by Peter Lawler
relationship between love and work

Silicon Valley

Miya Tokumitsu writes* with incisive elegance about our altogether elitist and self-indulgent view that our experts have these days about the relationship between love and work.

That view, of course, originates mainly from Silicon Valley: Your great work, which you love, is so creative and productive that it makes you fabulously rich, as well. You don’t have to care about the money because you have so much of it.

This elite view, of course, degrades the lives of most people these days. They can’t afford to enjoy their work, because they’re stuck working where they can to feed their families and all that. It’s easy to see that the work done by most Americans is so often getting less enjoyable. As most “intellectual labor” is done at some undisclosed location, those working for chains and multinationals and such are working off scripts they didn’t write. Surely it’s too much, and even counterproductive, to expect people at Panera Bread or Walmart to love their work. They shouldn’t even require that they’re employees fake it.

It’s also hard to be an independent contractor using your flexible skills to serve the needs of whomever is paying you right now to love your work. You’re not doing what you want, you’re doing what “the man” wants. There’s nobility and satisfaction in that, but love is quite the unrealistic standard.

At Berry College, we talk about the pleasure that flows from worthwhile work well done. That pleasure shouldn’t be confused with love.
relationship between love and work

Google Campus

At the level of high-tech intellectual work, the demand for love becomes tyrannical. One way I’ve been reminded of this is watching the film The Intern. There the Google “campus” is on display—with its semi-gourmet food, its many recreational opportunities, and its sleep pods. The official message is that work—with the help of these amenities—can be so fulfilling that you’ll never want to leave. The unofficial message is that you’d better love your creative work so much that you’ll never want to go home.

Although the film, at one level, is a cloying love poem to the Googlization of America, it did perform the service of showing us that those who spend almost all their time on campus have huge “relational” issues. They really don’t know much about love, and they’re mighty weak in assuming the relational responsibilities that come along with personal love.

It used to be a given that life is full of tensions and contradictions. And so those who love their work are usually personally irresponsible. There’s Socrates, for example, who was so erotically consumed with the pursuit of wisdom that he had no quality time for his wife and kids, and he was unashamed to mooch off his rich friends. There’s Willy Nelson, who really had no idea he wasn’t paying his taxes. And there’s Pavarotti, who confessed that he kept performing so much mainly because, no matter how much money he made, he’d be broke a week after he stopped making it. The typical practical situation of the artist or poet or novelist, even the eventually famous ones, is to be shaky on where the next meal is coming from and a trial to his or her friends and family.

It would be easy to go on. But Steve Jobs and lesser techno-gurus want us to believe that the highest form of human creativity readily generates huge wealth and a kind of selfless devotion to others. We’re told that Mark Zuckerberg has morphed from being the nasty wannabe portrayed in The Social Network to being one of the world’s best human beings. Facebook has done us all so much relational good, and he’s given hundreds of millions of dollars away.

We shouldn’t forget, of course, the extent to which Facebook and Google are intruding upon the most intimate online revelations about our personal lives to generate the big data that allows the more perfect manipulation of us as consumers. Google isn’t some new birth of the libertarian utopia promised by the Sixties or by Marx at the end of history. It is capitalism at its most productive. There’s not anything intrinsically wrong with that, but it’s not all about the love.

The truth, described by both Karl Marx and John Locke, is that under capitalism most labor is alienated. We sacrifice bohemian enjoyment in the name of bourgeois prosperity, and its bourgeois productivity that allows some of us to practice the bohemian art of life in our free time. But for most of us, it’s a disciplined, bourgeois attention to what the market requires that allows us the dignity of serving those whom we personally love.

Peter Augustine Lawler is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. He is Dana Professor of Political Science at Berry College in Georgia.

