This man has a job which he really enjoys!
Friends, the Federal election is up and running in Australia. It will be held on August 21st.
The leaders of the two main parties have come out with their vacuous slogans and promises rain down on us like confetti at a lavish wedding. One of the parties is concentrating on pushing how important it is to work hard to get a good education (which they’ll provide) so you can end up with a good, well-paid job (which they’ll guarantee) and a big house and a ritzy car.
Now this is a commonly held view in many Western countries. It is the basic foundation stone of capitalism which relies on having skilled workers who earn lots of money so they can buy the goods and services which capitalism produces. And if you don’t have the money, the considerate capitalists will provide you with unlimited credit. This means that those who control the capitalist system can skim off lots of money from the hardworking producers and consumers so that they can live in lavish harbour-side mansions and own private jets.
Now, in this time of financial crisis, a child starts off a four or five attending school. Then it moves to secondary and perhaps tertiary education, then, eventually gets a job and is encouraged to try to get to the top.
At the other end of the cycle, because of the financial crisis, the working life is now being extended with talk of people working until they are 70 and over. This means that people spend most of their lives working (assuming there are jobs available). 4 to 70 is 66 years! It doesn’t leave a lot of time for other activities, does it?
And, given that health issues often begin around 60, by the time you reach 70, you are most likely to be stuffed anyway and unable to take on other pursuits.
Now, what other options are available other than getting a traditional job? Well, let’s think. What about if someone wanted to pursue some artistic avenue, look inside themselves to see what is there rather than getting a job to make some boss rich. Where would a person go? Nowhere, of course.
Our education system, in the main, is not set up to cater for artistic people or any other kind. Our education system, in the main, educates people (assuming you call rote-learning education), so they can move through the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education and come out the other end ready to get a job and work until they drop.
If you were born a potential Shakespeare or Rembrandt or T.S. Eliot or Michelangelo or Da Vinci, etc, too bad. Our society hasn’t got time for such time-wasters. Become a manager or politician or lawyer, purchase a BMW, and, voila, your life is perfect! Yeah.
Likewise we don’t want people going bush and living off the land or growing their own food. We don’t want people living in communes and developing spiritual dimensions or becoming sun worshipers. You can’t tax such people and the capitalists can’t skim money off them because they haven’t got any. And besides, such people are generally peaceful and don’t join the military which will never do.
Friends, could I be controversial for a change and suggest that the ‘getting a job’ mindset is the biggest crock of crap that humans have ever been sold. It is even a bigger crock than religion. Last night, I saw on television a sweat shop in India which churns out leather jackets for the Western market. The boss, who pays his workers who slave in appalling and unhygienic conditions next to nothing, sells the jackets for a $100 and they sell to people higher up the food chain in other countries for $600. Hey, that’s capitalism for you! It ensures that a few screw the many.
Friends, getting a job has ensured the enslavement of most of the human race and has also guaranteed that most people spend their lives in boredom and drudgery.
But, worse, they never discover their real potential!
What a terrible waste!
Wow, sounds so much like the US. Lots of buzz words and catch phrases leading up to ‘election-type-things’. Then they all go back into the woodwork like cock roaches.
“…foundation stone of capitalism which relies on having skilled workers who earn lots of money so they can buy the goods and services which capitalism produces….”
Unfortunately, we don’t have an industrial base any more, so the ‘skilled workers’ aspect has been removed from the equation. Now it’s brain-dead BSA’s flooding the market. Many of them, stuffed shirts who can’t use a screwdriver and thrive on energy drinks.
“..The future belongs to those of us still winning to get our hands dirty….”
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This is a real problem you present. I deal with this all the time! My son is only eight and he already did the math! I have to regularly convince him how worthwhile it will be to get all of his schooling. One of the few things that motivates him is when we went to the beach and saw the beautiful houses overlooking the sea and we told him that people who finish college and who can take directions well are the people who can afford to buy one of those houses. Also, we live near a very famous college and he is in love with the college. Trust me – besides that – there is not much else to motivate him. This is a kid that when he was a baby I used to comment that he was such an academic baby. He was online at 20 months and he is an award winning reader and scientist! So it seems contradictory that such a smart boy would hate school. He is bored there.
My father longed to be a pianist. His cousin went on to Juilliard, but my grandma harangued my father and he reluctantly got his Business Degree and spent a miserable life!!!
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“Friends, could I be controversial for a change and suggest that the ‘getting a job’ mindset is the biggest crock of crap that humans have ever been sold. It is even a bigger crock than religion.”
David, this is deep…
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Australia sounds much more civilized than America.
