RE: a response to my prior post

Considering this post.

"Or, if you are just going to school and getting good grades so that you may get into a good college and for no other reason, why attend school at all or pay for a school as expensive at UHS? Why not take that money and go skiing and to baseball games now?"

"I just think it is interesting that we all seem to want to be happy but think that the only way to be happy is to make a lot of money, even if you are miserable while doing it, so that we can have a few weeks vacation every year to actually be happy."
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While reading this response to my previous post, I thought of the movie "The Great Debaters" in which a character says, "We do what we have to do so we can do what we want to do."

Considering this, I find it quite effective in representing my view of things. As my mother liked to remind me when I was little, "Well, sometimes we have to do things we don't like to." This conversation would normally take place within the context of me refusing to practice viola or eat tuna fish or something completely useless since I never was especially good at viola or very fond of mayonnaise.

Striving for something (like the bigger, capitalized End) does not mean that one rushes through life, "just going to school and getting good grades" in order to advance to the next step. It doesn't mean that there's no pleasure or happiness derived from going to UHS. Obviously there is, otherwise I would be in a different schooling situation. Having a greater End merely adjusts the perspective with which one might approach the alienation we feel sometimes (often, according to a rough poll in our class) as students doing seemingly pointless work.

The End isn't necessarily money either. Everyone has their personal end and yes for some maybe it's wealth, but I think that most people are grounded enough to see the larger picture. While eventually a large portion of us won't have the "perfect job," I doubt that any early 19th century worker truly felt impassioned by their factory work. We all would like to do any number of seemingly frivolous, but nonetheless personally important things like watch "The City," but sometimes we can't. Sometimes food had to be put on the table and clothing on the back. The End is an ideal.

And while skiing and baseball games are great, they're a sort of temporary happiness. Sure if you buy season passes or tickets, then the happiness is prolonged somewhat, but most people cannot go through life without facing circumstances that force them into labor of some sort. Why not have at least some semblance of control over your career so you don't end up completely loathing your job? School, no matter how great and amazing or stressful and inane it may seem at times, is a sort of cushion so we don't all end up selling ShamWows (though I'm sure he really enjoys his job and went through some sort of unpleasant schooling to get it). If your life goal is to sell ShamWows, then that's great. I'm sure that the training for it isn't particularly interesting, but if once you snap on the headset and polo then that's your End, congratulations.

For the rest of us, maybe it's not so simple. It's like this:

Child: Mommy, mommy! I want to become a rockstar.
Mother: Wow, Johnny, that's so exciting! What instrument?
Child: All of them!

And just in case Johnny can't manage to become a one-man mega band, Johnny also goes to school and decides he likes science class because he gets to blow things up.

The ShamWow Commercial

RE: On Marx's Estranged Labor

Regarding this post.

"When work is seen as a means to an end, the workers labor will seize to be Marx’s “forced” labor but instead be voluntary labor, as the worker imagines his labor helping fulfill his vision of a better life. Thus, a society that encourages mobility is a society that liberates the worker from the pains of estrangement and alienation."

Interestingly, this topic was also addressed in my class, but in a seemingly contradictory way. Perhaps the problems lies in the phrase "means to an end." When brought up, it instantly reminded me of last semester and Immanuel Kant (though this was not particularly helpful), and in turn the paragraphs we wrote about his categorical imperative. The more I thought about the paragraph the more I was reminded of the complexities that arise when considering a situation, and hence, I arrived at the following conclusion: Treating work as a means to an end might free the worker from alienation; however, it is quite dependent on what end a worker can see.

Attitude is everything. In class, the following question was proposed: When was the last time you did anything without caring what anyone thought?

The class thought long an hard, but personally, I felt confused. What does it mean to "not care"? Does asking for people's approval count? I considered high school, specifically the past year or so in which work seemed to exponentially speed up. As assignments flew by and I completed each one with less thought and/or personal attachment, did I feel more alienated? What was my end? To some (though hopefully not too many) the answer might be simple: college. But what about beyond that?

After considering the matter over the past day, I have decided that there are ends and then there are Ends, meaning the things that really count. College is a end, uncapitalized, while Happiness (for me and most people I'd imagine), is a big End. We work, go through school, complete homework as means most of the time. High School has been, at least some of the time, a means. College too will be a means to an extent, but when thinking about this greater End which is still fairly vague in my mind, I feel less alienated by my work.

While I have responded to the pertinent post in a most indirect manner, I would like to address one more quote. "Thus, a society that encourages mobility is a society that liberates the worker from the pains of estrangement and alienation." This is something I agree with (and what I have spent this post trying to personalize and legitimize). In my case I would phrase it like this: A society that fosters limitless possibility is a society which frees a person from alienation.

With the tools of imagination and a fair bit of optimism (depending on circumstance), we have the power to free ourselves.