This content was published first in The Sunday Letters Journal: https://sundayletters.larrygmaguire.com/p/you-abstract-working-mule-of-a-human by Larry G. Maguire on Mon, 29 Aug 2022 18:18:21 GMT

What I want to say when I write is always painted up in something else. I never get there, never finish, never say what I want to say. We’re like that, human beings—especially those of us who have spent time accumulating measures of apparent academic merit. We can’t say what we really want to say without “backing it up”. We discount our intuition. Data is primary. To forward a subjective assessment on this, that, or the other, is flawed and often irrelevant insofar as it cannot necessarily, be applied to the majority. What the majority agree, therefore, is what is. To change this, we must exercise influence over others. To stand alone is to shout into the vacuum.

Work is such a fundamental part of living that it is hard not to address what is detrimental to us in the doing of it. But what is work, and what lies beneath the apparent obviousness of it all? We are so sure what it is, and we are so sure that everyone must do it. Not to work is to be a parasite. It is to be an illegitimate member of society. But why? On the other end of the scale, there are those who do not work and have amassed fortunes on the backs of those who do. They have wealth, and so they are not parasites, surely? Not to ask why, not ask but demand answers to why things are how they are is to ignore the truth of our reality. But we’d rather not know. Carry on; nothing to see here. Distractions abound. The few control and direct the many—that is the truth. So how can the many be free, do we want to be free, and is it even possible?

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