Life Is All About Work, Didn’t You Know?
You were made to generate corporate profits. You live at the mercy of abstract concepts. Why can't you accept this?
Making a living. What a curious saying.
“As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small,” sang John Lennon in Working Class Hero. “By giving you no time instead of it all.” He then goes on about pain, drugs, propaganda, apathy, the depressing plight of the laborer he knows nothing about — the usual.
Still, it’s all true. As soon as you’re born, you’re entering a predefined, excessively detailed framework of rules, laws, and demands. One is expected — no, forced — to make a living. See, no right is given to you by birth. None at all. Not even the right to exist. All claims to the contrary are bullshit, and you know it. You got to earn it all, step by step. School for fifteen odd years, work for forty, fifty, perhaps sixty years or so, making children so they can earn their rights, too. Earning your livelihood in very, very predetermined ways:
No one cares what you think about this. No one asked you. You did not ask to be born but neither did you ask not to be born, haha. This is the deal, take it or die. Your signature is not required.
It’s not work per se that is so horrible. Not at all. Personally, I adore work. There are few feelings better than having a beer after a day of hard, purposeful, preferably manual and/or creative labor. The issue lies in the uselessness of most work available; in the utter bullshit, the soul-destroying masking required, all the pretending, the dreadful knowledge that it’s all fake. And the injustice, of course. The day a cleaning lady or construction worker earns more than a fucking leech of an investment banker or insurance broker or lobbyist is the day capitalism has finally, thankfully, God-yes-it-really-happened fallen. It’s not gonna happen soon enough.
Imagine for a moment:
You work hard, yes, but all your work has a specific purpose. Either to feed yourself and your family, make useful things with concrete outcomes, or provide value to other members of your community. You see and feel and rejoice in the results of your labor. You’re not alienated, you’re connected. You can feel shit with your own hands. You’re outside, even. You feel the grass beneath your feet, the breeze in your hair, and it is a hard life, yes, in many ways, but in others, it is pure joy. People are grateful for your work. They see what you have done. They appreciate you. And still you work only fifteen or twenty hours or so per week on average (an anthropological fact, look it up). Do whatever you want with the rest of the week. Work, if you want.
Your imagination fails, for this is so far removed from reality.
The alarm rings. A violent dissonance. You’re tired, exhausted, one stroke of fate away from just giving up. Sometimes you dream about being a vagabond, a traveler, an adventurer. But you’re not brave enough to stand the divine judgment of society. Also, the inevitable discomfort. You’re risk-averse. No, you carry yourself to work to perform the rituals:
So, you earn your right to be fed, clothed, sheltered, warm. So, you keep working. Someday, you’ll be replaced by a younger worker, but that’s all right because then you’ll have your oldest days for yourself — if cancer, strokes, heart attacks do not kill you first.
The alarm rings and you seriously consider ignoring it. But you don’t. You like being fed, clothed, sheltered, warm, and there is no other way. None. Nowadays, even the children yearn for the mines. You get in your car.
No other living thing has ever devised a system in which survival depends on being useful to an abstract concept of greed and eternal growth. I believe none ever will. It’s insane. Sure, humans have always lived in communities, and as anthropologists such as David Graeber point out, they, too, most often lived under certain rules and mutual expectations. The great difference is that they were free to leave. There was enough room, other communities, the entire Goddamn world to make your case. Now, there’s only cultivated forests, over-fertilized fields, abused cattle, slaughterhouses, factories, grey pavement, plastic rivers, all private property.
Realize: most people don’t care. Most people do not give a shit about freedom as long as they’re comfortable and have their property secured from the ravages of the filthy poor. So, it always falls to people like us to feel unhappy and disillusioned. Yet no one cares about our complaints. They give us drugs to stop it. They gaslight us into thinking there’s something wrong with us.
Indentured servitude dressed up as freedom and prosperity. That is what it is and nothing else. And not even that in most parts of the world. Leaving society is illegal, living off the land is illegal, traveling is illegal — obtain permits and visas, be questioned and probed to cross imaginary lines. Can’t even fucking kill yourself. Your life isn’t yours to take. It belongs to someone else. It belongs to society. And society needs workers so other imaginary lines go up, up, up.
“There is only one solution: revolution, revolution!” the optimistic among the disillusioned scream. But their revolution never comes, and when it does it ends up as just another system of indentured servitude. One with good intentions and smooth aesthetics, but servitude to industry and abstract concepts nevertheless. The only thing I’d ever serve is people I love. Friends, family, a community, nature as a whole. Spare me your empty phrases. I don’t care about humanity as a concept. I don’t care about reaching the stars, becoming immortal. I want to live, then die of my own accord. No gods, no masters, no illusions, no empty phrases can hold me. As Henry David Thoreau said: “All good things are wild and free.” There lies happiness!
So what can you do?
First, read Albert Camus. Nihilism is no way to live, but its optimistic version — absurdism — certainly is. Live despite everything. Fight and bite for every iota of freedom. Follow your passions and forget completely, utterly about certain expectations, i.e. wealth and fame. Work just so much that you can afford to feel comfortable, if at all possible. Then work for yourself and people you care about. Make art for the sake of making art. Have fun. Connect with people. Have children, or don’t, whatever you like. This is not hedonism, not completely, no. Rather, it’s the only way you can make it through this. A resistance of the soul. At least it’s helped me immensely. And, yes, also: spend as much time as possible in nature and as little time as possible in offices.
On your deathbed, you will not remember your career or your wealth or your cars. All insignificant, futile, devoid of anything. But you will remember how you lived and what you did. You will remember people. Is regret your aspiration?
Thank you for reading,
Antonio Melonio
Beneath the pavement, there is a beach.
Please support my work — and get access to the full archive of essays, free eBook copies of my novels, and so on — by subscribing here on Substack:
You can also support my ever-lasting pursuit of freedom and self-determination on Patreon (starting at $2 a month), or leave a tip on PayPal. Thank you so much.
To promote beneath the pavement, please share this essay and tell your friends:
What to read next:
This is all I think about. I truly do not think humans are meant to work this much. Like you say, I’m not against working entirely. But I hate how life has to revolve around it, particularly if you end up needing to take a job you don’t enjoy just so that you can afford to live. It’s incredibly alienating to feel out of step with something that our entire culture revolves around. Thanks for writing.
Exactly my strategy: barely working (for money, at least) and focusing on living local. Being active in communities, making a difference in people’s lives. It has been freeing to choose this path. I cannot go back to the well paid office life it will kill my soul.