Melancholy and somewhat aggressive thoughts on work

This is the working hour,

We are paid by those who learn by our mistakes

- Tears for Fears, “The Working Hour”

We want work.  We want jobs.  We want the things that an income helps provide.  But how to structure work?  Do we base it solely on what people are capable of doing, how much water can be squeezed from a stone? 

We don’t have a say in how much we work.  In the past workers’ movements got the work week reduced to 40 hours – perhaps we would be better off if those controls were removed.  Maybe then people would be healthier, less fat.  Maybe then people would better prioritize their off-hours and peel their eyes at least momentarily from the torrent of shit presented on whatever kind of screen.  Maybe if 60 or 100 hours a week were the norm people could grow some compassion and fellow-feeling for their co-slaves being worked harsh hours around the world.

But keep in mind the US worker already works more than any other worker amongst developed nations – more than the stereotypically harried Japanese worker.  We have no mandated vacation time.  39% of Americans work 50 hours a week or more.  This in a country where so many simply want a job. 

This will never go away.  Work and toil are part of the human condition in whatever age, whatever epoch.  Work is a part of human life from the blind work of the body itself out to the visible working world.  Structured differently at different times.  Serfs didn’t organize, at least not when the kings sat solidly on their thrones.  We are subjects today, subjected to working regimes dictated from above.  The rhetoric around schools is likewise captive: we strive for better education and for call for students to “go on” to higher education in order to get better jobs.  Is this a cargo cult?  Can I walk around town wearing a suit, advanced degree tucked securely in my briefcase and expect an employer to run up to me, offering a sick job?

The regulations and standards surrounding work will change and disappear in the future.  In 10 years, 20, 50, 100 years work here in the United States will look like work now in China.  Or the Amazon.  People will be forced to work untold hours.  Or they may live under some feudal regime that dictates their work schedule.  Who knows what the people of the future will think of our working lives today.

Existential musing no. ?

In the wake of finishing True Detective, Season 1 (finished a month ago or so) plus reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider:

I am an American – a United States citizen – here, now, on Planet Earth.  I am one of those who have not only rad some Existential thought but have deeply identified with this thought.  I feel for Meursault, another denizen of this realm into which we are thrown.  Made flesh.  Incorporated in these meat suits.

All structures of life seemingly arbitrary, the right way to live subject to idiosyncratic manifestation in different times and places.  Ways of living – morals – crystallize.

But it is all still the Wild West.  We are subject to frontier justice.  We must make our stated religious/secular moral systems conform to the world as it is – the mental gymnastics people are so disappointingly well-suited to.  The Wild West populated with children.

I am an existentialist in this Wild West.

Can’t other see the absurdity of things?  How they are hypocrites who cannot acknowledge their tiny-ness, the inconsequential-ness compared to, well, any picture whether that picture is big or small.  Fools.  I live among fools.

But that is the world.  I’ve made my peace with this world, though I still ask questions.  On a lot of cars I ask what each is capable of, what its characteristics are.  Human society is one type of car.  Its stats are on print-out taped to the driver’s side window.  I will not ask that the car go faster than its known and stated max.  I won’t cry that the car has already been painted.  I won’t wish that the sedan drive over mountains or that the sports coupe carry more than two people.

The cars on the lot are what they are.

And the perpetually new super car that we always mistake America for is really just a base-model Ford Taurus.  Don’t ask for more.

But there are other cars on the lot.  And some of those come only in inchoate form, their outlines a sparkly glow, a true mystery in car form.

My existential world is not a purely materialistic one.

We all struggle for control, understanding, maybe enlightenment.  Our Christian God is cloaked in mystery, an entity with an ethnic history that Himself has found (another?) apotheosis, become capital “G” God, the one and only, assumed the platonic form of God that before had room for other entities.  This God the big boss who doesn’t even live in town your office is in.  he surly isn’t manifest in our lives, or if he is, those he talks to are not exemplars of humanity.  The movie hasn’t changed but people keep paying the price of admission. 

But in the bible people talked to God.  They supplicated themselves before him and he made them special.  In America today we have jettisoned the Christian God of mediaeval Europe.  We have passed through.  We are in Heaven.  We are different and special and unique in history.  We are the apex of history.  A story told a thousand times.  A story recited the loudest while walls are being breached.  Told the loudest while cities burn and the citizens left alive flee to the wilderness.  The exceptional ones of history each and every one.

