Journal Entries
Friday 16 July 1999
Posted Jul 16, 1999
Friday: the last day of that arbitrary period where work is most commonly done (by the people who actually have work to do) called a "week" in most places in the world.
Friday promises many things, the most important of which is a period (again, arbitrarily measured) of two days where those who work at other times are not expected so to do, and which is commonly referred to as a "weekend". For many workers, the prospect of the weekend is in itself so exciting that the drunkenness to which they subject themselves as a result of their excitement means that they do not enjoy the small amount of time they have available in which they are not expected to work. The prospect of the weekend is indeed so exciting that people who are not otherwise prone to admitting the existence of a god spend a lot of time on Fridays proclaiming their thanks to one that Friday has, in fact, come.
Religious convictions or otherwise aside, Friday is a good day to plan to do things which you know you won't get around to, and to enjoy the prospect of procrastination which a weekend allows.
I fully intend to make as full use of this prospect as possible this weekend, although - procrastination being what it is - I may not get around to it.
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Wednesday 14 July 1999
Posted Jul 14, 1999
Gainful employment is indeed a mug's game. In the Western political economy as currently defined, you need to work to eat, and you need to eat to work, and if you don't do either you die. This system seems unjust, and to many people - particularly those who have to get up early to get to work on a Monday (an arbitrary, but particularly popular, choice for the first day of a working period most people know as a "week") - more of a burden than it is actually worth. These people do not stop working merely because of this impression, however.
Death also seems an unjustly harsh penalty for not working, which is why a lot of governments in the world have undertaken to keep their constituents fed through the use of large-scale social welfare systems which are not particularly effective for achieving any goal except keeping people fed. At the same time, however, the governments (particularly democratic governments - notable examples include the United States of America, Australia, all of the British governmental bodies etc.) make loud and particularly offensive noises to those who do not have jobs, claiming that their joblessness is all their own faults, in order to mollify the strident political rumblings of those who do have jobs. The relevance of keeping people alive merely to insult them escapes a lot of people: particularly those who are not employed.
Those who are in employment often do not enjoy what they do for a living (i.e. to keep themselves alive), and are frequently looking for other employment, or for a way - often via the optimistic medium of a lottery or an inheritance - to not have to work at all. In the mean time they perform tasks which they (and often the people who assign them to perform them) think beneath them, and are constantly looking for new ways to stave off the boredom which their employment encourages. Due to the (possibly misplaced) enthusiasm of many employers for the large-scale use of information technology and computers in achieving the boring tasks which they set for their employees, this process is a large part of the astounding success of the Internet as a communication medium.
Gainful employment, however, does often allow some "gain" in terms of exercising the mind and body of the worker, and is occasionally even made enjoyable by fellowship with others who are stuck in the same unhappy situation. The longer employment is practised, too, the greater the rewards - although the concomitant increase in the taxing boredom of the tasks to be performed is often considered enough of a disadvantage for many people to make a mid-life "career change" and be less bored, for less reward, somewhere else. The gains have to be balanced against the inherently boring nature of the activity, and the balance is difficult to achieve.
Most people are employed (most people, for example, are eating), it's just that very few of them are enjoying it. The "mug's game" lies in being dependent on the practice of activities that the average punter has no desire to practice.
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Latest reply: Jul 14, 1999
Tuesday 13 July 1999
Posted Jul 13, 1999
It's a funny old day, today.
Work is so boring today that I thought it would be more constructive to write entries in the Guide. Then I discovered what a crappy text editor the journal has, and I began to think that I could be wrong.
This is a very disconcerting thought. I am not usually wrong, which
is undoubtedly one of the reasons why I am still alive, still working,
and still able to engage in diverting pieces of solipsism like this
one. I don't know that I could do it all the time, though.
No matter. I thought I'd probably better comment on the "diabetes"
article which has made the front page - having been insulin dependent
for considerably more than 90% of my 30 years, I consider this article
just a little bit melodramatic. I could never consider myself
"disabled": either by my own illness or by other people's perceptions
of it. The only thing which other people's perceptions change is my
perceptions of them.
A more useful article would probably concentrate more on the things
which make diabetics "different" - the perceptions and skewings of
perception which diabetes gives rise to. I regard the world in a
very different way from other people, and this article has not
educated anybody on why that might be so!
Oh well, articles can always be replaced/improved.
I have yet to search the Guide on the topics about which I'd like to
write. Only if I can think of something good which has not already
been done to death would I consider contributing, and then only if I
had something which I felt was important to say: the rest of the
universe will not be impressed with wasted words - just like most
people here! The search facility for the Guide seems to be very slow
and cumbersome - why is that?
Anyway, I'll try a little searching...
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Latest reply: Jul 13, 1999
Hypoman
Researcher U49276
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