Kangyang wasn’t stingy with her vagina. This made her very popular among the boys in Danboyi Chal Street. All of them had been laid by her and whenever they gathered to play cha cha on that improvised table, in front of Chike, the Welder’s shop, Kangyang always turned up as the topic of discussion. Each of the boys took turns to describe how she spread widely her legs; how she raised her hips; how they made her moan, scream, shout or even cry. And they all laughed when it came to stating the price they paid for the pleasure she gave them. ‘After the whole thing, I gave her one Bazooka Bubble gum,’ each of the boys said, laughing and grabbing their crutches in lurid delight.
No one knew why Kangyang had week knees, why she never said no to any request from the boys to get laid. She seemed content serving as the pit where they dump their lust. It was just a matter of asking her and arranging a place for the laying. And the cost was one bubble gum and Kangyang’s favourite was Bazooka Bubble gum. Her popularity soared in the and soon not only the teenaged, secondary school boys of Danboyi Chal Street knew about her ‘generosity’. It got to the ears of Chike, the Welder, who was thiry-two years old and crafty. He wanted a piece of Kangyang’s butt but he was not planning to go the usual way of the boys of Danboyi Chal Street. He cooked up a plan.
That morning, by 7am, Kangyang was walking past Chike’s shop to school. She was in her smart green shirt and white skirt uniform. Chike was unusually early that morning because his normal time of opening business for the day was 9am or even 10am. But this morning, he was already bringing out iron rods from inside his shop and setting them to lean against the wall in front of the shop. Then he saw her walking past and called out.
‘Kangyang, how are you this morning. You are very early for school o’
‘Good morning sir,’ she greeted the Welder and continued walking briskly. She had to be at Apata before 7.30am. She didn’t want to be late for the morning assembly. But Chike, called out again.
‘Ah Kangyang, is that how you want to greet me this morning, come and greet me properly.’ This made her to stop and look at him. Then she walked from the road and went closer to the shop.
‘Good morning sir.’
‘Eheeen, that is how to greet your senior brother. Oya come inside let me offer you a drink before you go to school.’
‘No sir, I will be late for school. Assembly is by 7.30’ she protested.
‘Don’t worry,’ Chike insisted. ‘It is just a small drink of Eggovin. It will make your brain sharp for the day.’ He then held her hand and pulled her into his shop. He made her sit down on one of the iron chairs and handed over a cold bottle of Eggovin to her. He opened the bottle and said, ‘drink quickly so that you can get early to school.’ Kangyang took a few gulps and looked at her watch. It was 7.10am. She said to herself that she would leave in five minutes time. A few seconds later, her whole body felt too heavy for her to raise and she felt herself struggling against falling asleep. Suddenly, she fell with a big thug to the sandy floor of the Welder’s shop. Immediately, Chike moved back the iron rods that he was displaying in front of his shop and locked the shop from inside. He carried Kangyang from the floor to a prepared mattress at a corner of the shop.

1.They have more than enough of it.
2.They can discuss it without feeling embarrassed or ashamed.
3. They don't play safe like singles.
4. They take more time to do and enjoy it.
5. They show more non-sexual affection to each other.
6. They are more sexy than singles.

'' It's so bad that the United States has said it will not help Nigeria fight the Boko Haram terror group unless the country modify its laws regarding homosexuality, family planning and birth-control.''

Read the full story on:
http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/us-wont-help-fight-boko-haram-until-nigeria-accepts-homosexuality-birth-control-bishop-says-5344466437144576

1. Be polite and good things will come to you
2. Make her feel secure with you always.
3. Wear a good fragrance always.
4. Dress to impress always.
5. Go gym everyday!
6. Spend time with just the two of you, always. No friends .
7. Take her out to a classy restaurant everyday.
8. Shiny white teeth and fresh breath, always.

1. Don't have sex just before eating or after a full meal for this will cause indigestion and abdominal pain.
2. Don't have sex just before doing sport or after doing a tiring exercise for this will cause erectile dysfunction.
3. Don't have sex just before or after a hair cut for this will cause mental confusion.
4. Don't have sex when you are preparing for an exam or after the exam for this will make you fail the exam.
5. Don't have sex when you are about to watch a football match or just after the match for this will make your team kicked out of the league.

Therefore, the proper time to have sex is 24 hours before or after any of the activities mentioned above.

1. Listen to her and care about what she has to say
2.Show her physical, non-sexual affection
3.Surprise her with flowers
4.Take her out to dinner (without the kids)
5.Buy her a book she’s been wanting
6.Write her a love note
7.Wash the dishes
8.Check something off your honey-do list
9.If you have babies, change a diaper
10.Let her go out with her girlfriends sans kids
11.Open the door for her
12.Pray with her and for her
13.Apologize to her when you sin
14.Forgive her when she sins…never hold a grudge
15.Ask her advice
16. Pay attention to her pet peeves and avoid them
17. Take her shopping
18. Fast for her
19.Understand and comfort her fears even if you don’t share them
20. Talk to her about life
21. Compliment her specifically
22. Kiss her in public and in front of the kids
23. Hold her hand
24. Give up something you want to do to do something she wants to do
25. Don’t criticize or complain…praise

1. Sex is self sacrifice and self giving and that can be romantic.
2. Sex is sometimes a lucrative business that leads to romantic ideas.
3. Sex leads to maturity and romance is a product of maturity.
4. Sex is team work and team work is romantic.
5. Sex blows the brain and a blown brain is a sign of romance.
6. Sexually reactive characters, who are non-romantic, will believe 1-5 above.

