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Industrial Civilisation and Real Life

People live like idiots and machines all the time, at work and during their leisure, but they imagine they're living like civilised humans, even like Gods. The first thing to do is to make them admit that they are idiots and machines during their working hours. "Our civilisation being what it is", this is what you'll have to say to them: "you've got to spend eight out of every twenty-four hours as a mixture between an idiot and a sewing machine." It's very disagreeable, I know. It's humiliating and disgusting. But there you are. You've got to do it. Otherwise the whole fabric of our world will fall to bits and we'll all starve. Do the job, then, idiotically and mechanically; and spend your leisure hours in being a real complete man or woman, as the case may be. Don't mix the two lives together... The genuine human life in your leisure hours is the real thing.
The other is just a dirty job that has got to be done. And never forget that it is dirty, and except in so far as it keeps you fed and society intact, utterly important, and utterly irrelevant to the real human life. Don't be deceived by the loud-mouthed rogues who talk of the sanctity of labour and the humanitarian service that businessmen bring to their fellows. It's all lies. Your work's just a nasty, dirty job, made unfortunately necessary by the folly of our ancestors...
Don't try to cheer yourself up by pretending that the nasty mechanical job is a noble one. It isn't; and the only result of saying and believing that it is, will be to lower your humanity to the level of the dirty work. Admit that it is dirty, hold your nose and do it for eight hours and then concentrate on being a real human being in your leisure. A real complete human being.