Here's one everybody should take a look at (http://jacksatu.blogspot.com ). This guy is some kind of philosopher/ commentator like yours truly, with a very special remit: he's "anti-job/ pro-freedom" (at least on this site) and once a week, sometimes more, he presents you with quotes that support his thesis. Which is, to over-simplify, or to expand too much borrowing from my own well-known stock of anti-work sentiments, that most jobs are unnecessary, and society itself would be better served by having citizens free to cultivate their own minds and souls rather than urinate their time up a wall doing work that has no interest for them just to keep a roof over their heads.
But I'm speaking for him. Go over and see for yourself, if the idea interests you. Personally I've been trying to find a way out of the working world ever since I finally succumbed and got a job, aged about 28. Jack Saturday may help me achieve my goal at last.
UPDATE
Further investigation reveals that Jack Saturday has another site (http://www.theworldowesyoualiving.org ) which explores the ideas on the blog in a very different way, using montages of classic paintings, religious imagery and cartoon pictures mixed with quotes. It's effective as propaganda (but hang on, propaganda is the promotion of ideas you don't agree with, right?), and it's extremely beautiful visually and intellectually, in places. I scanned the site with a rare feeling of optimism that the world might not be completely insane after all. Somebody, at last, has seen through the lie that work is inevitable and an appropriate use of minds that have developed the capacity to span universes in an instant.
2 comments:
Hi Bruce!
My thanks from far west Canada for your kind words. Such support is a real boost. As a blogger, you know how good it is to feel you are providing something of value for others. So far I've gotten the best support from Brits, what is it with you guys? Must be the spirit's traditional response to the Industrial Rev, the Enclosure Laws, Imperialism, etc etc.
I enjoyed your sites, and intend to use something from your blog for my next Saturday quote. See you there, and I'll be back to see what you're up to. Hope you can get out of the commodity-labor-for-basics slave-market as soon as possible.
I agree with George Bush: "Freedom was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended." As I see it, the job system and its "work ethic" is the faceless coward-- sometimes it wears a clock mask, and sounds an alarm every morning: "All to arms! The enemy is nigh."
Best,
Jack Saturday
Hi Jack,
Funny you are getting such support from the Brits. I've been telling people about your sites and everybody likes the idea, though most are locked into the mentality that the work they despise is necessary. What defeatism!
Like you say, perhaps it's all that Industrial Revolution and technological revolution business that's making my acquaintances so sick. Iron and steel were bad enough, but now everything is plastic or made of some other synthetic fibre man's symbolic alienation from his society is complete.
Get up when you don't want to, go somewhere you don't want to go, do something that has no interest for you in the company of people you wouldn't normally hang out with--and for 45 years of a woefully short life? If anyone doesn't see that as an absurdity I want to untie them!
Fantastic to hear you'll be using something of mine on the site.Now your endeavour is one I can really get behind. And it'll be an honour to be keeping company with Alan Watts as in the May 13th entry. He's another Englishman who wouldn't accept the fate handed out to him.
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