Bullsh*t Jobs: Myth of Modern Work

David Graeber; Eliane Glaser (Guardian); Ashley Wells, C. Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

This column will change your life. How to tell whether you have a bullshit job: "Is the job you're doing, or applying for, one the world would be fine without?" (The Guardian)

My wage slave job has no point. Well, it has one point, as I found out one day at work.

.

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory review -- the myth of capitalist efficiency

The BS box tickers have taken over (Alamy)

Is your job one that makes the world a better place? If not, it is probably "bullshit," part of a system that is keeping us under control. 

I had a bullshit job once. It involved answering the phone for an important man, except the phone didn’t ring for hours on end, so I spent the time guiltily converting my Ph.D. into a book.

I’ve also had several jobs that were not bullshit but were steadily bullshitized: interesting jobs in the media and academia that were increasingly taken up with filling out [bureaucratic] compliance forms and time allocation surveys.

I’ve also had a few sh*t jobs, but that’s something different. Toilets need to be cleaned. But to have a bullshit job is to know that if it were to disappear tomorrow, it would make no difference to the world: In fact, it might make the world a better place.

 

Tatted up butch cop giving out BS tickets

When I read [American anarchist London School of Economics Anthropology Professor] David Graeber’s essay "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs" in Strike! magazine in 2013, I felt somehow vindicated.

I had sat in the pub on many a Friday evening moaning to colleagues about data entry and inefficient meetings. But with the Martian gaze of the anthropologist, Graeber managed to articulate my plight in a way that made me feel part of some grand, absurdist outrage.

• INTERVIEW: The Nature of Work and Paying for Time - author explains the bullshit jobs (iTunes) Anthropologist David Graeber talks about how over the years the concept of time has evolved to be used for control through hourly paid work ("wage slavery") leading to the proliferation of unnecessary jobs. He is known for his role in jump-starting the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011... LISTEN (KPFA, Berkeley)
• PODCAST: Graeber on pointless jobs (The Guardian)

Black liberationist speaks after 40 year sentence

I wasn’t alone. The essay went viral, receiving more than a million hits and being translated into a dozen languages.

“Guerrilla” activists even replaced hundreds of ads in London tube carriages [subway trains] with quotes from the essay, presumably in order to jolt commuters out of their apathetic stupor. As is the way in the world of reactive non-fiction publishing, a book followed.

As well as documenting personal misery, this book is a portrait of a society that has forgotten what it is for.

Leave those kids alone: helicopter parenting

The argument of both essay and book is this: In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological advances would enable us to work a 15-hour week.

Yet, we seem to be busier than ever before. Those workers who actually do stuff are burdened with increasing workloads, while box-tickers and bean-counters multiply.

 

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

In an age that supremely prizes capitalist efficiency, the proliferation of pointless jobs is a puzzle.

Why are employers in the public and private sector alike behaving like the bureaucracies of the old Soviet Union, shelling out wages to workers they don’t seem to need?

Since bullshit jobs make no economic sense, Graeber argues, their function must be political. A population kept busy with make-work is less likely to revolt. More

The secret rainforest in the heart of an [ORMES rich] African volcano in Mozambique

LOVE: Vain beauty reborn in dung (sutra)

D. L. Ashliman, The Jataka Tales (pitt.edu); Dhr. Seven, Ananda M. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

 
How a vain woman was reborn as a dung-worm

Once upon a time there was a king, Assaka, reigning in Potali, a city in the kingdom of Kāsi.

His queen consort, named Ubbarī, was very dear to him. She was beautiful, charming, and graceful with physical beauty surpassing other women, though not so fair as a goddess.
 

She died, and at her death the king plunged into grief and became sad and miserable. He had the body laid in a coffin and embalmed with preserving oil and ointments then tucked beneath his bed. There he lay without food, weeping and wailing.

In vain his parents and kinsfolk, friends and courtiers, priests and laymen bid him not to grieve. Because all things pass away, they could not move him to paralyzing grief. As he lay in sorrow, seven days passed by.

The Bodhisatta = The Buddha-to-be.

