparities between churches. Be it denomination, or racial, certain churches flaunted their wealth, catered to the wealthy, and those “wealthy” churches focused more on the experience rather than the message.
They would focus most of their efforts to their praise & worship and having captivating slides and have a preacher that threw around keywords, concocting fancy pseudo-spiritual word salads with some shouting to keep the crowd mesmerized. The church was more than just a weekly Sunday service, most tend to have other means of making money, kindergarten, music classes, hall rentals, wedding services and the list goes on.
They employed dozens, “encouraged” volunteering and were a centre of welfare to their congregation. Sounds good right? Sure, but they were noticeably racially biased. Their outreach/ social service programs were also always centered around people from their community. Serving all nations suddenly became their own.
That struck a nerve on me. More recently in my country, I noticed some pastors and their families travelling the world, donning the latest fashion trends. Though not Prada, Hermes, Chanel, Baby Kelly or any of the upper echelon brands, and while they should be rewarded for their hard work, isn’t materialism a sin, right? Especially as a leader of a church. Perhaps I am comparing them to my church. In some respects I prefer the Buddhist faith, but they can be just as morally corrupt, oftentimes more.
However my examples are no where close to what is happening in the US. Pastors wearing SUPREME to “connect” with the youth, living in penthouses and even owning private jets. Some get plastic surgery to look “presentable” but end up looking like a marshmallow at the end of a chopstick, with Tic Tacs for teeth.
Disgusting.
I also recently learnt that Justin Bieber is being betrayed by so called “Christians”. He sought refuge, or comfort in godly people but these people only had personal interests in mind. Man, woman, it didn’t matter, when money enters the picture, people get greedy. And I feel sorry for Biebs, poor guy looks awful.
People that work together are no stranger to politicking. No matter the organization, from households to NPO’s, from football clubs to governments. Everyone wants to serve their own personal interests, and have their own cliques. NPO’s are also notorious for laundering money, including some churches.
It is no wonder that trust is at a all time now in the public. People are asking the government to tax churches and I can understand why. This was all I needed to rebel. I mean, apart from wanting to indulge in life as a regular man, ‘free to sin’, I started backsliding. I wanted a reason to backslide to justify not wanting to seek out my calling to preach. I thought I found a loophole, rather I wanted it. I believed anyone seen as a religious figure should abstain from money. Most people do not see it as a tool, meaning most people are corruptible.
So what does a Christian kid do when he backslides? He studies other religions, branches out, looking for one that isn’t corrupted by man. Turns out there were none, some that we consider religions are more teachings, some were extrinsic observations, some were intrinsic, while many were definitely ‘inspired’ by a lunatic. The one true God was perfect in Christianity — I just didn’t want to admit it.
I soon became lost, depressed, rebelling against the One who always provided, drowned myself in World of Warcraft, skipped uni and had weekly trips to the casino & night clubs. Thankfully I can still keep my conscience because one paid for the other and I didn’t have to resort to other sins. My biggest regret was not having the courage to speak to my parents about it, though I knew what they’d say. “Snap out of it!”.
Bitcoin was starting up back then and I fell in love. Blockchain was a great idea and I loved the idea of having the greatest auditing tool. I hated corruption and the gears in my head began grinding. I didn’t have any “WD40” back then, but what little it moved, I remembered. I remember waking up one night just to write a plan down. That plan became “Project Kuchiku”
There were decent plans, and there were retarded ones. But they all had the same goal, to work their way up to end corruption. Structures are an amalgamation of strong foundation/values, creativity/idea, desires/outcome, and careful planning/resource management. But the organizational structure was flawed. It is too outdated for the 21st century, and welcomed inefficiencies like curry on a white shirt.
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No matter where you go, we see the same old organizational chart. We elevate some on merit, some from DEI, some from nepotism and so on, but the chart remains the same. It is always the same hierarchy charts, with the CEO or department head on top, mainly to depict reporting lines. What’s the largest chart you’ve come across? Do you think the CEO knows that some managers aren’t doing their jobs? Or that some underlings are abusing company time? I personally think accountability should be both ways, and think that in some cases, it would be beneficial to allow near complete transparency in an organization.
Most leaders are so busy with day to day tasks, that they develop tunnel vision and make decisions that negatively affect the entire company, or like in a true democracy, underlings should be able to refuse shareholders direction. That would cost companies more money to manage, but in the grand scheme of things, should unite and strengthen employee-employer relations. Of course voting should be anonymous, and buying out shareholders should eventually be a norm. Yeah, I’m too idealistic.
