An unfamiliar force of feeling is rising steadily within me and with a shock I recognise it: anger. It has directed itself firmly at the world of work we commonly - and complicitly - accept as normal.
I have been far too used to blaming my own weakness, selfishness, self indulgence, my own desire to have things be as I want them. And that has been important; it is very easy to seek outside myself for the source of my own discomfort. Blame can be a wonderfully easy “out”. But I have come to recognise a problem rooted far deeper than my own inconvenience. I am angry at a system that fundamentally devalues human beings, even as it professes to promote their welfare. I am angry at depersonalisation and the erosion of personal space. In a world in which our fear is that we will soon lose our jobs to machines or robots, it is surprising the extent to which people seem to be existing in machine-like spaces. I am angry that so many are expected to be other than they are and fit boxes they were never designed to fit, wearing the sacrifice as a badge of pride. And I am angry at resources stretched so thin that the slightest additional strain risks sending the whole delicate structure tumbling down, claiming untold victims. I do not like watching as the pressure builds within a human volcano, so perilously close to erupting that it would be impossible to say on which side of the line of inevitability we now fall.
Part of me wonders at my own conceit. It seems immensely strange, from my position of privilege, to direct my energy at the commonplace in the face of devastating human, animal and environmental suffering on a global scale. But it occurs to me that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. In a world in which we learn, consciously or unconsciously, to resent anyone who seems to get a “free pass” or a reduced burden, we are in danger of creating a fundamental barrier to genuine compassion, towards others and towards ourselves. We are in danger of discounting the validity of any complaint with which we feel ourselves capable of coping; we are in danger of accepting that what we have built is enough. We learn to “play the game” and we expect that others will play it with us. And perhaps, for as long as we do, we taint the waters of fundamental respect for life.
I have been far too used to blaming my own weakness, selfishness, self indulgence, my own desire to have things be as I want them. And that has been important; it is very easy to seek outside myself for the source of my own discomfort. Blame can be a wonderfully easy “out”. But I have come to recognise a problem rooted far deeper than my own inconvenience. I am angry at a system that fundamentally devalues human beings, even as it professes to promote their welfare. I am angry at depersonalisation and the erosion of personal space. In a world in which our fear is that we will soon lose our jobs to machines or robots, it is surprising the extent to which people seem to be existing in machine-like spaces. I am angry that so many are expected to be other than they are and fit boxes they were never designed to fit, wearing the sacrifice as a badge of pride. And I am angry at resources stretched so thin that the slightest additional strain risks sending the whole delicate structure tumbling down, claiming untold victims. I do not like watching as the pressure builds within a human volcano, so perilously close to erupting that it would be impossible to say on which side of the line of inevitability we now fall.
Part of me wonders at my own conceit. It seems immensely strange, from my position of privilege, to direct my energy at the commonplace in the face of devastating human, animal and environmental suffering on a global scale. But it occurs to me that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. In a world in which we learn, consciously or unconsciously, to resent anyone who seems to get a “free pass” or a reduced burden, we are in danger of creating a fundamental barrier to genuine compassion, towards others and towards ourselves. We are in danger of discounting the validity of any complaint with which we feel ourselves capable of coping; we are in danger of accepting that what we have built is enough. We learn to “play the game” and we expect that others will play it with us. And perhaps, for as long as we do, we taint the waters of fundamental respect for life.