You Are Free To Eat

From the “Biting The Hand” Files:

Am I? Am I really free to eat?

I used to think so. Nowadays, I am not so sure. What does it mean to be free to eat? Rather, what do I have to DO to be free to eat? Be someone else’s tool, I suppose.

In the corporate culture, to be free to eat means to be not free to do something else. It means doing what you are told, when you are told to do it, by whomever is in charge of telling you what to do. They can get away with this through the exercise of fear.

Fear that you will not have a job.
Fear that you will not have insurance.
Fear that you will not have a retirement plan.
Fear that you will not move up in life.
Fear that you will not have a “career”.

These are wonderful things, but no one like the implicit threat of the leash.

Fear that if you do not keep your mouth shut and behave you will become a corporate leper. You will not be able to find, or keep, that “position” in the “ladder” or “organization” in which if you work hard enough, long enough, you too will be “vested” and get to tell other people what to do.

Just keep chasing after that next “goal”*. The goal is there, they tell you, it’s just up ahead, just around the bend, just around the next corner. So you do keep chasing it, because after all, achieving the goals is what gets you “security”. Isn’t security the most important thing?

You will have “security”, they say. Security being a relative term, that everyone thinks they know the definition of but is really solely defined by the inscrutable whims of someone else in “authority”. If by security, “stability” is meant, that is true in a limited sense. You get somewhere to go everyday at the same time, whiling away your hours. Security, however, is a myth. A myth wielded as a tool to keep the parts of the machine in line. ‘Replaceability’ is implicit in being a machine part. Machine parts are not really meant to be individuals. You are useful in so much as you are replaceable.

The threat of replacement breeds fear. Fear becomes a tool to control the other tools.

If I am going to be a tool, I prefer to be a tool on my own terms. If I am going to work myself to the point of exhaustion, I prefer it to be at my discretion, for my own goals.

I once told myself that “we are all exploited” and I suspect that really is true. It is up to us to set the terms of that exploitation. Does this guarantee security? Of course not. But to survive, no, to thrive it becomes a matter of imperative. Being free to eat does not mean always having the ability to put food in your mouth; it also means the freedom to say “I’m not hungry”.

If we don’t set the terms of our exploitation, we will never be free to eat.

*Digression: If you transpose the ‘o’ and ‘a’ in goal, it becomes “gaol”, an archaic term for jail. How about that.

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