This Isn't Living, This Is Dying!

Invisible Cages

Any free society should be based on the concept of voluntary action but voluntary action alone does not lead to a free society. Volunteerism has been popularized by the concept that you own yourself. If you own yourself then you should be able to sell your time body and hence your liberty. The problem with this argument is that you don't own yourself, you are yourself! To say that you own something implies that there is an owner and the thing that is owned. You can't sell your labor because you are your labor. Otherwise people would go back to sleep when their alarm clock goes off, while their labor goes off to work. While the argument of self-ownership sounds interesting and even implies the concept of liberty, the reality is the opposite. The very idea of self-ownership turns people into commodities. It strips the humanity out of humans. People can now be bought and sold in the market place. On a larger scale the commodification of human beings has striped the humanity out of society, leaving a landscape devoid of human qualities and a people completely alienated from each other, a society in which we exist inside invisible cages.

Thank Freddie

The commodification exploitation of people has always existed but it was capitalized by Frederick Taylor in his theory of scientific management. In the late 1800's, Taylor complained that workers were lazy and could produce exponentially more by tough management. He studied the motions of workers to find out how to increase their productivity. It turns out that if an employee performs the same task over and over, then he could manufacture more product. Anyone who refused to conform to Taylor's methods were fired and had their wages reduced. Soon a new class of managers emerged while the highly experienced labor force was transformed into unskilled workers. It was Taylor's belief that all would be benefited by his methodology. To his surprise with the increase in productivity and profits the workers' wages were stagnant and even decreased. Scientific management along with a new class of managers quickly spread to all sectors of the economy. All of society, the schools, the workplace, the government, could be turned into large assembly lines. The fast food industry today epitomizes Taylor's legacy. Behind the counter kitchens are geared so that workers don't have to move or even think. Each person performs the same repetitive task endlessly like robots.

Cubicle Hell

The factory of yesterday has been transformed into the high-rise and the cubicle. The factory foreman has been replaced by the suit and tie. Almost every job including office work has been reduced to a monotonous task, typing, printing, going to meetings and generating reports that nobody reads. It's all the same every day, these dungeons dressed in fluorescent lights, phony smiles and mundane tasks. We were told that if we went to college we would become marine biologists, physiologists and writers. With the exception of a few, nothing could be further from the truth. The average student debt today is over $23,000. All those wannabe artists, sociologists and investigative journalists have been prepped for the reality of the cubicle. Not for their choosing but because they must pay back their loans. These people will be herded into sterile offices like animals because the world doesn't want truly creative people. The private sector needs people who can write memos, push paper and calculate profits and losses. The managers will impose work tempos, production quotas, you punch in, you punch out, surf the internet, you'll stay late. You'll day dream about what life could have been because this isn't living, this is dying.

Power(less)

While the government is usually blamed for limiting individual freedom, nothing attacks human liberty and sovereignty more than the work place. A person can buy you and extract your labor, an entire system of ultra-surveillance ensures your obedience to your superiors, regulations are all prevailing. You are told when to show up to work, when you can leave and what you must do in the meantime. They watch over you, inspect you, spy on you. They punish, forbid, correct, assess, number and abuse. Your told what to wear, trained how to talk and you are forced to compete with other workers. When you talk back or make a mistake you can be disciplined or scolded as if you were an infant. To paraphrase Bob Black, discipline is what the factory and the office and the store share with the prison and the school and the mental hospital. It is something historically original and horrible. It was beyond the capacity of demonic dictators such a Nero, Genghis Khan and Ivan the terrible. For all their bad intentions they just didn't have the machinery to control their subjects as thoroughly as modern despots do. This is the complete annihilation of human dignity, transforming people into prisoners. Even the most totalitarian states never had this much dominion over their subjects.

Decay of Human Potential

We used to get injured on the playground, now we get occupational overuse syndrome, muscular skeletal disorder, repetitive strain, tendonitis, cervical radiculopathy. We have problems with our eyes and our spine that even the best doctors can't figure out. The sedentary lifestyle is the new trend along with its legion of diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Performing the same tasks day after day, week after week, year after year is an assault on the human psyche. Nothing can be more detrimental to human growth, creativity, personal progress than the tedium of the workplace. When a person carries out the same monotonous job they're naturally drained of energy at the end of each day. It's no wonder then that the average person spends over 4 hours per day watching television, consider that. We spend 8 hours at work, 8 hours sleeping and after preparing for work, commuting to work and eating at home we only have 5 hours to ourselves and 4 of those are spent in front of the television. We actually live in a society that nurtures and maximizes stupidity and stunts human potentiality.

The 1%

Repetition is the enemy of every worker, the chains of humanity. Yet it is the liberator of the business executives and managers. Instead of using technology to free individuals, as it could be, the private sector has turned people into gears and commodities while they are the beneficiaries. These people make a living off of our lives, stripping us of our dignity, stealing our meaningfulness and seizing our essence.

New Religion

Frederick Taylor's legacy has become ubiquitous; in the last 100 years his methods have been studied, improved and refined with immense precision. Scientific management is today's god; its technique has saturated everything. Our schools, our workplace, our government and even our lives are regimented with this insanity. We can see it all around us in the cars we drive, in the advertisements we see, in the government that doesn't work and in the homes we live. When something is so pervasive we become entangled in its net. Every day is the same, a repetition with no end, dulling the person until they feel like they are living in a dark haze under water.

The American Dream is Dead

We were told if we worked hard enough we could experience the American dream. What we weren't told is that there isn't one and there never was one. A new reality awaits our young where wealth and equality has been celebrated and deified, yet inequality has created the separation of power and power, more than anything else, limits liberty.

Transformation

The workplace needs to be transformed not by deskilling laborers as Taylor did. Instead we need to liberate workers. Every employee should have the opportunity to participate in a variety of jobs from manual to intelligent labor. Workers should have equity in the workplace so they can call it their own. They should not be perceived as mere automata or commodities on a factory line but as living beings. We should be building technology to liberate not to enslave. All tedious and unwanted jobs should be reduced or automated. Most of all we should be producing not for the market but for people.

The Time is Now

It is important not to completely dismiss Taylor and his method, productivity is important. After all both the US and the soviets under Lennon used Taylor's methods to pull themselves out of the dark ages. However there comes a time in every society to transform such barbaric and childish techniques with moderation and compassion. That time is now. We cannot talk about liberty if we can't even mention the place we spend a third of our life.

The Return

"But its voluntary" you say. That is always the answer you hear repeated and repeated. "It's voluntary, we live in freedom". No we don't live in freedom, we live in invisible cages, we live in slavery. While it is true that every free society should be voluntary, volunteerism is not enough. Labor should be humanities highest aspiration, the basis of ones dignity. Until the day comes when the thinker works and the worker thinks. Free intelligent labor can emerge and humanity can once again be instituted.