post PhD reality:
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

22::July::2011 20:30 → permalink

ignoble subservient drudgery or honorable exploitation?

As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments. Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy, honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of dignity, worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or conduct, is of first-rate consequence in the development of classes and of class distinctions, and it is therefore necessary to say something of its derivation and meaning. — Torsten Veblen

In this moment of history, the values of dignity, honor, worth should be examined closely by all members of the political/economic elite (though they would have small care over such things), for it is clear that the situation of the commoner in Amurikan society is one where these attributes are being more or less quickly stripped from their lives of servitude to financial institutions. There are still choices one might make which are liberating to a limited degree, but the pressures to conform to the demands of that fiscal/market system are overwhelming to most.

Is another pathway possible?

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