You are supposed to imagine yourself at the centre of the panopticon, watching over the others.
I’m not sure the other perspectives were never really considered when old Bentham came up with the Panoption, barring the notion that the others knew you could be watching at any time.
Beyond that… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’d have liked to work in a pun about how I ‘Mr Hummels strikes again’ is also in the labour movement sense of strike however I’m too tired and lazy and I didn’t join the union. (Oh, the irony!) Instead let us take ‘Mr Hummels strikes’ to be acts of God. For that is what I am.
Allow me to explain.

I’ve noticed that I seem to have been part of a strange system where I am everyone in the system. Panoptical, even. A journey into capitalism and a few youtube videos later and I had myself a prophecy…

I’m sure I’ve explained the strange reality of working for an exercise bike company when being a keen cyclist (and bike mechanic). The simulacra of a bike. The Marxist in the service area. I’m one of maybe 5 people in the place I work, out of 30, who could actually fix the item which we sell. Everyone else, including; all my managers, their managers and their managers couldn’t fix these products. We don’t deal with money but in customer satisfaction scores. There is no budget to speak of – that I’ve heard of. No one could identify where the waste actually is, barring myself and the other 5. Which is probably why we are facing redundancy. I’m sure Marx had a bit on that. Marx, 1867.

We are the simulacra of a business. Often we are placed in the strange position where we have customers who require us to provide products or fixes to products, we have the resources (opportunity to provide these services using free time and geographically close vans, ample products, the skill-set to fix the issues) and we are instructed from on high that we can’t do it. It goes to follow that I am in an at risk job, not the ones who are stymieing the business.

I am facing another redundancy and while I would imagine this time should be more kind than the last, it is yet to transpire. The company is a global tech company, who espouse the values of well meaning hippy such as myself, however when push comes to shove, in come the administrators and out go the staff who know (Boeing doc on Netflix was ok, Dark Waters v.good.).

I hate myself for working where I work. Redundancy would be a re-birth of sorts, however I’ll probably miss out by virtue of being too good at my job. Which is ironic as the only efforts I’ve made in the job were to not get fired. Anyway, about that prophecy…

“We are all eye’s in the same head.
All of creation is an exercise in God experiencing itself” – Steve-O, 2022.

I’d love to be angry etc. But I can’t be angry…
Why can’t I be angry?
Perhaps I am God. God’s don’t get angry. They get wrathy.
Perhaps I am witnessing God. Which is myself.

(Ed. I’m aware that Nietzsche did it first, and better but that isn’t the point Freddy, baby. A quick shout out to The Assassination of Versace which was quite good. Also, The Satanic Verses which I am reading currently. Motherless Brooklyn was tremendous, as was The Father and Licorice Pizza. Bad was The Toll. )

These revelations came after I have managed to pass through each stage of crapitalism. I am yet to determine if these stages are dharma, bhumi or if this is actually a business plan. But I can tell you that I’ve been chewed up and spat out again and there is no nirvana here, even for me – God.

However, cosmically, events have transpired which made me think more about a karmic sense of the world (which I designed and cannot comprehend). A sense of the world as described by Brian Eno in Spinning Away. Or less cheerily, as in Arthur Koestler‘s suicide note. For example, how could it be that I should become obsessed with Talking Heads, have their lyrics read out at our wedding and then learn that my partner’s Mum met the musician from the following project while travelling around Skye.
We then learnt she wasn’t referring to David Byrne, but Jherek Bischoff. Who wrote the music. An easy mistake to make, and perhaps not exactly cosmic but a funny ditty which led me down the road of prophecy.

This prophecy prompted in me thoughts which have lain dormant since my first rebirth. Thoughts of business, entrepreneurism and ambition. Going it alone. These ungodly urges have made me consider things I would hate to confess to; wants and needs. I’ve had to stare myself in the metaphysical face mirror with my eyes and look and model hard at the same time. What do I want? What should I do?

After coming up with the sacred truth, I was tested by God (myself), again. I was given a vision of what I could become – a bike shop owner with bad priorities. It was not a pretty sight. The pure ego mixed with capital made for an unpleasant mix. However, as I looked further into me I couldn’t see the ambition or trauma which would lead to such a path. Instead, I saw a mixture of happiness and relaxation. Perhaps that was privilege? Had it led me down the path of sloth? Was I not an entremanure? Could I not be a sturt-up?

I think not. I looked deeper again and saw a future coloured with happiness, relaxation and well placed ambition.
“Rejoice!” said He (I).
Perhaps all this was prompted by the severance package I could receive. Perhaps I felt the contentedness from parting ways with the moral injury encountered in my current role. Perhaps in the future I wrote a fantastic book and had weans and lived the life of my dreams, shredding on the reg and knee pain free.
Perhaps.
It was all out there, in the primordial soup which was myself in the future, viewed by me (God), now in the past.

I looked again at the signs I’d given myself. Truth had come from within. Take Black Country, New Road for example. In a Nostradamus like feat, I had in not so many words, predicted their sad end. In a ramble elsewhere I had understood what would become of me and of my current working situation. I could sense the nonsense a while off. I could feel it before any market did. (Unfortunately I didn’t have the sense to make any money from this.)

This altered state, the Hummel, it had seen the future before. It had seen the darkness in others. The truth in the system and perhaps now, it was showing me faith in me, the real God, perhaps Hummels was God.

So, as I look, from the centre, the sides and the structure of the panopticon itself, I can understand. This is a red pill. Hummels is a higher power. I’m being made redundant for a reason. There is a reason for everything.

The reason I’m being made redundant is probably because I’m an idiot.
The reason I probably won’t even get redundancy is because I’m an even bigger idiot and so is everyone else.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is a red pill.