Man
the Only Working Animal
All nature loafs, while man alone works for
living. He works because he has to,
because with the progress of civilization life gets incredibly more complex,
with duties, responsibilities, fears, inhibitions and ambitions, born not of
nature, but of human society. While I am sitting here, a pigeon is flying
before my window, not worrying what it is going to have lunch. I know that my lunch is a more complicated
system of cultivation, merchandising, transportation, delivery and
preparation. That is why it is harder
for man to get food than for animals.
With the exception of a few draught horses
or buffaloes made to work a mill, even domestic pets don’t have to work. Police dogs are but rarely called upon to do
their duty, a house dog supposed to watch a house plays most of the time, and
takes a good nap in the morning whenever there is good warm sunshine, the
aristocratic cat never works for living, it just goes wherever it likes to go. We have this humanity alone caged and
domesticated but not fed, forced by this civilization and complex society to
work and worry about the matter of feeding itself. Humanity has its own advantages, the delight
of knowledge, the pleasures of conversation and the joys of the imagination.
Human life is too complicated and the
matter of merely feeding ourselves, directly or indirectly is occupying well
over ninety percent of our human activities.
Civilization is largely a matter of seeking food, while progress is that
development which makes food more and more difficult to get. The danger is that we get over-civilized and
that we come to a point, as indeed we have already done, when the work of
getting food is so strenuous that we lose out appetite for food in the process
of getting it.
Well to do people, living in better
apartment. More ‘arty’ rooms and
lampshades. Still more orderly and more clean.
They have more space to rent a seven room flat, not to speak of owning
it, is considered a luxury. But it does
not imply more happiness. Less financial
worry and fewer debts to think about, but also more emotional complications,
more divorce, more cat-husbands, who don’t come back home in the night, or
couple prowling together in night, seeking some form of dissipation. Diversion
is the word. Diversion from monotonous,
uniform brick walls and shining wooden floors.
Consequently more neurasthenia, more
aspirin, more expensive illness, more colitis, appendicitis and dyspepsia, more
softened brains and hardened livers, more ulcerated duodenums, lacerated
intestines, over worked stomachs, overtaxed kidneys, inflamed bladders,
outraged spleens, dilated hearts, shattered nerves, more flat chests, high
blood pressures, more diabetes, bright diseases beriberi, rheumatism, insomnia,
arteriosclerosis, piles, fistulas, chronic dysentery, chronic constipation,
loss of appetite and weariness of life. To make the perfect picture, more dogs
and fewer children. The matter of
happiness depends entirely upon the quality and temper of the men and women
living in these elegant apartments.
On the whole, perhaps they are less happy
than the hard working people. They have
more ennui and more boredom. But they
have a car and perhaps a farm house in their village. That farm house in the village is their
salvation. People work hard in the villages to go to city, to earn enough money
to go back to village again.
How inscrutable is the civilization where
men toil and work and worry their hair grey to get a living and forget to play.
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