I quit my job, I quit my job and I don't have another job to walk into. Of course, that means I am now unemployed. I suppose I have always judged unemployed people as wasters, parasites and leeches, and that is very much how they are portrayed both by the media and our political rulers. A viewpoint that until now, I have never stopped to question. But what is often (far too often) forgotten, are the personal circumstances of those unemployed individuals, where they have come from; where they are now; and where they want to be. By this I obviously mean more than their geographical location.
I don't plan on embarking on a comprehensive analysis of the diverse characteristics of the unemployed, I will however, share my experience, where I have come from; where I am now; and where I want to be.
Where I have come from:
The UK. There are much worse places to come from I am well aware, but there are better places too. To me, the UK reeks of capitalism and all its trappings, which include but are not limited to, greed; oppression; exploitation; and class division. All of which I despise with every fibre of my being, all of which I have come to embody over the last year
Where I am:
So after graduating I walked into a job working in a call centre for a supposedly reputable company. It was pretty much my worst nightmare. There was no passion, just cold hard sales, backstabbing management and miserable customers... All day, every day. I had spent most days for the last 5 years expanding my mind, learning and exploring new things, a genuinely exciting time. I was then working for a company which encouraged rigidity, dispassion and monotony, everything that a University environment seeks to avoid. I felt trapped and depressed.
The analogy I like to use is that of a monkey who spends his formative years in the wild, learning with each new step, every day a new adventure. Then one day, as the monkey realises that the limits of his new found potential are unbounded, he is tricked while gathering food for his family. A faceless corporation, alien to the monkey's goals of living a fulfilling and enriching life captures the monkey. They lure him into an iron cage and force him to forever perform repetitive tasks for their own profit. They take no heed of the monkey's feelings, even attempting to brainwash him that his life is easier here in the iron cage, he is fed without having to hunt and he is safe from the dangers of the forest.
So the monkey makes it his mission to escape and find his way in the forest again and to begin re-learning his skills and find a job which suits those skills and allows the monkey to live a fulfilling life.
I think all of us can relate to the monkey in some way or other.
Where I want to be:
Let me start by asking you a question which has been posed to us all already by our forever optimistic friend, Nietzsche
"What if, some day or night, a demon was to steal into you loneliest loneliness and say to you:
This life you live it and have lived it, you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? ... Or how well disposed would you become to yourself and life - to long for nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"
To be condemned to repeat the last year of my life, I believe I would do exactly as Nietzsche suggests, I would fall down to my knees and gnash my teeth aggressively, cursing the wicked demon curses so wicked they have never before been uttered by a man. The reason for this rather dramatic reaction is that I really did hate my job, it was confining and monotonous and oppressive and everything else you don't want your one life to be (I am not religious).
Where do I then want to be? I want to be in a position where I would " long for nothing more fervently" than to live my life innumerable times again - what an exciting and inspirational prospect.
At this very moment in time My employment status (or lack of) is now something that by default puts me in the same category as the stigmatised unemployed mass. But at this very moment in time, I feel liberated. I can feel my blood tingling with life inside my veins, a premonition of things to come.
(Reference: Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff, 2001)
