Superior Beings, Hard Work And Fruit

Superior beings do not have to work hard. Truly superior beings almost never do.

Virtues of Idleness

They say God created the world in 7 days. We contend he didn’t lift a finger. But many object. They tell us, “it shows the miracle of Creation, that is beyond hard work!” That is not so, we respond. God merely says, “let there be” this, that and that other thing. Where is the sweat, the flexing of muscles, the craft, the patience and determination, where are the examples to the toiling masses? Divine common sense says that is not hard work. We think it’s not even a miracle. It’s merely religion.

The luxury of not having to work hard is by no means an indictment of superior individuals. It is simply part of Our condition. The Preservation Society, itself, is a product of idle time spent by a group of privileged individuals engaging in their interests and concerns.

Idle time is time well spent. It is where one takes pleasure. It is where exploration and trial and error have uninhibited reign. It is a time when possibilities present themselves, and the individual can think and contemplate as they like. Idle time is, in fact, the perfect time for work hard. This is a virtue in large measure preserved for the upper echelons of society.

Throughout history much of the ruling class was composed of an idle class. For them toil and manual labor were degrading. A life of “leadership” or “contemplation” was for superior beings. And it created much “high culture”, itself a product of hard work. For the lower orders toil was pushed as moral, along with suffering — another thing the privileged need not endure. Today, though suffering hasn’t quite caught on, it is a peculiarity of ruling class public life that wasting one’s time in toil is highly valued and admired. Consequently, This ethic produces, in Our opinion, a “low culture”. This happens because life becomes stripped of interesting things, not fertile ground for the superior being. The ruling class, in their doctrine of capitalism, favors production, trade and profits (at least it used to), dedicating society to this triumvirate of values and forcing the masses to “compete” within their borders. Thus the unfortunate need for the masses to work hard.

As a certain “Taiwanese-born, thirty-something CFO 0f a U.S. tech company” told Chrystia Freeland in her book Plutocrats,

“We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So, if you’re going to demand ten times the paycheck, you need to deliver ten times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe the people in the middle class need to take a pay cut.” (241)

“Free time” of the masses is to be earned with dedication, sweat and with visible sacrifice to the masters. In contrast, idle time of the ruling classes is Our privilege, something that does not have to be earned. It is something We are entitled to. Are not the masses so entitled as well? The truth is the masses have little and quite limited “free time” only because competition makes life a struggle for the majority. The ruling class pits individuals against each other, puts obstacles in the system of life it forces upon the majority. There is nothing in nature holding society back from enjoying one of abundance and idle leisure.

The Sorrows of Mr. Martin

A good exertion of mind and body is healthy enough. But love of toil has gotten carried away. It has become a cult. The zealotry of the well off to “work” needlessly is something to behold. In conducting field studies of  the lower orders, We recorded a story of a young man who worked for a prominent attorney.

Danny was an office assistant of one Mr. Martin, a very successful personal injury attorney in downtown Manhattan. Mr. Martin was not rich by our standards, but he was certainly free of the obligation of unnecessary toil [on JP Morgan’s death Andrew Carnegie said, “And to think, he wasn’t even a rich man.”].

In his youth, Mr. Martin worked nights as a waiter and went to City College, and then on to Harvard. He became a very well respected, successful attorney, and thought highly of himself and his practice. When Danny met Mr. Martin for the first time he admits he was somewhat intimidated. The old man barely looked at him on introduction.

One day, the new gofer asked Mr. Martin’s secretary why the old man made copies of every note and memo he wrote. “So that his correspondence will be recorded for all time. He thinks the masses will be clamoring for his insights and fascinating life,” she said flatly.

Less than a year later Danny learned that he had been laid off. Mr. Martin was closing the office and wanted to take everybody to lunch. Danny had not known that Mr. Martin just lost his case against ethical misconduct. The venerable attorney had been disbarred. The highly esteemed individual who’s name will appear in the papers, was found guilty of passing inadmissible evidence to the jury and lying to the judge about it. At seventy it was the end of the road for Mr. Martin’s career.

