Addicted to the pleasurable rock of life

Work has always been, and still is, the rock to which my life is anchored, as is that of many others.

Bruce Springsteen

That, however, is a habit I don’t want to break as it pointedly enriches who and what I am. It makes me, in my view, a better person.

Naturally it is easy to be philosophically flippant about the pleasure work brings when not locked into seemingly endless and equally pointless and heartless sweat inducing toil, reminding me of the words from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory”:

“End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody's gonna’ get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life”.

Work, for me, however is not about that sort of drudgery (of course some jobs  have had that flavour), rather it has largely been an ongoing joy through which the human interaction brightens my being, makes me smile and brings satisfaction to every day.

Interestingly though, our addiction to contemporary understandings of work, sees us devote a hefty, and almost irrational portion of our lives to maintaining a structure that ultimately enriches only a few, while the many toiling endlessly, get little.

The “responsible men” who, by what they make appear default, but which is really intent, and call the shots in society repeatedly bleat about the need of the “many” to work harder and longer, for less, to ensure, they argue, the integrity of an economic system that ultimately serves only them.

The disparity between rewards to the worker and ever bulging bank balances of the few is what ignited the unrest that become known as “the occupy movement”.

The “occupiers” have my support and sympathy as I can sense the injustices they live with and the subsequent unfairness that assaults them every day as a system deemed to be as it should be favours only a few.

However, as understandable as their cause is, it seems somewhat ill-directed in that it seeks equity, or at least an increased sense of fairness, in a system that is in itself fundamentally flawed.

The literal meaning of work has been so distorted by capitalistic tub-thumpers that it equates more now with drudgery than a vocation or a soul-enriching contribution to the broader betterment of the human experiment.

Modern times have seen most people enslaved to an economic paradigm from which we need to urgently disengage, both individually and as a society.

Economics is invariably politics in disguise and is structured with the intent of the few to profit, control and provide substantial individual short-term comfort ignoring, to the long-term peril of all, the ecological significance of our finite world.

•Next: Considering the four-hour day.