From the earliest moments of existence there’s been work.  You can’t escape it!  We never could.  What’s more work than tracking down berries you can eat?  It’s not like they’re magically placed after every footstep.

It’s hard work finding berries that won’t kill you.  First, you’ve got to find a berry.  Then, you have to bend over to pick it up.  Sometimes you have to stoop and crouch.  Your knees ache while you examine the berry to figure out whether it’s worth collecting or whether it’s better tossed away.  Finally, you may collect enough of berries to do something like fill-your-belly.

With berries, you have to repeat the process everyday. 

That’s hard work!

If you want to eat meat, the work is more difficult.  So we work.  From the moment we can take part until we die.  We work at something and that is how we exist. 

HOW WE EXIST: Work

In the 1800’s, work became a place to exist as much as a "how we exist."  The textile mills of Rhode Island helped establish work as a place.  A place to live outside of the factory with a company store, work was a reason to be around so many other people.  Given the choice, large quantities of people would rather live amongst smoke from a factory town rather than collect berries and hunt for a living.  We work in the place we exist and we always have.  We live where we work.

WHERE WE EXIST: Work

At work, we meet our friends.  At work, we experience camaraderie.  At work, we plan our parties and living events.  We live where we work and when work impedes our living we get down.  We’re blue from perversions of our liveliness.  You should want to exist another day.  You should want to exist for tomorrow.  You should exist as if breathing another moment would be the greatest thing possible.

HOW WE FEEL: Work

Scientific management practices pervert work by trying to make objective the most subjective thing possible.  Set to a common task, we work as if our lives depend upon it because they did.  Scientific management took our work and expressed it as numbers.  We became accountable to those numbers.  We were supposed to feel for those numbers as we feel about our work. 

The work we do in order to exist!

Scientific management suggests people will work harder if they are given stated goals.  If the people state those goals themselves then we have buy-in to achieving greater numbers.  Buy-in equals emotion.  Buy-in ensures success.  Buy-in becomes a way of life.  A way of life managed by those with more knowledge by which the workers achieve greater success in the form of bigger numbers.

There is no greater perversion to liveliness than to make someone measure up to a number week after week for the total of existence.  Personal achievements of success become the reason to make someone more accountable to a number.  The celebration of Joy as well as binge drinking Misery rest upon a magical berry expressed scientifically as a number.

"Did we collect enough berries today?  Oh yeah!  How many?"

Behind this perversion of liveliness lies a perception that those who manage have more knowledge and can help us find our Mystically Numerical Berry.  A myth perpetually states that those who achieve success are rewarded with advancement.  This serves as a Democratic Salve applied liberally to disguise Rubes and Jackasses in charge of corporations across the country.  Stern and Westphal recently published a study discovering obsequious lickspittles get appointed to corporate boards more often than those who either don’t kiss ass or don’t do it subtly enough.