I not only write my own blog, I comment on a few others. Mostly political blogs. I figure if I can get my politics out in someone else’s backyard, I won’t stink up my own.
It’s dog-think, really.
Laila Yuile is a political blogger and I like her. No Strings Attached. She wrote recently about site C and, in her text, she mentioned the hoary old phrase, “of course, we all deserve good paying jobs so that we can raise our children.” Or something of that sentiment. Her point being we need good paying jobs.
And so, now to my point…
I am not so sure there is such a thing as a good paying job. In fact, I am pretty sure there is not. If they ever paid you what your life was worth, you’d get a fortune in pay for the first few years and never work again. So, the amount doled out by way of the system is ‘just enough’. You get paid ‘just enough’ to get by and keep on working. They call that good management. We are being managed!
They want you to eat and sleep but they don’t want you to get rich and be an influence. Of course some of us get by with less and some of us get by with a new SUV and a swimming pool but, basically, we all just get by. Even the guy with two Escalades, a summer cabin and a mistress is not calling the shots behind the scenes. Chances are that guy is just stressed out of his mind.
Only one percent of one percent have a say in calling the shots. Maybe not that many.
The point is that the hoi poloi can never be anything other than that. They are middle upper class at best. Most of us languished in middle class on a good year and flirted with lower class more than once. I grew up in poverty and scrambled up a notch. We did not throw our weight around. Not ever. We were and are the invisible, silent and dispensable majority. We are commoners. We always will be.
So, really? Is there such a thing as a good paying job? Or is there just subsistence and subsistence plus and minus?
“Dave, why nit-pick? If ya got two Escalades, a pool, a mistress and a few big screen TVs….what more does a guy need?”
Well, therein lies the rub. We don’t really need any of that nonsense. They convince us we do. But even that is not the point. The point is we think we need that crap and so we sign up. We enlist. We drink the Kool Aid and join the system thinking we may eventually make 4-star general but knowing that most grunts remain just that – grunts.
It is not news, I know, but we were conscripted at birth (see your SIN card) and most of us don’t even think about it. I think we should think about it.
And the irony is that we sell out to do it. We sell our precious lives to make money to stand in line and buy a box we have no time to live in. We don’t follow our dreams, we follow some curriculum. We don’t march to a different drummer, we march in goosestepping cadence and sing the national anthem. We are small parts of a large organism that is not a good one.
Our system has lost it’s moral compass. We have shed our ethics and our morality because, in a money-driven world, those are luxuries. No longer are we there to do the right thing. We are there simply to ‘make a buck’. We are here only to ‘make money’ now; not to help others. And, perversely, we willingly sign our names on a debt for a million dollars so that we can never change our minds. Some of us even take on system-entrenched careers like lawyer or doctor or accountant so that we are additionally trapped.
The longer I live off the grid, the more like incarceration living on the grid seems.
I know, I know….‘easy for you to say, Dave. You are free. We are not. Stop saying nyah, nyah to us!
Sorry. That was not my intention. My smugness runneth over. Mea culpa. My bad. Apologies. What I really mean is that some of us want to help others and study medicine or law or just grow great vegetables. I have no problem with that. But when your motivation is no longer to do good work or help others because you have to make a buck, then our priorities are all wrong. The result of that wayward path is not just your own misery. That is how evil gets done.
I have no real idea (I have a few real biases) whether site C is needed or not. Is it good or evil? I don’t know. I think it’s wrong. But I do know that, when people are trampling all over others like the government and BC Hydro are, it isn’t all good. And when I wonder why the BC Hydro guy is speaking with contempt to the protesters and the police get ready their tear-gas and tasers, I realize that they are doing it just to keep their well-paying jobs.
And there we are again….well-paying jobs…..
Our Off the Grid Home 
I have to agree.
Materialism good. Honesty is for suckers. Volunteerism is on the decline.
Conspicuous consumption on the rise.Personal debt is at historic levels.
Credit is too easy to get. Interest rates are at historic lows.
Its going to get ugly when ( not if) rates start to rise.
I expect houses to be lost, marriages and lives to be destroyed and we people still wont figure it out.
