The industrial complex needs incompetent people. It takes unproductive people but creates a context and environment for them to produce and then pays them at the marginal rate which their next best alternative pays them so as to generate margins for the owner of the system. It is the ability to utilise and make productive these people that allows for profit.
But then you’d be stuck; there’s no need for greater competence than your place in the machinery. There’s no need for a cog to be different at different points of time. He or she just have to keep going. Ideally his or her emotions does not matter to the system nor affect its productivity.
So how do you get out? Do you need to become more important or less important? That all does not matter. The only point that matters is; do you want to get out?