Mentally Enlsaved or Employed?

A story is told of a factory which had workers work 70 to 80 hours a week, and pay them 20 cents an hour. If you do the math, the workers made between $28 and $32 per week bringing the monthly wage to around $128. Isn’t that equivalent to slavery and an injustice to these workers? How much does the factory make viz-a-viz what they pay the workers? Wow! A very huge profit margin, I suppose. The interesting thing is the huge gains made by this company are used to pay some people to speak against oppression and injustice! That is a clever way of promoting slavery. Act like you are fighting for the rights of the oppressed in the society, and blind them into not seeing that you are the oppressor.

In the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, the author talks of fear and greed as being one thing that mentally enslaves the workers. The fear of settling bills, the fear of losing the job, the fear of not having money, and the fear of redeeming oneself from such mental slavery. One of life’s biggest traps that many people do not see is that they work very hard yet those who work make more money. The 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 job, depending on your location puts people in the state of mental slavery. Many will complain about how they are being oppressed but will never confront their bosses on the issue. With a little pay rise and vacation organized by their employer, they get back to singing the positive tune. Being in a 9 to 5 job, and working very hard gives the employee an illusion of job security, forgetting that if the owner of the company feels that he no longer needs them, he will replace them with a better employee, irrespective of whether he worked hard or not.  Everyone has a price, and this price is largely dictated by their emotions, which manifest as fear and greed. Imagining that you will not be able to send your children to good schools because of lack of money makes us work hard. The moment we get the pay, greed sets in, and we rush to satisfy our desires for the things we have always wanted but did not have the privilege to enjoy because of our previous financial positions. A few weeks later, we find ourselves in the same cycle again; no money, work very hard, get the pay, then satisfy our greed. Ever wondered why two people will get equal pay, but one will always be broke than the other? It is the level of greed that drives us.

Charles Bukowski had two choices either stay in their job and go crazy because of the pressure associated with it or quit the job, do what he enjoyed and starve. Surprisingly he went with the second option. He did not let his emotions think, but he used his emotions to make a good decision. What they call 9 to 5 is not as it is. People hardly go for lunch in those places and if they go, they will take the minimum time because they have work pending at their table. If that is not the case, the supervisor decides when they should report to work and when they should leave, whether they should sleep at night or trans night working on a deliverable required by 8 am. All this is packages in overtime, but once the remuneration time comes, someone else decides whether you truly worked or not. They never seem to get the overtime right. A slight complaint about the disparity, you will see your replacement at the door. You decide to keep quiet and live with the pain. After all, the overtime was an overpayment of what you were supposed to get. See! You use your emotions to think. Yes, fear. Fear keeps you on the job. Rich people have mastered the art of using their emotions to think, whereas poor people or rather mentally enslaved by 9 to 5 jobs think with their emotions.

Those workers who work at the factory and receive the meagre pay are there because of fear. Their employer understands that they will do everything to hold on to the jobs they do not want because they fear the alternative worse. Their body language portrays a workforce that is not psyched up, yet they obey their masters.