waking up - freeing ourselves from work

Now one could argue that if humans did not find a way to make and mass a majority of humanity, leashed to large projects of questionable worth, like the excavation of rock, the hewing of wood, the mining of coal and the making of masters, then how could the inventive mind have unleashed its wonders that today allow us to send satellites into space that help unify the world?

And this logic leads directly to legitimizing mass murder and successive genocides, as well as to the magic of wireless inanity while we wait for buses or for coffee in cafes.

Meanwhile, we’re righteously and rightfully furious at Madeleine Albright for saying that the deaths of a half million Iraqi children is an acceptable price to pay for…what, exactly?

But we say the same thing every day with our consumer choices and with how we live our lives.

Just because a result – e.g. “computers” – happened a certain way, doesn’t mean it could only have happened that way. Nor can we say for certain that this result we’re living with was the best possible one. Perhaps it forestalled the development of a ‘science’ in harmony with the natural world.

But, moving along, irrespective of the elimination of other options, let’s call this misappropriation of the title “Necessity,” applied to this story, the “Post hoc-con,” from the fallacy: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: “after this, therefore from this.”

What if the story of class society was not “the Idea becoming Itself,” whether “the Idea” is “Man’s Productive Capacity” or “the Triumph of Reason over Unreason,” but instead was a story of “Abandonment on Steroids”: the paroxysmal, pathological revenge of the abandoned child?

Once upon a time there was a deep, golden pool, ribbed by tall trees heavy-laden with fruit.

Footed on solid rock and brimming with endless fields, our warm pool promised to keep us forever. And on this soft, moist lap we swam and played. Laughter, ease and agility were our birthrights. And, of course, love.

Now to this sun-lit lap one day Disaster comes – who knows what or why or when – with a tumult rousing vampires from the dead.

Some called this bottomless hunger ‘Necessity’ – a hideous hydra from hell named Nesucom. Slimy, many-tentacled – its grasp could not be evaded and everything it touched became It. *

Nesucom ensnared children lost or left alone, splashing on the edge, and made them slaves. It forced them to devise a means to divide and drain the pool. And they did. The means they made, the tool, the wedge, the hammer, split the world, and the out-rush water swept people, happiness and harbor away. Nesucom stretched its face into a smile, thrilled with the harvest in its’ hold, the harnessing of natural forces – the energy of water and people both.
And in that tumult, unsettled and out-swept, without a home or means to make one, we wandered helpless into Nesucom’s net.

People who were unhappy descended on people who were happy, and the unhappy people made it their personal business to destroy the joy of the happy people, to make them pay for their crime of happiness.

Now most people of color have long suspected that these psychological dynamics are what lie beneath the catastrophe of capitalism, its brutal assault on Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Latin America – the global South, as we now say.

I remember a brother telling me years ago, making precisely this point, about his two cats. One had remained with its mother until weaned, had never known want or insecurity. The other, a stray, he found abandoned in the streets, a scrawny desperate thing, and he took it home and cared for it.

The first cat accepted its regular meals as its’ due and between meals occupied himself with catly matters. He was an easy-going and pacific soul.

The second cat could think of nothing but food, and would mew and fret and beg for more. His sole preoccupation was the quest to insure itself against future want. He could never get enough. He was never full.

In Herman Melville’s autobiographical work, Typee – the story of his experience living with a valley people on one of the Marquesas Islands – he explains the process of Joy’s eradication.

Frozen forever by his pen, he preserves for us a people still free, and so, still happy. When you read Melville’s description of these islanders, the dominant impression one is left with is, in a word, Joy.

Is it coincidence that these boisterous, buoyant, generous people who took Melville in, healed his infected leg, fed him, taught him how to bathe, literally bore him around on their backs until his leg and health were restored, for the most part did no work, at least not in any sense Melville could distinguish from ‘play?’

“Altogether the whole existence of the inhabitants of the valley seemed to pass away exempt from toil…” The hardest he saw anyone work was when he watched their process for starting a fire. “This operation appeared to me to be the most laborious species of work performed in Typee…”

What a striking evidence does this operation furnish of the wide difference between the extreme of savage and civilized life. A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer [match] performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wits’ end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree around them. (Herman Melville, Typee, chap. 14)

It is a peculiarity among these people, that when engaged in any employment they always make a prodigious fuss about it. So seldom do they ever exert themselves, that when they do work they seem determined that so meritorious an action shall not escape the observation of those around. If, for example, they have occasion to remove a stone to a little distance, which perhaps might be carried by two able-bodied men, a whole swarm gather about it, and, after a vast deal of palavering, lift it up among them, every one struggling to get hold of it, and bear it off yelling and panting as if accomplishing some mighty achievement. (chap. 22)

In my various wanderings through the vale, and as I became better acquainted with the character of its inhabitants, I was more and more struck with the light-hearted joyousness that everywhere prevailed. The minds of these simple savages, unoccupied by matters of graver moment, were capable of deriving the utmost delight from circumstances which would have passed unnoticed in more intelligent communities. All their enjoyment, indeed, seemed to be made up of the little trifling incidents of the passing hour; but these diminutive items swelled altogether to an amount of happiness seldom experienced by more enlightened individuals, whose pleasures are drawn from more elevated but rarer sources.
What community, for instance, of refined and intellectual mortals would derive the least satisfaction from shooting pop-guns? The mere supposition of such a thing being possible would excite their indignation, and yet the whole population of Typee did little else for ten days but occupy themselves with that childish amusement, fairly screaming, too, with the delight it afforded them. (chap. 19)

When you live with a joyful, loving people, a people who feed you, who save your life by healing an infection you were clueless how to remedy, it’s kinda hard to dismiss them as ‘primitive.’

