giddyiguana

I find inspiration in the strangest things.

Earlier this afternoon I stepped outside for a quick smoke to take a break from my rigorous day-off schedule of doing absolutely nothing, when a little thing stuck in a crack in the walk outside my apartment caught my eye...



Yeah, it's a nut.

Who cares, right? It's a small, rusted-out piece of junk that's obviously of no use to anyone anymore. Might as well just throw it in the dumpster and forget about it, right?

Well, maybe. But just think for a moment how much work went into its creation. Someone had to mine the ore. Then someone else had to smelt the ore down into the metal that would eventually be used to make the nut.

Meanwhile, someone else had to design the nut; to decide everything from how big it would be to how many grooves it'd have on the inside to what its exact metallic composition would be. Then a factory worker somewhere had to follow this design to actually produce the nut itself.

Oh no, the story isn't over. Then it had to be shipped to its final destination by yet another worker, where it was screwed onto whatever finished consumer good by yet another worker and sold at a retail outlet by--of course--another worker.

And then, inexplicably, it fell off and wound up rusting on the sidewalk outside my apartment. And nobody cares.

If you think about it, this whole incident is indicative of a lot of the trends affecting our society today. First of all, it's highly likely this nut is probably far more well-travelled that I ever will be. Thanks to global capitalism's insatiable hunger for profit, this nut likely travelled the globe in search of the cheapest raw materials and labour available. It's entirely possible that it was mined in South Africa, smelted in Russia, produced in South Korea, used as an assembly part in China, and finally shipped to the United States. Not that we'll ever know, of course. The whole process has become so automated, so assembly-line efficient, that a nut is a nut is a nut, no matter where it was produced or who was involved in its production.

Yet, despite all the human labour that had to go into the production of this nut, where is the humanity? Where is the "soul?" To the miners, ironworkers, designers, factory workers, truckers, and even the retail workers, there is no real sense of accomplishment, no pride of workmanship. I doubt any of them at any step in the process ever made the conscientious decision to become involved in nut production. To workers everywhere, it's "just a paycheck." It's just a way to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. At the end of the day, I doubt that very many of them will be able to display what they've accomplished with any real sense of pride or fulfillment. And to the "owner class," i.e. the mine owners, the factory owners, the shipping company owners, etc., the disconnect is even greater. To these people, the wholesale exploitation of both the natural resources and human labour that went into the production of this nut is represented by little more than numbers on a spreadsheet and dollars in their bank accounts.

And what of this nut's inauspicious end? To be dropped and forgotten, to rust back into oblivion on the sidewalk, despite the immeasurable human effort that went into its creation? Has our society as a whole become that disposable? And what of us, the ordinary workers whose lot it is to toil away on these ultimately futile efforts? Are we equally as interchangeable and ultimately disposable as the fruits of our labour?

No, I'm not really this indignant about a lone rusty nut I found on the sidewalk. It's the system represented by this nut that really makes my blood boil. People wonder why I'm so outspoken. Some have even labeled me "radical" or "belligerent." Well, forgive me for recognizing the inherent humanity not only in myself but in others as well. I find it disturbing that we're all caught in the trap of being little more than anonymous, manipulated labourers and consumers, and I refuse to believe that there isn't a better way.