The Lilies of the Field
by Jason GodeskyThe Martian Anthropologist has a very interesting article up, titled, “Man’s Real Natural State,” which includes a fascinating anecdote about the island of Tahiti. The Martian wrote, “Of course, not being civilized, the islanders did not have a ‘work week.’ When they got hungry, they simply walked over to a breadfruit tree, and ate. Those lazy heathens.” He then records the actions a certain European, J.M. Orsmond, who “believing that ‘a too bountiful nature on Moorea diminishes men’s natural desire to work’, ordered all breadfruit trees to be cut down.” The article also includes this analysis:
By this time the population of Tahiti had been reduced by syphilis, tuberculosis, smallpox and influenza from the 200,000 estimated by Cook to 18,000. After thirty years of missionary rule, only 6,000 remained. Otto Von Kotzebue, leader of a Russian expedition into the Pacific in 1823, long before the decline had reached its terminal phase, wrote: “A religion like this which forbids every innocent pleasure and cramps or annihilates every mental power is a libel on the divine founder of Christianity.”
The Martian Anthropologist asks, “When is the last time you saw a bird slaving away for 50 hours a week? Has it ever occurred to you to ask why humans have to, but the other animals on this planet don’t have to?” Or, to put it into the words of another that many Americans claim they respect a great deal, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” In Ishmael, Daniel Quinn’s sage repeats this verse and asks, “Did you think your god was joking?”
For some time, WhyWork.org has been asking that loaded question that Principal Financial Service’s television ad campaign raises, but refuses to answer. After all, it’s unanswerable. We toil to provide for families that we don’t get to see–because we’re too busy working. We invest in a future that never seems to come. We put away for a continual tomorrow that stretches always and forever into the inescapable future.
No other species does this; until very recently, most humans never did this. Only with the triumph of civilization have we discovered our “natural” state: to spend the bulk of our lives as units of labor that G-d put on earth for the benefit of his chosen people: capitalist entrepreneurs and the socio-economic elite.
Of course, the reason we work is clear. The food is all locked up. Civilization passes out tokens that can be redeemed for prizes at the counter, if you play the game. But now none of us know how to survive outside this surreal, horrific Chuck E. Cheese’s, leaving us slaves to those games. Unlocking the food means redefining what we mean by “food.” It means ending our dependence on others. Benjamin Shender wrote on this site less than a month ago:
In the specific case of civilization, in particular American-brand civilization, food is only that which humans specifically raised to be food. The only exceptions to this rule being fish and occasionally hunted meat. But even in those exceptions many only fish or hunt for “sport” and have no intention of ever eating their victims. But this meme is what holds so many of us in our shackles. Even once we’ve reached the point in which we can look at a forest and know that it is full of food, this knowledge is worthless if we’ve never learned what is edible in that forest, and therefore “food,â€? and what is not edible, and therefore “not food.â€? Ultimately this knowledge is the lever by which we can pry open the bars of our cage. Once we reach the point that we only have to walk down the street to earn our dinner, civilization only offers stress and pain, both of which we can do with out.
We work because we have to work; we have to work, because we are dependent. Only independent human beings can relate to one another without power or exploitation. Self-reliance is the cornerstone of freedom. We have been raised to make us dependent. We have not been taught the basic things our ancestors learned before they even reached puberty: everything they needed to know to live as their own person, to live as free people. Without that knowledge, we must depend on others. Without that knowledge, we can never be free. But once we have that knowledge, we can never be quite so enslaved again.
It’s not the food that’s locked up (an error of Quinn’s) it’s our minds (as you make clear in your account of the deomonstration in Washington) and also the land. If the land was open (in the Georgist sense), we would have access to farm it and the incentive to husband it sustainably.
Comment by Keith Thomas — 10 October 2005 @ 1:17 AM
Thought:
Ownership is being able to deny others.
(this thing is mine so you can’t have it.)
Ownership creates Scarcity
Scarcity creates a need to barter.
( I only have chickens, you only have ducks… let’s trade.)
Barter leads to money.
Money leads to corporations.
Therefore, corporations exist to deny things to people.
And, The perfect corporate state is where everything can be denied to anyone.
Comment by James Auld — 10 October 2005 @ 5:21 AM
I was sitting with a friend last night, and he remarked on his up and coming “day off.”
