Friday, June 12, 2009

Paperwork's Antithesis

Is paper shredding the logical antithesis to paperwork? 9 hours of cleaning out files yesterday followed by 2 hours of shredding today led me to pose this question.

Certainly each piece of paper I selected for destruction was, at one time, deemed important. Each sheet represented a job, done years ago. Communication, vital and necessary at one point; now incriminating, outdated, irrelevant or space-taking. Research, personal information, money, time--lots of time. Paper that once determined whether or not humans received healthcare, benefits, promotions. Now hoping only to become celebratory confetti or perhaps live out it's days of carbon-decay compressed into building material with millions of its closest friends. Seems the shredder acts perfectly as an agent of entropy, illustrating the physical principle of [paper]work degenerating into chaos. Momentary importance succombs to a final flurry of incoherence, emerging as senseless chaffe. What if we were to consider what the products of our 'todays' will be fit for in five years?


outrageously,

J. Luke

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