“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
—Charles Bukowski, Factotum, Black Sparrow Press, 1975
"My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell."
—American Beauty, 1999
"One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy."
—William Faulkner, interview in Writers at Work, 1958
"I was called to the bathroom at the cemetery to take care of something. I walked in the bathroom and in the middle toilet right there . . . somebody didn't shit in the toilet, somebody shat on the toilet. They shat on the wall, they shat on the floor. I had to clean it up, man, but before that, for about 10 to 15 seconds man, I just stared at somebody's shit, man. To be totally honest with you, man, it was a really, really profound moment. Cause I was thinkin', 'I'm 30 years old and in about 10 seconds I gotta start cleaning up somebody's shit, man.'"
—American Movie, 1999
"Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement."
—Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop, 1944
"I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
—Fight Club, 1999
“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.”
—Oscar Wilde
"For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again."
—Goodfellas, 1990
"But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in the old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before."
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
"We don't have a lot of time on this earth! We weren't meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements."
—Office Space, 1999
We should distinguish between work and job. Work, as a skilled expression, can be the fulfillment or edification of life. Wage slavery can be just as crushing as any form of oppression. Highly meaningful work can be as simple the pursuit of knowledge. It hardly matters how lofty or menial the work is that satisfies the inner needs of an individual, a healthy society wisely encourages whatever work its citizens need to be self-realized. Whatever gets the job done.
"Work is the blackmail of survival." - Bono of U2
No, we should not distinguish between "job" and "work" since we can't exactly use "job" as a verb. "I job all day, I job all night." Yeah, doesn't work. You already know the difference between making effort and working, why even draw attention to the potential confusion? Those who confuse making effort and working, are idiots who you and I shouldn't even bother considering. I mean if you REALLY think that not working = sloth, you are probably too far gone to ever be reformed. That goes for a huge portion of society, because we're all conditioned to think that non-workers are lazy assholes. Imagine how difficult it is for a homeless person to exist? Do you really think its harder for you to sit in your office for eight hours than it is for a homeless person to avoid violence, to be humiliated, looked down upon, having to scavenge for food all day? Do you wonder why so many of them have alcohol problems? Do you think its due to sloth and gluttony or can you not recognize self-medication? Yet you assholes look down on those people, you get pissed off because they beg for money. I remain unconvinced that certain people even deserve the gift of life, when they squander it on work and neglect their children, people around them, and their own lives. Making money for your family doesn't count as necessary personal involvement in their lives. You aren't learning from them, they aren't learning the right things from you.
So we can all mostly agree that rich greedy people are the problem. It's a reflection of republican ethics to be a greedy blood sucking bastard. Greed is the problem http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm The metaphysics of ethics which allow this problem to persist must be examined. Then there has to be a revolution, those who work don't like it, and those who don't work don't like the fact that working will drive them to a point of instability. If either side could accept the reasoning of the other, perhaps we could work something out. Alas, people don't want solutions. Because when each person dies, they didn't die, it was the world that ended.
The problem is not work. We need work, without it would would become mindless navel gazing people, nations of neurosis forever wrapped up in ourselves unable to get out. The problem is that work no longer involves creative imput. Mostly we sit bathed in the false light of our computer screens, pumping stimulants into our bodies to try and fool the brain that this is what it has evolved for. Blood pressure rises, the papers get passed around and before you know it your 60 and have just been cheated out of your retirement fund by people who, just like you, spend their days defining their existance by the distance between office walls... Let us reclaim our hands and minds, let us swap the neon strip lighting for the sun, our offices for the outdoors, our memos for art. Hermes stole the golden cattle, made the lyre from a tortiose and became god...
better oscar wilde quote: work is the curse of the drinking class
The Big Lebowski 'You're young, you've got your health ... Why do you want to get a job?'
