War on malignance

Malignance can be found alive and well and prospering in the offices of those large corporations or government employers that have evolved to serve the needs of the public. Like the DoE. Or the halls of further and higher education. Where does the malignance come from? It comes from targetting, ruthless or otherwise. Targetting doesn't take into account the needs of individuals. It holds no sympathy for life or its crooked road. Targets are bald faced demands without finer feelings. You know your in trouble when your VP talks about "milking the cash cow". This breeds fear in those that have to live up to the targets and contempt in those whose job it is to make sure the targets have been hit. Managers today are those faceless malignant creatures who only have one master to serve. The master of capitalism. The face of education these days has two sides. There is the caring, sharing side. The one that would be educators have to comply with in order to be able to pass in their knowledge within the hallowed class rooms. The PCE or Cert Ed as it is known to those who have achieved its status. The Cert Ed is all about the student experience. Student centred learning. Student led learning not Tutor led. Then there is the other face. The cold hard face of business. The face where the only thing that matters are the numbers. Bums on seats, candidates on a register. Milking the cash cow these days means drawing down funding from Learning and Skills Councils in order to feather the nests of those peculiar creatures the malignant narcissists.

In case you are not familiar with the story of narcissus the abridged version is thus. He was the beautiful son of a the god Cephisus. He was so beautiful that all the women in the land fell in love with him. But he rejected them all. Among them was the nymph echo who could not speak for herself, she could only repeat the words of others. One day while walking in the woods they became separated. Narcissus cried out for her "Is there any one here" but she could only reply "here, here, here". She tried to step forward and give him her love but she could not proclaim it, so he rejected her. She ran away and hid in a cave until nothing was left of her but her voice. A goddess was so angry with him that she made him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. So in love with his own reflection was he that he could not bear to leave the reflection and eventually turned into a flower, which is call Narcissus.

The war on malignance is a war on those narcissists in the work place that have nothing more to offer but the preening of their own reflection. Those shallow self absorbed creatures that are so wrapped up in their own status that they are willing to sacrifice what little integrity they have or indeed any person or persons who demonstrate that they have an ounce of integrity. Because integrity is the greatest threat to malignance. Integrity shines a beacon of light onto those that are afflicated with this incurable disease of malignance, so much so that it makes them feel incredibly vulnerable. For they know not what it is they lack. They have no aspiration towards having integrity. Oh no they are far too busy working towards getting as many glittering baubles of capitalism on their Christmas Tree as they possibly can. But somehow they recognise that the light shows them up for what they are. Shallow, fickle actors.