My editor demands from me another article this week.
Oh, I know what you are thinking: that I come back for you my adoring readers, or even more likely that I come back for myself and indulgence in my own voice, but no. No, it is much more common and slavish than that. My boss wants it. No word on what, no word on how, just do. Work.
So here we are, here it is: work.
That all consuming, all important aspect of our personhood, that fundamental foundation upon which we build our lives, our habits, so often our relationships and joys around: work. Always we come back to work, to the point that we begin to forget anything else or the big picture or even just why. Only work.
We have the resources to work less than we do, as a society at-large. I think we cannot imagine another way, another life without constant work, so instead of using our creativity and our free will (whatever that is), we create new desires that create new industries that create new jobs that create new products that create new desires and repeat ad NAUSEUM all so that we constantly have something to work towards and want and do. We want to work. We have to work. We have been programmed to work from the start, because it fills our time and our minds.
No wonder we have grown so fat.
No wonder we have grown so depressed.
No wonder we no longer feel like strong men.
We are weak, purposeless, and waiting for calamity to strike us so that the response can give us a sense of direction and challenge. We crave global warming, war with Iran/China/North Korea/SOMEONE just so we can get our rocks off and feel committed again, and not to a cause that we should be committed to, like silly ol’ racism, but one that we must combat, something existential and real, something that we must fight or die, because those are stakes we understand and can spend the monumental energy to care, unlike with all those lesser problems.
America will happily live racist forever, constantly subjugating anyone that is not rich and white as it sees fit, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. Barring revolution, America will be forever so because it never does anything real to act otherwise. Anyone who has done even a few hours worth of real research into our nation’s history understands full well the extent of the issues, go look it up if you don’t. I ain’t doing your due diligence for you. [Side bar: This is a good part of the reason I am hesitant to do any more of this writing at all, because I do not want to force my thoughts upon others and guide them to conclusions that are perhaps not their own. Then this goes down a much more muddled path of the origination of thoughts and epistemology and that’s a whole heap o shite best worth avoiding, so I pollute away. How 2019 of me] Things keep chugging along nicely with things being racist; the large companies that became so thanks to black exploitation never have to reckon with their past, the rich whites who gained their wealth thanks in part to access to great grandaddy’s homeownership that was denied their black equal never have to reckon with their financial legacy. America is racist fundamentally, there has been no serious restructuring of anything to account for the racist economic practices at any point in our history that allows for the trees of our economy to bear such juicy fruits.
Now I’m just ranting about racism, look at what a state we’re in. Steve Bannon must be delighted.
I’m just so tired of all of it, the whole “race issue”, the complete disregard for the constant and continuous injustice all around us, the way everyone is OK with the fact that most of our material products that we buy these days come from the work of slaves still, the fact that nothing changes, just relocates. I’m just so tired from the job I work all day for pittance so I can pay the dozen people who hound me for money for the things they’ve tricked me into thinking are essential to my daily needs. I’m so tired, how can I be expected to bring about the revolution? How can I be expected to fight for what’s right, when I can’t even fight back the sleep?
Why do we all feel the same way alone? Why do we not unite and figure out where we change? Because we’re scared, and we’re tired, and we’re dumb.
All of this has been done to us with purpose. Ours is the duty of realization.