The thing is, I don't want to work. I LIKE WORK. That's not the problem. I just don't like working for someone else and I resent the idea that I HAVE to work. How did we (humans) get ourselves to a place where WORK is what we have to do to survive on this planet? How totally backwards! How inefficient!
The worst part is that not everyone is in the same boat. The elite work on their own terms and are getting millions of dollars to our $50,000 to do it. The uber-rich don't work at all. Take Paris Hilton for example. She gets to do whatever she wants. I'm working all day so Paris Hilton can slut around town?
Why do we need hotels anyway? Sure, it's nice to be able to go out of town and stay at a hotel but think about it: Who's staying at the Hilton? Business travelers! People who WORK for a living. Hilton's making billions off of our indentured servitude.
Some friends of mine just traveled around the entire country by bicycle, over 10,000 miles so far, and didn't stay at a hotel. They camped and stayed in homes - some friends and some strangers. That's living! No car, no gas, no job, and no stinkin' hotels!
You constantly hear about how people "need" jobs and a company "gives" us jobs. Wait, hold the phone...GIVES US JOBS? Gee, thanks. You see? We're brainwashed into thinking we need to work and are grateful for the opportunity. It's sick I tell you.
I'm ready to give up this way of life. Grow my own food, make my own clothes, why not? Sure, there are some things about modern life I like - books, movies, music, travel - and I suppose organized society makes those things possible but with the time spent slaving, I don't have much time to enjoy those things.
What is the origin of work, anyway? I guarantee you it wasn't some democratic idea that people thought sounded peachy. I'm pretty sure it happened like this: Certain families, probably royalty, by force, claimed that land belonged to them. Who ever happened to be living on that land was kicked off or told they could "work" to stay. They were working anyway, tending the land, and they didn't have much choice, right?
As it turns out though, their two hours (say) of tending the land became four, six and then eight as the demands of the lord was not subsistence but accumulation. Excess. GREED. Make more product, sell it to people who aren't fortunate enough to be given the option to work, make money and use it to live better than anyone else. The elite families of the world can still trace their heritage back to those rich, ruling families from thousands of years ago.
The modern equivalent of that original land acquisition goes likes this: A corporation buys (or leases from the government) a small island, razes the fields, builds a factory and erects low-quality apartments. The displaced subsistence population is offered jobs and an opportunity to rent an apartment. Lucky people. Just think how much better their life is! How many times have you bought clothes made in...where the heck is Mauritius?
Supposedly, a working society offers the opportunity to invent technologies like building a space shuttle and exploring the universe. Granted, that's pretty cool, but most of what we spend our time inventing doesn't improve our quality of our life, it improves the quality of our work.
The anthropologist Pierre Clastres in Society Against The State writes that contrary to what we've been told, subsistence societies are actually quite efficient - "the average length of time spent working each day by adults, including all activities, barely exceeds three hours" - offering lots of time for relaxation, playing and higher thinking. He writes:
The Indians devoted relatively little time to what is called work. And even so, they did not die of hunger. The chronicles of the period are unanimous in describing the fine appearance of the adults, the good health of the many children, the abundance and variety of things to eat. Consequently, the subsistence economy in effect among the Indian tribes did not by any means imply an anxious, full-time search for food. It follows that a subsistence economy is compatible with a substantial limitation of the time given to productive activities.
I should say that there are incredible philanthropists in this world who give back as much as they've been given but doesn't it seem an awfully roundabout way to get back to (what is for most people) subsistence? At the risk of sounding like a hippie or a Marxist, there has to be a better (more magical, more interesting, more evolved) way to live.
I guess I'm not ready to completely drop out of society. I like not getting eaten by wild animals, being ravaged by disease or worrying about being killing by a warring faction in the middle of night, but I still don't like getting up for work.
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