210
Empire
"Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" in On Disobedience and Other Essays (1981)
Narrated 'Abdullah Volume 9, Book 89, Number 258 http://web.archive.org/web/20111004120922/http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/089-sbt.php#009.089.258
Sunni Hadith
“Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities.”
The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: Work makes a mockery of freedom. The official line is that we all have rights and live in a democracy. Other unfortunates who aren't free like we are have to live in police states. These victims obey orders or-else, no matter how arbitrary. The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to the higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing.
And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors; he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation.
“The air of one’s native country is the most healthy air.”
Letter to his brother, G.M. Chekhov (January 1895)
Letters
On laws in Ireland prohibiting smoking in buildings where people work.
Monster (2004)
[Original goodness: On the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount, Easwaran, Eknath, w:Eknath Easwaran, 1996, Nilgiri Press, Tomales, CA, 0915132923, http://books.google.com/books?id=EVMJXI4pJFMC&pg=PT155&lpg=PT155&dq=%22Love+is+so+exquisitely+elusive.+It+cannot+be+bought,+cannot+be+badgered,+cannot+be+hijacked.+It+is+available+only+in+one+rare+form:+as+the+natural+response+of+a+healthy+mind+and+healthy+heart.+%22+eknath+easwaran&source=bl&ots=p9woVsJ6yV&sig=tbv5qJjAiu6YNqt8luZX4RM0rFg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tdSdT7f9IOi9iwLF5NhU&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false] (p. 155) (book originally published 1989: p. 131)
“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”
1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)
