WORK is a destructive, nihilistic fetish for metabolic activity
Wretched Obsession Rouses Kali
Originally, and for almost all existence, there was no such thing as work. People lived. They did what they needed to, and then they hung out together. The average day for a hunter-gatherer would involve a few hours of wandering about with friends and family, picking berries, and stabbing small animals to death. Maybe they’d light a fire later, a sort of communal barbecue. Fights would break out, to sort out the primate hierarchy. They’re all things people do for leisure now. For happiness, or its simulation. At some point, someone decided hunter-gathering just wasn’t good enough. They wanted more, and they wanted it from other people.
At first, those with this psychopathy would be excluded from the tribe. Killed or exiled to prevent the bad spirit from spreading. However, at some point, things changed. Someone with smarts had spotted patterns in the sky. Things to do with the sun, moon, and wandering stars. Knowledge was kept within the family, its predictive capacity used to frighten the rest of the tribe. Subsistence became unacceptable. Other things had to be done. There were gods in the heavens to celebrate, or appease. Altars were constructed. Fresh fruit, vegetables, and animals, had to be brought before the new priests. And if the gods weren’t sufficiently satiated, they might demand humans, and their babies. The community was pushed to undertake extra activity. Harvesting more. Hunting more. Breeding more animals for slaughter. What once was good for the gut was now good for the god. (Und gut für das Priesteramt).
The priesthood organized the tribe, but they needed extra hands to administer their authority. They appointed guards and soldiers, others in administrative roles. Each rewarded for loyalty, or brutally punished for transgression. The ploy of the priesthood was internalized. They became em-ploy-ees.
Regular contact with the glowing gods in the heavens bequeathed the priests with special information. They could beckon the moon, predict the changing seasons, forecast strange celestial events, and navigate the land and sea. The people were taught to learn magic rituals and dances, or update their old ones. It was a means for embodying belief in the new gods; a powerful method for programming the subconscious. Outposts on hills, and pyramidal panopticons, helped keep an eye on things. Thus, the continued authority of the priesthood was ensured. After many generations, nobody remembered what it was like before the gods arrived. Now and then, a handful of folk would see through the charade, but it was a lonesome realization. Confiding in others was dangerous. Some fought violently and died. Others hid in the wilderness, or committed suicide. So the gods denounced those things too.
Prolonged activity helped stave off thought, but the new busy-ness had to be monitored and directed. Who did what? What was their value to the priests? What was the worth of their lives? Tallies were kept, birthing a money system. Priests became kings and emperors. Their bloodlines, an intergenerational red carpet. Their DNA, the Royal road to privilege. Yet, their mystical secrets were little more than knowledge of the stars and control of the issuance of currency. Soon, sacrifice wasn’t enough. An additional entry fee to the temple was required. Lending began. A new way to feed greed. A new form of shackle to control the minds of the minions.
Some objected on moral grounds. They saw through the trick. Called it usury. Uttered moral objections and dictums, like ‘… lend to them without expecting to get anything back’. A strange translation, because that isn’t what lending means now, is it? We’d call that a gift. Although, today, even with gifts, people expect something in return.
Lending and debt accelerated demand for more. It formed the basis of a new ontology. Growth was good. It was god’s will. Populations expanded dramatically. With expansion came war and conquest on a large scale. Empire building. The taking in of the outside and rendering it to submission. Dominions of domination. All driven by a beastly appetite. An abstract gut, never replete. The adversary to the concept of enough.
Technology advanced, but the daemon giving rise to this activity remained unchanged. Soon, the beast of insatiability spread across the globe, capturing whole civilizations, or murdering them. Growth was injected into new environments. More work. More people. Gradually, all land was captured. All activity controlled. Various means were put in place to prevent people from living freely and escaping service to the hungry ghoul. Earls and dukes. Lords of the land. Protectors of the state. Private armies. Fences. Gamekeepers. But psychological control was the real power. You served god, not your gut. You worked for god, or gods, to prove your utility. Otherwise you were worthless. Denizens, vagabonds, and gypsies were demonized. Tortured. Executed. Hung out as examples for all to see. The wrath of the deity was merciless.
In fear, people bowed their heads and ‘just got on with it’. They aligned with the program. Didn’t dare stick their necks out. Soon, the whole world was full to the brim. Cities everywhere. Nations centred around giant termite mounds and ant’s nests. Great phalluses of iron, glass, and concrete. Pulling in the world around them. Consuming it. Spitting out filth. As resources diminished, competition became increasingly savage. God was forgotten, but the worship of growth continued. People stepped over each other to climb the new, abstract pyramids. The higher they got, the more intensely they were watched, and the more paranoid they became. Great wars broke out. The malignantly evil enjoyed it, but nobody was truly happy or satisfied. It was never enough.
A new world had been birthed from a nescient womb. One of great technology, terrifying weapons, and complex systems of bureaucratic enslavement. Collaboration was fleeting, and only conducted in self-interest, that being growth. These relationships were temporary, cooperative structures, built on sand, easily washed away by floods of greed. Inevitably, great conglomerations with voracious appetites clashed. This novel expression of ‘humanity’, built on indomitable appetite, now owes more than four times its total annual productivity in public and private debt. There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth.
In this brave, new Sparta, 400 million children are physically or psychologically abused by their parents or caregivers regularly. They must learn that their god is cruel. Violent. Unhappy. Life is for suffering and servitude, not for living. Over 10% of children suffer from mental illness, increasing to 25% of adults, as the remnants of their childhood freedoms are lost and they are forced into work to pay for their existence. A contract they weren’t involved in drawing up, and never consented to; once called slavery. Meaningless, abstract jobs, that keep the dark millstone of the appetite machine turning. Grinding. Metabolizing everything in its path.
The waste from this metabolic work, toxic pollution, has reached the highest clouds and the deepest oceans. Clean water is running out. Hundreds of millions go hungry. Breathing air causes disease. Billions are sick and deeply unhappy. A spirit whispers quietly, ‘Isn’t this enough suffering? There’s no need to toil and sweat’. Its angelic voice drowned out by bombs of anger and frustration, and screams of sorrow and pain. A tragedy that will escalate into a slaughter beyond imagining. And still, they call it virtue.
