"Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life energy." - Nikola Tesla, quoted in Waking up: Freeing Ourselves from Work, a book by Pamela Satterwhite.
I have noticed the robotic routines people engage in during the week, with weekdays consisting of rushed morning getting selves and kids ready for work and school at crazy early times... coming home or doing afternoon activities designed by others to "improve the self," grabbing mail and newspapers, changing, cooking, eating, watching some tv, or reading a novel or checking out some social networking... and going to bed, and repeating the next day. The weekends are full of home improvement, car maintenance, yard work, going to games, cleaning the big house with all it's stuff that needs to be cleaned...
Someone told us that we need big homes with big yards, and big cars to take ourselves to long-working hours in jobs where others tell us when to work, and allow a few weeks a year which we use for a "getaway" vacation... giving us benefits that pay for exorbitantly unaffordable insurance.
This is the situation for the masses of people who are workers in large companies, and these companies are getting bigger, so that workers are farther and farther from those making decisions and they can't see effects decisions have on people, just how decisions affect numbers.
Capitalist society is structured such that most people are either unemployed or "wage slaves." This leaves little time for creativity, spiritual practice, organizing new groups to change politics/economics or being with oneself.
What is this doing to our self-esteem as a society of humans? How unconscious are we going to go, such that we don't notice that we are not having control of our own lives? How many of us just feel lucky enough that someone would allow us to work in their holy company and are willing to put up with being tired and overwhelmed by all we have to do each day?
Do we realize that the system is designed to wear us down, make us tired, make us busy? Even the fun that is offered is designed to keep us busy... don't think, don't organize, don't meditate, don't sit quietly with kids and have long conversations with them about what is on their mind.
We have been convinced in our society we must be always doing something. We must be productive. We must be active, or something is wrong. If someone asks another to a social event and the other declines, you might hear: "Why, what do you have to do?" It is often assumed that there has to be something that you have to do in order to justify that you won't accept an invitation. Or people ask, "Are you busy Saturday night?" So funny, actually!! The wording we have created around activity and invitations! Again it says, if you aren't busy, then you'd be going to the thing I am going to tell you about!
The news announcers list the great successes of the economy as more full time jobs are provided! People NEED to work 40 hours a week to survive!! This has been our creation. What an arbitrary numbver! Eight hours a day. "As long as you get your eight hours in!" is a mantra for many bosses... I have known many people who kill time at the end of the day, and stay at their desk until the clock strikes 5 o'clock. I have done this many many times at my last job! The boss was watching to see if she was getting her money's worth from me based on how many hours I was at my computer. It felt so degrading. Many jobs are designated as 40 hours... but some of those jobs require 30 hours to do the work, and some require 48 hours a week to do the work. The latter group has workders that don't take any breaks all day long, in order to get it all done; my sister is one of them. But she 'loves' her job! She leaves at 7am each morning, drives, and isn't back til 6pm each evening. This is 11 hours a day. What? How does this make a balanced life? And she takes no breaks at work. What? How is this acceptable, legal, and ok?
I was in the workplace, in cubicles in offices in companies, with offices and CEOs etc. For a time, I worked as an information technology project manager that worked on developing a new payroll/human resource system and I learned about labor laws that were developed for factory workers who needed to sit down and take breaks for their own safety. The law said you should get a 1/2 hour if you work at least 6 hours. Every state is different. Most require 1/2 hour if working 6 or more consecutive hours. Puerto Rico reflects their own culture that values sleep and family, requiring an hour (in Latin America, people would typically go home for the home cooked meal if possible).
Wow, 1/2 an hour break! Doesn't it seems a bit degrading when we are giving our life energy to the job? Then again, the culture of places I have worked is to not take breaks. Eat lunch at your desk and keep working through the breaks because we are busy and have a lot to do. Now if we are passionate our job and it is a sort that doesn't really feel like work because we are stimulated and excited and happy doing it, who needs breaks?
Well that is where I will be. In a role in which I give my life energy to something that is my spiritual calling.
I am happy that more people in my life are creating work schedules that match their energies where they have a lot of say and control over their work... and many of my friends are becoming more aware of the importance of alone time. I love when people do this for themselves, and I am becoming an expert!
I quit working a year ago. I am grateful for the great benefits I had in the mid to late 90s that allowed for great retirement savings and matching program at my company (14% match!). This allows me to ponder, sit, reflect, pray and be. For now. I will be in action again soon, but I do want to SAY NO to the 40 hour work week at someone else's office forever.
If I was in charge of a company that had workers, I would create a culture of taking breaks, and encourage people to stop and gather, and relax and visit and take care of themselves with some movement, yoga, or walks outside on the nice grounds with trees, bushes and birdbaths. There would be some games and... well that gets into a whole other discussion about all the perks that some companies are providing people with at work so they love being there! (Google, e.g.) I would want to hire a lot of part-timers so that people have an option to stay home with kids, or have 2 golf games a week, or do more spiritual practice or work on their guitar skills or read or just sit. We would measure work based on results somehow... not x number of hours, if possible.
I think 4 hours a day is a perfect amount of time to do good productive work... and not all at once.
And I would love our society to have the expectation and structure that every individual would take a year off of work every 7 to 10 years. Do the things we always wanted to do.
Eckhart Tolle was so depressed from working so hard on his PhD, and when he reflected on the I that was so tired, and exhausted, and suicidal, he had a deep inner awakening that there is no "I" but that is illusion. He quit is PhD, walked around London for weeks, sitting on park benches and observing the amazing beauty of everything around him, even the traffic.
These kinds of people are threats to a controlled society, by the way... it is not predictable or controllable, and the authorities have to be in control, they must provide us jobs, and affordable housing and entertainment, and really fancy, smooth black roads.