Google was having plenty of internal disputes and employees were retaliating against an array of reasons. Working with Israeli military, providing a healthy severance to a sexual offender and the list goes on. Now imagine if employees are able to show consensus by voting on such things in perpetuity, I’m sure Google would be able to manage conflicts ahead of time, with diligence. I respect people that have a clear conscience whether or not it aligns with mine, but Google should facilitate it and manage it by being transparent. “The other 89% of employees don’t mind, perhaps you need to calm down and talk to one of our 69 therapists” or “We understand why you’d think this way, here’s our side and why we need this outcome”.
Yes, I am oversimplifying it but you catch my drift. Instead of having more than 100 hierarchies in a company, lets boil it down to maximum 6 or 9, even with 50,000 employees. The power disparity will be neglected and ownership will increase. The need for a workers union will decrease over time and if treated equally (job pay/ benefits/ etc.), employees would be more efficient than their future counterparts, robots/AI. There are a variety of other aspects I’m neglecting for the time being because well, it’s a complicated world.
For instance, some big shot Google employee was at Burning Man and some chick was bugging him for a job at Google. He shut her down but somehow thought inviting her to a threesome with his wife was a good alternative. She does it, but then has the audacity to report him to Google for it. I’ve often pondered what I would do if I was Google. He did it outside the office, he did it outside office hours, do I own him?, sure it doesn’t reflect company values, but the PR backlash would be bad for my rep. I have to do the SAFE thing and fire him.
One small time nobody was able to get a big time somebody fired over butthurt feelings (perhaps literally) and she becomes the starry eyed ‘survivor/victim’, a strategy Luigi should’ve adopted to take down that insurance CEO he despised (there are already organizations for this). I suppose in today’s social structure, playing victim to self prostitution or even being one gets you further than the average joe. I pray my imaginary daughter never gets tempted by money.
But we need social structures, the Indians have had the caste system for 3 millennia and many other nations have a similar version of it. It is how societies function smoothly, even if you think you’re well above it, chances are you aren’t. But thankfully we live in a “free market”, and a “free economy”. The chance to alleviate oneself is there, unlike a chunk in India, or the rest of the world. Slavery hasn’t ended, it has been rebranded. Even your job titles are evidence of such a deception. Modern day secretaries are called administrative business partners — what are they going to rebrand it to in the future I wonder, .
The thing is, if this current structure and system continues, your bloodline will end up in slavery or cease to exist. Ceasing is fine, if it happens naturally, but being persecuted sounds terrible. It’s happening to the majority, but we’re too privileged to notice. They soothe our egos with fancy job titles and mediocre wages, despite purchasing power decreasing over time. Things only started to decline for us in the 70s. Why? Unions weakened, manufacturing moved, more competition globally, wages dropped locally, influx of women workers, local banks grew greedy, local laws loosened, morals loosened and many others. Why? The system is failing.
Anyway, the only way (I can think of ) is to concoct a structure that withstands the test of time, one that is fluid, that can restore itself, can be used in tandem with today’s society, but can also carry us forward. One that can manage itself, balancing downtimes and uptimes. One that is more efficient in relaying communication, handling disputes, managing people & their flaws and most of all manage time. I am imagining a spherical structure, non-newtonian by essence with a pulse indicating the health of the organization. Managed by a blockchain centric AI system.
I’ve worked in a few organizations, they all had the same drawbacks. Politicking, inefficient, managers that couldn’t manage, bosses that shouldn’t be there and the list goes on. The future I see is a structure that can handle volumes of manpower, manpower that can switch roles fluidly, same pay for all, streamlined objectives, effortless coordination, efficient accountability, and most of all, a 4–5 hour workday, 4–5 days a week.
I mean how often are you at work just waiting on others? If you’re asking about professions in the medical/engineering line that requires long hours, lets remove the exorbitant paywall behind it. Let’s educate & train more, succeed fairly, and grow quicker.
The dream right now is to create a complimentary economy to the existing one, following a different ideology, a non-predatory capitalistic one. A safer, tandem economy — until the existing one implodes. Perhaps an economy with its own currency.
When will we leave all the structures? The system is failing and we need out. Before a new system, we’ll need a new structure.
This is part of a series under “Project Kuchiku”, a project designed to help Fix the Future through Platform Building.
Please help this imperfect soul try to perfect this project by contributing $1/month here and share this idea of a better future with potential futurists. Arigato =)