This struck a chord in me, for reasons I didn’t at the time understand, so I did what any good thinker would do; I analyzed the hell out of it. Here’s what I came up with:
Calling your weekend “days off” implies a profound worldview in which work is considered to be the natural state, and any time not spent with your shoulder to the grindstone is considered to be special and unlike the default state of things. This worldview, one fundamentally focused on work, is why we don’t call our working periods “days on.”
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 10 October 2005 @ 7:27 AM
A while back I caught myself using a phrase that offended me. I was ashamed, but in the interest fettering out wisdom I will share it:
Emphasis added.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 10 October 2005 @ 11:50 AM
The food being locked up is a mental block by defintion. You can’t lock up the food, the entire planet is made up of food. There is simply too damn much to put it all under lock and key literally. But when you look at a field of danelions and see weeds where there could be office buildings instead of food where there could be stew….
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 10 October 2005 @ 11:52 AM
obviously, i think i can say that here, H/G(and maybe a very low intesity horticulturealist addition) existance is without work per se, as a seperate category of activity. it sould also be noted that it is possible to live as a scavenger of the wastes of civilization wich is in such excess. although this does not solve the essencial problem of dependence, and it is a step in that direction.
Comment by anarcho-feralist — 10 October 2005 @ 7:56 PM
Nicely said, and a hell of a great blog here. It’s better than the usual that I read. I’m adding you to my main links later today (blogs I read).
Comment by Martian — 12 October 2005 @ 1:24 PM
Thanks! You’ve been on my own reading list for quite a while yet. You’re in the blogroll, too–if you don’t see it, it’s only because each load is a random sample from each category.
Oh, and as an aside … just in the quote above, G-d has dedicated more ink and stronger language against the 40-hour work week than you’ll find from the most thorough scouring of scripture for condemnations of homosexuality.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2005 @ 3:16 PM
Great post. Well said. Adding to my links as well, thanks to Martian’s nice shout out to you!
Comment by thordora — 12 October 2005 @ 3:28 PM
Thanks! (BTW–love the Martian Man-hunter avatar!)
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2005 @ 8:08 PM
Hi,
I came to your site from a link in the Martian Anthropologist and I’m really glad I did. Fascinating post. Though, not being religious in any sense I can still see the wisdom in the words.
My only question is this.
With the 6 or 7 billion people currently scrabbling, slaving and ekeing an existance out on this rock do you believe that there would be enough ‘food’ to go around if we all went back to relying on nature? Nature in it’s natural sense, (as opposed to organised farming - nature beaten into compliance), which is what I think you’re suggesting.
I have no evidence either way, although I suspect there would have to be a signficant fall in numbers before a true ‘return to nature’ would be viable.
Comment by Journeyman — 12 October 2005 @ 8:15 PM
Absolutely not.
Though, the question is rather spurious. There’s going to be a massive die-off in the near future, whether we like it or not. When it’s over, the answer will be yes–because the die-off will only stop when the answer becomes yes.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2005 @ 8:25 PM
Great entry. Thanks to Martian Anthropologist for pointing it out. I have no issue with working, expending effort, I’m not “lazy”… or, er, not any “lazier” than average. BUT - it’s true, there’s a movement that’s occured in the last few hundred years, that breaks up our lives. We work/toil for someone else, for 40-50-60 hours per week, just to make, as said above, some “tokens” which allow us to buy the things we need. But then we have only a few waking hours per week to actually do ALL The rest of our work to survive - cooking, cleaning, paying bills. My thinking is that even at the founding of this (the US) nation, many people had much more time that they didn’t have to be “working”, and that allowed for intellectual growth, philosophical thinking, and is what lead to a pretty profoundly unique foundation for this country. One that if we still adheared to, we’d be much better off.
So - why the change? Well, one thing that this does is it makes it very difficult to stay abreast of what’s going on around us.
Who can discharge theri duties as a citizen, to keep a close guarded watch on the elected officials who guide out lives, if we’re too busy “working” for most of our waking hours every day.
And - sure, ther’es TV, Movies, Video Games, Sport, socializing… I have heard arguments that we can curb these “leisure” activities..
But studies show that the more complex an organism’s mind, the more down time it needs. I’d argue we are kept so busy we are not even getting enough “leisure” activities to maintain our mental health and balance. Let alone then having time to participate in society as citizens.
Comment by Nik — 13 October 2005 @ 11:51 AM