Hell is on earth, and it’s a waiting room, a line, a series of multicolored files and lengthy emails, weekly zoom meetings, LinkedIn posts, shareholder conferences, university applications, keynote speeches, and god-knows how much other representations of institutional red tape. In such a hell, by the “Nightmare of Interconnection”, all beings within it can be said to be simultaneously its victims and its demons, and the devil at the head of it all isn’t any particular individual, but rather, the system itself.

Of Kafka’s three major works, The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, I’ve only read the two former works. In particular, in The Trial, Franz Kafka displays the grotesque, demonic face of the needlessly bureaucratic system in such a way that every member of “civilized” society knows all too well. We’ve constructed a system of of over-organization, one that prioritizes a working order of rules and regulations so much that the the welfare of individuals is considered last, and ironically, such a system becomes so organized that its effectively something of a lawless, unempathetic mess in its final effect.

For example, we write laws with the intent of providing an orderly system of morality and punishment under society, and seemingly, the more rigid laws are written, the more the order is enforced. The more absolute and unchangeable a law is, the easier it is to enforce (and intrinsically, the more fair it becomes). The issue, however, is that just like physical rigidity or hardness of objects, the more rigid a law is, the cleaner it shall break. Loopholes in rigid laws are considerably more exploitable than laws which are flexible and open to interpretation, and although one could argue that flexible laws are easier to produce loopholes for (due to being open to interpretation), again, their flexible nature makes combatting these loopholes similarly simple through exploring other interpretations.

What a rigid society produces is an over-emphasis on rules and order with a lack of interest in the wellbeing of individuals and a fragility in the social order due to being largely unable to change with the course of humanity and thus much quicker to break. What comes immediately to mind is the legislation produced about recreational drugs. Legislation regarding drug use (that being, wide-sweeping bans with immense penalties for illegal distribution or usage) has historically had little to do with the supposed or fronted reasons of promoting social welfare. Rather, it’s far more been a tool for systematically oppressing groups that are the most susceptible to drug use. Controlled substances have been popular in human society from our initial civilizations, especially those like alcohol and medicinal herbs, and despite this, the rhetoric concerning drug use is largely conflicting. The state emphasizes an avoidance of drugs of all kind yet many fail to see the similarities between a drug like alcohol to drugs like Marijuana or psychedelics like psilocybin (magic mushrooms).

Regardless of the negative effects of such drugs, much of which has been studied relentlessly due to this long debate over the decriminalization or legalization of such drugs, we know from history (such as the effects of the prohibition) that wide-sweeping, rigid bans are not in the true interest of social welfare whatsoever. If we truly wanted to aid the population in avoiding addictance to these drugs and lowering deaths due to overdose or poison (from misuse), then the public must be educated about the full range of the effects of drugs alongside the proper, safe consumption of these drugs, and the entirety of the production and distribution system of such drugs must also be made into a legalized process such that the industry can be regulated. It is a fundamental fact of free-market capitalism that where there is a demand, there shall be someone that will look to meet it with a supply. The question thereby lies in the hands of the government: would they rather that someone be somebody above-board that they can control, or somebody unscrupulous whose success entirely depends on evading your control as much as possible?

Furthermore, we engage in the kafkaesque in all manners of society: especially the pipeline of education to the working, corporate world. Due to the capitalism underlying everything in education, much of the education system feels like a peacock show more than its actually about scholarship. For example, scientists are only really scholars as a part-time job. First and foremost, they are salesmen. The success of a researcher, especially in STEM, is largely based on their ability to sell their research to investors (grant funding organizations, such as corporations). Similarly, the success of a student is based on their ability to sell themselves to investors of other kinds, such as the universities, scholarships, or professors they apply to. Universities see the students they admit like investments, with the most likely candidates for admission being those who the university sees as the most likely to be a valuable relationship to have years after graduation. In turn, we see the effect of the children of the uber-wealthy or heads of state being disproportionately admitted to elite universities, but who can blame the colleges? Each admit is something of a gamble to the university, and an already wealthy or well-connected student is a far safer bet for how much the university can profit off of the student later down the line.

Furthermore, the entirety of the topic of networking is such an absurd system from the outside looking in. Many people justify the intense desire to enter elite universities by stating that top universities act as aggregators for the sharpest minds around, and as such, the appeal of a top university is the ability to network with the most powerful leaders-to-be. As James Bryant Conant once stated, “A Harvard education consists of what you learn at Harvard while you are not studying.”

The issue I see with the mentality behind networking is that it views social interaction in such a performative and lain manner. The networking mentality reduces people down into tools for hierarchical advancement, and the irony of advancing in capitalism fundamentally boils down to the idea that you can have anything when you fundamentally don’t need it, and with regards to networking or college applications, any college will quickly accept you and any person will swiftly try to connect with you if they see that their connection with you will allow them to gain something. The irony, therefore, is that the peoplpe that can make the most use out of a university education or a professional connection are those who cannot access it. It’s something of a Catch-22. You need clout or appeal to attract the relationships and positions that will garner you clout. For example, consider job experience. The age-old lamentation is “You need job experience to get a job, but the only way to get job experience is to get a job.” Catch-22, QED.

Our world is red tape and contradictions, rules and operations that make sense at individual levels but come together to produce a whole system that is woefully out-of-order. And what is to remedy it? Burning it down? Is anarchism the answer? Perhaps a return to some idealistic traditional society? In my opinion, probably not, and also due to the nightmare of interconnection. Such problems are probably more intrinsic to humanity than simple the result of the systems we have at hand. However, in all, I don’t know. I just don’t know.