26 September 1999 - 11 March 2000
Thoughts by John Kennedy Toole, Mark Twain, Hermann Hesse, Michael Moore, George Orwell, Josef Pieper, Bertrand Russell, Frederick Douglass, Oliver Goldsmith, Owen Felltham, Thomas Carlyle, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Merton, David Whyte, Carl Sandburg, Solomon, Victor Mansfield and The Inmate.
11 March 2000
"There, there, I shall find some good employment, although it will not necessarily be what you would call a good job. I may have some valuable insights which may benefit my employer. Perhaps the experience can give my writing a new dimension. Being actively engaged in the system which I criticize will be an interesting irony in itself."
Ignatius J. ReillyToole, John Kennedy, A Confederacy of Dunces, foreword by Walker Percy, Wings Books a division of Random House Value Publishing, Inc., New York, 1996, pg. 62.
5 March 2000
There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pick-axe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too.Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation and is its own highest reward.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Twain, Mark, The Unabridged Mark Twain, Volume 1, Edited by Lawrence Teacher, Running Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1976, pg. 1102.
27 February 2000
Awakening from this dream, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of great sadness. It seemed to him that he had spent his life in a worthless and senseless manner; he retained nothing vital, nothing in any way precious or worthwhile. He stood alone, like a shipwrecked man on the shore.
Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, translated by Hilda Rosner, New Directions Books, New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, N.Y., 1957, pg. 66.
13 February 2000
Nike pays Michael Jordan $20 million a year in endorsement fees. This fee exceeded the entire annual payroll of the Indonesian factories that make the shoes.
Moore, Michael, Downsize This!: Random Threats from an Unarmed American, HarperPerennial, a Division of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1997, pg. 129.
5 February 2000
Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless.
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and LondonOrwell, George, Down and Out in Paris and London; 1984; Shooting an Elephant; Quality Paperback Book Club by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1991, pg. 173.
30 January 2000
The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. "Anything," he thinks, "any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose." He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom ...
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and LondonOrwell, George, Down and Out in Paris and London; 1984; Shooting an Elephant; Quality Paperback Book Club by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1991, pp. 120-121.
16 January 2000
Incidentally, pseudo-festivals exist, as well as pseudo-work. Not all activity, not every kind of expenditure of effort and earning of money, deserves the name of work. That should be applied only to the active-and usually also laborious-procurement of the things that are truly useful for living. And it is a good guess that only meaningful work can provide the soil in which festivity flourishes. Perhaps both work and celebration spring from the same root, so that when one dries up, the other withers.
Josef Pieper
Pieper, Josef, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, St. Augustine's Press, South Bend, Indiana, 1999, pg. 4.
9 January 2000
When it became time for me to say good-night[Russell was a very young boy when this happened], he[Russell's Uncle] gravely informed me that the human capacity for enjoyment decreases with the years and that I should never again enjoy a summer's day as much as the one that was now ending. I burst into floods of tears and continued to weep long after I was in bed. Subsequent experience has shown me that his remark was as untrue as it was cruel.
Bertrand Russell, The Autobiograpy of Bertrand RussellRussell, Bertrand, The Autobiograpy of Bertrand Russell, Bantam Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., pg. 17.
19 December 1999
During these leisure times, those old notions about freedom would steal over me again. When in Mr. Gardner's employment, I was kept in such a perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty. . . . I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.
Frederick Douglass
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Signet Printing, April 1968, pg. 103.
12 December 1999
Happy they, who thus have some little faithful attendant, who never forsakes them, but prepares to wrangle and to praise against every opposer; at once ready to increase their pride while living, and their character when dead. For you and I, my friend, who have no humble admirer thus to attend us, we, who neither are, nor ever will be great men, and who do not much care whether we are great men or no, at least let us strive to be honest men, and to have common sense.
Oliver Goldsmith, "A Little Great Man"
Goldsmith, Oliver, "A Little Great Man," in The Oxford Book of Essays, edited by John Gross, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1991, pp. 93-94.
21 November 1999
'Tis a capital misery for a man to be at once both old and ignorant. . . . while his body sits still he knows not how to find his mind action . . . if my day prove a summer one, it [knowledge] shall not be amiss to have provided something that in the evening of my age may make my mind my companion. Notable was the answer that Antisthenes gave when he was asked what fruit he had reaped of all his studies. "By them," saith he, "I have learned both to live and to talk with myself."
Owen Felltham, "The Misery of Being Old and Ignorant"
Great English and American Essays edited by Douglass S. Mead, Rinehart and Company, Incorporated, New York, Toronto, 1959, pp. 1-2.
14 November 1999
For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair.
Think it not thy business, this knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.
Labor is Life . . .
from "Labor" by Thomas Carlyle
Great English and American Essays edited by Douglass S. Mead, Rinehart and Company, Incorporated, New York, Toronto, 1959, pp. 61, 63.
7 November 1999
Organization is indispensable; for liberty arises and has meaning only within a self-regulating community of freely co-operating individuals. But, though indispensable, organization can also be fatal. Too much organization transforms men and women into automata, suffocates the creative spirit and abolishes the very possibility of freedom. As usual, the only safe course is the middle, between the extremes of laissez-faire at one end of the scale and of total control at the other.
Aldous HuxleyHuxley, Aldous, Brave New World Revisited, Perennial Library, Harper and Row, Publishers, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, 1965, pg. 23.
31 October 1999
Thomas Merton, a monk, wrote the following because he feared he was being considered for the position of Abbot:
MY CAMPAIGN PLATFORM for non-Abbot and permanent keeper of the present doghouse:
. . . I would be completely incapable of assuming the duties of a superior, since I am in no sense an administrator still less a business man. Nor am I equipped to spend the rest of my life arguing about complete trivialities with one hundred and twenty five slightly confused and anxiety ridden monks. The responsibility of presiding over anything larger than a small chicken coop is beyond my mental, moral and physical capabilities . . . You would probably be voting for me on the grounds that I would grant you plenty of beer. Well I would, but it takes more than that to make a good Abbot.
Thomas Merton as quoted in The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton by Michael Mott Houghton MIfflin Company, Boston, 1984, pp. 503-504.
24 October 1999
We have been handed an accepted work world in which the things that really matter in human life have been pushed to the margins of our culture. Much of our present struggles with our organizations have to do with remembering what is essential and placing it back in the center of our lives.
David Whyte
Whyte, David, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, A Currency Paperback published by Doubleday, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1996, pg. 294.
17 October 1999
Southern Pacific
Huntington sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long.
Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid.
Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir.Huntington,
Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long.
Carl Sandburg
Sandburg, Carl, Harvest Poems: 1910-1960, with an introduction by Mark Van Doren, A Harvest/HBJ Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, San Diego, New York, London, 1960, pg. 49.
10 October 1999
Science and technology transform the world at many levels, but they often do so more negatively than positively. Many share my perception of crisis in which our materialistic world view is contributing to a physical, psychological, and spiritual catastrophe. Our very survival as a species demands a new view of humanity, nature, and their interplay.
Victor Mansfield, Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making, Open Court Publishing Company, a division of Carus Publishing Company, Peru, Ill., 1995, pg. 11.
3 October 1999
It is vain for you to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread of painful labors;
For He gives to his beloved even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:2
I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise, nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
26 September 1999
Investing in Key Workers is Smart Business.
Headline from The San Diego Union-Tribune, Section C, September 20, 1999.
Seven words and three business clichés in one sentence. Unfortunately these clichés are used so often that business executives(and business writers) can say them without ever concerning themselves about real meaning. It sounds good, but "smart business" is often an oxymoron which leaves little hope for significant "investment" in all those "key workers."
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