Blue Cheese: The Molding of Capitalism
Standing at the podium pressing the edges of a book down onto the chipping, black paint that coated the steel box filled with keys. The valet uniform was black pants, black undershirt covered with a beige, cotton, short sleeve button up bearing the company’s name and logo. In school but rarely ever in school, I spent most of my time playing video games, hustling for money at the hotel, binge drinking, or sporting.
I flipped the book over to save my page revealing the title and author. “James Baldwin?!” she remarked as I reached for her luggage. “Yes, Ma’am” as I often tersely retorted to guests. “For class” she queried; No Ma’am just want to. As her car approached, I moved toward the curb to open her door and load the luggage. “What do you want to be” she compassionately asked while fishing a tip out of her purse. “A writer.” “Keep reading authors like that, good luck.” She jumped in and drove off. I did get The Fire Next Time for a class but it was two, three years before I ever cracked it open.
Seven, mostly absentee, years later and I accumulated a 1.8gpa and ninety credit hours; ten of which were accredited through spring testing before my college career officially began. Year five of valeting was beginning and I spent more time in bookstores than classrooms. Perusing from history to fiction to economics budgeting my selections, one particular evening eventually picking Profit over People.
The night was slow and I whittled the workforce down to me and another valet. The crew were always looking to get out early to hit up bars or study for an exam. The two of us chatted waiting for the overnight guy to show up. Out the hotel walked a man with a manila folder under his arm. “Need your car, sir” as was custom for the job. “Nah I just left a meeting and wanna walk to the casino, which way is it” he requested. Pointing East I advised “follow the Mississippi River bout a quarter mile.” “Chomsky, nice, who’s reading that” “I am.” “Chomsky is the man” he exclaimed before disappearing into the night.
I couldn’t pronounce Noam or Chomsky and if it wouldn’t have been for the corporate shelves of Barnes and Noble I never would have unwittingly stumbled upon who many would characterize as the premier intellectual of the last ~fifty years. If some street stranger felt compelled to comment on Chomsky perhaps I should look into more of his work I thought at the time.
Following up Profit over People with Understanding Power, Chomsky would become a formidable foundation of my outlook. His research demonstrated across the globe what I was seeing in my microcosm of the world. The concept of academia didn’t exist in my sphere but thanks to PragerU and TurningPointsUSA my mother will tell you it radicalized me. However, the defining literature as a turning point in my life was provided to me not by some Marxist philosophy professor but by the General Manager and an outside HR consultant of the hotel. Who Moved My Cheese?
Not until I read Rebecca Lemov’s World as Laboratory years after did I realize how deeply, laboriously corporate culture is institutionalized through “research” like the Hawthorne experiments. As Chomsky points out, despite assertions by Jordan Peterson, Andrew Sullivan, and Charlie Kirk, campuses cater to the whims of capitalism and the ever moving cheese while the cultivation of “radicals'' is crumbs in comparison. Wonderfully explained by the remarkable Yasmin Nair. Richard Wolff holds a P.H.D. in economics and attended Yale, Harvard, and Stanford, and likes to reveal that Karl Marx was not once brought up in all his classes. Meanwhile halls, wings, dormitories, and libraries are named for some industrious philanthropist benefactor that also gracefully provided generous grants. And to the extent that there is a campus cancel culture, it arises not through the academic working class but through the consumers of college. With so much freedom of choice, it is the college CEO’s that fear the consumers will vote with their wallets and take business elsewhere. Last thing the Chancellor wants to see is two straight quarters of declining admissions. The Headmaster pleasing the skull and cross-boners afraid the little Bari’s may transfer next fall.
The story of Hem and Haw, two “little people” who must obediently navigate The Maze to get their cheese, is told by Spencer Johnson M. D. bolstering Chomsky’s case that conformity to the institution is more likely to produce the kind of pseudo self help drivel that becomes one of the best selling business books of all time. Now featuring a new edition, Who Moved My Cheese? For Kids. Marketing begins at conception.
All of “middle management” were corralled into a banquet room at the hotel. The GM and HR consultant took charge. The Meeting was on the heels of the third corporate takeover in my five years. There were other ‘team building’ exercises on the menu, like a game of telephone that reported to Dear Leader on the other end of the line if there were any whispers of unionizing, but the entrée was not what your cheese could do for you but what you better do for your cheese.
