Dr. Faustus: there’s a call for you. Beelzebub is waiting on line three
By Paul Hurst
“A sleep trance, a dream dance, a shared romance: Synchronicity”
The Police: Synchronicity
Carl Jung described “synchronicity” as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” I seem to experience this regularly.
In my Humanities 330 course, “Wrestling With The Devil”, I was reminded that the devil is sometimes presented as a slick lawyer or corporate “bankster” in a tailored silk suit.
Satan is the historical and cross-cultural personification of evil. Since the Global Economic Crisis began in 2008, a growing class war in the developed world has led to the demonizing of large corporations. Occupy Wall Street is case in point.
How does this tie into ICBC? The corporation has a reputation for being awful to deal with, but many people I talk to have had surprisingly positive interactions with ICBC. By and large, my former co-workers are normal, compassionate human beings that want to help their customers. In my case, I’m more humanoidish, with a bit of Terminator in my personality. I’m also a great cook, and I love puppies and kittens.
With the recent scandal involving ICBC ‘s executive, I felt a definite twinge of synchronicity with my Humanities course. Then again, corporate scandals seem to be omnipresent these days. I guess maybe it was just timely that ICBC was the scandal de jour.
When you graduate, dear reader, and move onto the work world, you’ll find that your education continues. But you will enter the school of hard knocks, where you will learn street smarts, if you are lucky. Sometimes people at the pinnacle of an organization seem to lack those kind of smarts.
This dearth is, however, not isolated to ICBC.
One important lesson in my street education was: never slag former employers, and don’t burn bridges unless absolutely necessary. You never know when you’ll have to make a tactical retreat back across said bridge.
ICBC gave me a powerful skill set, and an education in life that school could not.
Keeping a job often comes down to always being honest, and not stealing from your employer. I always followed these rules.
I think the most important lesson one can take from last month’s resignation of ICBC’s president Jon Schubert is this: always remain humble (and ethical), or the world will make you so.
Some of you will end up in positions of power and authority. But all of us are tempted to bend the rules to gain some perceived benefit. When, like Dr. Faustus, you sign that bargain, and you copy and paste your way through university, remember that it can come back to haunt you years later.
15 years from now, as you sit at your expensive desk, in your beautiful corner office on the 66th floor of Mega-Giganto Corporation, remember the Fausts who have gone before you. And think twice when Beelzebub wanders in with an offer you can’t refuse. You might end up paying with your soul.
