Paid Work and Marriage

[wolfy]

Paid work is only enslavement if you have to do it.

 

[maliafee]

Paid work is only enslavement if you have to do it.

+1

 

[Mole]

Personally I find you very musical Victor ... I enjoy the lyrical expression of your point of view.

How lovely.

When all is said and done, it is the music we remember.

So I will sing my song, I will sing my song, just for you.

 

[Qre:us]

When all is said and done, it is the music we remember.

Discrimination against the deaf!


*cough* Beethoven

 

[heart]

The artistocrats had arranged marriages and lived of the blood, sweat and tears of others, using people like toliet paper.

What would they know about soul?

 

[Mole]

The artistocrats had arranged marriages and lived of the blood, sweat and tears of others, using people like toliet paper.

What would they know about soul?

The aristocrats ruled Britain for a hundred years in peace before the settlement of Oz.

And so we inherited the aristocratic virtues and vices.

And of course we democratised the aristocratic vices and virtues and now each one of us, one and all, embody them.

I know it is hard to believe that the ordinary Aussie bastard is an aristocrat in disguise.

They used to call us the workers' paradise, but in reality, we are the aristocrats' paradise.

But a paradise no less.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

The artistocrats had arranged marriages and lived of the blood, sweat and tears of others, using people like toliet paper.

What would they know about soul?

Well said. Yeah, looking down on people who have to work to survive smacks of elitism which is a stone's throw away from sheltered cluelessness. It often has to do with disregarding what others have had to work for to make the elitist life possible for another. I have more respect for the slave than for the slave owner, or for the person who works for pay than the one who dismisses their worth as a human being. There is more wisdom to be found when a person has to face something difficult, than when they are in a position to take it for granted.

 

[Hirsch63]

"....the worker is worth his wages"

What price will you sell yourself (or is it just your body)for?

Compensation takes many forms.

 

[heart]

The aristocrats ruled Britain for a hundred years in peace before the settlement of Oz.

And so we inherited the aristocratic virtues and vices.

And of course we democratised the aristocratic vices and virtues and now each one of us, one and all, embody them.

I know it is hard to believe that the ordinary Aussie bastard is an aristocrat in disguise.

They used to call us the workers' paradise, but in reality, we are the aristocrats' paradise.

But a paradise no less.

It must be hard to maintain the lifestyle without the servants and the tenant farmers.

 

[FDG]

I don't think that's universally true at all, Victor.

 

[the state i am in]

Aristotle taught that those who did paid work were no better than slaves or animals.

And it was protestantism and the bourgeois revolutions that taught work was fulfilling.

But why should we take any notice of Aristotle?

Well, Aristotle informed Christianity, through Thomas Aquinas and the Renaissance, right up to the Reformatioin.

So not only do we today try hopelessly to make work fulfilling, but we also try to make marriage fulfilling as well.

But it is a hopeless task in both cases.

Perhaps the Renaissance aristocrats were right - we can only find fulfullment in amateur pursuits like hobies and love affairs.

The very word, 'amateur', comes from the latin for love. And everyone loves to have a love affair - even the lovers. And all the world loves a lover.

What do you think?

today the sky will rain chocolate drops of decadence and we will all forget to live in the void of the vapid virtues stemming from europe's enlightened period of melodramatic cultural celibacy and blooming like the nettles of satan's garden of gethsemene.

i agree in spirit but the whole things smacks of the eventually empty (runs dry) lyricism of youth. ideas that captivate you like a beer commercial (bikinis!). there's nothing underneath but boredom, waiting, inactivity, selfishness, the big nothing and its balladry so limp it can't even get (it?) up to be tawdry.

enslavement is a meaningless word unless you're an african on a fucking boat. otherwise the cell is the slave, the organ is the slave, the neck is the slave, the eyes are the slave, and we are all slave to the genitals the sparked the earth and forced us to be/become.

also, this post cracks me up. it reminds me of my friend and i quoting the beginnings of camus' the myth of sisyphus in odd social circumstances. "the first philosophical question one has to asks, is whether or not one should kill himself."

The problem with work is that you have to do it. It's the lack of control and subjugating yourself to others agendas that is distasteful.
In short the issue, at least for me is about creative control. Doing something that is meaningful to me.

It would be great if we could just spend our lives learning but that isn't going to happen. There are only two options. Hide or push through.
In my opinion the best way out is through.

the world will make you bend and break. young saplings with more elasticity learn to bow their backs. who knows when the catapult will snap?

I think that not everyone or anything is 100% fit and that an affair is finding something that completes the remaining 100% thats not being met. In life we have work and hobbies to even itself out a little better. In relationships we have friends and lovers. Sometimes when we lack the friendship and end up finding a friend and have an emotional affair and sometimes we lack the love and find someone who ends up being a lover. We all want it all, but are willing to sacrafice in the name of love, but when that love starts to fade you do not sacrafice as much.

We can only find fulfillment because the other part is already filled, we are simply looking to top off the glass so to say. How far we go depends on how empty the glass was to begin with.

agree 100%. our desire to have a full glass is really the problem, to top off and top off until the stomach of the beer gets upset and overflows over the top of the glass.

it's like a game of blackjack, no matter how good your first card is, you always want to get to that perfect 21! no matter how many great first cards and numbers games we have to invalidate, illegitimize, etc.

I think it is amazing the range of perception humans can hold towards certain activities. In a weird way I find it reassuring that we have the capacity to reinterpret our circumstance. Societies require an exchange of resources whether this involves employment or relationships. Being paid for work means you are involved in exchange with other members of your society. Maybe that makes a person an animal, but I suspect we fit that category long before we were paid in cash.

i agree with you, toonia. the world is made up of flux anyway. of exchange, communication, interaction, and information flow. we are all overspecialized when the zombie invasion comes. and the earth will move on without us.

 

[uberrogo]

Aristotle taught that those who did paid work were no better than slaves or animals.

And it was protestantism and the bourgeois revolutions that taught work was fulfilling.

But why should we take any notice of Aristotle?

Well, Aristotle informed Christianity, through Thomas Aquinas and the Renaissance, right up to the Reformatioin.

So not only do we today try hopelessly to make work fulfilling, but we also try to make marriage fulfilling as well.

But it is a hopeless task in both cases.

Perhaps the Renaissance aristocrats were right - we can only find fulfullment in amateur pursuits like hobies and love affairs.

The very word, 'amateur', comes from the latin for love. And everyone loves to have a love affair - even the lovers. And all the world loves a lover.

What do you think?

I agree that paid work is the same as being a slave. I am glad that I now have Arostotle to back up my hypothesis.