Bureaucracy is an essential and ever present element of Earthly existence, like air and Mormons. However, it is one of the most misunderstood components of society. If you asked a selection of the general public to define bureaucracy you would inevitably be met with blank stares (partly because the majority of the general public are absolute dullards who cannot define anything, but also partly because bureaucracy is an enigma). Few understand it, but they know it when they see it- again a bit like Mormons.

Bureaucracy is integral to any good government or administrative system. All the best organizations and political structures are blessed with enormous bureaucracies. The great proletariat utopias of Soviet Russia and Communist China were and are endowed with enormous bureaucratic systems. The best universities like Harvard and Oxford creak under the weight of red tape and copious amounts of shredded paper, the by product of a good bureaucracy.

We at Brainsnap are well and truly on our way to building an effective bureaucracy that will one day form the basis for a system that shall administer our one world proletariat government. Who knows dear reader, you might one day have the enormous fortune of gaining an entry level position in the Brainsnap bureaucracy. The smart ones out there will already be thinking about how to word their selection criteria and pad their CVs.

So it is the purpose of this guide to give you, dear reader, illumination as to the true nature and purpose of bureaucracy- to help the motivated amongst you to fully understand the system you aspire to one day enter. Read on, and learn...

Why does Bureaucracy Exist?
This is an interesting question. It is often asked, and just as often answered incorrectly. Many reasons are given justifying the existence of bureaucracy that, after a moment's thought, are easily discernible as wrong. These include:
* Bureaucracy exists to serve the people within a society (complete piffle);
* Bureaucracy exists to support governments to administer their constituencies (total piffle);
* Bureaucracy is a social virus whose ultimate mission is to spread across the universe and will eventually encase all living beings in putrid, disgusting, paper filled slime (getting closer).

These reasons are simply people's attempt to give definition to something that defies absolute, rational description, like religion attempts to define God. They are wrong, because they presuppose that there is a rational purpose for the existence of bureaucracy.

However, there is no higher purpose. Bureaucracy exists for no other reason than that it already existed before hand. Its purpose, if it has one, is simply to perpetuate its existence. There is no justification for why or how it exists. It is an entity that, once given birth to, voraciously consumes all its path getting larger and larger and more difficult to kill with every victim (Actually there are some definite similarities to the virus mentioned previously- perhaps I was hasty to dismiss that definition).

What is the True Nature of Bureaucracy?
It is perhaps best to describe bureaucracy as a living beast that must feed to survive. People are its main energy source. Most are not natural bureaucrats. Generally they were once bright, creative individuals, happily doing their Arts or Environmental Science degrees, smoking drugs and basically sticking it to the fascist system oppressing them.

However, when their college days are over, and they finish backpacking around Europe/ Australia/ Asia or wherever, they suddenly realize money is one of those necessary things required for survival and also to attract members of the opposite gender (or the same gender for those so inclined). These bright, socially aware individuals are the prime food source for a bureaucracy. It attracts them by short term contract work and a promise of a steady income until more creative pursuits start generating wealth.

Then, once they have entered the mouth of the bureaucracy, it gradually digests them. A permanent position arises. They think, 'Hey why not. I can do it for a while. It'll give me a secure income and maybe I can buy some nice things.' They just need to work a few more years so that they can get on top of things. It's not a permanent arrangement.They take the bait, the hook sinks in. With the steady income, they secure a loan for a car or house, then they're caught.

A decade later, they are mindless cogs in the beast. They are bureaucracy's atoms, unthinkingly performing their small role that contributes to the whole, thriving on copious paperwork and refusing to do the smallest service for anyone without receiving approval in writing from at least twenty other cogs.

These people are easily recognized. They are the zombies on the bus and trains each morning (watch Shaun of the Dead if you're unsure of what I mean), their life blood being drained steadily through an invisible tube linked to the bureaucratic beast. Their work now plays the role drugs once did, putting them into a mindless stupor where time drifts by and it doesn't matter whether anything gets achieved, so long as they can stare at a wall or computer screen.

Once they have been fully digested, very few are able to leave. They are a tiny cog amongst millions, and this comforts them. The wonderful thing about a bureaucracy is that it ensures that no one is individually responsible for anything. Nothing can be pinned down to a single person. Everything can be blamed on someone else, who in turn can always pass the blame further along the line. That's what creates the paperwork. Every thing gets written down and copied and sent to so many people who add their little bit to it and send it on again, that it turns into a type of bureaucratic chain letter. When something goes wrong, no one person can be found who is solely responsible. The bureaucrats are happy. If they do get in trouble it will be like being whacked with a feather that recently won the softest feather world championship. Their role is safe, everything is nice. Bureaucracy is like soma in 'Brave New World'. If you took it away, the bureaucrat's life would collapse under the weight of uncertainty and insecurity.

Of course, occasionally, to ensure the survival of the whole the beast will amputate certain portions of itself. Public servants make useful scapegoats when the proverbial 'shit hits the wall.' Their little secure world (ie. The beast) turns on them, slices them from the whole, grinds them into the dust, before urinating on them. Most good public servants who have suffered such a fate kill themselves rather than live another day separated from their former life system.

However, such amputations are rare. The average public servant lives their droll little life, retires, takes their superannuation payout, buys a house relatively close to the beach in a second rate coastal resort and settles down to continuing their droll life in retirement. They still attempt to create paperwork, often writing copious amounts of letters to the editor of the local newspaper and bogging down their local volunteer community groups at public meetings in endless discussions that go nowhere and never achieve any real action. Eventually they die, and their obituary is the last piece of paperwork they ever create.

It's a sweet life.