One of my favorite songs ever is "All the small things" --Blink 182-- not only because it is an awesome song, but also because one of the simple lyrics used in the song: "Work sucks. I know!" Has to be one of the most genius truths of the universe. me and all my friends sitting in the car, I've noticed, seem to scream that specific lyric when the song gets to it. ^_^
Very good read ! To all of you pro workers : Do they mean that all my time spent in education, assimilation and mastery of consumption and blind belief in the bubble of normative existence was contrived to make me THINK a certain way , make me certain I would voluntarily sacrifice my time in this life to a system designed to destroy the earth, wage war against minds, enslave and abuse every man woman and child under the banner of progress, freedom and development ? Well, wake tha f!"# up and smell the petroleum. Start educating yourself about the very foundations of our program , see through the rhetoric of greed lust and fear. Stop your auto-pilot just one second, see that we have been addicted to perpetual profit through exploitation of our weakness it is as any hard drug seemingly impossible to quit out of pure fear for the painful withdrawal.
@penfold: that was a very good comment. I'm glad this Top Ten is still alive and people continue expressing their hate for this horrible modern thing known as "work" (which in fact is "wage slavery"). In the past months I have discovered several essays against work: "The Abolition of Work", by Bob Black; " The right to be lazy", by Paul Lafargue; "The soul of man under socialism", by Oscar Wilde... I even wrote an email to Bob Black and he answered... WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE AND THEN... STOP WORKING!
Death before employment.
Hmmm, work maybe bad, but creativity good!....If you can't make love for 8 hrs, you either need a new definition of love making, or yo are doing it wrong. Pass the wine and put on some tango music.
Comes the question, "Okay, we've got a worker's world... how do we get out of it?" Let me make something perfectly clear. In the system we have, it is quite possible for us to maintain (or improve) standards of living and abolish most of work. What keeps this from happening? Those powerful and in control. Factories, automated processes, etc. all produce enough for everyone to have what they want & then some. Without work. However, by selling the stuff, those above the working man retain power. (Most automated systems are not working at capacity, or design their supplies to be easily broken so more have to be bought, rather than supplying most everyone with enough to last.) The resources exist for us to be living in a veritable paradise, instead we're all living in heck.
Thank you Ex-Worker and others! Yes, we are to work for ourselves, or a greater good, not some Ass like greentormaline and those that think we are un-eloquent! I am not the slave, those who are grinding for the imaginary dollar are the slaves! We are revolutionizing and liberating ourselves! You can feel free to work for the "man" or "yourself" as long as you want. I will cook up some hot-dogs, sell them on the side of the road, and slavers to the dollar can come and give me that imaginary money so I can pay my taxes! Thanks Asses!
Quote form "Easy Rider" George: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it. Billy: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened, man. Hey, we can't even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or something, man. They're scared, man. George: Oh, they're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em. Billy: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut. George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom. Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about. George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em. Billy: Mmmm, well, that don't make 'em runnin' scared. George: No, it makes 'em dangerous
I'm reading about Michael Albert's Parecon (PARticipative ECONomics). Check Wikipedia. I've come to realize it's the best economic system I've ever heard of. It's almost entirely libertarian, focused on freeing ourselves from any (I mean ANY) kind of opression. CHECK IT OUT!