” The pizza cook is an accountant with three kids who can’t find anything above minimum wage. “When I’ve gotten an interview, I’m going up against people with ten years’ experience and MBAs — for jobs that pay $10 an hour,” he told me. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/one-million-americans-lose-their-home
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Amerikagulag Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 7:09 am
Interesting reading on the deliberate dumbing down of society.
http://www.pakalertpress.com/tag/vigilant-citizen/
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Grace, I believe we must all get back to the basics. The ability to work with our hands – to create and fix. Also the knowledge of nature and it’s creations and resources.
In the 1800′s by the time a boy was 5, he knew the names of all the trees and what the wood was used for. Today, well….few if any could distinguish a deciduous from a conifer. But I digress. I do absolutely believe this man made global collapse of economies is deliberate in order to create a species of slaves for the elite. The deliberate dumbing-down of education and violent-infected entertainment is another tool for changing the mind of man and not for the better.
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well guys, you can blame all this on ‘progress’ and the industrial/technological revolution…………
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Friends, my own son is finishing his university entrance exams in a few months so, as a parent, I am facing some of the things you have mentioned in your comments. Earning $10 an hour after five or six years at a university is crazy.
Grace, your story of your father wanting to be a pianist and ending up with a miserable life in commerce is instructive.
Amerika, as usual you make interesting points. The song ‘Little Boxes Without Topses’ comes to mind. I feel that capitalism has reached its use-by date. People just can’t keep endlessly consuming especially when the jobs and income just aren’t there anymore.
Coco, we have been enslaved by our technology!
Cheers.
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Grace Reply:
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:20 am
David, a long journey. As a parent, I am amazed and really happy for your son and you. At this point, the piece of paper is a passport. Because, I have seen, that if there is no paper degree, it will at some point – or points – be used against a person. It is more of an insurance policy in an uncertain world. Even if a person does go into business for themselves – they better know how to do all the paperwork. Also, bank loans look at college degrees. It goes on and on. As a parent, I say , better to have it. Congratulations!
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Grace, my son is also brilliant. He got into the highly rated computer engineering program at the University of Illinois, with several scholarships to help pay the bills.
He flunked out his first semester. I was upset, but he told me that he didn’t want to spend his life working in a cubicle, and I could see his point!
Besides, I only work part time, enough to pay the mortgage and buy food, etc. No extravagances or frivolities. I value my time more than money.
He now has a job (sitting in a cubicle), making slightly more than my daughter, who finished in the top ten of her class, went to college and graduated with a debt of thousands, and now works in a cubicle.
Hmmm.
Could it be that college, and its attendant debt bondage, is just a scam upon the working class, holding up the hope of something better to the teeming masses? And encouraging them to step over their fellow workers in order to try to eke out a slightly better house than the rest?
I agree with David that “jobs” are a distraction to our society.
How about we decide what we need, as a society, and divide up the work necessary to provide a decent, sustainable standard of living for all, without raking off profits for a few?
Would we as a society decide that we need prisons, an empire maintained by hundreds of bases and thousands of weapons of mass destruction, Homeland Security, big box stores, agribusiness agriculture with GMO seeds, transportation fueled by oil burning private vehicles, McMansions cooled and heated by coal obtained by blowing up mountains, and burying streams?
Because that’s what we have now. The decisions are made by those at the top and presented to us as “jobs”, which we eagerly scramble for and hold at all cost.
This is insane.
We need to nurture and educate our children, we need healthful food and clean water, we need strong communities and good friendships, with laughter and parties, we need houses built to conserve energy, so that sustainable ways can provide enough for other purposes, we need public transportation and local food production, and art and music.
None of that is profitable, so we don’t get it.
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David G Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Wonderful comment, Wagelaborer. Working long hours in a plastic cubicle where you can’t see the real world or smell fresh air or hear the birds says it all. What a colossal achievement for the intelligent human race! What a way to spend your life.
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Grace Reply:
July 21st, 2010 at 5:11 am
Wagelaborer, indeed! Wow, my dad graduated from University of Illinois, Chicago. The only reason I think he stuck with it is because my grandma went and got an apartment right next door to him! To make sure he did everything!
You are a wise parent to honor your clearly brilliant son.
One of my dad’s first jobs after college was in a cube at Union 76′s main headquarters. He hated that job! He bought a business and created a modicum of success. Mainly his unhappiness at that point was connected to his parents. He waited for them to die so that he would finally be able to live. His parents both attended his funeral.
That was my lesson: you never sit around waiting for someone to die until you can really live.
