Slave and the Reeks – promote education with a mug
May 10, 2008
So in case you didn’t guess by the title, I am reading Player Piano by Vonnegut right now (are you getting sick of me talking about Vonnegut yet?), and wanted to comment on the how he portrays the working poor in this book. In a nutshell there’s this international prince touring the dystopian machine-run world of Ilium New York and is commenting on the working class people that have lost their jobs to automation and technology. They have been give jobs to keep them busy filling holes in streets, fixing buildings, etc but are doing work that only exists because of the government, otherwise they would be replaced by machines. The international prince calls them slaves, but the US diplomat driving him around keeps trying to correct him. The sad part is that they are slaves. The system, not unlike the system we have now, controls them and makes them marginal in normal society. They don’t make enough to live/interact with the middle class and can’t leave their jobs because there is nothing else for them, they are locked in. This is similar to how this country treats the poor. Once you are poor, you are locked in, there is almost no escape and you won’t be able to work yourself out of it. You are doomed living paycheck to paycheck. It is a sad truth and the only solution lies in education. The more available and the more advanced the national education system is, the better chance every American has the chance to rise above the social class he/she was born into and become a more successful person. That in turn makes the community more successful and creates a role-model that can help pull others to success. The answer to America staying competive and staying equal is the free, good education for all. Once we all have that, then we’ll all be smart enough to address every other issue in the world.
seriously, do you want to see more people making mugs like this one? God if I saw a teacher drinking out of this I would probably just give up…
