R E - R E A D E R - Biro Beograd

Now, this reminded me of a story I read somewhere, but can’t even google
it anymore, so I will try to retell it. It is about (if I remember well) a Japanese
business person, a small manager in the big company, obsessed with
his status within the organization and the pace of his climbing up the ladder.
He was so under the burden of thinking about his formal position that
he was contemplating all the time about how his business card looks like
comparing to the cards of other managers and executives – there is this
thing, allegedly, about business cards – the less it tells about you, the more
important you are. His card was saying a lot – manager of this department
for that in charge of developing this, with all sorts of contacts there. Senior
executives had less and less data exposed as they are in the higher positions,
and the President Of The Board had a card with just his name on it.
And, finally, the story ends one night, when our businessman wakes up in
sweat, after dreaming of meeting God, who handed him over his business
card – a blank piece of paper. I like this story – I think it has a lot to say not
just about how “system” is using titles and functions as automatically executed
“self-control” and “self-reference” system, and not just about how
people are unquestionably accepting and actually grasping this imposed
system of values, not only how the power is actually in it’s secrecy and nontransparency
(I believe professor Miško Šuvaković spoke about that at the
discussion) but about how vertical, “chain of command” and top-down
organization may produce a mechanism which can deliver real-world results
in the short term and in specific situations. It is creating what is perceived
as a personality-depriving machine, and in the long run it all may
work on the system’s inevitable and possibly ludistic end. The same applies
not just to military or business circles, but to the world of academics, as
well (soon I expect a post-mortem PhD studies and complementary titles
to be introduced :-). This is not to criticize the process of education, quite
58