Exploitation vs. Nurture

"The spiritual poverty of the Western World is much greater than the physical poverty of our people. You, in the West, have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel unloved and unwanted. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet they don’t know what it is."

- Mother Teresa

It's only thirteen work days to retirement and our new, simple life. The glideslope to retirement has given me a perspective on the soul-less nature of corporate work. I've started to notice small but profound things that I ignored - mabye to save my sanity. One is the pained faces of many coworkers. Most complain often,  that's the norm in the workplace and I've certainly contributed. Maybe it's cathartic to share the pain with everyone else. It doesn't seem to help, but it adds to the stress and fuels the cycle.

Another is the complete acceptance of exploitation, that it's okay to grab what you can, while you can. The attendant indifference to others is evident all over, notably in the preference for email and texting, as that avoids having to talk. It raises the insulating wall between the workers inside the gate and the outside society. 

That wall was evident to me last week when I participated in a blood drive at work. I asked about turnout and the nurse was pleased with only 48 blood donors they received - out of thousands of employees. That's a shockingly small number, one-tenth of the norm elsewhere. We work hard and make lots of money compared to those outside the gate, but most of us can't be bothered to help the community. It's an example of spiritual poverty.

"The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place."

- Wendell Barry

I've done my time as an exploiter. It's time to nurture.