Did you ever sit around and think, "this is the best that humans could ...

devise?"

We go to work, generally to do things we would rather not do, for most of our natural lives, to give money to someone else just so we can survive, and maybe just maybe, we can do things every now and then that we really want to do?

Who the fuck came up with that?!

I know this thread will sink like a stone, but I just had to say it.

:hi:

And no, I'm not depressed or anything, just thinking out loud.

a FAIR TAX system....

:bounce:

Yes this is the best they have come up with.

:eyes:

:hide:

in here and post this bullshit. Sheesh.


:crazy:

:P

:bounce:

you aren't ALLOWED to post serious threads :P

It says I get to post one serious thing on Dec 29 of every year!

See? Here it is:

:eyes:

He doesn't have a sig.

:grr:

Work, work, work, work... what's up with THAT shit?
By the time you get home you either are too tired or you have to do even *more* work. It's bullshit I tell ya.

and it's just silly to condemn it. There ain't no alternative.

Face it ... we're vehicles for reproduction and the rest is our imagination. So use it! Yes, it's immature to imagine ourselves at the center of the universe, but that's just another of our defense mechanisms against existentialist angst.

That's a pretty sucky spot to stop on.

I was raised in an ancient culture that fears and envies individualism - but I won't condemn what I was just because I'm enlightened now. I prefer to take a long term perspective and note that humanity continues to become aware of itself, even as it's repulsed by what it perceives.

I see it as analogous to Newton's laws of motion ... if you want to get from here to there with the least effort, take your time.

We're part of the process - and it's not immature to recognize that. Yes, we can curse the darkness, but I prefer to comfort myself with a few locally lit candles.

kings and priests

Series. It's HUGH!!!11!!!!!1

:eyes:



:D

I just LOVE KAB!!
He is da bomb.



(See, no more talking like the kid in the wheelchair on Malcolm in the Middle. That DS1 sure sucks.)

with my Vicks Vapobong, thinking almost the same thing. :tinfoilhat:

http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm

Here's a brief excerpt:

No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a *ludic* conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act. Oblomovism and Stakhanovism are two sides of the same debased coin.

The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much the worse for "reality," the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival. Curiously -- or maybe not -- all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else.

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full *un*employment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.

. . . more

:hi:

of some crazy shit was happening 10 to 15 years ago among Black and people like Jim Goad, Adam Parfrey, Jim Hogshire, etc. An old lunatic drinking buddy Steve who knew most of these guys (I only knew a couple of them) told me that Black once tried to set fire to the apartment building Steve lived in.

I have always wondered whether it was all an elaborate web of myths that these people had all conspired to contrive. Or whether they were just a bunch of crazy motherfuckers.

Example:

One altercation between Black and writer and alleged drug addict Jim Hogshire (author of the Loompanics book Opium For the Masses and the Feral House books Pills A Go-Go) resulted in Hogshire's arrest for possession of poppy pods with intent to manufacture opium. Black subsequently acknowledged that he had informed on Hogshire to the police, a claim that led to his alienation from some anarchist circles.

It is alleged that during the course of a dispute over religion (Hogshire proclaiming militant Islam), Mr. Hogshire aimed an M1 rifle at Mr. Black while blocking his exit. According to Black, Hogshire became incensed after Black "expound hermeneutics to Hogshire"<1>. Using Hogshire's wife as a human shield, Black maneuvered himself out of the house and escaped. Despite later accounts to the contrary, it was in fact Hogshire who first reported the incident to the police<2>. A month later, Black wrote a letter to the Seattle police claiming Hogshire was operating an illegal drug lab.<3> After news of this event became known, several bookstores, including Philadelphia's Wooden Shoe and Boston's Lucy Parsons Center stopped carrying Bob Black's books. Mike Hoy, owner and operater of Loompanics, sided with Hogshire and circulated a letter of support signed by himself and the ownership of Feral House. A legal defense fund was established and requests for donations were publicized by Loompanics.

Hogshire was indicted on the felony charge. Following his initial arrest bail was posted and Hogshire was released, after which he fled and was declared a fugitive. After a few months, his new lawyer negotiated his surrender and a guilty plea to a misdemeanor. The sentence was a fine, probation and community service. Hogshire and his wife later divorced and Hogshire (rumored to be addicted to heroin now) has not been heard from publicly since.

On another occasion, a member of the Church of the SubGenius, John Hagen-Brenner sent Black an "improvised explosive device consisting of an audio cassette holder wired with four cadium-type batteries, four flashbulbs, and five firecrackers" <4>, as described in the charging document filed in Federal District Court. According to Black, he thought the package looked suspicious, then on impulse "threw it against the wall. There was a flash (the flashcubes) and a puff of smoke but the firecrackers did not go off." <5> Black turned the device in to the police. Black believes this is because of criticism Black made of the Church, and he has repeatedly brought up the incident in his writings concerning the Church. Ivan Stang and other members of the Church have denied any involvement in this incident, and no one else was charged.

On a previous occasion a member of Processed World allegedly assaulted him by slamming his head against a sidewalk because he did not like Black's criticism of the publication. Black responded by suing him and represented himself in court. Police records show it was Black who was arrested for assault.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Black

he sounds like a thoroughly unpleasant person, doesn't he? but his writing could be entertaining

don't care to be on that sort of mailing list these days but will admit to reading some of these authors back in the reagan/bush years

I don't mean this to sound arrogant, but every now and then, I say to myself, "We're human beings. We make the rules." In other words, we live under systems that human beings have created and could conceivably change, assuming there's the will to do it and/or someone doesn't succeed in standing in the way.

So we have a system where a retired CEO is given a country club membership and delivery of fresh flowers, but flight attendants are expected to lose most or all of pensions they signed up for and helped pay for.

We have a system where people literally are told that health care is a privilege, not a right.

A few people get millions of dollars for spending a few months pretending to be someone else in front of movie cameras, and yet Joe or Jane Citizen can work six days a week and not be able to afford to buy a home.

I've been reading Stephanie Coontz's book on the history of marriage, and it is just fascinating (and calls into question some of the notions about marriage that have been put about lately). A lot of what the human race has done so far as community and marriage has to do with sheer survival, but the rules aren't necessarily the same from society to society and time to time! It's more food for thought...

And by the way, this thread ought not to sink.

My only real plan of escape from the endless toil is winning the lottery.

personal lives. I welcome work and do as much of it as I can, if only to blot out the misery of leisure.

I don't do it very often but this one's a keeper.