Why is it that we are not paid work-tokens every time we consume? Since what we buy needs to be made the two are sides of the same coin.
You might argue that manufacture must preceed consumption so logically we can only consume what we have made, so it makes sense to get spending tokens every time we work.
But as we see in the current economy we often spend tokens that we have actually worked for yet (i.e. debt). A promise to do the work tomorrow suffices. So why can't that work in reverse? We promise to consume tomorrow for work we do today.
In this world a doctor has to consume £50 worth of goods before they can do an hours work (or promise to condume). The road sweeper on the other hand only has to promise to consume £10 worth of goods before they are allowed to do their one hour of work.
The obvious result of this economy, and the reason for the question, is that everyone would just consume and never cash in their accumulating work tokens.
It illustrates an obvious but seemingly forgotten fact that we don't actually like working. Kings and aristrocracy characterise themselves through their non working, and the social heirachy is manifest in making other people work for you. They hardly pay people to sleep with their wives, it is the things they don't want to do which are passed on.
Employment is characterised by doing something we don't want to do, and we receive not consumption tokens as an economic balance, but a reward that encourages us to do such a thing. At its root the cost of not-working is starvation; the aristicracy force employment by threat of death.
This is enabled through a concept called "property". This is intrical to the system of illusion that has evolved which I was suggesting yesterday is the wrong direction in the wrong ocean for Mankind (where Man is genus Homo not sex as opposed to woman). Property is a subtle one that I was making some in roads into understanding this summer, and can't complete here, partly because as is so often the way these days I'm actually short of time! ironic since I don't "work" anymore. Must leave for London in an hour.
Shopping in todays society is not just about consumption, it is about ownership. Thus the manufacturing industry has to make copies of everything so that everyone can have one. This is the absurdity of property system - the endless duplication of things. In my life at the moment I use a jacussi, steam room, shower, sauna, swimming pool, library (with 100,000 books), internet, am chauffeur driven, and have millions of square miles of lakes and fields in which to spend my time. All this for a few pounds a week - because I share it all. Public swimming pool, library, toilets, transport, parks and gardens etc. I have never bought any clothes in my life. I simply wear other peoples unwanted clothes that they give me. Infact the only thing I must secure for myself, the only thing I actually consume is food and energy. I use solar power for the meagre high efficiency lighting in the garage and wind up radio etc. Am working on an easy way to burn veg oil, so still use 8L petrol a year in fuel. Food is minimal - porridge oats, potatoes, beans etc. I do virtually no shopping because I don't care for ownership.
In aristocratic times the primary ownership was land achieved through war. When William invaded England in 1066 he took the land and put the Saxons into slavery. Thus he had his workforce and his taxes. This essentially is the system that exists today. It is biggest yoke around Mans neck, and the biggest flaw in our view of what Life is about.
There is no reason why we can't share everything. John Locke tries to argue that property is logically deductable from Reality. When we eat and assimilate food into "our" bodies then we are at the same time exluding "other" people from "having" it. Such a conception evidently already presupposes an essentialist view of reality - with notions of "my" body, "your" body and the question of "who" "has" the food. The thing which holds Mankind back is this essentialist ignorance which I accept is profound and hard to enlighten from. I struggle myself, but at least intellectually can see the profound wisdom of people like Jesus and Buddha who preach a carefree attitude to the worldly forms. Jesus did not die on the cross to teach us concern for our own bodily welfare! He took our place on the cross to show us that "our" place is not really Ours. This is the foundation of the concept of Love. Amazing that in English that word has almost exactly the opposite usage meaning instead "I want".
We are all familiar with the thought that when starving it is a greater man who gives his food to another than takes for himself. Deep down no-one will argue that the man who makes a sacrifice like this for another is even equal to one who does not, let alone of lower merit that the man who takes for himself. It is profoundly known to our spirit that sharing is the True Nature of Reality. Yet the same twisted logic that gets us to college to study for a job we think we actually want, when deep down we know we would rather not work, gets us to hoard private property believing that this is the way the world is.
I need to make a distinction to clarify something. I tend to call Work the general activity of Mankind, while Job is the contractual agreement with an employer. Basically it is in our nature to work, but we don't want a Job. So it is work to write this blog, it will be work to take a shower in a moment, and it will be work to walk to the train station and visit a temple in London. However I don't even notice it as work, and won't notice a time when I do not work. On the other hand the train driver, who could drive the train as part of his Work, instead probably thinks of it as his Job and will notice the time when that Job ends.
Most of what we do in our Jobs is actually then just Work and we would do it if we were paid or not! How much more absurd the system of property and ownership! And the employers, how do we explain them? Are they just lazy passing all this work onto their employees as Jobs? That I agree is a mystery. I've noticed at work however that managers get very fidgetty and are always looking for things to do, or at least deligate which is their understanding of "work".
I need add also that this discussion is not just an internal critque of the logic of the economy. It began years ago from the issue of the environment. Mankind's labour is the greatest treat to the planet, but the planet is only factored into the economy when it goes wrong, when the damage has been done. Economy and economically driven labour are dangerous. The more I learn about this the more I realise that it is not a new problem, it is just that global economies are so huge now that the problems are blindingly obvious. Small hunter gatherer tribes could overhunt the environment and then more on, and if they failed they would simply die out and be replaced by other tribes. Today we don't have second chances like this. Whenever we work we change some part of the environment. Even typing this blog, while it is a low energy computer, I am using carboniferous sunshine released from oil, I am depleting global resources. The best answer is to work less, and that means have fewer jobs, and that means consume less. Yet economies are only interested in expansion and you look at why and you see the huge gaping holes in our imagination.
So as time runs out I'll recap quickly... looking at "hat life is about" on the local scale we enjoy friendsly relationships, we enjoy games and working together on projects, sharing toys and tools, ideas, free time, we are often very communal, caring and social. But then you look at the "official" picture and it could not be more distorted. It is about individual ownership, power and status, individual success, responsibility and achievement. In the "official" space we face armies of people who have been literally brainwashed to throw all that away as soon as the uniform goes on - people who ultimately manage the concentration camps of global destruction (to put the point over in its harshest form). The live in fear of starvation, and will cut their fellow man down to escape the wrath of their employers, or to gain the shallow praise and status that this affords. Thus wars are fought and Man is set against Man and ignorance prevails.
Yet the right ocean and the right direction are as taught us by the Great Teachers. I speak of my own great teachers Jesus and Buddha. Others have their own. I am ignorant, I do not follow the teachings well, but I know the ocean and I know the direction, and that is why I know I don't follow it very well. Man belongs in a world where ... it is so hard to explain because we have to completely escape the current paradigm... and I am doing that and I don't have time right now. I can't even say that we should not seek private possessions because what is a "private" "possession" when you understand Love? If you need food then you feed yourself, if another needs food then contemporary wisdom says they feed themselves. But does this thinking really exclude the situation where you feed them and they feed you? What in Reality is the difference? In Reality we don't see a difference! How then can we explain the meaning of "private" or "possession"?
A search for happiness in poverty. Happiness with personal loss, and a challenge to the wisdom of economic growth and environmental exploitation.
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