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we are currently in the throes of the sixth mass extinciton on planet earth. and if bp has their way, they will escalate the time frame. in all honesty, we have to ask ourselves, is there really a ‘purpose’ to life? do ants or bees or spiders ever ask this question? even dogs or cats or horses? why are homo sapiens so wrapped up with this ‘purpose’? if it weren’t for the ‘purpose’, i suppose no-one would look for a job…………………
after all, we will all go the same way as the creatures mentioned above…………
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David G Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Humans, with their itzy-bitzy intelligence and large egoes, have to find ways to give themselves purpose, Coco. And Capitalists are happy to oblige them by offering varieties of meaningless work with low wages.
The high-flyers get higher wages but they are thrown on the scrapheap when they reach 45.
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John Robertson (Robbo) Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
BP is getting plenty of stick at the moment(and deservedly so) but Big Oil has been destroying
the planet for many years before the Gulf of Mexico blow out. Now it is affecting the US we hear plenty about it.
An interesting article here
http://warincontext.org/2010/07/18/ellen-cantarow-blowback-crude/
Robbo
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I often think it would have been better if maybe we had adopted the life style of the Native Americans our forefathers found on this rock when they first got here. Instead of exploiting and killing them we could have learned some valuable lessons; respect mother nature and take what you need and leave the rest comes to mind. Ah but the (capitalist) lie has only evolved into a self destructive system that now has 98% of us trapped in it’s mechanism. With the true (terrorists) confined to the walls of Washington DC pointing to perceaved threats thousand of miles away just for the acclaimation of corporate profits. Off our sons and daughters go to kill and be killed in a meatgrinder to (preserve the American way) so the few may profit from the sacafice of the many. Even without war they must compete on a daily basis to secure their jobs to survive in society, a kind of war on it’s own. Alas, amongst all this one barely has time to consider ones purpose because junior needs shoes, my wife would like a new dress, the car needs gas, and there’s a sale on at the local market, oh, and can we afford the morgage payment this month. Till death do we part! Whats a free thinker to do? Love you guys! Cheers!
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coco Reply:
July 20th, 2010 at 10:36 am
’98 percent of us trapped in its mechanism’………..
reminds me of some lyrics in an elvis presley song………….
we’re caught in a trap, i can’t walk out………….
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Grace Reply:
July 22nd, 2010 at 3:40 am
“I often think it would have been better if maybe we had adopted the life style of the Native Americans our forefathers found on this rock when they first got here. Instead of exploiting and killing them we could have learned some valuable lessons; respect mother nature and take what you need and leave the rest..”
76 water, I have thought about this ever since I saw the movie, Dances With Wolves. Me, then young, just coming to awareness of the world as it is. I Now, still believe that if.. the few, the psycho killers, hadn’t ruled, that – people – an important distinction, and native civilization, could have totally lived side by side. We could have studied at each others colleges. Some Native societies had high levels of evolution.
Peace on Earth, y’all.
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Hello Everyone -
There ARE alternatives, even in the U.S. Type in “Intentional Communities” on Google and you will get a worldwide list of co-operative living places. I visited one of them, Cobb Hill, in Vermont and was impressed. They have a small number of energy efficient houses and two apartments for rent in the Main House. They grow much of their own food and live together as a real community in that beautiful and rural state. It seems to me that they are much better prepared for what James Howard Kunstler refers to as “The Long Emergency” that we are facing here and around the world.
The whole concept of “work” in the modern era is, in many ways, a perversion. People end up in cubicles and surf the Net further reinforcing the the disconnectedness of it all. Work is not something that you do with your hands but a clever amalgam of “skill sets” that you get a diploma for and end up owing huge amounts of tuition so that you are basically forced to pay it off by ending up in a cubicle where you hope things will get better. I realize that there are lucky people out there who genuinely love their work but they are the increasingly fortunate few. The nature of global capitalism is to destroy unions and make people more and more into serfs. I saw that program that you referred to, David, and it was disgraceful what that weasel manager was able to get away with. I also read that there are places in SE China where workers put in 14-16 hour days and get no breaks for weeks! The Chinese govt. apparently is fine with this as long as China’s GDP keeps increasing by 9-10% a year. Human beings are just fodder to these overlords. The abject sickness of corporate capitalism is appalling. Check out an excellent documentary called “The Corporation”. It convincingly describes modern capitalism as a pathological disease by comparing it’s symptoms with those listed in the DSM, a classic reference work on mental illness.
