onions, too.
At 02:35 PM 6/1/2008, Carrol Cox wrote:
>For some reason, no one responded in any way to the Joann'as post of
>last Tuesday. It seems to me of some importance, so I am reposting it
>here. Perhaps it simply got overlooked in the exchange of mutual
>semi-flames.
>
>Tue, 27 May 2008 16:28:45 ? 123hop at comcast.net
>
>Doug writes
>
> > I've done dishwashing, merchant marining, toll collecting, loading
> > trucks, mopping floors - all in small doses, with the knowledge that
> > it was almost certainly very temporary. But that sort of manual labor
> > leaves one exhausted and mentally numb.
>
>When people ask me what I do, I tell them I dig ditches with my brain.
>I'm a technical writer.
>
>Mental labor can be every bit as exhausting and numbing as manual labor.
>This is a false distinction.
>
>Each kind of labor can lead to a different kind of idiocy. Mental labor
>can lead to all the dead ends where symbol manipulation and the logic of
>ideas can lead...in the absence of a reality check. Most inventions are
>the inventions of craftsmen, not exclusively mental laborers.
>
>The division of labor into physical and mental labor is a form of
>violence that is the result of our particular historical trajectory.
>There is nothing natural about it.
>
>It is the marriage of mental and physical labor we should be aiming for;
>not the justification that one should be subordinate to the other. It
>is the elimination of alienated labor which we should be aiming for,
>which includes both mental and physical labor.
>
>The denigration of physical labor often goes hand in hand with the
>denigration of nature and of the work of "merely reproducing life"
>(largely the work of women). We should be wary of falling into this
>trap. Joanna
>
>Carrol
>
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