August 28, 2003

  • Those of you who have the entire day to themselves to roam the world unfettered have what I have not: a look at life sans labor—uncluttered.  


     


    Someday I shall destroy work.  No, not my workplace: I’m no disgruntled psycho-maniac.  But I shall rather destroy work itself: my work, your work, the whole damn psycho-social notion of ‘work’.  Outrageous?  Of course!  Why would I endeavor to do such if it were anything less? 


     


    And how shall I do this, you wonder?  Simple.  I’ll break it.  I’ll work until ‘work’ can contain my exuberance no longer.  Then the container ‘work’ will burst and be bust.  Shit, I’m hard at work working to bankrupt work right now!   What a fucking kick-ass endeavor.  But I’m doing good.  You’d be proud of me.  You’d probably say, if you were standing aside as an unlikely witness to my mania: “Does he have any idea what…?”


     


    And my answer would be: No. Yes.


     


    “But what will take the place of work?” you may ask.  “How will we live?”


     


    My answers:  Wonderment.  Better.  Embracing and nurturing a near workless future as an outlook will become our way of life.  Tourism will not be a mere industry but a spiritual vocation.  Vacations will become obsolete except for those sentimental individuals who want to spend two or three weeks a year laboring in voluntary ‘work camps’.  Maternity will never be a ‘leave’ but always a miraculous coming.  There will be no calling in ‘sick days’ but rather a clear focus without need for an alibi on healing.  Small talk will no longer consist of “What do you do for a living? but rather “How do you live for a doing?”  And there’ll be fun, fun, fun, now that daddy took the T-bird away


     


     


    Of course, this vision requires just one minor adjutant precondition: a self-replicating slave army of ever self-improving robots.  Before you object on humanitarian grounds, realize that ‘slave’ and ‘machine’ have been and forever will be virtual synonyms.  So unless you’re the one about to discover a way to invest robots with the eternity of heart and soul, give a big hand and hearty Welcome to Machines.


     


    Now, I just ran 7 miles.  And while I’d like to run another 7 miles and write for 4 hours, unfortunately, the sun is soon setting.  And the Dracula-laborer in me is waiting metaphorically under a shadow of a tree to take wing.  There’s more work to be done tonight, the eternal unzombie in me proclaims.  It’s my fling.  But you’d be proud of me: never once has a drop of blood (or sweat or tears) escaped me without a curse by me of my workworld fate—a curse that will cease the day the bloodsuckers relent.

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