Buy what you need , not what you desire.
Even a low wage can be “enough” if you’re careful with your money.
Owning a home is a luxury not a right. House prices dont always go up. Dont use your house as a line of credit.
Economic recessions are cyclical and we havent had a really really bad one since the mid 70’s and early 80’s.
Simple ideas but most people dont know how to balance a cheque book these days let alone balance a budget.
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Balance a budget? Easy peasy! Just ask Chrispy.
Well wrote David. Easy to say, after all the money-grubbing has been done and you walk out of the darkness. And behold! There is light after all. We don’t need all the Escalades and swimming pools, but most of us realize too late. And the closer you get to the end the less important the material things become. Now that cauliflower is down to two bucks a head don’t you wish you’d shorted cauliflower futures? I do.
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Ah, the lure of cauliflower futures…..hard to resist. If I HAD a good recipe for them, I would recant all that is written above and open a puppy mill to make some bucks so as to control the cauliflower market. Maybe chop up a few puppies for the casserole once I had shed all my moral inhibitions. The love of cauliflower has been the ruin of many. It’s a slippery slope – but only WITH THE RIGHT RECIPE!
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Chasing a buck seems to be a waste of precious time. Turning away from the Kool-aid to look for something that resonates with you is something not a lot of people get to experience . I’m glad to have found some who live with thoughtfulness, if that’s a word!
Good post ,
David
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I guess I was lucky. All of my jobs were well paid and fun. I got to be a kindergarten teacher, a teacher of gifted students, an elementary school principal, and several other positions at the district level including Director of Technology when we were just starting into computers in education. I loved my work and the people I worked with, especially the kids and their parents. It has also given me good retirement so I can enjoy my life off the grid without worrying about will I be able to make ends meet. I did retire early, and that was possible because of the good pay I received for the hard work I did, and because I paid into a strong retirement system through all my working years.
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Good for you. And I had a few of those myself. I loved being a mediator, for instance. But my point is a bit different. It is not about the work you choose to do, it is the motivation that you bring. Is it interest, fun and to do a service for others? Is it to do good work even if it is hard at times (like SkidRow was for me) or is it to ‘make a buck’ because your damn mortgage is so high and you are always under pressure. If the latter, then there is something wrong. And for many it IS the latter. In fact, I would suggest that, because money is such a prominent factor, more and more people are living to work rather than working to live. And that dehumanizes us all.
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Heard an interview from an recently made redundant Newfoundland oil sands worker who had been making $140,000 gross per year. Back home after many years in the patch he has no savings, no RRSPs but he does have a used pickup. A single guy on a work and spend programme. I’ve heard of folks winning the lottery and running through it after one year. What are your thoughts on capacity? There is more to consider than hard work and not scratching every itch. Thoughtful post.
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Capacity? My take on that is our natural ability to bring magic and humanity to the work place diminishes with age and bureaucracy. If they let you ‘think’ and do the right thing, you can work rewardingly for a while although I tapered out by 55. But, if I had been in a brain dead role with heavy regulations and procedures, I would have been dead myself by 55. When I see the common man being miserable to their co-workers and neighbours, when I see young teens selling drugs and when I see evil actions justified by having to make a buck, I think we have gone way too far. And when I see fools like Trump have credibility BECAUSE he has money, I am sickened.
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The needs versus wants discussion is timely. Sadly in a consumer driven economy spending is encouraged. The other day I heard some mocking laughter elicited by me playing an eight track tape. Later that day people were on the floor when I played a cylinder on my Edison phonograph.
“Did you know that all Edison cylinders are on YouTube?”
“Well duh, that’s a true fact!”
“So why are you playing it on that thing?”
The explaination I gave was answered with a shrug and the dismissive wave of a hand.
Essentially the question was why would I keep old technology around?
Why drive a twenty year old car, why stay married to the same person for fifty years? Why gut it out in a mentally crushing job for forty years?
Sources of continuity, satisfaction, and constancy are highly variable and speak to the capacity of people to stay engaged when others would have moved on.
Hegel observed that, “It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
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