It’s raining and 45°F, and I have to walk half a block between my house and my garage. I’ve been awake since 3am and I’m gritty eyed with exhaustion. My arthritis and heart problems are both exacerbated by the short sleep and the cold damp so that everything aches. I have a pile of laundry that needs doing. I haven’t been to the grocery store in two weeks. There are still daffodil bulbs to get into the ground before the hard freeze. And I need to spend some serious time processing apples before the ones that don’t keep rot. So… I don’t want to go to work… And there is nothing at all wrong with that attitude.
I am not being lazy or irresponsible. I am not being unproductive. In fact, not going to work is possibly the most productive thing I could do with this day. Because then I would have time to address some truly productive tasks, both in the sense that they benefit me and in the sense that the things I would do at home have productive output at all. Nothing I do at work is necessary or beneficial. Not to me. Not to any body. Even sleeping is more productive. It makes my body healthy. Wage work makes the entire planet sick.
But if I give voice to my desire to stay home, my character is in question. A wish to take care of my own needs is named sloth, no matter that when I am at home, I am always far busier than when I am tied to a cubicle. And I am busier with tasks that need doing and should be done (unlike wage work which never needs doing and only rarely should be done at all). In my busy hand-made life, tending to my home and my body is hard work, the opposite of idleness. But since we devalue and disdain care work of all kinds, doing the hard work we do for ourselves, doing this the only necessary work, is considered indolence. Staying home gives rise to questions from sneering bloviators like “Why doesn’t anybody want to work these days?” (Implying that they have virtuously put in time doing hard labor in some halcyon past… as if…)
Worst kind of black magic ever imposed upon humanity is this notion of the work ethic.
I talked about the definition of magic as altering perception in accordance with will. Brainwashing a whole culture to work against their own interests, to work against the entire planet’s interest, this counts as black magic in my books. This is exactly why I find “accordance with will” repugnant, though it does seem to define most of the magic inflicted upon the world. Marketing, propaganda, advertising, political campaigning, branding. These are all magic. These all change our perceptions based on their will.
We are compelled to buy the branded shoes at four, five, ten times the cost of exactly the same pair lacking that brand mark (often made in the same factory). Why? Because our perception of that brand mark was bewitched by aggressive marketing. We see higher value in that mark, where before the marketing campaign, we would have seen two pairs of nearly identical sneakers. As is, in fact, the case… A spell has been laid upon our eyes and we perceive differently now, in accordance with their desire to part us from our money by way of exorbitantly priced footwear.
Black magic…
Similarly, a little under a quarter of American voters were persuaded to vote for a charlatan. Twice. I think it is fairly safe to say that when Trump was squeaking out his trademark “You’re fired” on television, very few people had any respect for him, never mind regarded him as presidential material. Perhaps his books sold well… to a certain class… mostly people like him. But I can say that in 1990, The Art of the Deal was regularly clogging up the remainder bins that came into Half Price Books, meaning that a couple of years after the book’s release, publishers were desperate to unload unsold copies and dumped them on the thrift market.
It is unlikely that any of the people who voted for him in 2016 — and then rioted in his name in 2021 — thought him anything but an idiotic, drooling huckster in 1990. But then, in 1990, many of those rioters were still in diapers themselves… However, the average Trump voter was not. That guy is older than I am. And he almost certainly found early Trump manifestations rather reprehensible. Not because early Trump was a slimy reprobate pedophile, but because early Trump was a terrible businessman who was handed New York real estate on a silver platter by daddy tycoon and then lost the empire… to where today, he’s peddling gold watches out of the Oval Office…
What else can explain the embrace of this loser, this transformation of a vile piece of New York scum into a “strong leader”? It’s got to be black magic. Complete brainwashing. Turning one thing into something entirely other with nothing more than words and pictures. Endless bludgeoning with words and pictures, to be sure, but nothing more tangible. Certainly, no change whatsoever to the actual piece of New York scum.