Seems to me that there are valid points raised by both the pro-work and anti-work sides that seem to have formed in this forum, but there has been no acknowledgement of a fundamental: There are no absolutes. Considering the incredible population density of the planet, and peoples desire for a decent standard of living, someone or something is going to have to produce the required goods. This implies work being done. However, with our level of technology, humans really shouldn't have to do the work. Automate. People get angry when machines take over jobs, but this is only because they've been brainwashed into believing that there isn't enough for all of us. That's bullshit, it's brainwashing, and the vast majority of people in industrialized nations have bought it hook line and sinker which is just fucking sad. The ridiculously fucking greedy people in control of the means of production and resources aren't willing to give out their product, you have to buy it. Money is not an essential, as sooo many people are conditioned into thinking. It was a convenient and stable means of expediting transfer of goods originally, but has mutated into another system of control and exploitation, because after all what's the fun in being rich if there's no one who is poor? The real problem isn't that stuff has to get done, because the important things will always have people willing to do them (i.e. designing new products, researching new technology, saving others' lives), the problem is that there's a select few on top who really enjoy fucking over everyone else and making them miserable. Fortunately, with advances in global communications, production tech, resource conservation, etc. it is more than possible to provide everyone on the planet with all of their basic needs, at virtually no cost. The downside is that implementing a plan to get these resources to the right place is going to require complete global co-operation, and it's going to make the rich people's fortunes null and void... I don't believe that people will stop doing new, creative, and amazing things if their basic needs are met, we're not going to stagnate and die off if there is no mandate to go and do someone else's bidding in order to survive. Most people would just get bored sitting around all day every day doing nothing. What's important is to allow people to choose what kind of 'work' they WANT to do, what drives their passions; get robots and machines to do all the shitty, dangerous, or otherwise undesirable tasks that are nonetheless necessary for metropolises and the like to function. One of the first and most important steps is to de-condition EVERYONE, break down the useless crap that's fed to people since birth, and then INFORM and EDUCATE them. Give people options, not dogma. Give people mentors, not taskmasters. READ A GODDAMN BOOK! (I recommend Buckminster Fuller, Robert Anton Wilson, Dr.Leary, and David Suzuki just as a starting point)
Let me tell you, its such a rotten life to live somewhere where you have the ability to work and earn fair wages. Bear in mind that there are people in this world who starve to death because they have no food to eat. Think twice about your complaints, and be thankful.
"Think twice about your complaints, and be thankful." --> That's quite catholic, therefore not my cup of tea. I want to be free NOW and HERE.
If girls fucked guys with bus passes, we wouldn't care about work so much. So yea women are to blame, just sayin'
I think I need to upgrade to Blue Ray because a poster said that it would increase my viewing pleasure. Apparently DVD quality is just not good enough. I now know that my shave isn’t close enough; I need 4 blades. Every morning I have to leave the house smelling of lime and mint because nothing else can wake me up as effectively. I have to drive to work in a car that has at least three letters attached to the engine size; if it’s not GTi, GTX, SRi or TDi it’s not worth having. When I arrive at my place of work, I must perform soul destroying, tedious, meaningless tasks to make obscene amounts of money for people who then hand me an embarrassingly low amount back each month so I can upgrade to Blue Ray, have a close shave, smell of mint and lime and TDi myself to work each day. I have to ask myself: do I really need Blue Ray?
You people are the problem. You choose the wrong work. I am an astronaut. I get to fly into outer space. I might get to walk on the moon. Work is fun, if you choose your own work. If you are working in a job you don't like then you are the lazy one who will not get up and WORK for your better work/job.
dude told evalution --- they will have enough to do evoluting so provide all they will need to see them through it how ever long it takes. period. this is a true and correct statment - i have the authority to speak for the dude - god to you --- we can deal with alot of things i have the information there is suppose to be like an army of people ready to act -- i just cant find them - there is no manual for what i am suppose to do -- i just thought i would say this here - thanks pixy an dude
Office space is the ultimate break away from the man movie lol
Work is a part of life, You give effort into life, you get something back. What comes up must come down. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to do something bad and how fucking hard it is to do something good? You will ALWAYS have to work for something and never would you get something for free. Life is not free. You WILL have to work for food, water, etc. Thats how life is. I also understand the underpaying jobs and stuff. If you do good in life, you get good from life. Same with bad things. There could be a murderer having the most fun he has ever had but he will have to pay, mostly his life. Everything is of equal value. Such as a pistol and a automatic-rifle. The rifle can shoot automatically but the pistol only shoots semi, there will always be something to balace two objects. The pistol is more versatile than the rifle, but has less power. The rifle is less versatile but has a big difference in power. Have you ever found a $20 dollarbill on the sidewalk? You most likely deserved it. What I am trying to say is, everyday, you have something good and something bad everyday. You could be good at writing but horrible at speaking, you could be good at speaking and horrible at writing. You can be fair at both. One day, you could get a promotion but trip on the sidewalk and scrape your hands up. You could compare a movie star to a downtown living person. The movie star isnt all good fame and no work. Moviestars get all the luxury but the downtowner gets the crappy small house. How is this fair? Think about it, everything, I mean EVRYTHING is equal.
