Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Hobby and Occupation

A recent comment said that my hobby of reading is now my occupation. And I suppose the converse - my occupation of school is now my hobby - is also true. For the modern person this is certainly bizarre - to completely dissolve the boundary between hobby and occupation. But, as Marx already exhaustively analyzed this, it is the modern person who is bizarre for making a separation between occupation and hobby. In pre-modern time there is no such separation: a being's work is his life. But with the advert of capitalism and wage economy, occupation becomes forcibly specialized and human beings are alienated from his job. With the Industrial Revolution, workers not only become specialized, they also become mechanical. Specialization and mechanicality alienates human beings, forcing them to draw the line between occupation and hobbies.

Now, the problem with this separation is that we are forced to become consumers and materalists. Being alienated in labour, we have to step outside our own sphere of actions and look for hobbies available to us. Capitalists so readily feed us with plenty of toys we can use to claim as "hobbies". (A person who is not alienated from his work, who makes no distinction between hobby and occupation, does not need the toys.) One might argue that one can make his own toys or whatever, without being a consumerist; but I ask this question: how is that possible, when everywhere is private property? I suppose you can go to the public parks, on foot...this is a very limited form of hobby or entertainment (which I don't disagree - I am a man of Nature). One, if one is doomed to be a sophisicated urbanist, is doomed to become a capitalist, constantly under the spell of wage economy.

I do suppose the Marxist view of wage economy is not such a bad thing, if 1. one likes one's job as a specialized, mechanical tool, or 2. one is okay with being a capitalist (that is to say, a victim of the capitalist system - you must be a victim if you are not the rich-business-people). By my readers, reflect a little: can you actually be okay with either of the two conditions? Material satisfication, I agree, is important; but only to a degree: it is spiritual (I do not mean it in a religious sense, but in a general metaphysical sense) independence that is most important - being autonomous in this world of (economic) necessity. For me, right now, my dissolution of hobby and occupation (through reading and writing essays) gives me this kind of independence.

My readers! When will you seek to break out of the capitalist system, or am I just blowing a bubble that is about to burst?

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'll break out when:
1. it fails me or,
2. i bore of it
:)

12:58 a.m.  

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