As most of my friends are aware, I read (and love) the publication The Monthly. It’s contains well researched articles and commentary on topical social and political issues and most importantly I find it’s really well written. In the June 08 issue, in the essay ‘Living in the age of noise’ by Robyn Davidson, the following prose really stood out for me as beautifully written:

The logic of bureaucracy is to grow, mycelia-like, through life’s fabric, stifling free impulse, bringing everything and everyone under it’s control. It often appears to act in the interest of ‘the public good’. Or ‘for the community’. But at the root of the bureaucratic mindset is a hatred of the individual. And it is now inescapable. Our actions leave traces in the great fungal mat – in computers, on film – so that, should it be necessary, the bureaucracy can send out a tentacle and haul us in.

We pride ourselves on being ‘free’ – free democracies in which all are allowed to choose. But really, we can only choose between a few kinds of sameness. We cannot choose to reject, to live outside of, the gargantuan administration that is modern life.