My Work

I have 'a work'... or maybe that should be 'a Work' with a capital W. It was a chap today on his bike who stopped and told me 'I like your work'. This had been said to me last year several times by passing admirers. And I started thinking, 'Hmm, I have a work, my work is taking shape. The problem we have today however is that few of us have the time or the headspace to find our work having been sidelined into the sideshow that is man's awful economy. As soon as you stop feeding this economy and stop labouring you liberate yourself from your chains and begin to free yourself into Work. Work that is natural and enlivening. Labour is the opposite of this: it is exploitative and exhausting. As old Bernard (Steigler) says below: Bullshit jobs are everywhere. It is our duty not to kowtow to them. As many a wizard knew, 'tis better to be an unemployed sorceror than a well-paid rapist.

Never labour! 

You may recognise the bespectacled face of the French philosopher (and former armed robber) Bernard Stiegler talking about 'bullshit jobs'. This guy was the man (sadly he passed away last year) and his Technics & Time (both parts) are massive. He, like Ivan Illich, could articulate the exact moments where man went wrong and started to become a monster. With Illich it was tools, the manipulating hand, and power that did not belong to the body, and with Steigler it was transport, the act of being carried, and the act of sharpening the stone. Lately, Steigler lamented the death of capitalism (or at least its spirit) and the fact that most people had shitty little jobs that did nothing for them except deplete and exhaust their vitality (cf. Jennifer Anniston's flipping the bird to her boss in the film Office Space).

Never labour! Better unemployed (and making use of the time-space that unemployment affords) than someone else's little bitch.