The Unsettling of My Soul

I'm sitting in a downtown brew pub about to enjoy a local porter: the White Eagle Baltic.  It's an especially dumb name for a porter but it looks delicious.  Ain't I a special little boy.  It's small comfort this beer and all its local goodness especially since I'm apparently a nigger and niggerdly and niggerish and being niggered upon and have niggerized a few myself.  WB slapped me around pretty hard today.  I just finished his essay, "The Unsettling of America" and I have to say I'm pretty unsettled by it.  It raises a spectral question that I can't seem to put down: Is there any hope for us?  Is there any hope for me?  There is much of Wendell that I'm going to have to read, absorb, and then set aside.  I feel I've no way of coming to terms with its consequences in my life.  I'm not equal to his task.  The sociopolitical symptoms he criticizes are to large for me to get a handle on and then the only purpose it can serve is for me to accentuate my hypocrisy with a high flown cultural criticism.  That would come so easily to me.  I can imagine I would be really good at that.  That wasn't the point of this here writing though.  The point was to find something tangible and do it.  So here's where I stand.

The growth of the exploiters' revolution on this continent has been accompanied by the growth of the idea that work is beneath human dignity, particularly any form of hand work.  We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from.  We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.  Out of this contempt for work arose the idea of a nigger: at first some person, and later some thing, to be used to relieve us of the burden of work.  If we began by making niggers of people, we have ended by making a nigger of the world.  We have taken the irreplaceable energies and materials of the world and turned them into jimcrack "labor-saving devices."  We have made of the rivers and oceans and winds niggers to carry away our refuse, which we think we are too good to dispose of decently ourselves.  And in doing this to the world that is our common heritage and bond, we have returned to making niggers of people: we have become each other's niggers.

But is work something that we have a right to escape?  And can we escape it with impunity?  We are probably the first entire people ever to think so.  All the ancient wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise.  It tells us that work is necessary for us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom.  We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.

I'll be honest and tell you that I read this while sitting in a tacobell on my lunch break slurping high fructose corn syrup through a straw and munching down Cheesy Double Beef's.  You don't have to tell me that my hypocrisy knows no bounds.  I think this idea was the killing stroke of the essay, the coup d'etat.  Our grand malaise of culture boils down to an individual sickness.  I'm adverse to work.  Now in my defense I'd say I'm more prone to working with my hands than some may be and I enjoy it as well.  Spending a morning cutting wood in the fall; steam rising from your shoulders as you work, the rhythms and strength of the moment, the sound of cracking wood and the exultation of a perfectly delivered blow sending two pieces to ground from one, all work to produce a pile of wood that can be used.  It's fulfilling to my soul.  But... I burn a natural gas furnace.  I send a check to the gas company and they pipe me fuel.  I do nothing for it except earn a pay check.  Is my furnace a nigger?  I've called it worse things before.  Or my automatic dishwasher?  That's near blasphemy.  My refrigerator, my car, my computer, my ipod, my food, my clothes.  Or, for the love of all that is holy, is my toilet?  I love my toilet.  No really.  I LOVE MY TOILET.  Don't %$#@ with my toilet.  Or my toilet paper.  I hate wiping my butt with pine needles.  That's right, we don't have deciduous forests in this state.  No fluffy oak leaves here.  Its pine needles or poison ivy.  Take your pick. 

All that aside, do I really understand the deep rooted hatred of work that Wendell is getting at here?  I know that I'd hate washing dishes.  If I could get somebody to buy my food for me I would because I can't even stand walking down an aisle and picking it off the shelves in prepackaged splendor.  I'd hate crapping in an outhouse although I hear in the winter you can stack up quite the frozen fecal stalagmite.  Can I even imagine disposing of my own waste?  What about walking to work?  Aside from the fact that it would take a good hour, not so interested. But I have to say that if I can do it for myself, then I should.  So... Can I grow my own food?  Can I dispose of my own refuse?   Can I light my own house?  Can I build my own furniture?  Can I make my own clothes?  Can I cook my own food?  Can I make my own music?  Can I embrace the sweat and sorrow that is work?  For some I can and for some I can't.  So then I ask, can I find a community that will help me?  And this is where I think our hope rests.  Though I can swing a hammer I can't pick a guitar.  Though I can cook a mean ribeye, I've yet to raise a cow.  Though I can do things for myself I can't do everything.  I'm ready for the promise of Genesis.

"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

And behold, a double cheesy beef burrito emergeth from the maw of the serpent and assuaged the raging hunger of Adam beneath the shade of the apple tree where he lay in repose while listening to Michael Franti on his Ipod and getting his feet rubbed by Eve with the Homedics Foot Pleaser Ultra Deep Kneading Massager with Heat.  And all was well with his soul.