La Joie de Vivre

Modernity and all its labour saving devices has taken the meaning of life from us. "Joie de vivre" means "joy of living", since we no longer live for our selves but permit robotic like devices to do our necessary daily tasks for us we rob ourselves of the joy which can be derived by the skill and ability of being able to individually take responsibility for ourselves. We have become so over specialized in our money acquiring tasks that the simple doing and learning of achievement is no more. We have become so corrupt by the narrow minded pursuit of money earning that existence itself has become a trivial calculation based on acquisition. I'm not trying to pull apart the materialism of our culture, those in favour of it will sing it's praise and need no help in explaining the heaps of its greed. Rather this is a lament of the lost action of living ones own life and just being ones own self. The emergence of the industrial phenomenon of the middle class has brought honest folk closer and closer to the despicable love of an aristocratic way of life. To pass our work on to others, to live off the sweat, blood and backs of others. The Count Dracula version of Vampire folklore is the perfect analogy for how the aristocracy feeds off the blood of the peasant. How else have monarchs accumulated so much wealth and lands through out the centuries? How else have the robber barons taken hold of the power of the world? We the people have become infected by our adulation of their supposed lives of ease. Yet we lost the most important thing there is to being alive . We can no longer make our own cloths, grow our own food, make our own tools and utensils, think for our selves. So we are the perfect fish to be shot in the barrel, who must purchase the necessities of life being incapable of providing such things for themselves any more. Freedom might just be a euphemism for slavery but less advertising, less propaganda equates a mind less hampered by someone else's desire to control us. We are the one animal best capable of taming itself, once done we tamed all the others who could be tamed and killed those who would not. Tamed of course just means controlled. I suppose we made the bed and there we shall lie.