"If I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work:" a loving meditation on my job

I am a corporate slave. 

However, as my bum sits in the ergonomically designed chair behind the ergonomically designed computer desk, designed thusly in the recognition that the bum was not meant to withstand such violent lethargy for 8 hours each day, my mind is mostly free to wander (little mental engagement is needed for such tedious and inconsequential data entry).

It wanders many places, but as suggested by my last post, of late it's been exploring the idea of purpose. Purpose. Clearly, my job is not my (capital P) Purpose, which is the inspired action where internal purpose and external purpose merge. My job is an external purpose. That purpose being, of course, to make some money to fulfill other external purposes. My point is not to complain.

I recently dug up a CD done by Ani DiFranco with the words of Utah Phillips (The Past Didn't go Anywhere, 1996, Righteous Babe Records Inc). Phillips was a self-identified anarchist, a beautiful speaker and poet. His unique way of looking at societal structures is really blowing my mind and I am meditating on the following recollection from Phillips of a conversation he had with someone who we would consider to be on the fringes of society.

"...And that's where he said to me (he'd been tramping since 1927), he said, 'I told myself in '27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labour I will henceforth cease to work.' You don't have to go to college to figure these things out. He said, 'I learned when I was young that the only true life I have is the life of my brain. But if it's true that the only true life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for 8 hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!'"

It made me think of this article I read in the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks back about the "modern phenomenon of nonsense jobs."

What are these statements pointing to? Where is it all going? What does it mean? And why am I bringing it up?

These statements point to the recognition that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way much of the world operates. Because, why did I come into this human body? To valiantly serve this corporation in whom I own no stakes and to whose values I am vehemently opposed?

And where is it going? Well, it is going towards a shift. And that shift is on the level of me.

What does it mean? It means I am responsible for the freedom of my own mind and, in time, for the freedom of my own body. 

Of course, I bring this up because, lest I be a lethargic bum on an ergonomic chair, maybe I can start contributing to society in some meaningful way.

Love,

R