Most of Us at the Preservation Society can sympathize with Mr. Martin. So much is invested into one’s “career”. Particularly if it is successful, it is unthinkable that we are actually individuals independent of occupation, never mind wealth. That is where our prestige is stored. Thank goodness being a part of the Preservation Society helps inoculates Us from the shock of facing our individuality stripped of the trappings and accessories of Our class. Our tale continues:

A great legal career meets an ignominious end. But what really depressed Mr. Martin most of all was the inability to be “in the game” anymore as he put it. The inability to work was hard for him to take. Mr. Martin was now condemned to idle life of luxury, trapped between his house in Switzerland and his 22nd floor apartment on Central Park West, which he was expanding, having bought the apartment next door. But all was not terribly lost. He enjoyed oil painting, and belonged to a private Nietzsche club.

Despite the old man’s prosperity and relative lack of problems, Danny reports “at the restaurant Mr. Martin became very depressed. He drank a few wines and got worse. He said he didn’t want to stop working. I told him, ‘it’s not so bad Mr. Martin, it’s a gorgeous day out and you can do whatever you want.’ He started sobbing and hung his head, which sunk lower and lower with every word I spoke. ‘The world… is…. your… oyster… isn’t it?’ Mr. Martin laid his head on the table oblivious to the world around him. At first I felt bad for him. A successful career marred by  disgrace! Then I became annoyed. His blubbering got to me. His situation didn’t seem that bad to me. Watching him, you’d think he was awaiting death by torture. I thought to myself, if I didn’t have to got to an office every day… I mean, he’s rich and he’s forced into “retirement”. It wasn’t that bad. What’s wrong with him? That’s what I thought. My frustration was compounded by my own concerns. I needed to find a job, am living pay check to pay check, and trying to finish school, while Mr. Martin’s crying because he’s got a lot of leisure time on his rich hands!”

Who is the superior being? Mr. Martin was wealthy, respected and a self-satisfied high-powered lawyer who intimidated lesser breeds with his stoic inattention. Danny was his servant and gofer. But the mask of superiority drops away when the social trapping are pulled out from under Our feet. All of the sudden Mr. Martin is reduce into a mere sobbing pile of  flesh and blood. Ruling Class superiority is a superficial and fragile thing.

Who is Superior?

The ruling class individual is not, admittedly, necessarily a superior being. Chances are good that they are less than one. We know only too well how much We owe Our superiority to the things around Us — expensive watches, nice cars and not so modest mansions. In fact, the more an individual “owns” the less “humanity” that individual “needs”. It is a dangerous attachment, but a simple and relatively cheap way to attain “superiority”.

So says Andrew Carnegie in the Gospel of Wealth,

[w]e accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment; the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few; and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the future progress of the race.

We thank the masses for joining Us in accommodating great inequality.

The hard work We are talking about, so beloved by the wealthy, is of a specific type. It is work associated with the glories of the career and making money, or for many lesser ranks of the ruling class, who rose up from the lower orders, the definition of hard work includes any activity deemed “practical” or “useful” to them. Work that focuses on unprofitable things like feeding the homeless becomes voluntary good will of those that essentially participate in creating those conditions. Exploring anything in a free, creative, and inevitably unprofitable manner becomes a luxury of “free time” earned by “hard work”.

One of Our members at the Preservation Society was forced to work, at the tender age of fifteen, at a KFC for a year or be threaten with disinheritance. This was quietly frowned upon by other families. Nevertheless, Our Preservationist’s parents thought it would be good for discipline and to have a sense of what the masses have to do every day. The day after his first day on the job of frying chicken and mopping floors,  father was driving the family to their “country cottage”. He turned to his son and announced to the family: “Well, you had you’re first day on the job. Now you are a productive member of society.”

To be sure, forced retirement from a career one loved is no small tragedy. All of us at the Preservation Society can certainly sympathize with Mr. Martin, but as Preservationists we also see the danger in “careers”. Their spell has been broken for us — for the most part. It is a condition that also afflicts the lower orders, for careers are the golden fetters of ruling class capitalist society that bind the individual to their ruling class. The “career” forces the individual to put all their eggs in one basket of concern, self-worth and social focus. And when the mirage of the “career” suddenly disappears what happens to the individual’s value? It was once with an “institution” of some sort sanctioned by the ruling class, now the individual is alone, a mere human being — no longer a superior one. Yet, the irony is that, in their fall, they have come closer to the superior being they really are. And that is the big secret. The superior being lurks within us all — forbidden fruit of knowledge denied us by the Supreme Executive.

