Here is something i wrote after coming home for work this morning. Posted on Facebook, been doing some personal work and writing has been good for me. Figured this would be a good place for it as well, been following the sub for a long while. Cheers.
Though of the morning. How did we get to the point that earnings are inversely proportional to production/effort? Generally, the harder that you work and the more you actually propel society forward the less you are worth.
In my industry apprentices do the majority of the work, jouneyman do a more technical but less intensive job, up to the point where they sit in a truck for half a day waiting to work, and management/owners move paper and send emails at most.
Same seems to be true in every walk of life. If you are the hardest working person, keeping the wheels turning and the lights on, you are making the least. And maybe thats the trap? We see the job get easier the higher you get, we pay our dues and get to that point. Feel like we've arrived, life is more bearable now.
But thats the lie, right? You are still making pennies on the dollar and providing those above you riches you cannot imagine. Wherever you are in life there is someone doing less and making more .
Goes all the way to the top, to celebrity and big business CEO, which are often the same thing. At this point you make more in a day than most make in a year, and all you have to do is exist as yourself, maybe sign some papers to keep the juice flowing, maybe make an appearance somewhere to keep up the mythology.
We all go with this, even applaud it, for some reason. We had this idea planted in our heads that hard work can make you one of the ones at the top. There are entire industries built on telling us that this is true, with people raking in money telling people that all of their financial problems boil down to laziness and other personal failings. You can be a king like me, says the man firmly in the middle of the pack, just buy these training courses and instructional/inspirational videos.
Its this, like most things I learn/realize about our system and society, that just makes me shake my head. Why is this okay, why is this accepted? Why do we allow this, let alone glorify it? How is a person working a 12 hour day, keeping a company afloat, coming home to unpaid bills, an empty fridge and stress, while another sits in a mansion, or on a yacht, making more on that day off than the worker sees in a year?
Im not trying to pass the buck, under this system most of my issues are due to the choices I make and the damage I have. I could have been better off, I could have been in the upper middle of this spectrum. But I hate it, and I cant make myself believe that i should spend every waking moment working towards the possibility of being as successful as i can be, especially with the knowledge that without some unreasonable luck that success will be the actual definition of mediocrity, I will be the average, skewed by the outlier.
I am tired of watching people kill themselves every day just to exist, and I am sick of hearing how proud people are of working 300 days of the year. I am sick of all the broken promises and false ideology that we labor under every day. I am sick of feeling guilty for being one of the privileged few who makes north of 20$ an hour, yet still struggling to maintain my existence.
I want to play my guitar, have sex, make art, make tools, build a home, raise animals, raise children(not my own, we do not need to pass this along). I dont want to be the least paid person in the best earning corporation giving the best years of my life for the promise, for the illusion, that I might get to live that life, someday, if I work hard enough.
Anyway, rant over I guess. If you made it this far, love ya, hope you got something out of this. I am finding it very therapeutic to be writing again, and I think its something Im going to keep doing. If you have any comments, for or against, I would love to talk. Im not right, i just have opinions lol.
May you make yourself a day with many smiles, and failing that, may your tears be useful and not repeated.
Cheers.