Where the allegory takes a Goebbels-like turn is when Hem and Haw must learn from Sniff and Scurry, two rats, who blithely run the race and chase the cheese. The maze is littered with “writings on the wall” like Move with the Cheese, They Keep Moving the Cheese, and If you do not change, you can become extinct. “One sunny Sunday'' Michael told the story of Hem and Haw’s journey through the maze to his former classmates. Sniff and Scurry “possessed simple brains and good instincts'' while Hem and Haw wanted “special cheese that made them feel happy.” Dr. Johnson was acutely prescient as he pegged the Millennials just as the first ones were celebrating their 18th birthdays yet to know the wonder of avocado toast. Hem and Haw’s “human beliefs and emotions… made life in the Maze more complicated and challenging.” Cue Ben Shapiro condemning empathy.
Eventually Haw got with the program and followed Sniff and Scurry to new cheese. Haw “had been holding onto the illusion of old cheese that was no longer there.” If only he were more patient since Trump is bringing back those manufacturing jobs. “So what was it that made him change? Was it the fear of starving to death? Haw smiled as he thought it certainly helped.” The reader is left in suspense if Hem ever ate again.
As the Sun began to set Michael and his former classmates related to the fable and its lessons. Carlos started with his experience of “an unexpected job change.” “Michael laughed. ‘You were fired?” Carlos answered, “Well, let’s just say I didn’t want to go out looking for new cheese.”
Next ‘Military Frank’ spoke of his friend who “was the only one surprised when his department closed.” Followed by Nathan, “Our chain of small stores suddenly became old fashioned when the mega-store came to town with its huge inventory and low prices. We just couldn’t compete with that.” After Jessica explained her company’s failure to adjust with new technology she worried she could get laid off. Carlos shouted, “It’s MAZE time!” “Everyone laughed.”
The group speculated Hem’s fate. Cory thought Hem never tasted cheese again saying he knew people that felt “entitled” and like “victims...blaming others.” It’s not personal, it’s just business. Or, profit over people.
I’m too busy moving with my cheese to look up old reviews but I imagine the WSJRB raved, “the Atlas Shrugged of the post Nafta era, DR. Johnson’s parable masterfully portrays the proverbial Rat Race deserving of a fellowship at the Institute of Human Relations. His poignant metaphor eloquently encapsulates the plight of the prole!”
The hotel restaurant was led by its fourth Chef by the end of my tenure. The eaters had dwindled to a dearth that left my pockets noticeably hollow. Weekend weddings gave way to National Guard training, the weekday traveling business clientele slowly disappeared, banquet rooms increasingly vacant, and the streets were becoming quieter. The cheese had definitely begun to move but who was moving it was the million dollar question that I couldn't personally answer. Maze Time!
At the time I had never heard of Mitt Romney or H-B1 work visas but Who Moved MY Cheese seems like the kind of literature Bain Capital would have gifted its new employees at the Christmas parties. Or if it was written sixty years earlier, the book Reagan would have distributed around G.E. facilities as he was doing the builders of the mazes bidding. Eventually Amazon’s warehouses and Wal Mart’s greeters will be rendered defunct in the fourth and fifth trillionaires pursuit of happiness. The cheese suspended just above the wheel waiting for the next Bane to rise out of the darkness as the Waltons taunt the Bezos, “you merely adopted the cheese, we were born into it, molded by it!” Everyone knows old money is way classier than new money.
Besides Master Splinter raising mutated turtles, thinking of rats in a laboratory elicits the Rat Park experiment. Bruce K. Alexander and his Canadian colleagues tested the theory that drug addiction is attributable to the addicts environment as much as anything, and added much needed data to the discourse. Since the late 1970’s experiment, drug addiction to opiates has spread through the post-industrial regions. About thirty minutes west of New Orleans, St. John the Baptist Parish has one of the country's highest cancer rates thanks to a Dupont factory. The greatest con of American history is Capitalism’s disassociation with the chemtrails it leaves behind while manufactured consciousness centers on Q.
Valeting subjected me to the famous as well as the homeless and everything in between, the consumer, the bystander, the worker, and the system. The experience Newton Lawed me to the fringes chasing snowflake cheese. I may have ended up here regardless but every time I think of DR. Robert Johnson, I say, “Thanks Comrade!”