Work is not the problem here, wage slavery is. Working for a cure for diseases, working on a beautiful piece of art, working on technology so we don't need to slave away, that is work. Wage slavery is sitting for hours on end, to make a little money for yourself, and a lot of money for your boss.
also to add, that work is absolutely REQUIRED. Nature wont let you off the hook and give you stuff to live, you have to work to deserve what you get. if you dont work, then you dont live. thats it... thats about as simple as it gets. You really have to think about all this.
What most people really need to do is get unplugged from the idea that they have to buy everything they need. You don't have to buy a house, ever thought of saving enough to move out to the country and build your own? Medieval farmers had a house because they built them! Look up cobb building and other alternative ways of building and you will be amazed at how cheap it can be, and so freeing, to know you can build your own shelter. Get friends in on it and let them learn that they can do the same. A dear friend of mine did just that, and now has a beautiful, secure, safe home for herself and her children. Built by the labor of her own hands, the help of good friends, and little money. She has been able to work part time to get what they needed for that. Weekend work parties are most fun, after a hard day of really productive work, at something done for love, a beer and a bonfire and potluck dinner, wonderful!! And no, we don't need the latest car, the latest clothes, the latest stuff. I drive and 1978 Oldsmobile delta88. Great car, great to drive, and just as good as it was when it was new. I don't care that other people might wonder why I am driving such an old car, I don't need the newest $40,000.00 car, that's crazy. I do grow some of my own food, I am looking into getting chickens and raising a pig, and other animals for food. And man! Do what you love, I am an artist, and also raising beautiful dogs that I sell for a little income. When you unplug from the idea of needing more, you will be amazed at how well you can live on a little money.
From the Daoist master Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu): "I have a huge tree," said Hui Tzu to Chuang Tzu, "the kind people call shu. Its huge trunk is so gnarled and knotted that no measuring string can guage it, and its branches are so bent and twisted they defy compass and square. It stands right beside the road, and still carpenters never notice it. These words of yours, so vast and useless - everyone ignores them the same way." "Haven't you ever noticed a wildcat or a weasel?" replied Chuang Tzu. "It crouches low, hiding, waiting. Suddenly it springs up and bounds east and west, uphill and downhill, centering its trap, and finally it makes the kill there in its net. Then there's the yak: huge as clouds hung clear across the sky. It's mastered immensity, but it can't even catch a mouse. Now you've got this huge tree, and you agonize over how useless it is. Why not plant it in a village where there's nothing at all, a land where emptiness stretches away forever? Then you could be no one drifting lazily beside it, roam boundless and free as you doze in its shade. It won't die young from the axe. Nothing will harm it. If you have no use, you have no grief."
a lot of problems but no solutions . . . can anyone offer something that would solve the issue . . . I can, but I wait to hear from you first . . . btw my verification words were "kind ghettoes", how appropriate
Learn the tune "Big Rock Candy Mountain" Hum it several times a day at your desk.
I work 3rd shift and it fucking sucks...
Anyone heard of an expression "find a job you like and you won't have to work for the rest of your life"? I grew up in a moderately humane socialist/communist economy outside "the iron curtain" and now live/work in a moderately humane capitalist one. They don't differ as much as one would expect and following principles worked well for me in both: - Find the job/line of work/industry you enjoy working at and stick to it. - Don't change careers just because there's more money in a different field/industry. - Balance work/life. If you need to work overtime to afford something - you don't need it. - Don't spend what you haven't earned or are guaranteed to earn in short term. - Control your debt - don't owe more than you can afford to service. Don't borrow from long term needs to satisfy short term desires. - Don't fall for hype. "Lifestyle" is what you make of it, not what infomercials tell you it is. - Never buy anything just to own it. The value of any possession in only in what you can do with it. A house you don't see because you work 12 hours a day is worthless. - Never try to keep up with the Joneses, because Joneses likely lead a very miserable life, despite appearances. No rocket science here - all (un)common sense. Work does not and should not have to be something you dread and do just to pay the bills.