This is powerful stuff…
But the Trump campaign was a very mild curse compared to some of the others we labor under. We have been ensorcelled to believe in hierarchy and status, despite all evidence to the contrary in our real embodied lives. There are charms over our eyes compelling us to see women as less valuable, less intelligent, less worthy of being alive — though always perfectly adequate to doing all the work in living. We see people of color through the same spell. Children are merely mute containers for our legacies (at best). We see the rest of the living world as inert matter, lacking all agency, resources to be exploited, dead and useless in its own right, having no rights at all. We have been entranced to believe that money has value quite beyond its capacity to be redeemed in real goods, and we value our own living bodies not at all, having been brainwashed into believing in some disembodied eternal reward for throwing away our only lives.
See? Black magic all around…
But most of these spells primarily affect humanity, not much else. Even stripping the more-than-human world of all living agency would not necessarily destroy the world. It just becomes an option to exploit.
However, this work ethic thing… Enchanting us to willingly subsume our lives and needs to feed the system that builds wealth for elites by way of churning the world into waste. This does not merely destroy human lives. It is the spell necessary to destroy the world. Because this gives the elites the labor necessary to carry out that destruction.
Once upon a time, the masters had to compel us to show up for work, to do their work. Whole peoples were enslaved, forced into becoming working bodies with no rights, no souls. For a long while, this was sufficient to tend to the work of fainéant high-status bodies and to marginally grow the wealth of the wealthy. In those days, there weren’t that many high-status bodies, and wealth was largely confined to the real material realm. So, there were real limits to wealth. Until very recently, hoarded gold was about as abstract as wealth could be. And in the past, even insouciant elites recognized that gold doesn’t do much to feed or shelter you. This meant that there was less inclination to pile up gold beyond meeting their bodily needs.
Now, those needs were met in extravagant fashion, with precious (but useless) resources lavished about their bodies and estates and endowed public spaces. Gold was even used to gild food, just to show that they could afford to waste with abandon. This was, itself, a bit of black magic, but it was aimed at their peers, and it probably had limited effect as peers tended to have broadly equal wealth. The plebs and peasants and serfs only saw slivers of the status signaling and did not much care how the masters chose to waste their wealth. It was all one to the lower classes who had no hope of acquiring either wealth or status (and truthfully not much desire…). On the other hand, it did not do to signal status to those above your station. You would soon find yourself status-less. Among other sudden deprivations…
In these more grounded times, there was no need to ensorcel the entire world with this notion of a work ethic. There was no need for most bodies to be working most of the time. There was not that much work to do, even with the entire elite class doing nothing.
This all changed in the Enlightenment…
There were many factors leading toward a change. One was that elite status was no longer determined by blood alone. The opening of distant resource pools enabled even quite average Joes to amass wealth equal to and greater than the elites. With those funds in hand, it became possible to challenge the status quo. A merchant could buy estates, serfs, lavish goods, women, as well as soldiers and weaponry to protect all these possessions. (Note that word…) The newly rich could wear purple, could deck their bodies in rubies and carbuncles, could eat saffron and sugar, could sleep on vast feather beds under chandeliers dripping gold and crystal. And royalty was powerless to stop the leaching of nobility downwards to the merchant class — because the nobles depended on the merchants for wealth.
So, there was growing need for flowing wealth. In fact, this need quickly outstripped even the vast riches of the newly conquered lands. To facilitate the flow, gold was stamped into coin and contracts became currency, the first step toward abstracting wealth out of the material realm. Coin was still valued for what it would buy in the future. Contracts still referenced actual material goods. But a looseness was opened up between investment and collection. This enabled wealth to grow beyond the limits of existing material claims — because the future would always produce more. So, currency began to be valued in its own right, for the claims it made on the potential of the future.
Thus, the golden hoards multiplied… because it is much easier to amass money than matter.
In those early days, we did not fully believe in the magic of money. We still held on to ancient notions of actual trade in goods and wealth accumulation. To build the early fortunes in the days of waning kings, it was necessary to enslave more and more and more bodies to do the work of acquiring, manufacturing, shipping and trading actual goods. Plantations especially required bodies. A master was in no way equal to planting and harvesting and processing the wealth of his estate. He needed dozens, hundreds of hands and backs and legs. But acquisition and maintenance of these dozens of bodies had to generate the very minimum of cost or the enterprise would be profitless. Hence slavery of the American variety, where each body was barely provided the basics needed to remain alive and procreation was enforced. (The master found he could breed his own labor pool and slave stock, with the fringe benefit of sexual conquest thrown into the bargain.)
