> > Why does "menial" work have to be necessarily physical (and why does > physical work have to be menial?) > -raghu. >
This is a great question. The answer, of course, is that there is nothing *inherently* menial about physical work. Nor is there anything inherently noble about intellectual work (for example, when it consists of doing public relations for sleezeball corporations or politicians). It is only social convention that has both excessively elevated intellectual work and isolated it, ironically, within a cocoon of anti-intellectualism. I recently received the proofs for an article forthcoming in a scholarly journal. Although I had clearly indicated East End Food Co-op as my affiliation, the publisher queried what my affiliation was. It was as if my affiliation couldn't be EEFC, it had to be University of the East End or East End Food College or some such. They insist on a addressing me as "Dr." Well, I'll submit to this Doctor shit only if I can be "Doctor Sandwichman" By the way, concurrent with correcting my proofs, I also drafted a manifesto -- the joy in work manifesto -- in which I conclude my personal profile with the following statement: "It is my conviction that environmental sustainability, social equity and reflexive governance require the breaking down of artificial arrangements whereby one group of people always does the lifting and sweeping while another group is paid to do all the officially-certified thinking and decision-making." The CM it ain't. But then I'm only trying to roll together a very small snowball as a demonstration project of how snowballs might be rolled. -- Sandwichman
