Website owner:  James Miller

Facts of life

    The Facts of Life.  What are they?


   Fact 1.  If you don't work, you don't eat.

       This ironclad rule is true for all except certain 
       categories of people who are shielded from it.  Examples of 
       those shielded: people who are being supported by someone 
       else (as children being supported by their parents, 
       nonworking wives being supported by their husbands and 
       welfare types being supported by the government), people on 
       pensions, and people with money stashed away (savings or 
       inheritance).

   Fact 2.  Jobs are usually extremely difficult, almost 
       impossible, to find. 

       One reason jobs are so difficult to find is that in our 
       modern, industrialized, highly complex society most jobs 
       are very specialized and require specialized knowledge and 
       skill.  There may be many jobs available but only a very 
       few that would be open to you with your particular 
       background, knowledge and skill.  As the society becomes 
       more and more complex the number of unskilled jobs 
       available becomes smaller and smaller. 

   Fact 3.  Most people dislike their jobs.  They work because 
       they have to, not because they want to. 

       Although many people might well enjoy work, given the right 
       job, they dislike their job.  The reasons are many:  They 
       and their jobs may be mismatched, the job not being right 
       for their particular talents, abilities and personality.  
       They may dislike their boss for one reason or another.  The 
       job may involve a lot of stress or pressure.


     Fact 1 above, "If you don't work, you don't eat", may not 
     seem so unreasonable, unfair or bad.  After all, all the 
     creatures of the earth have to work to eat and, in addition, 
     it is important psychologically for a person to be busy, to 
     be occupied.  However, when you add in Fact 2, "Jobs are 
     usually extremely difficult to find" the situation starts 
     taking on a very cruel look and life starts looking dark and 
     gloomy.  The two facts combined raise the specter of you and 
     those who depend on you being locked out in the cold to 
     starve to death if you should lose your job.  And the first 
     two facts almost guarantee Fact 3, that people will dislike 
     their jobs because people, when desperate for work, will take 
     anything that presents itself.  And people continue to work 
     at jobs they hate because they know that an unpleasant, ugly 
     job is better than no job at all. 

     Given the three facts listed above one might think that 
     people, if they did have a job, would be very careful with 
     their money, spend only what they needed to spend, and save 
     all they could.  In fact this is not the case, at least not 
     in this country.  Instead most people squander their money, 
     saving nothing for a rainy day.  They spend it on all kinds 
     of things they don't need: luxury cars, overflowing closets 
     of women's clothes, eating out at restaurants and fast food 
     places all the time, amusements, expensive vacations, etc..  
     All this leads us to Fact 4. 


   Fact 4.  People are mostly improvident fools.


     This last fact means that as hard as life is most people 
     multiply its hardness by their own foolishness. 

     Which leads us to Fact 5:


   Fact 5.  Most people sleep in the bed they have made for 
       themselves.


     The people who do well in this world are the wise and 
     prudent.  The improvident and foolish usually pay for their 
     ways in the end. 


   Sept 1996