The Unenjoyment Crisis
Watch the news on TV or read it on the internet or open a newspaper or magazine and you are sure to see something about the pernicious unemployment crisis that has America and much of the world in a vice-like grip. Monthly the unemployment numbers are announced. They may go up or down a fraction of a point but they do not seem to change much. There are always a significant amount of Americans who are either unemployed or underemployed. For a nation of people who have been conditioned since birth to believe that work is one of the greatest virtues, this unemployment crisis is profoundly shattering to the nation’s psyche.
Ever since we got out of diapers we have been told over and over and over again that we must not be lazy; that we cannot truly enjoy life unless we work very hard. We have been conditioned to believe that no reward comes without hard work. Humankind has been embedded with one of the grandest guilt trips of all time. We are bad people if we are not working.
This guilt trip helps maintain our economic system and our economic system helps maintain the guilt trip. We are subjected to life-long conditioning that convinces us that all rewards are materialistic. And those rewards do not come without money and money does not come without plenty of hard work. We have become slaves to the notion that the purpose of life is to work and work and work and then be rewarded with a fleeting materialistic comfort for a few years before we die—if we make it that long.
We have been conditioned to see value in anything only in monetary terms. Not only have we been conditioned to feel guilty for not working but we have been taught to fear the lack of money which work brings. Without money we have no value. Not only are we bad but we are worthless. And fear breeds a need for security. Without hard work we get no money and without money we have no value, we are worthless, and we are threateningly insecure. How can we feel secure without a roof over our heads and without our TVs and computers and microwave ovens and furniture? How can we feel secure without an automobile? How can we feel secure without electricity to power our appliances? How can we feel secure without mass-produced processed food to zap in our microwave ovens?
We have been inculcated into a value system that is based, not on something that is real, but rather on something that is merely symbolic. We live in a society based on work and money. We work and work and work for something that is not real. We work for a symbol of value that is empty. And our lives are empty as a result.
We are so fixated on this symbolic and ephemeral value system that we fail to see the greater values that can be had in life. We miss the greater purposes. And we certainly miss the greater rewards.
We are so fixated by this work/money system that when we see a substantial decline in either work or money it becomes our greatest crisis. We fail to see an even bigger crisis permeating our lives. Ask anyone on the street, ask any political candidate, ask any political pundit, ask any economic guru, or ask anyone that watches the news and almost every one of them will tell you that the greatest problem we reguarly face is unemployment.
But I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe there is a crisis much greater than our unemployment problem. And that is our unenjoyment problem!
Yes, I know. ‘Unenjoyment’ is not technically a word. My spell check keeps reminding me of that every time I type it out. But I think it should be a word, in fact I hereby ordain it to be a word. Notice how close the words ‘unemployment’ and ‘unenjoyment’ are? The similarity in those two words points to their importance. The difference in meaning points to the chasm that exists between our symbolic and enslaving value system and a value system based on the human spirit. By focusing only on unemployment we are maintaining our focus and energy on a system that produces only fleeting and illusory values. By changing a few letters around to create the word, ‘unenjoyment,’ we can see the bigger crisis and begin to realize that we need to change our value system instead of just trying to fix a broken one.
Say the words ‘unemployment’ and ‘unenjoyment’ back to back, over and over again very quickly. They sound very similar, do they not? It is in the understanding of the difference in meaning between the two words that solutions and new directions become apparent and a window opens up to a more advanced stage in human evolution.
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
Ever since we got out of diapers we have been told over and over and over again that we must not be lazy; that we cannot truly enjoy life unless we work very hard. We have been conditioned to believe that no reward comes without hard work. Humankind has been embedded with one of the grandest guilt trips of all time. We are bad people if we are not working.
This guilt trip helps maintain our economic system and our economic system helps maintain the guilt trip. We are subjected to life-long conditioning that convinces us that all rewards are materialistic. And those rewards do not come without money and money does not come without plenty of hard work. We have become slaves to the notion that the purpose of life is to work and work and work and then be rewarded with a fleeting materialistic comfort for a few years before we die—if we make it that long.
We have been conditioned to see value in anything only in monetary terms. Not only have we been conditioned to feel guilty for not working but we have been taught to fear the lack of money which work brings. Without money we have no value. Not only are we bad but we are worthless. And fear breeds a need for security. Without hard work we get no money and without money we have no value, we are worthless, and we are threateningly insecure. How can we feel secure without a roof over our heads and without our TVs and computers and microwave ovens and furniture? How can we feel secure without an automobile? How can we feel secure without electricity to power our appliances? How can we feel secure without mass-produced processed food to zap in our microwave ovens?
We have been inculcated into a value system that is based, not on something that is real, but rather on something that is merely symbolic. We live in a society based on work and money. We work and work and work for something that is not real. We work for a symbol of value that is empty. And our lives are empty as a result.
We are so fixated on this symbolic and ephemeral value system that we fail to see the greater values that can be had in life. We miss the greater purposes. And we certainly miss the greater rewards.
We are so fixated by this work/money system that when we see a substantial decline in either work or money it becomes our greatest crisis. We fail to see an even bigger crisis permeating our lives. Ask anyone on the street, ask any political candidate, ask any political pundit, ask any economic guru, or ask anyone that watches the news and almost every one of them will tell you that the greatest problem we reguarly face is unemployment.
But I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe there is a crisis much greater than our unemployment problem. And that is our unenjoyment problem!
Yes, I know. ‘Unenjoyment’ is not technically a word. My spell check keeps reminding me of that every time I type it out. But I think it should be a word, in fact I hereby ordain it to be a word. Notice how close the words ‘unemployment’ and ‘unenjoyment’ are? The similarity in those two words points to their importance. The difference in meaning points to the chasm that exists between our symbolic and enslaving value system and a value system based on the human spirit. By focusing only on unemployment we are maintaining our focus and energy on a system that produces only fleeting and illusory values. By changing a few letters around to create the word, ‘unenjoyment,’ we can see the bigger crisis and begin to realize that we need to change our value system instead of just trying to fix a broken one.
Say the words ‘unemployment’ and ‘unenjoyment’ back to back, over and over again very quickly. They sound very similar, do they not? It is in the understanding of the difference in meaning between the two words that solutions and new directions become apparent and a window opens up to a more advanced stage in human evolution.
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.