Danny is jobless, and living pay check to pay check when he has a job. The Preservation Society looks in horror at Danny’s circumstance, though a few of Us had been there. How can he possibly be happy? We had forgotten. At the time of his lay off he was trying to finish school and was uncertain about his future. He conveyed an upbeat if worried attitude. And yet, this “lower” order individual consoles the “superior” for whom he was a essentially a prop.

While Mr. Martin, by any measure, “made it”, Danny can only hope that one day he may enter the ranks of the ruling class where he too can sob like the rich man on a beautiful summer day with the world at his feet. The individual and material possessions are analogous to labels and the ego. More labels compensate for the shriveled ego, just as more things compensate for the individual’s self worth. Mr. Martin was experiencing his “career”, the crucible of his identity, being ripped away from him. Thus, in an “enlightened” world a mansion might be seen by the masses as an unfortunate symbol of insecurity.

The Superior Being:  Trap or Forbidden Fruit

The ruling class usually styles itself as “superior”. Then there are superior beings by character. The Great Institution has always promoted the two as one. It is a strange irony that the ruling class has traditionally thought itself superior to the masses, yet We undermine Our class by precluding advancement of the talented from the masses who would only love to serve among Our ranks and fortify Our class. The masses for the most part accept these conditions as well. It exposes the colonized mind. The masses want better within the paradigm, not liberation from it. Such is the allure of ruling class status. It is the light at the end of a tunnel most will never reach.

It is quite a trap for the individual, especially those of the masses. Superior beings do not inherently “love” work, but work because they (1) are interested in something, (2) love what they do, and/or (3) things need to get done. The Establishment alienates the individual from this relationship to work by forcing them to spend most of their time subsisting. The masses subsist, the upper middle classes subsist respectably,  high net worth individuals subsist successfully. Compounding the inferior mindset is the masses being forced to subsist, not in nature, but at the pleasure of the superior orders, under conditions that offer less opportunity for independence. And that is as it should be. Ruling class society is not compatible with superior consciousness.

Inevitably this happy arrangement leads to peril. The successful ruling class need not fear it’s masses when it is teeming with inferiority. There is nothing to stop the Great Institution from running rough shod over the lower orders, and endanger their own basis of support. We may not want superior beings among the masses, but a few of them, or a superior consciousness pervading in certain areas, will lead the masses to counter-balance Our power mongering. A few superior beings among the masses now may help prevent many from developing later.

The superior beings are antithetical to ruling class society, especially hectic modern life. The superior being moves deliberately, without anxiety, tends to be more quiet than noise. The superior being is confident in themselves and sees no reason for excessive exertion of energy and therefore has much energy. The masses hurry along, keep appointments, run late, get there early. We pour over charts, shuffle papers, dig ditches, go comparison shopping, and then continue our distraction at home with TV, hobbies and/or pain numbing substances. The successful ruling class rules through a network of rushed distractions, making it difficult for the superior being to develop, for the superior consciousness requires stillness.

Prevention of the development of superior individuals is the Establishment’s primary goal. There is nothing more horrifying to the higher orders than an uppity populace who think they are “the People”. This is what Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ruling class sympathizer, said of the  rising revolutionary consciousness during the French Revolution:

“There has been visible insubordination among the people for several years now, and especially in the trades. Apprentices and lads want to display their independence; they lack respect for the masters, they form corporations [associations]; this contempt for the old rules is contrary to order…”

This is the eternal ruling class fear.

Thus, Supreme Executive will not tolerate those superior beings — even among the ruling class because of their potential as enemies. But wouldn’t superior beings be good for the masses and their society? A truly superior society, as opposed to a ruling class society, could be had by the masses, and they do not know it. If the masses discovered the superiority within themselves and among their own ranks, their ruling class superiors would be done. It is that simple. More forbidden fruit.