The Culture of Ants and Bees

Americans are taking fewer vacation days per year, which means they are working more hours than previously studied periods. Part of the problem is that employers give fewer benefits to their employees in the ever continuing effort not to spread the wealth. Publicly traded corporations, and those organization that wish to become publicly traded are forced to cut expenses, and when they cannot eliminate the jobs, outsource them to prison inmates, or send them overseas, they simply squeeze more out of them.

Workers and professionals, those who are lucky enough to have jobs, never get a break. This speaks volumes about our values. We do not value people and we have allowed our culture and many others around the world, to create institutions that benefit very few people.

People are losing what little freedom they had in their lives. Employers, and by that I mean any employer that wants to be competitive in the global marketplace cannot treat people as people, but as assets and commodities. For all the talk about a culture of life, our actions speak much louder. It is easy to sign a law to save one person, or veto a stem cell funding bill that has wide popular support, to carry on the illusion. In reality, we do not even have the decency to give people a paid vacation for even a paltry two week period. This is half what many European countries give.

However, perhaps it falls on the employees themselves to demand it. It is ironic that people who work all they in order to acquire things that are superficial and of little long term value. And we think ants and bees are communists! In many ways their motivations are much more admirable. Such an insatiable drive to work may have some value if we actually worked for a goal that advanced the universal good. Increasing profits for Boeing and Microsoft tends not to serve the universal good as much as it lines the pockets of the already ultra wealthy. It is a vicious cycle, and it will continue until people are able to recognize it as such. Only then, will we begin to do something about it.