Working for Ourselves

"Get a job!" was a common insult hurled at the hippies back when I was a kid. I remember a few of them homesteading in the woods off the dirt road to my favorite swimming hole on Vancouver Island. I remember the homegrown vegetable gardens and the hastily assembled log cabins and the pungent odor of their strange cigarettes.

I wouldn't pay much attention if I was alone beyond noticing you could barely see their eyes under all that head and facial hair. But if my father was with me ... well, then I'd hear a few lectures on the long, windy drive back home. The values of work, the satisfaction of a job well done, the "I had to walk 5 miles to school - both ways" speech that all parents at that time seemed to pull out of their back pockets at times like these.

I appreciated my father's point actually ... especially as I got older. But I sympathized with the rebels, too.

But now I'm noticing the same "Get a job!" catchphrase going out from Wall St. to all the OWS occupiers. For sure, work is needed for the liberation of the people. But not the work the 1% is thinking we need.

Working for Ourselves, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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