Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations 173-176
What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man [sic] who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his [sic] work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great. It is "society" which provides man [sic] with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his [sic] life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word "society."
It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees.-
It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees.-
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
posted by Jack Saturday at
8:04 AM
1 Comments:
The public has been brainwashed into believing that a college degree is their ticket out of a life spent working in a low-paying, uncreative, soul-crushing job. If that is true, why did I find myself, like so many others, back in a low-paying job after having obtained my college degree. I was a nearly straight-A student with a degree in education. I went into education because our country apparently had a shortage of teachers, and as the ad has said, "America needs teachers". However, after graduating, I found that every job I applied for was applied for by at least 200 other people as well, all of us thinking we were "needed". I was interviewed for an internship, but the word from the top was to "hire a man" as I was later told by teachers in the school district in which I substitute taught. Later I learned that this person was a "C" student, (more qualified than me with my A's?) but also had "connections" which helped him obtain the internship. I learned a lot from obtaining my college degree, but all of my real and useful learning took place after graduation: 1. I learned that the university system of this country is no different than big business. They have a product to sell (education - i.e., a "degree"). 2. The university system, like big business, will use slick advertising and "spin" to sell their product. 3. Unlike some big businesses, however, they don't have to guarantee anything about their product - the quality of it, or whether you will even be able to use it. What other product would you buy for $20,000 that you couldn't even use? Think of the outcry if people spent $20,000 on a car that wouldn't even start! 4. I learned that I cannot go back to work in a job in which my creativity and intelligence are so stifled that I am not even as free to think and dream as a kindergartener! In fact, in many jobs, you need permission, like a kindergartner, to take a bathroom break - and it is timed. However, unlik a kindergartner, we are penalized "for taking too long in the bathroom". 5. I have decided that the only solution to my dilemma is to use my creativity and intelligence to employ myself. I realized that our whole educational system brainwashes us to work for someone else. From the time we are small, we are taught that we will go to work for "someone else". Countless millions of us are frightened into thinking we don't have the money, intelligence or "secret knowledge" it takes to be an enterpreneur. We are taught to be cogs in the wheel of big business. Well, this cog has had enough and is taking her life into her own hands, making her own wheel turn. No wage slavery for me!
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