Looking for Independence

One of the concepts our society is most concerned with is freedom. But I think our greatest fear is not about being enslaved (which, at the moment, does not seem to be any possible threat), but about being dependent; as long as we depend on other people for our basic needs, we fear being blackmailed into doing things we don't want to do. From childhood on, we struggle for our (personal) independence. In the first place, our parents intrude in our life all the time: they tell us when to get up, what clothes to put on, where to go (and especially where not to go), whom to talk to (and whom not to talk to); later on we are made to go to school, no matter if we want to; we are also told when to go out, and what time we have to get back; we don't have a say in most things concerning our life while growing up.

That's what prepares us for the world of "earning our own money." Because then we don't have to listen to our parents anymore. We can move out; we can meet any person we want to, hang out with everybody our parents warned us against; we can eat what we want to; we can follow any career or do any job we like (or don't do any work at all, if we want to); all has become our own decision.

I think that's what being independent really is about: making one's own decisions. But by reaching majority and earning our own money, we certainly have not gained much - while struggling against our parents for independence we forgot to look at the whole picture: There really is no independence for nobody in our society, not even for the people at the top who are said to be really mighty.

Most of us of course realize that our freedom here is only relative. Instead of being dependent on our parents, we are now dependent on our employers. We can choose the profession we'll be trained for and practise, but sometimes there are not enough jobs and we have to take a job in another field; we also depend on a market. Some of us don't manage to get a job at all, either because of an illness or a lack of skill or education, or because there are not enough jobs for everybody in the country (technical rationalization has done a "good job," for that matter); they are at least some time or partially dependent on welfare programs.

So, if we have enough money to spend on not only our basic needs, but some things beyond, we are free to consume. We can decide if we buy books or new clothes, a TV-Set or a new computer; if having a relatively high wage at our disposal, we could go on a journey on our holidays or save our money for buying an appartment, or what else comes to mind. (We can even go to a bank and apply for credit.) Our work is nothing we can decide much about, at least this goes for most of us. There are professions where people are relatively free to decide, but usually there is a client who has certain ideas we should match. We cannot decide when to start working in the morning (if it is in the morning and not at night) and how many hours we work; the employer does this. He or she often even tells us how much time we are allowed to take for a given task, no matter if that puts us into a lot of stress. Strangely enough, we are often forced into a dress code or even professional clothing (think e.g. of stewardesses); we are thus made to represent a company where we usually don't have a say in any decisions concerning the business - just like at home, isn't it?

Our independence is restricted to the time when we don't have to work.

Economically seen, there is no independence. Employers need employees as much as the other way around. Because there are more people in need of work than jobs, employers at least in some sectors can determine wages and other working conditions, unless there is no strong union behind the workers or a good societal system that lets people choose if they'd rather live on welfare or let themselves be exploited. (To my knowledge, all systems of s. c. civilization by law make people do what employers want.) On the other side, employers can only pay a kind of wages that can be gained from a market (if they always do pay what's possible or nurture a financial market as well, is another matter.) Whatever, a high division of labor means, most of our basic needs we can only care for by trading; usually we use money for the purpose. Communities and societies need employers for creating jobs as well as workers for paying taxes; this is the way communal tasks are taken care of. Everybody depends of everybody else for his life (historically, this has never been the case in such a high degree as nowadays - at the contrary, s. c. primitive people were perfectly able to care for their material needs without being dependent on anybody else, except for the old; they shared life and material goods because of emotional and psychological needs, not by force. But this is another subject).

So any freedom we gain is restricted to our personal life.

Most of us find themselves in working conditions they would never choose if they were free to do so, although we may not realize this from the beginning. From school on we are forced and trained to focus on using either our brain or our body. When we choose a profession, we can only work on a part of a process, never the whole: we may design or plan something (furniture, a house, a street, a book, or any device for the household), but we won't construct it. Or, we will construct or build or work on something another one has planned; usually nobody builds the whole thing, just a (small) part. Even the one who planned something usually is instructed to do so by another person (and what he or she plans, is always planned for someone else). We use only a few of our faculties; the big rest becomes stunted, atrophies. Few of us have the opportunity of a job where creativity is asked for; mostly the creative part of the process is done by somebody else. Our spare time may be used up by family matters, but if there is any time for creativity at all, we may not be able to use it: Try working in a factory at the production level or as a cashier in a supermarket (to name just two examples), after a month or so there is not much creativity left; the working conditions in many jobs do not evoke creativity at all but use up all the energy we once had for it.

