The Automatic Earth in Greece: Big Dreams for 2017

You have hit the nail right on the head with institutions. I, a nobody, have been on this for a long time. Institutions be they governmental, NGO, corporate, political party and all the space in between define our age. Special mention must be made of the modern business corporation which is the perfect form or institution and all other institutions have adopted large parts of the corporate institutional form.

My focus is not on what institutions do but rather the people who willingly and eagerly become part of them. In a nutshell all ‘successful’ people are institutional people save entertainers of various types. The institutional person surrenders their individuality to become part of the group. Yes this sort of thing has gone on since humans emerged but the scope is far different now. In the US right through the 50’s ordinary workers often held a certain amount of contempt for what was called the “company man”. (An interesting side note is that in WWII, ordinary soldiers, GI’s often held some contempt the low and mid level officers, the brass. Who were selected and self selected because they were insteitutional men, who later become corporate managers, Read Catch 22 and look at Cathcart and Korn)That has disappeared and with it so too has our defense against institutions. Well I won’t ramble on but I would guess if you read Automatic Earth your not a company man, and institutional person. You may work for a corporation above the hourly level but you don’t fully check into all that goes with it, and your very limited to the upside. They want to weed you out and for the most part it is self weeding. Real individuals don’t want to be institutional people.

Great article about institutionalization. People are herded into tax exempt charities, charities that are required to hire staff to complete mountains of government paperwork to maintain their tax exempt status. The unfortunate result being that complying with mountains of paperwork legitimize that organization. I guess I could rant forever about other institutionalized “things” but I won’t now.
My thanks to Mr Polychronopoulos and you. Mr Polychronopoulos for feeding the hungry (whether or not they have their “papers”) and to you for your unselfish humility by reminding us to give when we are able.
It worked. A donation from a stereotyped ” angry white guy” located in the former industrialized Northeastern Ohio.