No job is worth a life, yet in the USA more and more jobs demand precisely that.\u00a0 Indeed, to me it seems likely many countries that have embraced capitalism as the basis of their social system make similar demands of their citizens.<\/p>\n
Are these harsh words?\u00a0 I don’t think they are, but they will certainly be unpopular.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, something that fascinates me is how fanatical capitalists are about the merits of their chosen system.\u00a0 Sadly, that fanaticism reminds me of religious dogma.\u00a0 Have you ever noticed how religiously indoctrinated people are incapable of questioning the most rudimentary inconsistencies of their religion?\u00a0 Furthermore, they seem incapable of differentiating questions about the fundamental basis of their beliefs from attacks upon their deity and themselves.\u00a0 Unfortunately, dogma is that powerful.<\/p>\n
In the USA capitalism has become the most prevalent dogma.<\/p>\n
Do you doubt me?\u00a0 Let me illustrate my point by invoking a single word.\u00a0 Socialism.\u00a0 Socialism is bad, right?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it isn’t capitalism?\u00a0 That is dogma – you’re not allowed to even consider alternatives<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 When you have difficulty thinking about alternatives without feeling you’re somehow betraying your fundamental beliefs, you have been indoctrinated by dogma .\u00a0 {I’m going to revisit this topic in future posts, count on that.)<\/p>\n But, for now, let me get back to the opening assertion in this post<\/p>\n I wonder how many lives have been shattered by the demands of unreasonable employers? I wonder how many people have sacrificed their families and\/or their relationships for their jobs?\u00a0 I suspect the number is vastly higher than is morally acceptable.<\/p>\n Am I making this stuff up?\u00a0 Unfortunately I am not, I’m speaking from personal experience gathered over the last two decades.\u00a0 Twenty years spent watching in horror as the quality of the life of everyone I know degrades.\u00a0 It has been particularly bad recently.\u00a0 How bad?\u00a0 Well, in the twelve weeks preceding Thanksgiving, my hands down favorite holiday, I was home for seven days.\u00a0 Total.\u00a0 To be clear, that wasn’t a week of ease spent at home, that was a total of seven days spread out over several bits.\u00a0 But it gets worse.\u00a0 In the two weeks preceding Thanksgiving I worked 162.5 hours.\u00a0 I didn’t have a choice my principals could let me live with, I had<\/strong> to do it.\u00a0 And no – I didn’t do it for the overtime, I did it because my conscience would not let me let the customer down.<\/p>\n My <\/em>job <\/span>did that to me, but I will never let it do so again.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n So I guess I’ll have to get a new job that allows me to live…\u00a0 It is long past time.<\/p>\n Please don’t think I’m looking for your sympathy, I’m not. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I do know that many of you have your own horror stories about what work has done to you or those you love.\u00a0 So no, I’m not looking for your sympathy – I’m looking for your understanding.\u00a0 Sadly, I suspect understanding might be even harder for you to grant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No job is worth a life, yet in the USA more and more jobs demand precisely that.\u00a0 Indeed, to me it seems likely many countries that have embraced capitalism as the basis of their social system make similar demands of their citizens. Are these harsh words?\u00a0 I don’t think they are, but they will certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[73,121,391],"class_list":["post-5251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-capitalism","tag-dogma","tag-socialsm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}