5 ways to stop living to work and working to live for "the man"?

Question

that are not insanely impractical for the average joe to implement

Answer 1

Only buy locally grown produce at farmer's markets and not at chain grocery stores. Better yet, grow your own. Bake your own bread, buy local honey and jams and jellys.

Ride a bike when possible instead of driving everywhere. Schedule trips to certain areas of town, so you only make one trip instead of three or four ventures out. Even if it's just a couple miles a way, this can make a difference.

Shop for clothes and housewares at thrift stores or small locally owned businesses instead of large department stores.

Get rid of cable tv, put up some rabbit ears and just utilize network tv and public television.

Stop using paper plates, paper napkins, paper towels, etc. Use washable, cloth linens and ceramic plates.

Stop going to the megaplex to watch movies, and patroize small art house theatres instead. Bring your own bottle of green tea and pita with hummus instead of buying a Coke and a box of Goobers.

Stop buying books in the checkout line and check out the library instead.

When you must buy products or patronize establishments owned by "The Man", do some research first and find out what kind of corporate responsibilty they have. It will help you make choices you can feel better about when given the option.

Small things do make a difference, you don't have to drop off the grid to generate change. It all adds up. Stay strong and fight the power.

Peace

Answer 2

I think the key is to determine what you passion is and follow that. If you are excited about what you are doing, then it won't seem like work. And your enthusism for and commitment to what you are doing, whatever that is, will lead to success in your endeavors.

Answer 3

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a *ludic* conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child's play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn't passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act. Oblomovism and Stakhanovism are two sides of the same debased coin.The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much the worse for "reality," the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival. Curiously -- or maybe not -- all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else.

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists -- except that I'm not kidding -- I favor full *un*employment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work -- and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs -- they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.