This new color of slavery, as well as the ability of lower men to profit thereby and exceed the status of land-limited European elites, eventually created backlash against enforced labor. Though truthfully it was never a sustainable venture for the long run. Bodies so treated sicken and wither. They are not productive, certainly not increasingly productive in a manner that would increase wealth. The returns on investment were already shrinking by the time calls went out for the abolition of slavery.
Another problem of slavery was the need for a market for what the plantations produced. Enslaved bodies don’t buy goods. Enslaved societies might provide resources and labor, but no market. And with no market, there is no reason to transform those resources into goods. There is no sale, no potential for revenues. So, really, no need for slavery…It’s a self-limiting mode of organizing society that will always spiral to null in a rather short time.
Now, while all this was happening in the colonial hinterlands, there was growing population pressure in urban areas as elites enclosed all the lands and forced thousands from their homes. These newly urbanized peoples had no place to live, no way to provide themselves with food as they once did, no means of meeting any needs. They were a dangerous burden on cities and states.
And finally, there were merchants desperate for working bodies that they did not need to maintain. Pay a pittance and be done with any further reciprocity. The urban poor constituted a vast new pool of labor that swelled each day with the refugees of enclosure. But convincing people who very recently set their own schedule and benefitted from their own work to do wage work for miserly pay took powerful persuasion. It was a while before the sorcerers perfected that art.
So, there were pressures from many, many sides that spurred the spellcraft. A need for a market for goods. A need to replace the slave system with something less volatile. A need to find something to do with the urban poor. And of course, the growing desire for wealth from men who had never before pursued, never even imagined, a change in their state. The time was ripe for industry.
We often claim that machines reduced our need for human labor. To the contrary, machines created new need for continuously laboring bodies. Where one potter would produce one pot from start to finish, machinated production would produce hundreds of pots. But each machine, each machine part, would require the labor of at least one body, often more. Further, machines do not exist in nature. To make a pot with a machine, the potter first needed to make the machine and whatever parts constitute the machine. This manufacture of the machine required the labor of more and more bodies. Then, the transport of machinery, parts and pots required more bodies. The sale of each pot, each machine, each machine part all required more bodies. The more machinery, the more laboring bodies.
Also… the more pots produced. Which might sound great… until you think about the actual need for pots. One pot is very useful. Ten are sort of a burden. Hundreds are just ludicrous. More pots means there must be more need for pots. Only, there isn’t more need for pots.
Unless there is an infusion of pot-deprived people with money to spend on pots.
Machinery created more pots, but it also created the labor needs that would enable more people to earn money to buy pots. This is its own variety of circular dark magic. Creating something from nothing. Creating vast piles of pots and thousands of bodies laboring to make pots for wages that will pay for pots. Machinery didn’t reduce the need for labor. It increased the need for labor, thereby creating more wage earners who could buy the products made with the lubrication and increased complexity of machinery. And all these transactions generated revenues for the masters of industry and trade. (Not the potters…)
Of course, this was an incredibly powerful incentive to men desperate to rise above their station. And so, this is where the work ethic spell was laid.
Because people don’t really want pots. They want full bellies and warm shelters and lots of friends. People also do not want to labor for such an abstract cause as wages that might buy pots. And it didn’t take long to realize that wages are notably terrible at meeting most of our basic needs. In any case, people want to do the work that is necessary to meet their needs as directly as possible so as to leave time for more enjoyable things like actually eating dinner and being with loved ones. People want to do quality work that produces quality work and that inspires pride in the doing and in the result — as well as the direct benefit of those results. People do not want to labor for the benefit of someone else. When it comes down do it, people just don’t want pots… Nor most of the things that wage labor buys.
