99.9% of all institutions in my life are at best feudal orders, run by aristocrats so far removed from my life that they wouldn’t even know how to survive without their armies of servants, nannies, and assistants. Democracy needs to extend beyond the state. Democracy must be present in every part of our society, or it will, as it has now, inevitably become nothing more than another oligarchy for and by the rich.
Recommended readings:
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah.
Anarchism and other Essays by Emma Goldman.
Recommendations from the comments:
/u/BallShapedMan - The Dictator’s Handbook by by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
I have useless managers at work that like to try and bend the rules, and it gets hella on their nerves when I just outright ignore or argue with them because I know they're wrong and that they can't justify firing me. I recommend anyone else in that position humble those "above" them when possible.
It's wild, actually. I got away with saying "this is why no one likes you" to one because they were the instigator after I'd annoyed them enough. Like they went to the next level up in management over it and got told they were the one in trouble lmfao