Tom Walker wrote: > > > > Do you really believe that 21st-century Future of work can be determined > > by a 1843 Predator (i.e. a technical illiterate)? You must be kidding. > > > > Chris > > > The lad doth protest too much, methinks.
For some people, even a single mention of the word Predator is too much. It's a taboo they just don't want to hear about. Why? Either because they're Predators themselves, or they are so brainwashed by Predator PR that they have sort of a Stockholm syndrome. So this Shakespeare quote is indeed appropriate here, albeit the other way around. And in two ways: It also applies to protesting too much for shorter work time (even turning work time into a fetish) while other issues would be much more important in order to overcome the status quo. > I'm reminded of the 'family > values' Republicans who time and again get caught with their pants > down on the wrong side of town. Or the law and order zealots taking > kick-backs from mobsters. These primitive allegations just don't make sense. If I was a Predator, I certainly would never have brought up that word or "dichotomy"*. Instead, I would have kept quiet about it, or more cleverly: brought up a misleading, false dichotomy, like Marx's literally red herring. > As a shorter work time advocate even I must confess to the hypocrisy > of burning the midnight oil for the cause of leisure. There's nothing wrong with leisure as such (it's valuable and necessary to "refill batteries"). What's wrong is to exploit & oppress others. > But this > one-note refrain of "predator" leaves me especially unconvinced. If you don't like that word, then let me re-phrase the quote above: Do you really believe that 21st-century Future of work can be determined by a 1843 technical illiterate? You must be kidding. Now perhaps you can reply something to that (maybe even without ad-hominems)? > For starters there's the black and white dichotomy of predators and prey. For starters, it's Predators and _Producers_. (The prey may include other Predators -- usually smaller ones.) > No colors. No shades of gray. Dichotomy is the cradle for delusion. *Straw-man argument. I never said that P/P is a _binary_ dichotomy. It's a multi-dimensional continuum between the two extremes, like the interval [0, 1]. The colloquial term Predators refers to those who are near the one end of the spectrum (or corner of multi-dimensional space). However, Marx's "Working class / Ruling class" IS a _binary_ dichotomy! Talk about delusion... Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
