Colloquial Rants and Reasoning: End Civilization as we know it Part 4
Part 4 Labor and Education
Labor
I think civilization as we know it should end because within civilization you MUST make money or depend on someone who does or you die! Civilization doesn’t expect everyone to be an athlete or an artist, it doesn’t expect everyone to help each other, it doesn’t really expect us to be good parents, but it does expect EVERYONE to acquire and manage money somehow or depend on someone who does. You’re expected to make money without regard for your health, safety or sanity.
Young adults are often expected to put their young lives and education on hold to pick up the slack during hard times.Mothers are often expected to leave their newborn babies for eight or more hours a day to pay the bills.
"For mothers who must earn, there is indeed no leisure time problem. The long hours of earning are increased by the hours of domestic labor, until no slightest margin for relaxation or change of thought remains." ~ Katharine Anthony
Whatever it takes, the bills must be paid. Does anyone think that miners would risk extreme heat, shaft collapse, methane pockets, the bends, black lung or a myriad of other deadly hazards if they didn’t have to make money? How many prostitutes would there be if people didn’t have to make money to survive? What about other jobs? How many people in the world love their jobs enough to devote 40 plus hours a week to them if suddenly they weren’t forced to make money?
We create arbitrary positions, just so more people can participate in this madness. American philosopher, systems theorist, architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller said it best.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
I remember working for one of the world’s largest shipping companies where periodically inspectors and auditors would pay us all a visit. No matter how smooth and efficient the operation was running, they had to make changes. They had to justify their positions existence.
Proponents of this work for pay arrangement argue that if people were not forced to make money they wouldn’t work at all. I see this as an insult to humanity. This argument quickly falls apart when you consider all the work we do in our daily lives for no pay. It dissolves when you think of all the things you would do if you didn’t have to go to your job. It’s obviously a myth when you’re mindful of anthropology. People of pre-colonized nature based cultures had to do some work to survive, but contrary to popular belief, their lives were not all that arduous.Author Bob Black cites the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in "The Original Affluent Society." Black writes, “They (indigenous people) work a lot less than we do, and their work is hard to distinguish from what we regard as play. Sahlins concluded that "hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society." They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were "working" at all. Their "labor," as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities;.” Sure many would do the bare minimum to survive, but most of us really want to use our minds and bodies. Most of us really want to devise solutions, create beauty and take care of each other. Just imagine all the great things you could do if your job wasn’t draining the time and vitality from YOUR life.
Education
Despite widespread disparity over the rat race, we rush our children off to schools to be indoctrinated into it. The public education systems of many industrialized civilizations (including the U.S.) are based on the Prussian school model. This system is deliberately designed to perpetuate class and the established system of power. The vast majority of Prussian schools discouraged critical thinking and produced mediocre intellects which made graduates nice obedient workers, consumers and frontline soldiers. John Taylor Gatto describes the system in detail in the “The Underground History of American Education.” Gatto writes…
“The familiar three-tier system of education emerged in the Napoleonic era, one private tier, two government ones. At the top, one-half of 1 percent of the students attended Akadamiensschulen, where, as future policy makers, they learned to think strategically, contextually, in wholes; they learned complex processes, and useful knowledge, studied history, wrote copiously, argued often, read deeply, and mastered tasks of command. The next level, Realsschulen, was intended mostly as a manufactory for the professional proletariat of engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers, career civil servants, and such other assistants as policy thinkers at times would require. From 5 to 7.5 percent of all students attended these "real schools," learning in a superficial fashion how to think in context, but mostly learning how to manage materials, men, and situations—to be problem solvers. This group would also staff the various policing functions of the state, bringing order to the domain. Finally, at the bottom of the pile, a group between 92 and 94 percent of the population attended "people’s schools" where they learned obedience, cooperation and correct attitudes, along with rudiments of literacy and official state myths of history.”
Which tier are your children on? Naturally, a child ascends a level or two from time to time, but if they didn’t it would be much harder to convince people to believe in the system. Again, I’m not saying teachers, staff or board members are bad people and I’m not saying parents are bad for sending their children to school. This self perpetuating system was put in place long before any of us were born. It is all we have ever known. I whole heartedly agree with free education, but it should be the best education humanly possible for ALL humans.
I think civilization as we know it should end because it puts a price tag on higher education. Think about it. Say your lifelong ambition is to become a veterinarian. You love animals and you want to help them. The establishment says, “So, you want to care for animals? Well it just so happens that people have been studying animals for thousands of years and we have compiled this wealth of knowledge here. You could preserve the health and lives of countless critters and realize your lifelong dream… for a small truckload of money.” Civilizations actions scream, “WE REALLY DON’T CARE ABOUT ANIMALS PAY!” Again, this is all we have ever known and most of us are too busy doing what civilization expects of us to see how backward and counterproductive it really is. Same goes for doctors. There are plenty of people all over the world who actually want to help other people and would make great doctors, but civilization inhibits their ability to do so in one way or another. On the flip side of this, you have people who really don’t care for others and enter medical school because they have the means to do so, they need a job and there is a lot of money in it. How would you like to have one of these people as your doctor? Maybe you do. Someone brought to my attention that it's possible to educate yourself through the library and the Internet. This is true, but with all civilization expects of us, who has time for that? Furthermore, how many employers are willing to take the chance on someone without a degree? Civilization has stupefied the populous by making knowledge scarce and expensive.
Works Cited
"An Underground Education." Randomhouse.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2012. <http://www.randomhouse.com/book/195374/an-underground-education-by-richard-zacks/>.
Kawagley, Oscar. "A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit [Paperback]." Amazon.com: A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit (9781577663843): Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley: Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/Yupiaq-Worldview-Pathway-Ecology-Spirit/dp/1577663845>.
"The Original Affluent Society--Marshall Sahlins." The Original Affluent Society--Marshall Sahlins. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2012. <http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm>.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2012/07/11/255172.htm
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/10/us-natives-alcohol-lawsuit-idUSTRE8191JJ20120210
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443931404577553082044623996.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-51841/Why-mowing-lawn-bad-you.html
http://www.indiaresource.org/campaigns/coke/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization
