My dear daughter,
We are not free.
If anything, we are slaves to the needs of our body. It cannot maintain itself without nourishment.
We have to use money to eat, to have homes and even to have access to security. Most people have to work to have access to money.
Work always means doing something you wouldn’t normally do for the best part of your life. It’s not just doing something unwillingly, most times you have to endure the company of people you wouldn’t if you could choose, you have to endure exploitation, exhaustion, health hazards and extreme stress.
Paid work is a relatively new feature, historically speaking. For a long period of time, people worked because they were forced to. Nowadays there is salary, but the suppression of will remains: the alternative to not working is usually dying of hunger, disease, violence or becoming an outcast.
Almost everybody believes work is more than a necessity; it is a virtue. It’s a culturally and historically constructed concept, to normalize work exploitation. People won’t complain about working for far less than they deserve. Business owners and people who live off of inheritances or investments don’t have to work and have nothing to complain about.
They say business owners assume all the risks and have a hard time managing everything. It’s not true; every employee contributes to the success of the business. But the idea that all the profits should go to a select few has made its way to the status quo and has remained.
There have been a few extenuating factors to this model: there are cooperatives and profit and shares distribution, for example; but, overall, things remain the same.
Love,
Dad
Aspergers Dad 