"The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery." - Bertrand Russell
Life's a cycle ain't it? Birth!...School!...Work!...Death! (The Godfathers)
Work is something you do. Work shouldn't define you and should never become you. This is a reality factor for most people. By God, I can think of a million things I'd rather do than work, but thinking of those alternatives make me think of all the things I wouldn't have done if I didn't work. Work is something you do... Be creative and enjoy the things you do do!
work sucks ..... hard to live with it ..... harder to live without it ..... but i have plans to minimize my work ..... such as live within your means ..... you dont need a V8 truck to get around ..... you dont need a 5 bedrooms house when there are only 3 people
I think the problem here is a much more insidious one than many people seem to think, and that problem has to be the connotations that we've attached to the word "work." When we think of work, we immediately loathe the concept because it immediately brings up images, ingrained in us at a tender young age in elementary school, of sitting at a desk, cubicle, computer, or whatever else, doing pointless, mind-numbing, machine work. This results in an emotional deadness that makes the only satisfying option after a day of work to sit in front of the television and drool on a microwaved dinner. Work doesn't have to be this way, but because of the system we live in, the majority of jobs are going to be like this, and the majority of people are going to do them because they haven't the independence of thought to realize that they hate it, they can't think of it any other way, or they just don't have the honest nads to put in the effort to do something more fulfilling with their lives... this would take "work," and since that word is a dirty word, we just settle with the easy way out. It's not easy to liberate yourself from the machine-labor society of today... society itself seems determined that you remain a dead cog. And they're right about one thing: it does take some level of work to survive, there's no question about that, we haven't reached a resource-plenty society yet. And I say: why not make that work something you actually enjoy, something that actually fulfills you? It takes effort to know what would actually fulfill you, but why not go the extra mile? It's better than the alternatives of remaining a cog in the system, being a welfare-monger, or working in the illegal underground to be just as much of a cog, only with the illusion of being outside of the system.
Work casn be good and fulfilling when it is good and fulfilling; otherwise, it is futile and ridiculous.
more people die due to work then -war -crime -road accidents i think the only 2 things that kill more than a job are alcohol and nicotin... at least i wont die working...
It's hard to enjoy time off when friends and family are constantly asking you 'why aren't you working? why aren't you working? i feel i have to make up some lowsy excuse like 'i hurt my wrist' to buy some time off (normally a few months, then back to construction for a few months) I am now out of work and am buying a unit outright close to the beach (tx to inheritance from pop, not from work) and moving away from friends and family to escape city bullshit. Let you guys know how that goes
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
Someone has to "work" so you guys can put your self justified babble up on this site. Rather than imposing people to gain "spiritual freedom", enlighten yourselves to the fact that people have to work for your sorry existence. The world owes you nothing. I do not agree with capitalism and the downfall of america is coming very shortly and it will be glorious and if you want, you can blame it all on Nixon and a generation of self absored consumer idiots. This generation sadly only listens to fear, exactly what the aforementioned quote "warning"(fight club) was trying to point out. Im 21.
I wish I could find work more meaningful to me, because I don't want to live life just for the sake of living; I'd rather accomplish something meaningful or I may as well not exist at all. If I can avoid it, I don't want to work all my days as a cashier at a checkout or sitting in some cubicle filling out forms. I don't want to reach the end and wonder, "why did I bother?"
Work isn't work if you love what you're doing. The problem is just like it says in the goodfellas quote. Nobody has balls. Have the balls to go for your dream. What do you LOVE to do? Find a way to make money doing that and you won't work a day in your life.
I would have to say, as someone who knows, that one of the most emotionally, physically, and mentally draining jobs in America is fast-food. I am a Supervisor/Manager at a fast-food job. I work 9 hrs a day on my feet non-stop without even one half hour break. I did well in High school and graduated college with a 3.5 GPA. I have been applying EVERYWHERE that focus's on my concentration: Writing. I love it. I would take on all the stress of that world, to do something I love. Art is amazing and I continue to read, write, and breathe every aspect of darkness and light relating to art. I have worked at this job to help me through college and now it has become my livelihood. I pay my student loans, electricity,internet,phone,rent, and gas on eight dollars an hour. I have always been responsible with money, but my bills are draining me. Problem is, I have been experiencing job burnout. The symptoms are pretty nasty. I continue to deal with unreasonable and somewhat un-educated assholes that tell me I am stupid when several of the things they complain about are prices or how slow we are when I have to deal with less people to save money on labor. ALL is out of my control.People don't NEED fast-food to survive but America is a service economy. It's disgusting and ridiculous. I came here to find quotes about shitty jobs. Luckily, I found those who relate. I understand that work needs to exist in order for any of us to survive. Let's be honest. We don't need fast-food greasiness. We don't need to buy the best designer clothes. We don't need to serve to greediness while killing ourselves at the same time. If no one believes me, job burnout kills; look it up. When catastrophe's occur on this planet, the ones who will survive will be the farmers who produce food. Not the wealthy corporations that file paperwork and count their millions while exploiting those who destroy themselves for piss poor excuse of a paycheck. You don't like it, take a walk in my shoes for years, and see how strained the fabric of your being truly is. So FUCK our societies. It really just isn't worth giving in.
I just want to have fun and work hasn't been fun yet...
"Money is nothing but a small piece of laziness. The more one has, the better one will be able to become acquainted with the bliss of laziness. In capitalism work is organised in such a way that it does not permit everyone equal access to laziness. The only ones who can enjoy this laziness are those who are protected by capital. The capitalist class has liberated itself from the work from which the whole of mankind has to liberate itself." Kazimir Malevich, the painter of "Black Square on White", from his book 'Laziness - the Real Human Truth' that was written in 1921 and that was only published in Russia two years ago.
wow, this thread has died out. wonder how many of these posters have become unemployed or forced into working three jobs over the last five years. it would be interesting to find out. of course, no one is ever honest on the internet so it would be a mute point. All hail capitalism!
QUOTES: "Considering the alternatives, I prefer self-employment to employment. After all, you usually make a lot more when you work for yourself and have much more independence. But my real choice is comfortable and creative unemployment." - Steve Solomon "Perhaps it is time the 'work ethic' was redefined and its idea reclaimed from the banal men who invoke it." - Studs Terkel, Working "The United States desperately needs a public discussion that challenges the prevailing belief that a person's worth and social contribution can and should be measured primarily (or exclusively) by his or her income from paid work." - Katherine McFate, "A Debate we Need," from Philippe Van Parijs' What's Wrong With a Free Lunch? "There is more for us in life than the nine to five work ethic and a life of clocks, finances, and shallow living." - Tom Brown Jr., The Quest "I would like to see people refusing to work in any job they felt was wrong. I would like to see work-dodgers: honourable and brave people who refuse to continue to feed this monstrous culture." - Chris Busby, in his foreword to Molly Scott Cato's book Seven Myths About Work
"Every man has a right to decide his own destiny, and in this judgement there is no partiality"- Bob Marley In the end it doesn't matter how much or how little you worked. It's all about how you feel.
I have never seen a herse with a luggage rack that had a damn thing on it...
I totally agree, it'd be the supercool life to just drink some Pepsi and surf the webz. The internet and infrastructure are great examples of chillllllling out. These quotes are an example of pandering. Work is relative. If you can't have dreams and work you are extremely passionless and exceedingly average. You create the way you see your world, you make everything what it is.That is unless you're unimaginative and base your life solely on quotes from people who are completely detached from the subject matter they are commenting on. You all sound like a bunch of victims.
The book "Four Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferriss formalised and gave a blueprint to many of the sentiments expressed here, especially the genuine futility of embracing hard work for the sake of it, as though it was a moral issue, I highly recommend it. Stress kills more people than RTAs and war combined, and have you noticed that those who argue for harder work usually never mean for themselves? Just like those who bash welfare claimants would never trade for that supposedly cushy lifestyle... My fave quote: "Up in the sky / Is the devil's eye / And he sees a berk / And he makes him work." S'all.
Work is like a garden full of cactus you don't want to fall into