Work Ethic - Why I Like Marxism

"The work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life.
The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact. Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro-chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis" - Andre Gorz (in a quote I lifted from Wikipedia, lest anyone think I read alot of political theory)

The one thing I like about Marxism that Capitalism doesn't seem to offer is a reason why I should keep working when there's clearly enough already (though to be sure I think both systems flawed, though Capitalism much less so). There's probably 20 grocery stores in our region, and we have cars. If we didn't have cars then I'd see the multiplicity of grocers as meaningful, but as such, I see it as useless that I have to go tonight just so that competing grocery stores can be open.

So True

"In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we eventually learn that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished" - Karl Rahner

This reminds me of C.S. Lewis' quote where he says that if we were created for the finite, then why does it feel so empty in our soul? Why does everything scream for an ending if there is no ending?

Busy-ness as Quasi-Virtue

I haven't been in depression lately so I haven't posted as often on here - usually I have less interesting thoughts when I'm functioning 'normally'. But I was thinking about tonight and how I had nothing I had to do today. I just sat around, I read a bit, the most enjoyable part of the day was doing my laundry and making my bed and cleaning my room. I mean, I hate doing those things, but it made me feel like a human again after sitting around all that time. I look forward to moving out again so that I am forced to take care of myself, because as I act and remain busy, even though it frustrates me, it's good for me, and in the long run I enjoy life alot more.

I think sitting around and not doing anything is probably the worst thing for me. I am hopeful that I'll probably do my Master's and Doctorate (God willing) in some far off land where I have to worry about bills and shop for groceries, and work, and be ridiculously busy.

Perhaps being busy is a quasi-virtue. It's a habit that helps me sustain other beneficial habits. I know the longer I'm at home, the less virtuous I'm becoming. I anxiously await busy-ness, because only when there are bad things in my life, can I enjoy the good things and be hopeful. When everything is fine, it seems to be a slow downward path, the path to Hell really. And as good students of the Greeks, we all know that Virtue is the path to Happiness / Eudaimonia.

So if you're immensely busy and stressed and you barely had time to read this, perhaps you should consider it a blessing. And perhaps I should read this again next time I'm bitching about how busy I am. In the mean time I'll be loafing around (until work tomorrow) and reading Evelyn Waugh (a MALE R.C convert like myself) or possibly watching a movie.

A Great Quote

"We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away." - Walker Percy

(A Southern Catholic author, God rest his soul)

He knows too much.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Thoughts Before Work Tonight

“Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.” - Simon Schama (pictured above making cheese soufflet in his home)

I had a fine day today. I went to Tim Hortons, had Chocolate milk, listened to a good lecture by a genius historian (Prof. Sainsbury) and then had an actually good Latin class! craziness. Then I had a great lunch, and when I came home I decided I needed my Simon Schama fix so I lay down on the couch and watched him compare Ireland and India. He even talked about Thomas Babington Macaulay whom I had researched without remembering Schama talked about him.

Now I'm just waiting to go to work. It's been a good day, but it's weird having the fear of work and prospective essays looming over you. Then I realized: this is my life. I'm only viewing it on a daily cycle though. Like why should I relax the day before I work if I just have to work the next day? ANd I'll have to work my entire life, so really this, "just get through it" attitude is really the bane of my existence. What's the point in toughing out your entire life?

When I think about History and Schama and the job of a Historian I constantly think about how many people have gone before me. The Romans had a phrase we translated in Latin the other day. It was "to go to the majority", and it meant 'to die'. They saw the majority as those already dead. Schama said 1 million Irish died in the potato famine of the 1840s and 5 million people starved in India during one famine. 6 million people, dead.

...

What were their lives like? What did they think of God? What did they love and hope for?

I guess we'll never know. And one day I will 'go to the majority'. And people like Simon Schama (and myself) will write essays about me as one of the beleagured multitude. They'll try to place me into a group that all sought one clear goal, that fit somewhere. Whether I'm a proletarian wage slave who died working in a grocery store, or one of the many morbidly obese Canadians of the post-modern period who died from heart faillure due to excess, or one of the 'faithful departed' in a liturgy (better than unfaithful departed).

...

What kind of an account will I give for my life? I can picture it now: "Hi... I'm (name), I was of the (religion) faith, does that mean I'm in? ....Yes that's correct, mhmm glutton, lustful, etc yep. ... Ya I guess I was a Capitalist? is that bad comrade? ...oh I see...well I only shopped at Walmart because it was so cheap, though I guess that doesn't count... alright ... Ya I only did that with one girlfriend ..." and then the questions get even weirder "... well ya, I preferred Charles I to Oliver Cromwell ...but you do remember what he did to Ireland... oh you saw that on my facebook" It's so unimaginable to think of such an epic ending to such a transitory life.

So little of life is epic, so much of it just the drab everyday. So much isn't about Ideals, but rather endless compromise.

...

If I believed in reincarnation, I'd just do whatever the hell I wanted. I know that's kind of against the point, but seriously, it'd be like being invincible. It reminds me of when the Romans had trouble fighting the Germanic tribes because they believed in the immortality of the soul so strongly, they had no fear of death.

...

Plato makes a pretty good argument for the immortality of the soul.

...

well I guess I'll get ready for work.

A Parable For You

Imagine a place called "normal". In this strange village everyone would wake up earlier than they desired, to prepare to journey to places they didn't want to go. For each prospective journey they would all dress in clothes they didn't actually find comfortable or functional, but rather they would select vestments from a spectrum of rigid conformity known as "Fashion". Then imagine they paid to translocate themselves in a manner horrifically destructive to their own environment so that they could go to work in a place they didn't want to, for longer than they wanted, with no one that they liked. Their twenty-somethings would go to the 'school' where they would pay to be forced to do things they didn't want to do, and occassionally learn, if only, by accident. Their overlords would yell at them but were no longer able to hit them, and so only psychologically degraded them. The establishment that had instituted these 'schools', "the kirk", was hated and derided in them. There had been a great rebellion against it called 'the enlightenment' and so at the basis of all they were forced to go through, there was no underlying purpose anymore.

Basically, I hate the way the world functions. ... I miss the Middle Ages & Renaissance... then you could go to cities and have a lively urban environment, or you could choose to be a rural farmer. You could get one coherent education which was actually based on LEARNING rather than getting a piece of paper or doing homework (an American invention I hear). I would've lived in an italian city-state given another shot. Been like the people in the merchant of Venice, forcibly baptizing Jews, and living the high life.

Although I'm sure I'd find things to hate about that era too. ...

C.S. Lewis said that we always thing the light is on the other side of the hill or just around the corner, just not where we are, and so we live in the Shadowlands.



Rant over.