On the contrary, if you’ve any heart at all, you’re forced to reevaluate the lies you were told about them, forced to consider that people are people everywhere, with differing cultural heritages, but all just people.

One day, in company with Kory-Kory, I had repaired to the stream for the purpose of bathing, when I observed a woman sitting upon a rock in the midst of the current, and watching with the liveliest interest the gambols of something, which at first I took to be an uncommonly large species of frog that was sporting in the water near her. Attracted by the novelty of the sight, I waded towards the spot where she sat, and could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I beheld a little infant, the period of whose birth could not have extended back many days, paddling about as if it had just risen to the surface, after being hatched into existence at the bottom. Occasionally the delighted parent reached out her hands towards it, when the little thing, uttering a faint cry, and striking out its tiny limbs, would sidle for the rock, and the next moment be clasped to its mother’s bosom. This was repeated again and again, the baby remaining in the stream about a minute at a time. Once or twice it made wry faces at swallowing a mouthful of water, and choked and spluttered as if on the point of strangling. At such times, however, the mother snatched it up, and by a process scarcely to be mentioned obliged it to eject the fluid. For several weeks afterwards I observed this woman bringing her child down to the stream regularly every day, in the cool of the morning and evening, and treating it to a bath. No wonder that the South Sea Islanders are so amphibious a race, when they are thus launched into the water as soon as they see the light. I am convinced that it is as natural for a human being to swim as it is for a duck. And yet in civilized communities how many able-bodied individuals die, like so many drowning kittens, from the occurrence of the most trivial accidents! (chap. 31)

Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? So pure and upright were they in all the relations of life, that entering their valley, as I did, under the most erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in amazement: “Are these the ferocious savages, the blood-thirsty cannibals of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane, than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.” I will frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But alas! since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.
There was one admirable trait in the general character of the Typees which, more than any thing else, secured my admiration: it was the unanimity of feeling they displayed on every occasion. With them there hardly appeared to be any difference of opinion upon any subject whatever. They all thought and acted alike. I do not conceive that they could support a debating society for a single night: there would be nothing to dispute about; and were they to call a convention to take into consideration the state of the tribe, its session would be a remarkably short one. They showed this spirit of unanimity in every action of life: every thing was done in concert and good fellowship. I will give an instance of this fraternal feeling.
One day, in returning with Kory-Kory from my accustomed visit to the Ti, we passed by a little opening in the grove; on one side of which, my attendant informed me, was that afternoon to be built a dwelling of bamboo. At least a hundred of the natives were bringing materials to the ground…Every one contributed something to the work; and by the united, but easy, and even indolent, labors of all, the entire work was completed before sunset. The islanders, while employed in erecting this tenement, reminded me of a colony of beavers at work. To be sure, they were hardly as silent and demure as those wonderful creatures, nor were they by any means as diligent. To tell the truth, they were somewhat inclined to be lazy, but a perfect tumult of hilarity prevailed; and they worked together so unitedly, and seemed actuated by such an instinct of friendliness, that it was truly beautiful to behold. (chap. 27)

The penalty of the Fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee; for, with the one solitary exception of striking a light, I scarcely saw any piece of work performed there which caused the sweat to stand upon a single brow. As for digging and delving for a livelihood, the thing is altogether unknown. Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana, and in her own good time she brings them to maturity, when the idle savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite.
Ill-fated people! I shudder when I think of the change a few years will produce in their paradisiacal abode; and probably when the most destructive vices, and the worst attendances on civilization, shall have driven all peace and happiness from the valley, the magnanimous French will proclaim to the world that the Marquesas Islands have been converted to Christianity! and this the Catholic world will doubtless consider as a glorious event. Heaven help the “Isles of the Sea!” – The sympathy which Christendom feels for them has, alas! in too many instances proved their bane…
Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, and the idolaters converted into nominal Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the starving inhabitants, or sent on board the numerous vessels which now touch at their shores.
When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to hereditary opulence does manual labor come more unkindly than to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of Heaven. Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself; and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon terminate his miserable existence.
But what matters all this? Behold the glorious result! – The abominations of Paganism have given way to the pure rites of the Christian worship, – the ignorant savage has been supplanted by the refined European! (chap. 26)

This will be a relatively short chapter. Either you buy Hegel’s pronouncements as gospel, buy the argument that no heartbreak, hell, hopelessness, suffering, sadness or sorrow is too great for other people to bear for some Idea to fulfill itself (or for your iPhone), in which case nothing I could say would alter that conviction – or you know that these are sophistries and lies, and admit the suffering, acknowledge the debt, without any pleading of the case from me.

Still – given that we’ve all been systematically lied to and hobbled, given that we’re all, to some degree, overwhelmed by the seeming authority of ‘what is’ and are nowhere encouraged to challenge the “zero-sum-con,” the lie that we, the human species, had (“of necessity”) to relinquish joy in order to claim allegiance with ‘Reason’, with ‘intelligence,’ and thereby earn the cool toys (and, after all, the toys are in our hands while the joy is smoke from that pipe we rely on to get through our dreary lives *) – let’s take a moment to draw out the implications of the “zero-sum-con.”

Continue to "Progress" - Part 3

* The Ojibwas have a similar fiend called “wendigo:” “a person who has been transformed into a monster by consuming or possessing people and turning them into cannibals.” And, after all, what are podrunks if not people who eat other people?

* The abandoned child is a practical animal – best to hold on to what one has, says the devil on its back, than risk losing it for an intangible dream.

Nascence to End Work

waking up - freeing ourselves from work

Chapter III: Progress (Part 2)

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work