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Why Do We Work So Hard? (1843magazine.com)
An anonymous reader points us to a fascinating piece at The Economist that tries to explain the elements that drive people to work so hard: Working effectively at a good job builds up our identity and esteem in the eyes of others. We cheer each other on, we share in (and quietly regret) the successes of our friends, we lose touch with people beyond our network. Spending our leisure time with other professional strivers buttresses the notion that hard work is part of the good life and that the sacrifices it entails are those that a decent person makes. This is what a class with a strong sense of identity does: it effortlessly recasts the group's distinguishing vices as virtues. This reminds me of an article by Om Malik, veteran reporter and founder of the GigaOm news outlet, who wrote this when announcing his retirement. From his piece: "I relate to Jeter's desire to find life outside of work. Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news. It is a unique type of addiction that only a few can understand, and it is time for me to opt out of this non-stop news life."
Only because you're really ignorant, but hiding that from yourself. There is an imbalance in the earnings from labor and those from equity that isn't justified by anything except social and corporate structures. In truth work beyond the real level of achievement adequate to fuel leisure only fuels the class divide supporting the ultra-rich, and dupes the poorer into believing they need it for their own security. Puritan ethic is "work is good", but said another way "arbeit macht frei" - the implication is the same.
Funny, as one born in a communist country, I can tell you don't know shit about socialism/communism and how they worked.
The rulling class, elected by the free will of the people (yeah, right), was supposed to think for the unwashed workers and peasants. The unwashed had to work as hard as they could in order for the whole society to be able to beat back the class enemy (capitalism). Wehn that happened and socialism/communism would rule the world, we would all live in paradise where everybody would work according to their abilities (rulling class thinking, workers working) and everybody would get a share according to their needs (rulling class a bigger one as they have to be free of troubles in order to guide the society, working class enough to be able to work another day).
It's the same message every rulling class is promoting to the unwashed: work your ass off so we (as in we, the rulling class, not in we, as a country) would have enough to live happily ever after.
As monopolies and collective oligarchies continue to form and gain power most of the worlds population is no longer necessary for production so the illusion (just as in the matrix) of struggle has to be there to keep the masses believing their efforts and lives matter. War or the brink of war is usually the most effective way to keep the masses engaged in productivity tasks.
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world.
Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an article of faith. It is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and more territory and so building up an overwhelming preponderance of power, or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon. The search for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for " Science ". The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance - meaning, in effect, war and police espionage - the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. - George Orwell, 1984
The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, jou
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
You realise that its extremely hard to just let a worker go in the UK, right? We dont have the equivalent of Californias "right to work" rules here.
You're confusing "right-to-work" with "at-will employment". Right-to-work means that union membership can't be a condition of employment. At-will employment means either you or your employer can terminate the relationship unless there's a contract specifiying otherwise.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas