"You should get a job, loser!" (The rallying cry of idiots everywhere)
Firstly - I apologize for the offensive post title. It's something I used to hear quite frequently as a younger man, and something that, to this day, makes me shake my head and grimace.
I know I'm not the only person here who has ever had this line directed at them, it seems that, in our "culture" (for want of a better word) there is this common notion that anyone who does not have a job, who does not have employment - must be worthless, lazy, stupid, greedy - the list goes on and on. So many flaws one is assumed to have for the simple lack of employment! Why, you must live in your mother's basement! I bet you just play playstation all day and are too lazy to GET A JOB. Why don't you get up off your butt and DO something?!? Our economy is crappy, so you should work to make it better! If you don't pay taxes, you can't complain about shit!
All the indications of a society that has been systematically dumbed down and taught to honor and worship wealth as if it were worth. To praise "job creators" as if they were National heroes. To scream and cry and whine and moan endlessly about those "lazy bastards on welfare/food stamps who don't do anything but pop out babies!" All the intellectual garbage, which might best be compared to shit that has been eaten, regurgitated, then eaten and shat out again - it begins to make me very tired. It was old long ago, but now when I hear it from intelligent, educated people, it makes me want to bang my head on a wall.
For the majority of my twenties I was "in between" jobs. Occasionally I worked as a dishwasher, telemarketer, lawn mower... field boy, gopher, jack of all trades. I worked for the Census of 2010 , took reservations for hotels, cleaned out people's basements and worked for farmers - doing some of the heaviest, most disgusting work available. But I spent more time unemployed than employed, due to a clinical depression and anxiety disorder that, every year or so, seems to make a massive comeback and leaves me cringing in bed for a time.
Now that I have been among the ranks of the employed nobility for about a year (the longest job I've ever had, which, at thirty, is an indication of something, so people say) I can't help but wonder at why people think having a job makes you a better person. Thirty, forty, fifty hour weeks. Four days a week, five days a week, six days a week - ten days in a row, I've done them all, worked all the shifts and have the physical and emotional bruises to prove it.
I have met all kinds of people in my field of work. Some of the greatest workaholics are jerks - some are awesome. Some of the poorest people I meet are jerks, some are awesome. The employed and the unemployed - what seems to separate them the most is (obviously) financial. Earning eight dollars an hour at 34-40 hours a week in the field of hospitality, I am slowly starting to wonder if I might be better off living like a hermit in a cave somewhere.
Yet, it is a strange peculiarity of our culture that just about everyone I know now respects me more, that people tell me "we're proud of you" where as before, the simple lack of employment was the motivation for them to call me names, insult me - make judgments about my parenting, my personality, my worth as a human being. Labels like "loser", "bum", "layabout", "freeloader" and others that were much worse, were all too common. Not just in what people said, but in how they acted towards me, with a contempt and condescension that drove me into seclusion.
So today, I need not work at all, if such was my desire. I could return to who I used to be, spending my days dreaming, reading, in a sea of simple fuckery and laziness. It occurs to me now though, that I continue in a job that I'm not really fond of, simply for the sake of the respect of my peers, my family and friends. It means little to me as generally I'm rarely permitted to do anything useful, to help people. I answer phones and charge people way more money than I know certain things are worth. I smile patiently when rich people yell at me or when my employer lashes out with a random verbal assault.
I honestly make just barely enough money to make employment worthy of preparing for work, or owning a car. I don't do it for the money - I do it because I don't want people to think I'm worthless.
What a strange society we live in. A homeless man with a generous heart, a world of compassion and a brilliant mind... is judged as lazy, as a loser, as pathetic, because he does not have wealth or employment. Great mothers are insulted and held in contempt because they occasionally need help from society in the form of nutritional aid or minor funds. Stay at home dads are considered to be effeminate, lazy and so on.
My overall point and the argument of this OP - is that neither wealth nor employment have anything to do with the overall worth of a human being. If Bethoven had been unemployed, would he not still be Bethoven? Was Jesus too lazy to live a simple life of carpentry as his Father had? Darwin or Enstein, had they been miserably poor or homeless, would have been shunned in this society. Gandhi would be mocked and insulted. I do not compare myself to any of these people, other than in the regard that we are all human beings.
I ask of all of my fellow DUers here that, the next time we (any of us) decide to judge someone based on their employment, or lack thereof, we consider the simple fact that we are human beings, who's worth is not determined by our trade or by our bank accounts, but by our nobility of spirit, empathy, compassion, generosity. For a culture that complains so much of greed and selfishness and of corruption, selfishness and cruelty... we encourage these very things every time we rage at the so called "welfare state", every time we call a Mother of five lazy. Every time we suggest that someone is a "loser" because they don't have a job.
In the end, money is not worth all that much. A man much poorer than I once shared a sandwich with me because I was hungry and we worked together. I would trade everything I have of any financial value to simply stress this point. I'd give it all up and run naked through the street, simply to get the point across that wealth is not worth.
I do not say that being wealthy makes one better or worse, but that our hearts, our minds, what we do with them and how we treat others... should be the determining factor in how we judge the worthiness of individuals.
My deep compassion and empathy goes out to all of those who are unemployed right now. I tell you - the lack of employment means nothing at all about you as a person. Do not despair or listen to idiots who tell you that you are worthless or lazy. Be kind to yourself and know that, when it comes right down to it, you are far more worthy than any number of wealthy, sociopath CEOs (the Mitt Romneys, Koch Brothers and Bushes of the world), if you just have a little charity and kindness in your heart.
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