As Free People We Get To Work

Or In DeSantis' Words, "How Going To Work Benefits Free People

This is a companion to the last article. I would suggest both should be taken as exercises in reductio ad absurdum.

 Well at some point most of us go to work.  Work is when we get paid for working.  As free people we are entitled to be paid, we are no longer, even if we might be paid “slave wages' '.  We now can go to work.  One of the benefits of being able to go to work is that you can get vacations from work.. And of course we generally don’t work all day, and we generally get weekends off.  So since all work and no play makes jack a dull boy (or mary a dull girl I assume), our time is carried over from our playground times from our school days.  Schholwork and play periods carefully orchestrated and segregated.  It’s not just communities themselves that are segregated but we segregate when we are allowed to play.  

Now as a free people we are free of having to do the work we are assigned to do ( not freetime) but our playtime is all ours.  We can sit in front of the boobtube (more likely today on the internet or playstations) .  We can go to a movie or spend an hour at home deciding on a movie.  I don’t know if it’s still done, but in my day you might invite friends over and play cards and drink yourself into oblivion.  Or can go camping at a lake in an RV on long weekends and play in the water or ride on your motor or jet ski.  And then drink yourself into oblivion in the evenings, or maybe even in the daytime drink yourself into oblivion out in the water on your boat.  Drinking oneself into oblivion is one of America’s favorite things to do during their playtime.  Because playtime is freedom to do whatever tickles your fantasy.  If we had no playtime of course we would have to work 16 or 18 hours a day, six days a week, but boy does playtime give us the freedom to do what we like.  One thing hardly anyone wants to use their playtime is to learn anything.  Okay we learned and we got certified, or we did not get certified, who cares, because in playtime we are all equal opportunity players.  Oh yeah some have yachts and private planes or catered affairs, but we all have credit to buy toys these days and ample time to “enjoy ourselves.”

And especially when we get vacations. A whole week or two to take trips and see the world.  Another wonderful opportunity that debt frequently  grants us.  All of this wonderful freedom.  Everyone eagerly anticipates all this fine free time.  And it just amazes how tiring all this enforced freedom makes everyone.  If we play to be less dull, why is everyone more dull after a night of drinking?  If long weekends and weeks off are  so relaxing, why does everyone I know need to get back in time to relax before returning to work?  Sometimes I think even spending off times as a “couch potato”  tires people out.  We dread returning to “worK” or our “jobs” but I don’t know, when I was young and played football or basketball I became energized.  After a rough and exhausting contest we were so energetic we went to a dance and when we exhausted ourselves beyond endurance we fell asleep  and woke up energized and ready to go to whatever.  Of course professional athletes might say differently, but they are working really, and not really playing and seasons are longer and their off time is consumed in travel, etc.   And then there’s a lot of pressure not to have fun, but to perform well, and fit into their assigned role on the team as if the players are merely clogs of the machinery of the game of entertaining.  

But I wonder if perhaps the very equation that says when one is permitted to play and when one has to work may have a few screws loose in its calculation.  If you have to have assigned times of freedom is that even freedom?  If off time is exhausting instead of exhilarating, has jack and mary really accomplished anything in their play?  And if we have to consume alcohol to play because work, I suppose, is so unfulfilling, I don't know why so many cannot play without some kind of mind altering high, but I wonder, nevertheless, how anyone is benefitted.  

Then comes the day when we are put to pasture and are released from the cycle of school-work-play and I suppose the day we always looked forward to is supposed to fulfill our purpose in life.  We’ve made it to the promise land. Saint Peter has opened the gates prematurely and we are rewarded with what?  Well now we get to determine what we want to do, but we soon discover we need to do something.