Seven Seeing Stones

two turtle doves, and a brand new ethical quandary.

Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash

The sidewalks in front of Macy’s on 34th street in Manhattan glitter in the sunlight. Walking them can be a bit like traversing the star-field during Star Wars opening credits—a rolling carpet of twinkling lights. I never tire of New York City. The love is real.

I was living in a bubble of isolation from the dark enlightenment’s technocracy professionally. Not-for-profit public health concerns largely use open source software, which has been largely supported by communities adherent to liberal democratic values and mores. Our data is very niche, mostly concerned with keeping track of what happened to who when and where, and who did it. I didn’t consider it an early target for authoritarians especially, and I hoped my corner of tech could duck the bullets until this all burns itself out.

Of course, I’m dropping all of this on you out of the blue because I was wrong. I didn’t expect a Trojan horse. The corporate arm of the openly anti-democratic NRx movement just inked a contract with my employer.

Since I have sought her counsel, my therapist has heard me threaten to resign from my job at least three times, it might be four. Each of these previous times she has heard me out and crafted a response designed to talk me down from the ledge. After her Socratic inquiry I resolve to ponder my situation later with a cooler head and after more discussion. By the last time this happened, years ago, it almost felt practiced, like a professional burnout/breakdown tango we can do well.

When the aforementioned contract was signed, I once again assumed the I’m quitting my f*cking job figurative dance position, but we waltzed instead. After I explained what this company does, who owns it, and the aggressively collaborative relationship they have with the Trump administration, she looked me directly in the eye and said “I can’t say that resigning is the wrong thing to do.”

Mic drop. This is the equivalent of a marriage counselor saying dump his useless ass. It kind of shocked us both that she said it. I’m the dog that caught the car. I don’t know what to do now.

I ran a kind of rash and radical idea by my usually circumspect and deliberate therapist, someone whose conservative and measured counsel has been reliable for many years, and her response was “I’ll hold your beer.”

F*ck, now what?

Short answer is I don’t know yet. I’m not in a decision-making role here, and the plans for the contract with evil concern a division of the company that is adjacent to mine, not my work directly. This doesn’t mitigate my concerns, but it buys me some time to think.

My concern is karma, and I mean that a bit differently than you might imagine. Karma is simply a word for action, and the religious notion I’m pondering concerns how to act in concert with my awareness of reality. It is something akin to the Biblical notion of righteousness.

Do I continue to do the work I value for an organization that is contracted with an entity deliberately crafting the technical architecture for authoritarian rule of my country? My work is downstream, what I do won’t be operative in what they’re doing. Does that matter?

I don’t know. How do I want to look back on what I did during this period? The last time I did something rash (no pun intended) professionally was for covid in 2021. I didn’t make a big thing of it because I encountered no resistance, but when the vaccines became available on January 7, 2021 I basically told my employer I was going to be elbow-deep in getting these into people’s arms even if I had to quit to do it.

To their credit, they figuratively rolled out a red carpet in response to my alturistic demand (I wasn’t working for anyone as a clinical nurse at the time). I manned room one of the vaccination clinic for the next six months, perhaps one of the most satisfying things I have ever done.

I administered about 3000 vaccines, drawing each up by hand, and about 800 of them were the second vaccine for someone I gave the first. I was the last link in a chain that saved countless lives, far more than the 2200 people whom I vaccinated, during a world pandemic that killed millions. I like looking back on what I did there. That was rash, I had no idea what that was going to mean for me at the time.

Now, four years later, here we are.

What do I owe them? Anything? Should I really be so damn sure I know what they are doing is something I can’t support?

Yep. In this case, right is right and wrong is wrong. I am more comfortable that I am seeing things as they are with each passing day. As my presumably hot head cools down, I just become more certain; this is not going to lead anywhere good.

I just didn’t expect this is how I would end my career.

That’s the most unsettling thing. I have had a vision of my retirement since I began working. As my career went along, it changed a bit, but I had an idea that certain things would be known and others would be in place by the time I toss the keys to the next generation.

None of those things are known, nothing is in place.

But, it may be time anyway. I can’t predict the future, this may work out in ways I can’t possibly foresee. I can’t act as if I know what is going to happen in the US. None of us can.

I see why “may you live in interesting times” is regarded as a curse.