Tuesday, December 25, 2007

THE HIGH COST OF WORKING


The best teachers I’ve had in my life are those who planted seeds viable enough to sprout nourishment in the most fertile occasions for life lessons. The idea that the big lesson must be one of self discovery, no matter how interesting and fact filled the lecture, is a carry over from days when 95% of the population lived lives of physical activity using skills acquired by apprenticing to a working mentor so that the lessons all made immediate sense through living examples, from carpentry to stalking game. Classrooms and teachers can only offer the experience of proving that one remembers the facts of the lecture with little assurance that relevance to ones life is grasped until well after graduation. The next best thing to apprenticeship is having a teacher who employs knowledge of the subject in daily life as a primary livelihood and is, therefore, also a mentor in the classroom.

The best art I have ever seen has enhanced the way I am able to look at everything from from that moment on, or bugged me until it did so further on down the track of time. One piece that bugged me for most of my life until the cosmic humor of the scene, adequately depicted by unexceptional oil painting technique, finally broke through my chronic perturbation. Although it may have been obvious to the entire rest of the world already, I enjoyed realizing for myself that humorous beauty of dogs playing poker was the high irony of dog’s inability to hide their emotions well enough to ever be able to bluff … a prerequisite to poker is lying!

Not that it is art work, but there is something that has bugged me like the poker playing pooches. With the obvious savings gained by not needing to supply office and parking space, insurance or food for employees who could work just as efficiently from computer at home as they ever did in their cubicle, in addition to the good sense to eliminate commuter traffic wherever possible — with all that, why have corporations not jumped on that bandwagon to the bottom line and stockholder profit? I think I have finally caught on to them and it is just as insidious as the rest of the ruinous practices of capitalistic excess: corporations’ greatest enemy are individuals who think for and are useful to themselves which, allowing them to work from home at their own pace, will allow them to discover in the much more encouraging, entrepreneurial setting. The mass hypnosis will break down if the mini patriotism of corporate loyalty to product necessity is seen for the propaganda it is when viewed from the fractalized perspective of the individual. If the savings do not balance out the loss of profitable loyalty they must be pretty worried about their secret.

6 comments:

troutsky said...

The idea used to be that having all those disgruntled workers side by side would lead to organization and a union. Capital has found a number of useful strategies to thwart that danger but you WOULD think they would embrace Home Work for that reason as well. By the way ,I have been doing some research on the important differences between individualistic and individualism which goes to the root of some of the differences in our perspectives. A bit opaque but I will try to clarify soon.

goatman said...

I'm afraid that we are out of luck if we expect the corporate mass hypnosis to be recognized by the individual, thats why its called "hypnosis".
As long as tiny faces peer into that glass tube and see pretty things, the game is afoot!
Only drugs or perhaps lack of indoctrination in the first place will create a questioning of the culture (for me it was drugs.) This just my opinion, of course.
I like your blog.

Yodood said...

Trout, I await your clarification with eyebrow cocked at the sophistry required to make such distinctions about the individual.

Welcome Goatman, Many things led to my awakening, but drugs were the straw that broke the mythical corporate camel's back for me as well.

Yodood said...

To clarify "drugs" I meant natural psychedelics (cannabis, mushrooms and peyote). The pharmaceuticals (legal, industrially produced) I avoid like the plague, they teach me nothing.

Unknown said...

Our teachers are now only taught to tick the little boxes. Children as young as three are boxed, labeled and prepared for mass packaging. I got out while I could and can now work with children in an area far removed from so-called education. I work with children who do not fit inside the boxes - how cool are they!

karoline in the morning said...

i never did fit into boxes very well..