posted on Feb, 22 2011 @ 07:50 PM
I know there are several topics on this as well as the latest ATS Street View, however, I think another is necessary to point out the flaws that
apparently people aren't understanding. From my readings on the subject and actually in depth conversation with people about work, I think it is safe
to say that there are very view people that believe that ALL WORK, no matter what, is un-natural. So let's just swipe that off the table right
now.
Clearly, you need to work to survive. When mankind began, man worked to gather food, create shelter, and take care of himself. Soon enough, man
learned that he could gather excess of one thing in order to trade for another, thus his work load was condensed to a small range. Finally, when time
went on, man decided that instead of trading excess physically, we could attribute currency to it and instead trade currency in its place.
All in all, it is the same system. But the problem is that as currency took over, the proportions of work to the pay off began to skew wildly.
However, at the same time, availability and transport of excess goods became so easy that the work being done to do so, was hardly worth it.
The argument of live to work vs. work to live came up, and sadly, no matter what the people say - EVERYONE is working to live. That is the basis of it
all; always has been, always will be. The only exception to this formula are those who are given handouts with nothing in return.
So many people talk about living to work, ie. finding a job that they enjoy doing, but what about those who can't find something they enjoy doing?
What about those who only wish to work in the old methods to survive on their own?
Society doesn't allow for those. For instance, I have a job that I am content at doing, however it is not something I necessarily enjoy doing every
day. At one point in my life, I wanted to design video games. I did it in my spare time, I had fun doing it, but when push came to shove and college
prices came to realization, that dream ended.
Almost everybody I know has their job because they have to pay the bills. They had opportunities to do what they enjoyed out of life, but the sad
reality is that if everyone got to design video games, become a famous musician, or was a firefighter - who the hell would do everything else?
Sure, there are people out there that enjoy being businessmen. There are people out there that enjoy being doctors. There are people out there that
maybe, just maybe, enjoy collecting garbage. But what do we say to all those people, those millions of people who are forced to do something they
hate, day in and day out, because there wasn't enough room for them? Because, society deemed it fit to make them work doing whatever they could to
make money because there was nothing else left elsewhere.
And the scale of the work to the payoff is absurd for one reason and on reason only, an issue that I have expressed many times in my writing - SKEWED
PRIORITIES.
If the scale of pay to the importance of the work done actually made any sense whatsoever, people would be happy with work. However, in this world,
the farmer, the teacher, the grocer, and the healers, are all undercut by the athletes, the actors, the musicians, and the CEOs.
The reason work is so "un-natural" in most peoples eyes is the fact that the people in this world making the MOST income to survive on are the ones
doing BY FAR the LEAST work. An athlete needs only play one game, an actor needs only make one movie, a musician needs only to make on record, and a
CEO needs only play one game of golf to make the equivalent of 90% of an average person's LIFETIME INCOME.
This is the only statistic that I need to look at. This is the only thing that matters. This is the only thing that makes me care absolutely NOTHING
about money. Instead of people bringing this simple fact to light or trying to do anything about it, instead they work their 60-80 hour a week jobs,
slave in hot factories with no air conditioning, watch their business go overseas, and watch the upper tier continue to dominate the world's finances
by making more money in a single hour than they will ever make in their lives.
Un-natural to work? Certainly not. But I think at some point you have to lose faith in the process when it has become so messed up and you don't even
know why.
The simple fact is this. With the exception of insane priorities of modern people, this world has the resources and we have the technology to provide
every single living human being on this planet their basic resources, indefinitely, for free, without the need of a 40-90 hour work week. Do we do it?
No. Do we attempt it? No. Do we even ADDRESS the issue? No.
So long as people continue to be ignorant to the reality that is life, and the messed up norms that, for some strange reason, society has created for
themselves, then people will continue to be slaves.
I, on the other hand, will continue to work. No, not to fuel the corrupt and silly system. To provide for my survival and my family as best I can
without succumbing to same old song and dance. There may be days that I go without because I won't be able to afford the luxuries of life, but at
least I know that in the end of it all I will be happy having lived for myself than in support of the system which has damned us all.
And with any luck, I will be a part of that which helps to destroy it and start anew.
So is work un-natural? Absolutely not. But the conditions in which we work are as un-natural as only the human condition could made it.