J*bs are Baphomet Humiliation Rituals

The most influential image of Baphomet comes from nineteenth-century French occultist Éliphas Lévi, first published in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. Human and animal are one. Spiritual and material are another. One hand points upward while the other points downward, and on its arms are written Solve and Coagula, dissolve and reconstitute. The reconciliation of opposites is central to Lévi’s Baphomet. Everything that should repel against everything else is somehow made to coexist inside one body. This was not just an aesthetic choice. Lévi’s symbol was part of a larger attempt to hold competing principles in equilibrium.

Lévi interprets Baphomet’s human hands as symbols of the sanctity of labor.

Sanctity of labor. The moral and spiritual language of wage slavery. You are expected to have a career and a sense of purpose. Yippee! Be a wholesome guy with a wholesome career and a modest income. Go out and do things so you have new fun facts for the weekly meeting icebreakers. Your j*b cannot simply be the place you exchange labor for money. It has to develop you as a person and eventually become part of who you are. The pernicious corporation wants to occupy categories of life that previous societies reserved for family, religion and community.

This is deeper than corporate branding anon. The institution force feeds you vocabulary for interpreting your own life. By the time someone is fully acclimated to corporate life, they can explain their life story through the language of the company without anybody telling them to. In other words, ritualized.

Any conscious person would lament taking part in this. Some stay and relinquish consciousness. Others look to leave and can’t find the exit. There is an especially bleak point where one recognizes the absurdity of the entire performance and still has to perform it every morning. Everyone knows the enthusiasm is fake, yet the smile still has to appear. The transparency of the performance is THE POINT of the ritual. You are demonstrating that you will participate despite seeing it clearly. That’s humiliating. Corporate speak is the most offensive medium of communication one could undertake. Nobody involved is fooling anyone about their true intentions. That is the true indicator of a Baphomet Humiliation Ritual. Speak down plainly, do not even attempt to fool the subject.

Harvard sociologist Harold Garfinkel wrote in his 1956 essay Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies:

“Any communicative work between persons, whereby the public identity of an actor is transformed into something looked on as lower in the local scheme of social types, will be called a ‘status degradation ceremony.’”

Garfinkel describes this process as a status degradation ceremony. Corporate America and HR junkies will rule on what kind of person you are. The problem is most of these people have never done anything impressive in their lives. They are not valid messengers of truth. Yet within the corporation, their judgment acquires institutional reality. Garfinkel specifically distinguishes between what somebody did and the deeper motives or qualities a group uses to explain who that person really is. His degradation ceremony concerns the transformation of a “total” identity, where an action becomes evidence of the underlying kind of person somebody is.

The real defining feature of the modern j*b is that relations of submission are repeatedly redescribed as virtues. A good obedient dog is “professional.” A creative genius “lacks focus.” The employee who most successfully internalizes the preferences of the institution eventually gets described as someone demonstrating leadership. But really they could never lead anything of value.

There is no room for serendipity or extremities in corporate America. You need to turn your brain off and be a cog to the machine god. You will be industry standard.

Hyper-optimization selects against weirdness because weirdness is difficult to model. Once an institution discovers a procedure that produces a slightly higher expected return, deviation from that procedure requires intense justification. The internet made every company aware of everyone else’s best practices, and software made more of human behavior measurable. There is now a benchmark for nearly everything.

Convergence. A different guy becomes difficult to manage because he introduces variance into a system built around predictability. Deviation will make your corporate life hell. You can never decline or mess up in the slightest. As soon as you do, the hyenas will pounce.

This is why corporate life produces such a fascinating and peculiar form of mediocrity. It does not particularly care whether you are stupid or brilliant. You’re just a walking expected value. Nobody really looks at you. Just keep a smile and be a good little culture fit.