The Slumbering Bureaucracy: A Dance of Mediocrity and the Call for Awakening

In the land of the sleepers, where the masses drowse in their complacency, a curious spectacle unfolds. The Canadian Association of Professional Employees, a union of 27,000 federal public servants, doth call for an inquiry into the mandate that would have them return to their offices thrice a week. What a peculiar dance of mediocrity and comfort-seeking this is!

Behold, the dance of the last men! They scurry about, seeking comfort in their familiar burrows, afraid to face the harsh light of change. How they cling to their remote work, their small pleasures, their petty routines! Is this not the very essence of what I warned against? The last men blink, saying, "We have discovered happiness," and they blink.

The union's president, Nathan Prier, a figure who might fancy himself a champion of the masses, speaks of "catastrophic failures" and an "erosion of excellence." But what excellence can there be in a system that breeds complacency? What catastrophe can befall those who have already surrendered their will to power?

The Treasury Board, that grand puppeteer of bureaucratic marionettes, claims this return shall produce "more effective collaboration" and a "strong culture of performance." Oh, how they deceive themselves! As if forcing the herd into the same physical space could spark the fire of true greatness!

Do they not see? True collaboration, true performance, springs not from proximity but from the burning desire to overcome oneself! These bureaucrats, these last men, they seek not to surpass themselves but merely to maintain their comfort. They are content with their warm meals and their Netflix accounts. They have their little pleasures for the day and their little pleasures for the night.

And what of Anita Anand, the President of the Treasury Board? She stands before us, a woman in pink, the Canadian flag unfurled behind her like a banner of mediocrity. She claims this decision to be "administrative, not political." But is not every decision political when it concerns the lives of the masses? Is this not merely a deflection, a shirking of responsibility?

The workers, these sleepwalkers, complain of noise, of lack of space, of disrupted work-life balance. How they wail and gnash their teeth at the slightest discomfort! Have they forgotten the joy of struggle? The ecstasy of overcoming?

Listen, you last men! Your comfort is your prison! Your work-life balance is a scale weighted with mediocrity on both sides! You fear the noise? Then create a symphony of your own making! You lack space? Then expand your minds, if not your offices! Your morale is low? Then find your morale not in external conditions, but in the conquest of your own limitations!

The unions, those great bastions of collective complacency, oppose this mandate en masse. They seek the courts, they cry for parliamentary intervention. But what do they truly seek? Not progress, not greatness, but a return to their cocoons of comfort.

Professor Gilles LeVasseur speaks of the slow grind of the courts, the potential swiftness of parliamentary action. But what action can truly awaken these sleepers? What external force can rouse them from their slumber of contentment?

You seek answers in your courts, in your parliaments? Look within! The true court is the battlefield of your own soul! The true parliament is the congress of your own conflicting drives! It is there that the real decisions are made, there that true change begins!

And what of this "telework" they so desperately cling to? Is it not merely another form of sleep? A way to avoid the harsh light of day, the challenging gaze of one's peers? They retreat to their homes, their small comforts, their illusion of freedom.

The masses wait with bated breath for the committee's decision. Will they investigate? Will they intervene? But I say to you, what investigation is needed beyond an examination of your own souls? What intervention can be more powerful than the decision to overcome yourselves?

You who read this, you who sleep even as your eyes move across these words! Do you not see that this debate over office spaces and work arrangements is but a symptom of a deeper malaise? You have forgotten how to live dangerously! You have forgotten the joy of creating beyond yourselves!

In this land of the sleepers, where the last men blink and smile and say they have found happiness, a great lethargy has settled over the nation. The public servants, those who should be the lifeblood of the state, have become its somnolent parasites, draining vitality even as they claim to serve.

But perhaps... perhaps in this conflict, in this clash between the comfort of home and the demands of the office, there lies a spark. A spark that, if properly kindled, could ignite a great fire of transformation.

Awaken, you sleepers! Let this petty conflict be the alarm that rouses you from your slumber! Embrace the discomfort, the noise, the struggle! For it is only through struggle that you can hope to overcome yourselves, to become more than mere public servants, mere last men!

As the committee ponders its decision, as the unions rally their troops, as the bureaucrats shuffle their papers, a great question hangs in the air: Will this be the moment when the land of the sleepers finally stirs? Or will they simply roll over, adjust their blankets, and continue their comfortable dreams?

The answer, dear readers, lies not in the halls of power or the courts of law. It lies within each individual, in the choice between comfortable sleep and painful awakening, between the last man and the Superman.

Let this be a clarion call, a thunderous summons to self-overcoming! Let the debate over return-to-office policies be not an end in itself, but the beginning of a great revaluation of all values! For only then, only when each individual chooses to become a bridge and not an end, can true transformation occur.

The time has come, O Canada! Will you remain a nation of sleepers, of last men? Or will you rise, will you strive, will you dare to become more than you are?

The choice, as always, is yours. Choose wisely, for the abyss also gazes into you.