We overstrain our bodies (as construction or manual workers), or we don't use them at all, sitting the whole day in front of a computer in an office (which is, of course, another way of overstraining our bodies, as well as overtaxing our eyes). After having done so for decades, our bodies start to resign - headache, backache, slipped disc, and our joints cause problems. Not to mention all the boredom that comes from working conditions that make almost everything into a process of routine - which may, in some cases, result in depression or other psychological problems. All because of the one-sidedness in our professional life. Most of us are not happy but rationalize this life - things are how they are, and without a division of labor efficiency would go down so that everything gets more expensive. Besides, there is always someone else in a lot worse conditions, aren't we lucky!

Why do we submit to this?

Most people would answer this by pointing out our dependence on these jobs for being able to meet our basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. I think this is just another rationalization; nobody could force us into unfavorite working conditions if we just said NO. The problem here is, there usually is not really a WE, meaning people are not solidary to one another (which goes, by the way, for any government that drops people financially when they won't submit; we should not take this as an example for our own conduct). There is a lot of fear behind this; who guarantees us that the other ones will stick to their "no" (so that the employer would not find anyone to work under e.g. unhealthy conditions)? At least, from school on (sometimes even earlier) we are trained to be competitive, we are educated into a system with places for winners and losers. The program seems to work indeed really good, because not only teenagers, but already children humilliate other children by labeling them as losers: just because someone takes more time in thinking or understanding than others, someone hasn't got the latest electronic device, or her clothes don't match what the average girl finds suitable, etc. It is, therefore, education in the first place that hinders us from acting out of solidarity - instead, we are trained to do anything not to become "a loser" in somebody else's eyes.

And this goes not only for our institutional education. Often we do not experience a really loving, caring, and acknowledging atmosphere at home. This way, we grow up with some, or maybe a whole lot of deficits; we may feel we are not good enough, we have to try harder, we are not loveable, or maybe even stupid. Being put down by our parents, we may not be able to develop faculties the way we could do in a loving and nurturing environment. People are often not aware of that; they may think their parents did really okay when this is indeed not the case. Some are beaten by their parents, but may even rationalize it ("I was just a really wild boy, so I can understand my dad losing his temper"); for others, the hurting their parents caused them is not that easy to see, because humilliating acts were more subtle, psychological ones (and so the experience was swallowed down). Too many people need a lifetime for remembering and working this out through a psychotherapeutic process; and even more can't see or do not want to realize themselves being in need of help - they live through their tensions by blaming others for any bad incidents, acting resentfully, or even using violence against others. And, what may be worse, they are so dependent on finally getting some kind of acknowledgment and appreciation that they are willing to do anything for it - if the usual competition doesn't do it, mobbing will.

The decisive point is the following: The needs we don't get fulfilled as children may stick with us a long time. Those of us with low self-esteem may not be able to defend themselves against overcharging employers, because they always hope for being acknowledged and valued in the long run; just to make one example. That means, we may have moved out of our childhood home, but we are not emotionally independent. At the contrary, we search for people that fill the lacks our parents have caused. And, usually, we are not aware of that; so that it is easy for others to get from us what they want, without giving much in return (and leaving us again with a feeling of emptiness). For many people, this is a regular experience when it comes to friendship and/or love; but it goes for jobs and employers, too, as well as for the colleagues we don't get solidarity from, although they seemed so nice at first.

To sum up: (1) There is no economical independence; we are all interdependent (even welfare-receivers consume what other people produce). Besides, this goes for everybody and everything on earth. (2) Emotional needs not being fulfilled in childhood will remain in adulthood, usually well hidden behind rationalizations, resentment, twisted thinking, and the like. Any emotional setting we don't know about makes us vulnerable; we are easily brought to submit to conditions that damage our integrity and creativity even further.

Independence in our life is important concerning our emotions. Because only then we have an inner freedom to really decide - what we do and don't want, how we want to live, and how we connect to other people in the first place. Feeling dependent, at least, is a result of the subconscious fear we have grown that what we emotionally need is being withhold from us. Without being dependent on what anybody else thinks about us or what we should do, we may find out what we really need with regard to other people. Only then we are not confined by the necessity to set our material needs as priority, and to push other people away: instead of being competitive (and lonesome), we could live in harmony with ourselves and solidarity with everybody else.

Of course, this does not seem to go along with capitalism, where labor is done for making money, not for providing for the needs of people. But capitalism with all its negative effects like exploitation, greed, destroyment of social relations and natural environment, is no longer an option to live with; it does us no good. For any change, we need to realize how we are (personally) affected by this system, and how we ourselves constantly support it by focusing on our material needs at the cost of our social and emotional needs we try hard not to recognize: we have been hurt because of them almost from the beginning of our life. Our children should not be forced into this kind of life like we were. It really is our choice to go on like before or finally break the chain.

Remember: When most people no longer compete one another into bad working conditions, the rich and mighty cannot blackmail us any longer; they'd rather start changing the system than doing all the unacceptable work themselves.

(For further reading I recommend any book from Arno Gruen, see literature.)