One of the dogmas of modern society is that hard work is the most important, most valuable, most meritable quality there is. There is an unspoken assumption underlying the majority of social, economic and political ideas of the age, that if you work hard, that entitles you to something, and that if you are entitled to something, well it’s either because you worked hard, or it’s “unfair”.
That my friends, is a lie.
You are not entitled to anything by working hard. You can slave all your life and get nothing for it, and suffer and sweat and die alone with not a penny to your name – and this is not unfair, because, you are not owed anything.
You are not owed anything for working. You are not owed anything for being born. You are not owed anything for being smart. You are not owed anything for being stupid. You are not owed anything unless you enter into some kind of contract to that effect, and even then my friends, even then, you are relying on the good graces of your debtor and their ability to pay, and if they fail, you are at as much fault as they for choosing to engage in a risky endeavour.
My father used to say “nothing’s fair in this goddamn crazy world” (in recent years he has shortened it to “this GCW”. But it’s not really about fairness. Fairness is a social construct which has a specific sphere of meaning. A contract can be fair, if both parties get their due, a contract is a social relationship between to people. But even then… its hard to explain…
When I was born, I was born to middle class parents, with a comfortable lifestyle. Some people are born to parents who are slaves. Some people are born princes and princesses.
It’s easy for me to look up at princes and not consider it unfair. I am not owed to be a prince, it’s not something I deserve. It’s not something princes deserve either. It is, we could say, a grace bestowed upon them (by birth, by life, by God, by society) – a gift they are given without deserving it, but a gift is not “unfair” its something given freely by someone(s), someone(s) who have the right to grant such a gift. As such it cannot be unfair. My parentage is as much a gift, but it is easy for me to look down upon those born to slaves and think that their situation is “unfair” – because middle class guilt was drilled into me from a young age. I was taught to feel that way. Truly, it is no more unfair than the prince scenario. The child of slaves does not deserve to be born into slavery, it is also a gift, although this is a horrible use of the word. It is something that history has brought to bear upon them. The results of ancient wars and conflicts, trickled down to the present, and the princes of the world, and the guilt obsessed middle class families, and the salt of the earth working class protestants, and the slaves – we all are given these situations by these forces which, though we battle with all our might against it, against the thought of it, in our every action, of charity, of selfishness, of self will, of planning, of effort of control – though we fight it, these forces, this world, is bigger than us, and out of our control. Whether we are born a prince or a slave, we are equally powerless. Equally weak. Equally deserving of nothing.
By which I mean… there is nothing we deserve. Not that we deserve nothing. Because the two statements are very different, and the latter is not at all what I mean.
When good comes to us, we like to think we earned it. We like to think our hard work, or our skill, or our good nature can be credited with the good we receive. In truth, the good we receive is beyond our control. In an artificial environment this is not always true, but in the real world it is, and we find it so easy to forget because of how long we have lived in an artificial environment. Where we think we are getting what is fair, but we are really getting the spoils of wars too far away for us to understand. The product of other peoples slaveries. Born princes but educated to believe that we earned it, and thus more dangerous than any young aristocracy who knew that their position was a mere accident of history.
And this …this factors into the whole complaints I have been hearing a lot about the education system. Because it’s an artificial environment. The goal of education was once LEARNING, and by learning, I mean specifically a very high level abstract kind of learning, learning to understand, to think, to process the world at an analytical level above what is required for the everyday.
But the idea that “effort” is entitled to reward. That work in itself is deserving of success, an idea only able to thrive because we live in an artifice propped up by blood money and other peoples slavery, this idea, which seems so noble, so enlightened, so “fair” – has corrupted education beyond recognition. And learning no longer has a place, because there is something that unfortunately comes with education, that corrupts it everywhere, and that is status, and status is a grander reward, even more coveted than money (which is greatly coveted). And so the children taught from the earliest age that effort, hard work – these good valuable things – are in themselves deserving of reward, pound their little fists on the table, because they tried dammit, they tried so hard, and they deserve what they are owed.
And there wasn’t any other point to it anyway… was there?
