Over the last year or so, I have had many interesting discussions with my 18 year old son regarding the horrible fact of life, that of, "we have to work to survive." Now, my son has used the blanket reply, "well, we shouldn't have to," and, if you hadn't heard all of the intricate arguments behind that statement, you would be rightfully raising your eyebrows. I try to communicate that, in order to eat and have a roof over our heads, we need to have money. The way to get that money, is to work. He tries to communicate that work is crap, it's senseless, it's in no way personally beneficial, and there should be some other way. In truth, we are both somewhat correct in our arguments.
The concept of work has probably been around since the whole Adam/Eve/Apple Fiasco back in the day. If you're not a biblical story sort of person, then we'll say that it started back in caveman times. We have always had to "work" to survive, even if it was a very different sort of work. We had to build our shelters, we had to hunt for or grow our food, we had to break our backs and make sacrifices to the gods on a daily basis just to survive a season. The harder we worked, the better chances we had. Working, back then, was purely a self serving (yet necessary) concept. We eventually started working together, strengthening our chances for survival as a group.
Fast forward to today, in which "working" is still a means of survival, but the route is quite circuitous, and rarely feels personally beneficial. It's no longer about breaking your back and making a nice shelter for your family, it's about working for someone else who is working for someone else and lining their pockets and obeying their rules and hoping that your hard work pays off in a decent raise some day and saying, in the end, "well, we might have enough money in 6 months to repair the leak in the roof."
So, I ask you, why do we work? Why do we spend hours, days, months, years doing something for someone else, in a general state of unhappiness? This is no longer just about a roof over our heads and bread for the winter. This is about the pursuit of "things." The need for "things."
You need a car to get to work if there is no public transportation, because you no longer walk to the fields or into town to literally earn your bread. You need gas to put into said car. You also need car insurance. And a license, and registration, and current inspection stickers. A car is not often a luxury, it's a necessity.
If you have a school-aged child, apparently you need a computer, as well. Which also means that you have to pay for an internet service provider. When Spenser was in grade school, he had a writing project for which he was directed to do on-line research. There was a small asterisked item at the page bottom which indicated that school computers could be utilized until 4 p.m., or the local library could be an option for those poor underprivileged members of the population who lacked computers. We had only just gotten our first computer (which was a hand-me-down), and I remember angrily thinking, "what if we didn't have one?"
He couldn't use the school computers because he would have no transportation to his after school day care, and I worked past 4:30. The local library was on the other side of town, which meant that I would have to drive him there (with my required for living car), which further meant that this would have become MY school project as well. I think we actually had to buy a printer for this one, "simple" project. I can't imagine what the non-computer "country" kids (and parents) had to endure.
Could we have done it without a personal computer? Sure. Would there have been hours of extra labor and (gas) money and time involved? Yes. I'll bet that the non-computer owners put "buy a computer" at the top of their priority lists. And "get AoL" as the second priority. And "work 23 hours of overtime per week and/or get second job."
Cavemen didn't have necessities like this. If their wheel broke, they fixed it. Or, if they didn't have the talent or the tools, they went to the wheel fixer guy. Wheel fixer guy didn't charge anything, because he was already appreciated and provided for by others in the group who employed different talents. Now, I know it likely wasn't this simple, because eventually the wheel fixer guy got greedy, and the strongest caveman of the group decided that his hunting skills were superior to others, and, here we go. "Must kill extra boar to pay wheel fixer guy."
Okay, so maybe cavemen had it rough too.
Anyway, we can all agree that work is a necessity in life. It's just unfortunate that our unique talents, our pride in our abilities, our feelings of self worth have been all but stripped from our lives due to power, and greed, and the need for "things." The fruits of our labors (unless we're all farmers, which, I suspect, we're not) are only seen by someone in a home office 3,000 miles away. It has become a never ending cycle of sacrifices required to even just have the basics, the growing list of luxuries which have become necessities, and the pursuit to get them. Sure, we've come a long way, baby, but at what cost?
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