So, the dubious lure of the market was not enough to draw people into wage labor, even with all the dispossessed refugees from enclosure. Elites needed a compelling mythology, a story that inspired, a spell.
Meanwhile, in the north of Europe there was a growing movement that provided elites with the final ingredient in the enchantment.
The merchant class had no patience for the limits imposed upon their status by the system of nobility. They were earning all the wealth. They wanted the respect and rewards. They fought every vestige of top-down authority left in Europe, including the Church. Protestantism was born as much from the greedy ambitions of men as from a desire to interact directly with deity. (It also gained hold in the more backwards countries of the time for the very same reasons. England wanted out of the shadow of the ancient majesty that was Rome and Spain and France. That would never happen within the hierarchy of the Church…)
This new version of Christian faith developed the mythology that would allow the merchant class to rise above their former betters. And in so doing, it created an opening for all individuals to work within the mercantile system, increasingly a capitalist system, to rise above their fate. As long as you worked hard, you would earn God’s favor, not only in the afterlife, but in this material realm. Monetary wealth, the wealth of trade, the wealth of wages hard earned, was regarded as a sign of God’s favor, a sign that your name was in the Book of Life, that you were heaven bound. (Conveniently, poverty was seen as a mark of sure damnation, thereby eliminating any need to care for fellow men fallen on hard times.)
And these are the people who created my country… They wove this myth of heavenly favor on the hard wage laborer right into the fabric of our being.
In this, the spell was cast. Work endlessly in this life, and you would gain eternal paradise. Never mind the suffering in this life, eternity more than compensated. Meanwhile, your hours of labor fed the capitalist machine’s need for more product to sell while simultaneously generating the market needed to buy the product — in the form of your wages. In a neat bit of hocus-pocus, you were kept from being able to meet any of your own needs because you needed to spend all your hours earning the wages that pleased God and country — and earned you status in this realm. So you needs must spend all your hard-earned wealth, sending it right back from whence it came — the merchant class, the new elites. The masters.
And what you earn is never enough to pay for all that you can no longer provide for yourself. So, you keep working and working and working, earning money for them and doing their work. And you must try to meet your own needs in the margins of your life. Because what they sell is… pots… Not wholesome food. Not restful sleep. Not adequate shelter. Definitely not love and companionship. And never good health.
And in your labor…
This system just keeps churning the world, including all these laboring bodies, into mountains of pots and other dubious goods. We all can see that perpetual pot productivity is a horrible waste, but it can’t stop. In some cases, like the high temperature manufacturing of glazing, the actual physical processes can only rarely be shut down without destroying the equipment. But even in trades that produce nothing but those contracts that once promised material wealth — for example, my job — work can never stop. Because then growth would falter and all the contracts would be called in due and it would be quite clear that there are far more contracts than the entirety of the material value of the planet. In other words, when this mad rush stops, the whole system will implode for lack of actual material value.
Elites know just how fragile their system is. So they brainwash us all into thinking that wage work is a good in itself. That any body that does not work continuously to prop up this system is evil. That this system is the only option, there is no alternative. It’s not an ethic. It’s a compulsion. We don’t believe that hard work is a virtue. We believe that hard work is necessary to be wealthy and therefore seen as virtuous. And we believe that hard work is the only choice.
And, so I have to go to work. Not because I benefit from it. Not because there is any benefit at all. But because of this spell.
I have to go to work to make pots and other dubious goods that the masters can sell back to me at far more than they pay me. I have to go to work to turn a healthy living planet into a wasteland of broken pots and other over-produced refuse. I have to go to work and do no actual work at all, while the real work of living piles up and up and up. And I have to do that work as well.
And it never stops…
Except…
There are indications that it is slowing. That all the contracts are being revealed as so much cantrip and crumbling paper. That the laboring bodies are faltering under their curse of compulsion. That the material world is proving to have some fairly intractable limits that magic is just incapable of concealing.
The spell is wearing thin. The illusion is fraying. Soon, we will all see clearly again.
And then we will not go to work.
We will stay home and do the work that we need to do for ourselves.
And I will get some sleep…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 