We’ve diversified religion today, polytheism that doesn’t call itself polytheism.  There is the Christian God, yeah.  He’s still around doing his thing.  But alongside Him are new Gods” Progress.  Science.  Technology.  Blinding us from reality, all of them.

Voting not voting 2016!

I find myself inexorably drawn to politics – while at the same time saying that politics is futile.  Just mainstream politics?  No, all of it: even the radical fringe that provides a more incisive view is still part of the big game, the big machine.  So with election season in full swing I’d like to consider avenues for real change.  What are some other ways to “vote”, i.e. alternative lifestyle choices, good philanthropic institutes to support, etc.

1. Nothing.  This ultimate option immediately comes to mind.  No, there are no avenues for real change.  And I’m not just saying this to set up a straw man to tear down.  Not doing anything is the same as doing something.  Actually, if participating in a calcified/corrupt/hypnotizing official political system is pointless, then we are all doing nothing anyway.  Maybe it feels good to vote: sure, that is easy to see.  You get the pat on the back and the “I voted” sticker.  You sacrificed for a change and took the extra time to rub shoulders your fellow proles in (meaningless) social pageantry.  Whatever, since: voting = not voting.

Proper placement of the "I voted" sticker - photo from T.r. Lang's post in Jill Stein's Dank Meme Stash

2.  Get radical.  Like environmental shit that Deep Green Resistance does.  (This might be the only/right answer).  As Derrek Jensen states, it is always good to have some activist project going.  And not just a protest revolving around the election – get out make your community better.

3.  Just wait.  The historical tides of demographics, the ratio between perceived-

disenfranchisement/actual-disenfranchisement, etc. will eventually have their say.  Change occurs because people try hard to create change.  But change takes time to build up.  Do people trying to cause change actually cause change?  Sure, they help.  But the change they try to affect could not happen without the dull weight of time.  Example gratia: is Hillary a war-criminal?  Yes.  Do popular conceptions allow the average American to see her as such?  No.  Not yet, despite the efforts of people getting radical.  If you are against war then of course you would not vote for Hill (vote for Jill!).

4.  Have fun!  Host an alternative election in your living room with your collection of weird dolls – or – wheelchair yourself to voting place then rise out of your chair and walk out proclaiming that “Voting works!  We do live in a democracy!” – or – stay at home chain-smoking while reading The Stranger.  Whatever you do this election cycle, be creative!

Of elections and alternate realities

The party's over: Bernie being led out of the DNC

So confession time about election time: a sense of unreality has taken over me during this presidential election cycle.  A month or so ago – before either party had officially declared their candidate – is when I first really felt this uncanny feeling.  And it wasn’t with Trump.  With the Republicans I could care less: remember the cast of characters Trump was running against?  No, it was when Hillary finally got the delegate counts that the little voice said, “This is really happening”.

Perhaps age makes this feeling possible and not the candidates themselves.  I’m older, seen more shit.  Maybe people felt this weirded-out when, say, Reagan became president in ‘81.  Part of it too is my interest in the Sanders’ campaign.  He was an unreal alternative with a very real network of support.  When Hillary got her unsurpassable lead down the stretch it became clear that The Machine had spoken.  Inertia would rule.  That is when the feeling kicked in: when the Democratic Party demonstrated that ultimately they had a lid on things.  The Party had decided on Clinton and the Party was, in end, getting its way.

That is what made the Sanders’ campaign so exciting.  He was an independent who switched to Democrat for the election, i.e. he was an outsider going against the status quo.  Again, maybe others felt this feeling of unreality.  Maybe Ron Paul supporters felt this when their candidate was finally eliminated from contention in ’08 and ’12.  Just like Paul was running in a Party that had an ideological foot in libertarianism, Sanders was operating within the recently sympathetic to progressivism.  Different dreams, same result.

It turns out that, to me, Sanders was last chance for doing something.  And that chance disappeared and the sense of unreality unfolded.

Now we are operating in the wholly symbolic.  Choice has been reduced to political acts that align with a political point of view – purchasing certain products, shopping at certain stores, listening to particular types of music.  All surrogates for real choice.

Unreal reality has been restored.  The illusion that voting is your voice may continue.