What if we could live more simply, work less, and just be still part of each day? Is it too painful? Are we too ancy and conditioned? I am getting ancy if I am out too much now. I will find the balance soon enough.
Someone told us that we need big homes with big yards, and big cars to take ourselves to long-working hours in jobs where others tell us when to work, and allow a few weeks a year which we use for a "getaway" vacation... giving us benefits that pay for exorbitantly unaffordable insurance.
This is the situation for the masses of people who are workers in large companies, and these companies are getting bigger, so that workers are farther and farther from those making decisions and they can't see effects decisions have on people, just how decisions affect numbers.
Capitalist society is structured such that most people are either unemployed or "wage slaves." This leaves little time for creativity, spiritual practice, organizing new groups to change politics/economics or being with oneself.
What is this doing to our self-esteem as a society of humans? How unconscious are we going to go, such that we don't notice that we are not having control of our own lives? How many of us just feel lucky enough that someone would allow us to work in their holy company and are willing to put up with being tired and overwhelmed by all we have to do each day? Do we realize that the system is designed to wear us down, make us tired, make us busy? Even the fun that is offered is designed to keep us busy... don't think, don't organize, don't meditate, don't sit quietly with kids and have long conversations with them about what is on their mind.
We have been convinced in our society we must be always doing something. We must be productive. We must be active, or something is wrong. If someone asks another to a social event and the other declines, you might hear: "Why, what do you have to do?" It is often assumed that there has to be something that you have to do in order to justify that you won't accept an invitation. Or people ask, "Are you busy Saturday night?" So funny, actually!! The wording we have created around activity and invitations! Again it says, if you aren't busy, then you'd be going to the thing I am going to tell you about!
The news announcers list the great successes of the economy as more full time jobs are provided! People NEED to work 40 hours a week to survive!! This has been our creation. What an arbitrary numbver! Eight hours a day. "As long as you get your eight hours in!" is a mantra for many bosses... I have known many people who kill time at the end of the day, and stay at their desk until the clock strikes 5 o'clock. I have done this many many times at my last job! The boss was watching to see if she was getting her money's worth from me based on how many hours I was at my computer. It felt so degrading. Many jobs are designated as 40 hours... but some of those jobs require 30 hours to do the work, and some require 48 hours a week to do the work. The latter group has workders that don't take any breaks all day long, in order to get it all done; my sister is one of them. But she 'loves' her job! She leaves at 7am each morning, drives, and isn't back til 6pm each evening. This is 11 hours a day. What? How does this make a balanced life? And she takes no breaks at work. What? How is this acceptable, legal, and ok?
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| http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/meal.htm |
I was in the workplace, in cubicles in offices in companies, with offices and CEOs etc. For a time, I worked as an information technology project manager that worked on developing a new payroll/human resource system and I learned about labor laws that were developed for factory workers who needed to sit down and take breaks for their own safety. The law said you should get a 1/2 hour if you work at least 6 hours. Every state is different. Most require 1/2 hour if working 6 or more consecutive hours. Puerto Rico reflects their own culture that values sleep and family, requiring an hour (in Latin America, people would typically go home for the home cooked meal if possible).
Wow, 1/2 an hour break! Doesn't it seems a bit degrading when we are giving our life energy to the job? Then again, the culture of places I have worked is to not take breaks. Eat lunch at your desk and keep working through the breaks because we are busy and have a lot to do. Now if we are passionate our job and it is a sort that doesn't really feel like work because we are stimulated and excited and happy doing it, who needs breaks?
Well that is where I will be. In a role in which I give my life energy to something that is my spiritual calling.
I am happy that more people in my life are creating work schedules that match their energies where they have a lot of say and control over their work... and many of my friends are becoming more aware of the importance of alone time. I love when people do this for themselves, and I am becoming an expert!
I quit working a year ago. I am grateful for the great benefits I had in the mid to late 90s that allowed for great retirement savings and matching program at my company (14% match!). This allows me to ponder, sit, reflect, pray and be. For now. I will be in action again soon, but I do want to SAY NO to the 40 hour work week at someone else's office forever.
If I was in charge of a company that had workers, I would create a culture of taking breaks, and encourage people to stop and gather, and relax and visit and take care of themselves with some movement, yoga, or walks outside on the nice grounds with trees, bushes and birdbaths. There would be some games and... well that gets into a whole other discussion about all the perks that some companies are providing people with at work so they love being there! (Google, e.g.) I would want to hire a lot of part-timers so that people have an option to stay home with kids, or have 2 golf games a week, or do more spiritual practice or work on their guitar skills or read or just sit. We would measure work based on results somehow... not x number of hours, if possible.
I think 4 hours a day is a perfect amount of time to do good productive work... and not all at once.
And I would love our society to have the expectation and structure that every individual would take a year off of work every 7 to 10 years. Do the things we always wanted to do.
Eckhart Tolle was so depressed from working so hard on his PhD, and when he reflected on the I that was so tired, and exhausted, and suicidal, he had a deep inner awakening that there is no "I" but that is illusion. He quit is PhD, walked around London for weeks, sitting on park benches and observing the amazing beauty of everything around him, even the traffic.
These kinds of people are threats to a controlled society, by the way... it is not predictable or controllable, and the authorities have to be in control, they must provide us jobs, and affordable housing and entertainment, and really fancy, smooth black roads.
What if we could live more simply, work less, and just be still part of each day? Is it too painful? Are we too ancy and conditioned? I am getting ancy if I am out too much now. I will find the balance soon enough.
#wageslavesociety #overworked #makingaliving #tesla #workplace #howtolive
