In darkest Herefordshire there is an old Victorian bridge over a small branch line of the county railway. On either side of the narrow track are rows of formidable spikes to deter you from leaping into the path of the 9.30 from Hay-on-Wye. But evidently someone had given it a go and caused enough mischief to warrant the spikes being carefully boxed up with wooden planks to make sure no further harm was caused.
These, of course, were immediately clambered upon by grateful youth, endangering their innocent if foolish lives. The hazard was resolved by placing an even more scary row of spikes on top of the box sections thus returning to the original dilemma of what to do about the perilous points.
There’s nothing more likely to drive you crazy than trying to make sense of that which will not. You try nevertheless, impelled by curiosity and the need to find meaning in contradiction no matter how split the fabric of reality.
Specially designed to curdle your neurons is the idea that the Industrial Revolution was going to free us from the shackles of work alongside what has actually happened which is that we are wage slaves as never before. Instead of the Elysian fields we have the dark flowering of Karoshi, overwork death.
In 2016, Japan had 2,000 work related suicides. Their government resolved to cap overtime to try and stem the flood. Some companies, notably Apple’s Foxconn, has adopted a more hands on approach, eliciting signed pledges not to top themselves from prospective workers and installing safety nets to catch dissatisfied jumpers, which is very kind of them but hardly addresses the problem.
If you were a worker there, would you feel comforted by the new nets? Would you feel emotionally supported by your employer? Would the nets motivate sufficient loyalty to embrace your fourteen hour day? Or would you be wondering what kind of godforsaken life it must be where the only thing worse than the prospect of killing yourself is that you cannot?
The West is in little better shape. The economic costs of work related stress to Britain last year was £6.5 billion, dwarfed by the US with a wopping $190 billion, nearly 10% of spending on health care.
So the kind of government you have doesn’t seem to be a factor. Something else is making lemmings of us all and it is this….when the divine feminine is marginalized, it doesn’t matter if you are in New York, Moscow or Tokyo at the time, the Universe suddenly becomes conditional. Your worth has to be confirmed daily, your appreciation constantly expressed, your faith demonstrated in real time with feats of endurance and self-sacrifice.
When the warrior/king commands consciousness all on his own he becomes petulant and unbearable. Working to live becomes living to work, everything becomes a treadmill, even leisure, food, sex. Gone is the sense of life being for its own sake, the valued other, the wayside flower….
which is why it was such a joy to see Nancy Pelosi accepting the Speaker’s gavel amidst a gaggle of bouncing kids, choosing to stand there as Mother and Grandmother as well as politician, reminding us what work is for, not as an end in itself by which all your worth will subsequently be measured, but by virtue of your stewardship and connection with one another.
