Systems Live Longest!!!

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Back when Captain America: A Brave New World was released, I went to see it in the cinema and as expected, it was an enjoyable experience. However, there was one thing about it that struck me, and since then, I’ve not really been able to get it off my mind. But something totally unrelated happened recently, and I was able to see the parallels between what happened in the movie and what happened in real life.

It just shows that when you understand systems and processes, you would come to accept the fact that a system can’t belong to one person. And no matter what, if the system needs to, it will definitely turn on you. Regardless of who you are or what you’ve done.

So, in the movie, towards the end when President Ross turned into the Red Hulk, one of the things that struck me was how easily his own guards started shooting at him. There was no pause to try and see if they could talk him out of it, there was no taking a minute to see if he would calm down. They already knew how the Green Hulk could be, and they judged Ross that way and they opened fire on him.

This was the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of their Armed Forces, and at that very moment, when it was determined that he was a threat, they turned on him. The very system that he governed was now turning on him to protect itself. You might say that they were doing it to protect the innocents and stop Ross from wrecking the entire place, and that would be valid. My point here is just that his status as the President didn’t save him from getting the heat.

But things like this don’t just happen in fiction, they happen in real life as well. Granted, Presidents don’t turn into Hulks, but CEOs get fired from companies that they created themselves. They’ve been kicked out of systems that they built themselves simply because the system decided that they weren’t a good fit anymore.

The other day, a tweet was trending about someone who had worked for a company for over ten years, giving his sweat and blood to the company, and even creating a particular software that made the company lots of profits. However, in the last round of layoffs, he was kicked out. Just like that. After everything he had given, after everything he had put in. All his efforts didn’t matter in the end; his status as being the one to make more money for the company didn’t save him from getting the sack.

You see where I’m going with this now, right? Now, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do their best when it comes to work and all, but in this day and age, having an identity outside of it would also be a great idea. Whether we like it or not, systems outlive the people who create them. Disney is still one of the biggest studios in the world, and it just might last another hundred years. The same can be said for Coca-Cola. When you look at companies that have been around for more than fifty years, you see that the people who started them are not the ones who are still at the seat of power.

That’s what a system does. A system will always look out for itself, and if anyone looks like a threat, it’ll be taken care of in the best way possible. That’s just how it is, and I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to change this.

So, my dear friends, when you work, give your best. But know that everyone is expendable. You could be the president of your company today, and by tomorrow, the company will be sacking you. It’s cruel, but it is what it is. We can only hope that this knowledge will go on to motivate people to work more on themselves. So that they’ll be harder for the system to get rid of.

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_{Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I would love to know what you’re thinking. Till we meet in the next post.}

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_{N.B: All images used in this post are mine. The thumbnail was designed using Canva.}

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