Now the Bodhisatta [Buddha-to-be] was at that time, in that former birth an ascetic who had gained the Five Supernatural Faculties and the Eight Attainments, and he dwelt at the foot of the Himalayas. He was possessed of perfect supernatural vision, and as he looked around [what we now call] India with his divine vision, he saw this king lamenting. Straightway he resolved to help him.

 

By his miraculous power he rose in the air (levitated) and alighted in the king's pleasure park. There he sat on the ceremonial stone radiant like a golden image.

A young Brahmin of the city of Potali entered the park, and seeing the Bodhisatta, he greeted him and sat down. The Bodhisatta began to talk pleasantly with him.

"Is the king a just ruler?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, the king is just," replied the youth, "but his queen has just died. And he has laid her body in a coffin and lies down lamenting her. Today is the seventh day since he began. Why do you not free the king from this great grief? Virtuous beings like you ought to [be able to] overcome the king's sorrow."

"I do not know the king, young man," replied the Bodhisatta, "but if he were to come and ask me, I would tell him the place where she has now come into the flesh again [been reborn], and cause her to speak for herself."

 

The Wheel of Rebirth (samsara) showing various planes of existence: Bhava-chakra of Yama, the kind judge of the dead, holding Wheel of Life, and a buddha pointing the way out.

.

"Then, reverend sir, stay here until I bring the king to you," answered the youth. 

 

The Bodhisatta agreed, and the boy rushed into the king's presence and told him. 

 

"You should visit this being who possesses divine vision!" he urged the king. 

 

The king was overjoyed at the thought of seeing Queen Ubbari, so he got into his chariot and rushed to the pleasure garden.
 

After greeting the Bodhisatta, he sat down respectfully to one side and asked: "Is it true, as I am told, that you know where my queen has come into being again?"

"Yes, I do, lord king," the Bodhisatta replied.

Then the king asked where that was.

Dung beetle larva are worms (shutterstock)

The Bodhisatta replied, "O king, she was intoxicated with her great beauty, so she fell into negligence. As such she did not do fair and virtuous acts [acts of merit, good karma]. Therefore, she has now been reborn as a little dung-worm who lives in this very park."

"I don't believe it!" exclaimed the king.
 

"Then I will show her to you and cause her to speak," the Bodhisatta said calmly.

 

"Please, do make her speak!" urged the king. 

 

Worms become beetles living in dung.

The Bodhisatta commanded: "Let the two beings busy rolling a lump of cow-dung come forth before the king!" And by his power he caused them to come, and indeed they came.
 

The Bodhisatta pointed one out to the king: "That is your Queen Ubbari, O king! She has just come out of this lump of dung, following her husband the dung-worm. Look and see."

Husband and wife worms rolling lumps of dung

"What! My Queen Ubbari a dung-worm? I don't believe it!" shrieked the king.

"I will cause her to speak, O king!"

"Pray, make her speak, reverend sir!" the king begged. 

 

The Bodhisatta by his power gave her speech. 

 

"Ubbari!" the Bodhisatta said .

 

"What is it, reverend sir?" she asked in a human voice.

 

"What was your name in your former birth?" the Bodhisatta asked.

Who was I, what did I think and do (karma)?

"My name was 'Ubbari,' sir," she answered, "the consort of King Assaka."
 

"Tell me," the Bodhisatta went on, "who do you love best now -- King Assaka or this dung-worm with you?"

"O, sir, that was my former birth," she explained. "At that time I lived with him in this park, enjoying shape and sound, scent, savor and touch [the five strands of sensuality available in the human world]. But now that my memory is confused by rebirth, what is he to? Why, now I would cut the throat of King Assaka and would anoint the feet of my husband, the dung-worm, with the blood flowing from the king's throat!"

And in front of the doting king, she uttered these verses in a human voice:

Once with great King Assaka, who was my husband dear,
Loving and beloved, I strolled about this garden here.
But new sorrows and new joys have made the old ones flee.
Now far dearer than King Assaka is my worm to me.

When King Assaka heard this, he repented of his foolishness on the spot. And at once he caused the queen's body to be removed from under his bed. And he washed his head. He saluted the Bodhisatta and returned to the city, where he married another queen and ruled in righteousness.

Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? (Brahm)

The Bodhisatta, having instructed the king [on virtue and goodness], set him free from sorrow, and returned again to the Himalayas. More: Table of Contents

• Source: The Jataka; or, Stories of the Buddha's Former Births edited by E. B. Cowell, Vol. 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895), No. 207, pp. 108-110. Translated from the Pali by W. H. D. Rouse. Further translated by Wisdom Quarterly, Dec. 1, 2017.

Africa: Buddhism Gaining Ground

What is African Buddhism?
Engaged Buddhists discussion (2/21/08)

And what is African Pureland Buddhism? These two questions tackle a delicate subject that cannot be answered straightforwardly. So it remains much of an open question. What we ask viewers and participants is to give their opinion/position/critique on:

• What is African Buddhism?
• What is African Pureland?
• Is there, or should there be, such a thing as African Buddhism?
• What would it entail?
• Who decides what African Buddhism is?

It is important to keep ethical principles in mind. Buddhism should not be propagated as a power structure seeking converts. The Dharma is shared as a mutual means of guidance to help end suffering. Share your ideas and suggestions on the topic for the benefit of the African socio-spiritual-cultural Continent at:

Bhante Buddharakkhita (Uganda), a Theravada Buddhist monk born in Uganda, East Africa. He became interested in Buddhism while he was a student in India in 1990. He was ordained by the late Sayadaw U Silananda. In 2005, he founded the Uganda Buddhist Centre in Kampala, Uganda, the first Buddhist Center in Uganda. He is the author of Planting Dhamma Seeds: The emerging Buddhism in Africa. He is also a resident monk in West Virginia (USA) at the Bhavana Society Forest monastery. Venerable Buddharakkhita's Vipassana Foundation profile can be found here (scroll down to the end).

South Africa (Wikipedia, WQ edit)

Buddhism has been gaining ground in South Africa. The country now comprises the largest Buddhist community in Africa. South Africa is also the base for organizations aiming to spread Buddhism in Africa, such as the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

History
Apart from various Buddhist groups brought to the Cape Colony from Southeast Asia during the 1680s, and the many indentured laborers brought to Natal from India during the latter part of the 19th Century (some of whom were Buddhist, and some of whom were Hindu who later converted to Buddhism once in South Africa), most Buddhists in South Africa are non-Asian converts.

Nan Hua Temple Complex, near Johannesburg, South Africa

Various Buddhist groups grew up in the major cities since the 1970s. There has been a proliferation of distinct Buddhist traditions since the mid-1980s. These include Theravada, Zen, Nichiren, and Tibetan schools. The Fo Guang Shan Buddhist order has erected Nan Hua Temple (pictured above), the largest Buddhist temple and monastery in Africa, in the town of Bronkhorstspruit near Pretoria.

Another notable Buddhist center in the country is the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal. The Nichiren Buddhist lay group Soka Gakkai International also has a community center in Parkwood, Johannesburg.

A community of lay and ordained Buddhist practitioners live in the modern and tranquil setting in the peaceful and beautiful suburb of Blairgowrie/Randburg/Johannesburg. Classes open to the general public as well as structured study classes are held at the Vajrapani Buddhist Centre and various other venues in Gauteng. The center is run by the resident teacher Gen Kelsang Legden, who was ordained in the UK in 1997 by the spiritual director, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche, of the New Kadampa Tradition - International Kadampa Buddhist Union.

A 2003 study estimated that in the late 1990s there were a total of 6,000 Buddhists in South Africa (3,000 of Asian ancestry) out of a total population of 42 million (or 0.01% of the total population). [Ref]

Notable South African Buddhists & Organizations

• Rob Nairn - Buddhist teacher, author, and popularizer
• Hout Bay Theravada Buddhist Centre, Cape Town, South Africa
• Emoyeni Retreat Centre, North West
• Lam Rim Buddhist Temple, Johannesburg
• Shantikula Buddhist Centre, Johannesburg
• Sat Chit Anand Buddhist Centre, Plettenberg Bay
• Buddhactivity Dharma Centres database
• Tushita Buddhist Centre, Cape Town, South Africa
• Vajrapani Buddhist Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa
• Johannesburg Meditation Center