Point omega

The novel “Point Omega” is a story about an 83 years old retired secret war adviser who has retreated to a sad house in a desert. But one day, his quiet isolation is perturbed by a young filmmaker. This novel reminds me about the function of a war adviser.

The common thought should be to say: “This guy must be inhuman to take on this job.” However, after reading this novel, particularly the page 63: “I hate violence. I fear the thought of it, turn away from news reports on television that show dead or wounded people.”, my thought was quite different. We are very far from the common thought. I think a person can perform this task because he thinks that wars are inevitable, and try to keep the casualty count as low as possible is the most we can do.

The first thought is to say that war advisers are unhealthy. Also, they do this job because they like strategy, manipulate soldiers and enjoy feeling they manage their life. Furthermore, war advisers are most of the time described like unsocial men and do not feel sensitive to know that families are broken because of wars. Moreover, people think that most soldiers die because of them. That is a common thought a little bit ill guided I think.

All within this novel, we can see that the war adviser, Richard Elster, is someone quiet. For sure, he is living in a desert, hates violence and avoids anger. (Page 63: “I had a fight, I was a kid, I went into spasms. Violence freezes my blood”). This is absolutely not what we said in the first paragraph, but is it really “science-fiction” that a war adviser could be so sensitive? I don’t think so...
We also said that war advisers are unsocial people. Elster is often described as someone who does not like to be alone and love company. Page 51: “What the hell am I here for?” asked the filmmaker. “Company” Elster’s daughter said. “The man totally physically hates to be alone”.

In addition, Elster’s family is broken. He is divorced from 2 wives and does not see his sons and his daughter really often. We often see in this novel that he feels sad to have offered this childhood to his children. For instance, page 79, he refers to it: “Childhood is lost life reclaimed every second.” He feels responsible of his children’s childhood lost because of him and his trade.

Unfortunately, I learnt during my studies that wars can be used to boost economy. The best example is the war in Iraq. Nonetheless, we need a good economy to live to the detriment of poor countries. I feel ashamed to say it but I am not far from the truth. That is why my advice is that a person can find the motivation to do this job because he thinks that the 1st enemy of the war is the war itself!

Integrity or safety ? Make your choice !

According to the article « Snooping bosses », we are able to say that the surveillance and monitoring in firms is becoming more common. An employee overstepped the bounds of his boss confidence and lied by saying he was sick whereas he was driving to another city. He got caught trough the GPS and was fired.

Employers would prefer avoid having to snoop their staff. The surveillance and monitoring create a real cost because they have to spend energy, money and time to apply the software and process. But if they want to be sure that their employees are always working, it is the best way. The question that we can ask is: “Is it cost-effective for a firm to apply surveillance and monitoring? “

The problem is that there could be 3 scenarios:

·         When the employees are asking by their employers about to be track and are agree

·         When the employees are asking by their employers about to be track and are not agree

·         When the employees don’t know anything and are tracking

These 3 scenarios are created a new question, what is the most important on a work place, the productivity or the privacy of each employee?

But the monitoring touches every employee. They think that their employers will look after his computer all the day... Yes he can, but does he want? Employees think that it is just legitimate to look after staffs who doesn’t reach their aim, they are right. If an employee can arrive late, surf on the net, call his children, smoke every hour, and even reach his aim, where is the problem? It just will be judicious for the boss to increase his aim next time.

The employees can be tracked trough the video cameras, phone surveillance, GPS, private investigators, internet history, E-mail, keystrokes, etc In fact, all your computer activities can be registered. In this way, employers can find if they are using the company time to make their personal business and make loss to the company. They lose time by using social website like Facebook or go against the company policies to make racist or sexist comments or share company secrets with others. But the employees will only be caught if surveillance is in place.

But do the employees need to know that they are being tracked? It is to the boss to decide of that. I think that when the boss will say to his employees they are being tracked, their confidence for him will be lost, the firm environment will worsen and their creativity too, they will feel more nervous during the work by knowing they are being tracked. However, the good point of this choice will be a productivity increasing because all the time spent by employees in the factory will be me to make their job. But in another case, if he chooses to don’t say anything to them, he could just find which employee is doing personal business and caught him and speak with him quietly and give him warning, and only fire him if he continues to make his own business. On the other hand, employees are not stupid and will quickly know that they are being tracked once an employee is caught.

But the closer tracking could bring big problems against the integrity of the employer. For example, if the boss can use what he find in the mail box of his employees and use that against them. For example, if the boss find that one of his employee is homosexual. It could be possible that this employee want to keep that like a secret, at this moment, the boss could make blackmail with him.

Outside of the workplace, the surveillance is specially used in the street to diminish delinquency. Cities mayors have to try to diminish the delinquency to make their city more safety. The better solution for them is to put cameras because it is cheaper than policemen. And cameras can register what it see. Furthermore, in the contemporary society, there is a new kind of delinquency which is the terrorism, and to fight this one, governments have to put all the means possible to fight it, and cameras are the matter.

However, some people will say that it can hurt your privacy because some person behind cameras can look at you wherever you are doing outside... They are right, because this person could see you kissing your girlfriend, being drunk...

To summarise, we have to make a choice: Do we prefer to keep our privacy or our safety? We are all different, and our answers will all be different.

My conclusion is that: All the surveillance and monitoring won’t be necessary if everybody were a little more responsible by what he says and what he does in the workplace and outside.