There have been periods of my life when I have voluntarily been out of work. These have been both good times and bad times, but they have been free times, responsible times, my time.
Economic arguments are bullshit. You don't need to earn money to live. Money buys lifestyle, nothing more and nothing less. There is food and waste everywhere in our landscape and society. There are burdocks breaking the tarmac in the corners of car parks. Bins overflow with useable produce. It is ego and fear that keeps people in work. It is the need to appear financially solvent, to puff ourselves up in the face of our fellow men and women that keeps us in work. It is our desire for fresh coffee and familiar brands that keep us going back to the same shops and supermarkets. Like a child in McDonald's, we all buy Jack Fulton's oven chips or Ecover washing up liquid.
There's nothing wrong with that. But no one needs to work to live. Work for your lifestyle all you want, but don't come to me saying there's no food on the table. There's food and shelter everywhere. Why is there such an overabundance? Because the West exploits the rest of the world in a trade game designed by the winners.
From the opposite angle, it is morally reprehensible to participate and condone a system in which people have to struggle for the essentials of life. What is necessary to life? The answer is necessarily subjective. Whatever you think you need must be made available to you by society. You are a human being. To be denied what is necessary to your life is the greatest sin that can be committed. There is nothing more fundamental than the dignity of humanity. You can't talk to someone without recognising that their humanity is equivalent to you own. It is not possible to communicate without theory of mind.
What about the gap between what is needed and what is given? The dissonance here will cause suffering if it is not addressed. Once the talking is over, there is nothing that can be done about the agency of others. If someone with a pile of food fails to share it there is no solution. The only realm over which you have control is your own agency. Your choices are: to suffer, or to modify your expectations about your needs. Perhaps you do not need Sky TV. Perhaps you do not need a KFC bucket meal. Perhaps there are plums rotting on the tree at the corner by the post office.
The picture gets harder for those that have dependants. It is easy enough to condemn those that have children. If you chose to reproduce, it's like taking out a mortgage where the currency is duty rather than dollars or pounds. Can you provide for your children without an income? Yes, but I would not recommend it. You have a duty to defend yourself from the expectations and prejudices of others - what good can you do should you be attacked by society? You have a duty to provide as socially normative an environment as possible for your children. There is more to being a human being than the mathematics of ethics. You must be able to pass in society, otherwise you will look unhuman in the eyes of the ignorant. The complexity increases if you are looking after the weak or the old. Tough hand, bro.
Despite these solutions being so tangible, I have felt guilty when I have not worked. I had thought people who asked "so what do you do?" or "when are you going to get a job?" were incredibly rude. I tried to forgive them - some were only making conversation and others were disturbed by their own unprocessed internal issues. But I could not fully move on because I was disturbed by my own unprocessed internal issue. I was puzzled. How could I so thoroughly lack ambition? But the problem wasn't one of appetite, it was one of definition. My ambition was at once larger and smaller than a career.
I started working again because it was easier than not working. The routine allowed me to shut off my overactive mind. It is hard to see through the structures of reality when you are tired from work. You fall into fellowship with others - this person is working to pay their rent, oh yeah, so am I. That seems reasonable and noble. It is reasonable. It is noble. But it is not the whole picture, and it is presented misleadingly. Why were we paying rent?
There was once a powerful wizard. He could see things that were occluded in fog to others. But he grew tired of explaining. To wade through the errors and emotions of the ignorant is exhausting. So he took a job at the sawmill and cut up timber all day long until he was able to go home, watch X Factor and pass out with a half eaten takeaway balanced on his growing gut.
Then I bought a house. Someone on my wage with my contract could never afford a house, that was the wisdom. It wasn't for us. Get back in line, know your place. Buying a house was easy. It was cheap; the mortgage was much cheaper than renting. All that had kept me in slavery to landlords was a tissue of fear. When I went to the bank in the boom time not believing they would accept me, they did not accept me. When I went in the recession with a tank of self-belief it all fell away and the clerks eyed me with reverence. Who was this buying at the height of a recession? I talked all the problems away. I didn't even sign their piece of paper. I just talked it away. I guess no one checked.
For some people this is enough. It is painful to want more. You must confront a million internal sufferings to deconstruct your slavery. Some people work their whole lives apparently satisfied with the reward of a box of bricks on a housing estate. Buying Tesco Finest. Living the high life for two weeks in Tenerife. That extra pint at the end of a night out.
I see them growing old. I see 60 million wasted lives. Newton invented optics, mechanics, calculus and ran the royal mint. Just make sure the kids have got a Spongebob Squarepants doll, but you don't need to mow the lawn this week.
I will set no limits on my ambition. Somewhere under the surface the goal has always been there but I have not been able to codify it or to say it out loud even when I could bring it into focus. "So what do you do?" I am preparing myself with the mechanisms and ideas to be able to make a lasting change to the ethics of our culture.
I have been toying with the pieces for a long time. I send ideas out into my immediate society and wait for them to come back. They do. I suggested musical things here, and they took root and somebody else grew them. I was constantly flattered, and I witnessed the corporeal body of the Zeitgeist. Clarity of sight. Brevity of communication. Say it in five words, or ten if you must. I have been staring at the mess that passes for ethics for far longer than I have been able to understand it. I have been constantly improving my communication skills. Toying with structure and rhetoric. As much as I am an outsider amongst men I have been watching, remembering, processing. I have been consciously writing this algorithm since before primary school. One of my earliest memories is making a pact with the universe: I will accept being socially awkward in exchange for it being necessary to understand the mechanics of what others do not even see is there.
Things can be better. I can help; I have been specialising for this. We've divided the labour. I've scouted it out and I'm starting to report back. Not today: I'm not ready yet. I've got too many things wrong, there are too many mistakes, too little understanding, too many neighbourhoods unvisited. But this is what I am doing. I am an archaeologist, I am a drummer, I want to be a writer. But above all of that I am going to improve. Am I an imaginier? That was rhetoric, a ruse. I am a human being.
How am I going to do this? What makes me think I can do this? The answer is the same to both questions. I have been working on my relationship with fate. I have looked inside of myself and I have seen the reflection of the garden. I am floored by tautological inevitability. Or, if you don't mind the language, I have knelt before the golden throne of God.
This is what it means to burn like the sun.
