Thursday, March 29, 2007

Slave culture

In the Romanian jargon there is an insult: slave. It appeared ten years or so ago and it stuck. It probably came from Gypsy talk, probably holding more meaning to them, since they were liberated from slavery and into the worst social problem Romania has. But at least the cool ones are not slaves anymore, even if they recreate daily the hated cliche of the typical Gypsy Roma and are stuck in the mentality that work is somehow a shameful act.

But the word is also used by Romanians. You might see young people that have a little business or a scheme to get money quickly use it to refer to the people that are employed somewhere and go to work every day. And they are somehow right, since a lot of the rich people in Romania, business owners, top managers, land owners, etc. are uneducated folks. Instead of going to school, they chose to fight, risk, learn in the school of life. And it shows. They have a lot of money and no manners. They have a lot of opportunities, but don't really use them. They are no longer rude people with no money, they have money now, but are stuck into being the same people they started with. Kind of like the joke where the anus wanted to be the manager of the body.

How about the slave, then? The guy that goes to school, goes through all the (mechanical) motions of learning, passing exams, getting a job, living a "normal" life? Well, we are mostly wasting our time. The money we get are what we need to live, maybe even enough to get a car or, if one is lucky, an apartment. People like us spend their entire lives surviving and dreaming about what we would do if we had more money. Meanwhile, we lose 8 hours a day working, 3 preparing and going to work, 7 sleeping, 1 or 2 eating and are left with 4-5 hours in which to do "what we like". If that isn't slavery, I don't know what is, but in all that time we make the system work.

Slimy manager types that themselves work for uneducated bullies that somehow got into fortune work in the system as well. Poor 'unslavy' thieves occasionally steal something, thus making policemen work all day and accept bribes. Businesses run into the political framework maintained by corrupt politicians who themselves obey the laws of economics, which are heavily influenced by the people from other countries, who themselves are only cogs in this great machine we call humanity. And of course, all those good managers that work for great people and all the Gypsies that go to school and work and all those politicians who actually want to make a difference, too.

This is no freedom, we are all slaves. We allow ourselves to be blinded by a value system, be it invented by us or just stolen from someone else, and we live by it. We all choose our swords and then we let ourselves die by them. True freedom is inside, not outside, it's in the dreams, not in their realisation. I might even venture on saying that it's in the quantity of the dreams, not their quality, because that is what enslaves us, dreaming of a single thing, being desperate to achieve it and then to hold on to it.


danezia said...

This post is really good, and it confirms my decision to subscribe to your blog and add it to my blogroll.

And believe me, I'm a tough guy to impress :P!.

Sometimes I just wonder why I try to succeed in life, by the normal (and apparently LAME) way: "study and work hard".

And, I'm not upset when it comes to the moron that makes a shitload of money... and brags with his fancy car&house and his beautiful but biatchy girls.
Those kind of people are simply pitiful, they life a shallow and sad life... and their showing off, shows how desperate they are trying so hard to prove that they "made it mom!" (most of them will end up bad, at some time in the future... like some stupid people that win lotteries).

I'm pissed, when it comes to the "smart guys", people that made a shady business, and made enough money to start a clean business... and then miraculously transform into honorable people, they become the elite... the untouchable.

They are smart, smug and arrogant, and they end up owning huge corporation, and commanding the media and politics.

...I'm pissed because, I'm envious... and because I feel that I'm wasting my life living like a "slave"

Siderite said...

I am honored to be in your blogroll. Yet, the spirit of my entry was that even if we do feel like slaves or envious or whatever, it's just in our heads. Just as freedom is. What I meant was that even if a jerk has a lot of money and we don't or even if he is really a nice person, that really should not affect you and me.