As for me, I have worked largely as a librarian for most of my “career” years but I have never taken the idea of a career too seriously and I have never defined myself by my work. I have had much time off to ponder things and I have had only one cubicle job which, ironically, was with the EPA. Now I have lots of free time because at 61, despite all of my experience, I am basically unemployable by this ageist system. That is one of the real tragedies of all of this career stuff. You play their game, you get the degree(s) that are deemed necessary to “success” and you give them your best years and show up every day from 9 to 5. Then they discard you and you are left with little resources in an economy that has no empathy. I just read yesterday that nearly HALF of older Americans have $2,000 or less of their own money to retire on!
Good luck to all of you.
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One of the most desirable employers around is Google. They hire the young smart ones right out of school. However, a tiny percentage of employees are over the age of 45.
That is very threatening to young people who might like to take some time off to develop, themselves.
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In my reflecting on this situation/solution I have to ask a couple of questions. To me it comes down to what gets labled as human nature. Now consider how children are brought up. 1st question: Is greed a natural responce, or learned responce? 2nd question: Speaking on any level, is prejudice a natural, or learned responce? Depending on the true answer to these and possibly other questions a utpian society could be developed, or not, we might be confined to a structure that fits within the limitations of (human nature). Thanks for the thought provoking discussion.
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Bruce Reply:
July 21st, 2010 at 10:09 am
76-water
I’m reasonably sure that as far as “human nature” can be described the qualities of greed and prejudice are mostly learned. I say mostly because in the matter of prejudice we are constantly struggling against a psychological construct in our deeper brain that could be called “The Other”. This is a reaction to other people(s) that we are not familiar with by feeling they they might be a threat. This was originally a survival mechanism in a much older world where survival was a much more immediate concern day to day. However, this old brain psychology can be unlearned by experience. There are many examples of societies which embrace outsiders and seek to help those in need. I just saw a show about 16th century conquistadors who beached on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and they were injured, exhausted and had no food. They were surprised when their “Other” prejudices were put to rest by local natives who not only assisted them but actually wept in response to their misfortune. Hardly the “savages” that early imperialists were told to expect and defend themselves against. Of course, Natives DID resist Europeans when they came to realize that their lives and cultures were at stake. But there was nothing “savage” about it. It was a matter of survival. The United States negotiated and signed more than 400 treaties with various Native people and broke every one of them.
As to greed I have seen examples of selfishness in children but the characteristic of greed is something which comes later with exposure to parents, friends and other individuals who have subscribed to our hopelessly materialistic and money-oriented society. Perhaps someone here who knows a lot more about cultural anthropology could make some insightful comments. From my own experience in Alaska I have heard that Native children who are close to their tribal history and traditions do not exhibit these characteristics. In fact, the potlatch ceremony in SE Alaska is a great example in which Native people exhibit remarkable generosity.
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John, the coal industry has also been destroying the environment for decades.
76-water, humans with guns don’t stop to analyze. They just destroy and kill in a mad rush to fashion the world into something familiar to them, no matter how ugly it is. What’s a free thinker to do? Chart his or her own course!
Bruce, it is a tragedy that so many people have worked so hard and ended up destitute. But then the capitalist system is designed that way. It rewards the cunning and ruthless and bleeds the little people. If the little people rose up and made things a lot fairer, you couldn’t blame them, could you?
Grace, Goggle exploits cleverly. Give the hotshoters great money then burn them out by 40.
76-water, greed is a learned response. In a few societies, your prestige was achieved by how much you gave away, not how much you accumulated.
Prejudice is also learned. Look at the photograph of two babies reaching out to each other and smiling on a recent post. Potentially, we humans could create a Utopian society, but we would have to get rid of religious, capitalist, nationalistic, elitist, me-first indoctrination first!
Take care all!
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An important thing to remember in the current set up about jobs is not to see it as employers ‘giving’ people a job. They ‘need’ us. We are giving them what they need and they can’t do it with out us. If more people remembered this and used it collectively against inhuman workplaces and inhuman policies it would be a better world and not just for workers. Voting for good cop or bad cop every three years is very limited democracy. Until there is full democracy in every workplace it will suck like slavery does.
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GOING TO WORK HAVING THE JOB DONE ON US . YES THESE FAIRY TALES ,STICK AND CARROTS ARE WHAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS BUILT ON .THIS IS JUST MEDIEVAL TIMES WITH NEON ,COMPUTERS AND RUBBER WHEELS
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Magda, like sheep, we have allowed ourselves to become domesticated and manipulated to benefit the few. It’s time we reasserted ourselves, like the animals did in Animal Farm.
Jeff b. thanks for your perceptive comment. Medieval times indeed. Instead of royalty we have Robber Barons and Politicians!
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