One of
the fastest ways to fail in life is to work so hard your manager will think
you're after his job.
In
1976, one year before our semi-blissful marriage of five years, my ex-wife and
I went on a sailing adventure in the West Indies. We paid good money to be
deckhands on a 248-foot, four-mast schooner, island-hopping the Leeward Islands
of St. Martins, St. Barts, St Eustatius, St. Kitts and Nevis for two weeks.
After
a few days, we hooked up with a couple from Philadelphia and a couple from
Alaska.
One
day the six of us were wandering the neighborhood back streets of a town on
Nevis. Some of the locals were sitting on the front porches of their modest
houses, playing dominoes or watching the tourists pass by.
The
couple from Philadelphia (liberals) mentioned how poor everyone seemed and
suggested there should be an influx of government money to help everyone out.
The
couple from Alaska (conservatives) wondered why no one seemed to be working
very hard and suggested an influx of private industry to kick-start the
economy.
My
ex-wife was too busy looking for a shop where she could buy some more useless
junk to notice anything.
However,
I noticed and wondered if I was the only sane person in the group. Everyone I
saw along the street appeared to be perfectly content in their existence. You
could see the happiness in the twinkle in their eyes. It was beyond my
comprehension why anyone would want to barge in and spoil a perfectly desirable
way of life.
Apparently,
there's a big difference between liberals and conservatives and relatively sane
human beings. On the Orb of Wounded Souls, being enslaved by dependency on
government handouts or being enslaved by becoming a cog in the giant economic
engine of production and consumption (mindless growth) are both forms of
enslavement.
Clearly,
there must be a more reasonable way of life.
Once
upon a time in America, the Europeans had not yet arrived to spoil a perfectly
desirable way of life. There were indigenous people (Native Americans) scattered
throughout the continent, doing just fine until the white man arrived on the
eastern shore, stuck a flag in the ground and declared it to be a
"discovery."
Some
of the indigenous folks had permanent settlements while others were
hunter-gatherer nomads. A hunter-gatherer society consisted of small bands of
nomadic people who lived in an area where it was too harsh to allow permanent
settlements. They survived by foraging for edible plants and wild animals.
Basically, they wandered from one food source to another. Everything they
owned, they carried on their backs.
One of
the major areas of concentration of hunter-gatherer nomads was the Great Basin
Desert area of the southwest (Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado, etc.). These societies were part of the Shoshonean bands of Indians
(Hopi, Piute, Mono, Comanche, Kawai, Panamint, Chemehuevi and others).
In an
article titled THE ART OF NOTHING, Thomas J. Elpel declares,
"Hunter-gatherer societies succeeded in working only one or two hours per
day, yet in our efforts to reproduce their lifestyle we end up working all
day."
Elpel
is the director of Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School in Montana and author of
many books on survival. According to Elpel, the hunter-gatherers "had a
lot of time on their hands because they produced almost no material
culture."
They
basically sat around all day doing nothing. This helped conserve energy, an
economical imperative so they wouldn't be forced to harvest more food each day
to feed themselves. They also produced no unnecessary material goods, including
artwork. Whenever they were forced to move on, they needed to do so with a
minimal of effort. They didn't want to be dragging junk or luxury items with
them.
In our
materialistic culture where the objective always seems to be growth, we love
junk and luxury. Often they're the same thing.
We
work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, just to stay even. In fact, we're less
than even since our national debt is in the multiple trillions and continually
rising. But we're too busy "getting ahead" to notice.
So,
you can be a go-getter and spin your wheels in pursuit of junk and luxury, or
you can be a do-nothing and observe the folly of the go-getters as they work
harder and harder while getting deeper and deeper in debt.
Work
is something you do because it's necessary for survival -- work you do beyond
that is called a burden.
Instead
of continually clamoring for jobs, jobs, jobs, we should make quality of life
our common objective. This would include a shorter work-week, less government
control, less monetary insanity, less military adventurism, etc.
- The corporate world wants everyone working at full capacity to maximize profits.
- The government wants everyone working at full capacity to maximize tax revenues.
- Financial institutions want everyone working in order to perpetuate their credit schemes to expand their control of the monetary system.
- The military-industrial complex wants a world of bloody conflict to justify their costly existence.
A
shorter work-week and a less stressful way of life for the masses goes against
the greedy ambitions of those who control the puppet strings.
Endless,
mindless growth is a cancer -- sooner or later, the puppets are going to figure
it out.
___________
Quote for the Day – "The sole
purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere
being." Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
___________
Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark
Mountains with a few dogs and where happiness
comes from being satisfied with what you have, not with yearning for more,
more, more.
___________
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