Freedom From A Cubicle
I'm Bernard the Buffalo, and this is my home.
(I must apologize for the pointless nature of this post. I had to write something.) I am one devious dog. Seriously, I don’t know anyone with a more criminal mind than me. I’m the kind of person so lazy that submitting a book in college becomes a great big deal. Y’know, all it took was for[...]
Am in a position now where I know the names of some of the people I’ve gotten to know: Luiza: You got to know her in my last mail. Tall, pretty and with long black hair, she is Mexican. La Pe?a: Big Mexican, his real name is ?scar, but everyone knows him by his surname, which is[...]
It has been a long standing tradition in my family that the lazier one is, the merrier one’s Christmas will be. Everyone, maybe with the exception of Mother Alvares, absolutely makes it a point to wait till the very last minute to do things they should have done ages ago: like making the Christmas star,[...]
(This article by Lucano The Brother appeared a couple of weeks back in a newspaper. I’m reproducing here in its entirety, since not only does it give laziness a new meaning, but also provides some much needed closure to the entire Mexican Shenanigans section of this site - definitely better than my own attempt at doing so.)
My first (and last) 9-5 job was as an intern at one of Bombay’s top advertising agencies. I could best describe the experience as soul-killing. Almost every one was assigned a cubicle of not more than 4 x 4 feet at which they were supposed to exercise their imagination.
The novelty of having one’s own desk and telephone extension quickly wore off, and I eventually came to see myself in a situation no better than an assembly line worker. It was a terrible environment, and one that I was happy to escape after doing my two months’ time.
I have always had an aversion to the word work and the emphasis people around me seemed to give it. I hated the eight-hour routine of school, and I later realized that school was just training for another eight-hour routine that we would have to submit ourselves to later on in life ? the 9-5 workday.
After graduating from college, the spectre of a 9-5 job looming large, I began to look around on the internet to see if others shared my distrust of the idea of work, or wage-labour, as it most commonly signifies in our society.
I came upon a wonderful essay written by Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue titled, ‘The Right to Laziness’. I was delighted to have found a kindred spirit. Later, I bumped into more fellow travelers, like American anarchist Bob Black who spectacularly demolished the monster called work in his essay, ‘The Abolition of Work’ (in it, he refers to wage-labour as ’slavery on the installment plan’).
I eventually stopped worrying about the biggest thing that young people my age were made to worry about ? finding a job in the big bad world before someone else came and took it away.
So many of my friends ended up in thankless work environments thanks to needless pressure put on them by ‘knowledgeable’ elders or peers. Luckily, my parents didn’t pressurize me in any way ? whether or not they personally felt I was doing the right thing in life.
After working for some NGOs, I travelled to Mexico on the suggestion of an uncle who had a friend who ran an NGO there, something called Universidad de la Tierra, or University of the Earth.
It was an alternative learning space, where anyone who wanted to learn something could do so there without having to submit themselves to routines, exams, or certification.
During my stay in Mexico, I met my present wife, Isa. We talked about the kind of life we would like to lead. I shared my thoughts on work. It seemed to me that the ideal life would be living on a farm, growing our own food, and devoting spare time to doing whatever we wanted, whether or not we derived anything commercially from those pursuits.
It turned out that she felt pretty much the same way ? and she’d actually studied Agroecology in university, a course that taught environment-friendly forms of agriculture, such as organic and bio-intensive farming.
In August 2005, I returned to India with Isa. As luck would have it, I ran into a friend on the day I arrived, who on hearing of me and my wife’s desire to work with the soil, put us in touch with the MD of a Bombay-based company who had agricultural land around Pune and Lonavala.
He asked us if we could help him set up a 50 acre property he owned as an organic farm. I’ve been managing this farm for almost two years, and it’s been exhilarating. I’ve been given absolute freedom, with the emphasis on results rather than time spent achieving them.
I could never do a nine-to-five job, since I don’t lead a nine-to-five existence. I’m an early riser, and like to take siestas in the afternoon. Some of my best ideas come to me at night just as I’m about to go to sleep.
I couldn’t imagine an existence where I’d have to spend 8-10 hours daily away from my family, and I find it unfortunate that so many people are forced to do exactly that by compulsions that they find overwhelming.
I believe that the idea of work as exemplified by all industrialized societies these days goes against the very concept of freedom. I believe that we all should have the freedom to define exactly how to exercise our productive capacities, and in what form. —
Links to essays mentioned:
Abolition of Work by Bob Black
Right to Laziness by Paul Lafargue
THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives