I Was A Lab'rer Like My Father Was Before

Lately I've been listening to two of the only "salt of the Earth" songs I know:

Downeaster Alexa by Billy Joel

The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald By Gordon Lightfoot

Coincidentally they are both about ships. But, more importantly, they're about downtrodden people who do desperate things for money. Society did not choose them to be affluent, so they do what they can to eat. Commercial fisherman have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Other seafaring workers aren't much better off. They picked the wrong parents.

My full-time job is white collar, but I took a blue collar job on weekends. Why? Because I want to stay mad. I never want to be complacent--to feel that I am separate from the proletariat or above them. I deal with rich people in both positions, and am often treated the same--as "the help". What many fail to realize is just how lucky wealthy people were to have the circumstances they did to amass their fortunes: the right smarts, connections, maybe a touch of sociopathy, and hugely--being in the right place at the right time.

Still, I see much dissatisfaction and neurotic behavior among those blessed with affluence, but most of their problems are their own fault. Living simply is very easy.

Then again, there is the chance that they are trying to fill the hole that civilization left when it began to destroy nature. Buying stuff and telling people what to do seems to help.

The more I learn about primitives, the harder it is to focus. Of course, I will because, quite frankly, I have a gun at my back. If I don't work, I don't eat. I'm out on the street digging through dumpsters for the 92 billion pounds of food people in the US throw out every year. But I can't help but think of the 2-3 hours hunter-gatherers generally worked. I dream of the egalitarian life they had. There was no class division among them. Nobody thought themselves better than the others because they had more green pieces of paper. Few starved because they all shared. And, unlike the salt of the Earth, they did not futiley try to control the world around them. (Farmers are the most aggregious offenders.)

I hold no ill will whatsoever to the blue collar worker. My father is one of them, as am I. But unlike many, I realize the damage of what I'm doing is causing the Earth. Nevertheless, the humility centers me.

Who is richer: the person with many possessions or another with few, but leisure, community and purpose? High stress managing money or low stress dealing with the day by day?

Here is an excellent article with details about Stone Age living.

The technology and "conveniences" humans have created have enslaved them. We are all grown children who, if left without electricity and commercially grown food, would likely starve. The laborers--the salt--might do a little better, but we are nothing compared to even a primitive child. As technology advances, we become even more dependent on it and alienated to nature. I respect the hell out of a calloused hand, but hard work to survive didn't begin until people began trying to rule the Earth with agriculture and domestication.

It all makes me sad... which is probably why I keep coming back to these songs.