Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Jan. 27 Reading

What is alienation? Have you experienced it and does Marx take on alienation change your view? I think the alienation that Marx describes is another way of not being spiritually connected to certain aspects of your life. You are driven to do them in order to satisfy a physical need and derive little or no spiritual benefit from them

Yes, I have experienced alienation on the job and I would say also in the area of religion.

I have used my “satisfaction level” to define how a job made me feel. I would be satisfied with a job if I felt I was contributing something to society and not just working to create profits that were intended for somebody else’s pockets. I think that is what Marx is really saying about alienation. That those who have to sell their time (and therefore themselves) to make enough money to live, instead of doing work they love, they are alienating themselves. I would argue that those who love what they, even if it produces profits for capitalists are not as likely to feel like they are alienated.

In the readings I never heard Marx talk about people who work on their own to create items for sale. Are they alienated as well? I would think not, if they are doing work that truly satisfies them and reaches them at a spiritual leve. However, if they are doing work because it is the family business and they are expected to do this work, then I should think that alienation would set in.

In the past thirty years I have held only job that truly where I did not feel some form of alienation and that was for most of the time I spent working as a communication specialist for ISU Extension. During the first five to five-and-a-half years I truly felt that I was truly serving the citizens of Iowa. Then a new vice president of Extension came in and changed the focus of our work from communicating science-based information from ISU to the citizens of Iowa to spending inordinate amounts of time and funds making him look good. The alienation set in immediately.

In most of the other jobs the alienation was there from the beginning, but I was not in a position financially to do much about it. However, now that my step children are through college and my husband is retired, I can now look for things that don’t make me feel alienated.

The other area where I have felt alienation is in the area of religion. Being raised Roman Catholic and attending a Catholic grade school, drenched me in this religion. I would try to feel some spiritual connection, but never have. I finally let go of it when I attended a Catholic college and had the opportunity to have discussions about religion and I how I did or did not feel about it. I was amazed to find that many of my classmates feel a deep connection to the Catholic way, but I did not. At that time, I let goof the Catholic religion. I have explored some other religions since then and found none that I felt I connected with.

So now I feel like I could be branded a Marxist.