It was the 16th of September and I was supposed to be at Abuja that evening, by 6pm. So I left my house at Apata, by 1pm. The drive was smooth up to the roundabout facing the Plateau Specialist Hospital, Jos. I was coming from Joseph Gomwalk Road and ascending the road beside the hospital. All of a sudden, I saw this yellow PW Limited articulated truck hurtling down the road, moving dangerously against traffic and towards me. For a moment, I was bewildered. Why should the truck move against traffic when there were two police men directing vehicular movement at the roundabout and I had just seen men of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), directly in front of the hospital, in the seeming act of controlling traffic? However, the truck kept coming and filling up all the spaces ahead of me on the road. I am used to the recklessness of heavy duty truck drivers on Nigerian roads, so I edged my car as close as possible to inches within the open gutter at the side of the road. I had thought the truck driver, having seen me, would steer clear and just move straight ahead down Joseph Gomwalk Road, even though, on the wrong lane.
However, just as the head of the truck passed me, I saw its long metal trailer begin to curve towards my, now, stationary car. The driver was negotiating his way into the roundabout while on the wrong side of the road. This is crazy, I thought. By this time other cars had stopped behind me and there was no way to move back and prevent the long mass of steel, twisting towards me, from crushing my car. In panic I started horning and shouting at the driver. He was not watching his mirror, instead he was looking ahead at the traffic police man and FRSC officers, who kept asking him to move against the direction of other vehicles in the roundabout. Then the crushing of my headlights and fender started and I had to increase the intensity of my horning and shouting. The truck did not stop until it had fully turned into the roundabout and completed the destruction of my fender, headlights and driver’s door. At a point, and in panic mode, I reversed the car and rammed into another car parked inches behind me. At this time the FRSC officers and the traffic police had seen what was going on and alerted the truck driver. But it was too late. The deed had been done.
I managed to squeeze out of my car and ran angrily to the driver who had now parked the truck, facing Joseph Gomwalk Road, beside the hospital’s fence.
‘You must pay!’ I shouted angrily, as the driver came down from his truck. One of the FRSC officers came to us and in Hausa told him that if he had been more observant he would have prevented what had just happened. But the traffic warden with the name tag, David Ojo, who was now also with us, at that instance, tried to defend the driver. Pointing to his chest he kept shouting in Hausa, ‘I asked him to drive against traffic, I asked him to drive against traffic’. Then I asked Officer David Ojo, who I later found out was from Kogi State, whether he had directed the driver to hit me. The implication of my question hit him and he vigorously shook his head and now turned to blame the driver for not using his mirror. The driver looked confused and kept saying in Hausa that it was the police man that kept directing him to move against traffic.
‘That is not my business o!’ I screamed. ‘All I know is that you will pay’. I whipped out my phone and dialed someone I knew at Toyota. I told him about the damage to my car and asked for an estimate of the cost of repair. When I told the driver it was going to cost 80000 naira according to my man at Toyota, he was visibly shaken. He then said in Hausa, ‘let me call my boss’. He called the boss and Officer Ojo magnanimously decided to wait and explain the incident to the driver’s boss.
We waited for two hours for the boss. At about 3pm a yellow Toyota Hilux van with PW Ltd written, in black, on it pulled up beside the truck. From where I was standing, I saw alighting from the van a chubby European. His ash-coloured vest exposed his tattooed arms and chest. He was a little less than five feet tall and was closely followed by a groveling policeman of about the same height, who brandished a gun, and was obviously a bodyguard. We stood at our distance watching the truck driver meet his boss. A few moments later, the driver beckoned us to come. The policeman and I walked up to them. The European, in halting, accented English, asked me what happened. I only managed to understand what he said because the accent was really unintelligible but I told him what happened. He asked Officer Ojo for his own version of the story. Officer Ojo narrated a similar story to mine.
‘Is it because I Whiteman?’ the short European asked in his faltering English. I got alarmed. He reminded me of those miserable characters from Jerry Springer Show. I asked him what he meant by his question.
‘Is it because I Whiteman two of you tell same story?’ He asked.
‘I am telling you what happened, not because you are Whiteman’, Officer Ojo, obviously agitated, said.
‘But the driver needs space to turn the truck,’ the Whiteman grunted.
‘Yes, but I heard the driver telling you that he wasn’t watching his back and was moving against traffic,’ I replied. ‘What have you to say about that?’ But he kept repeating ad nauseum ‘the driver needs space to turn the truck’ and ‘is it because I Whiteman?’. I got angry and pointing my finger at him, told him to stop this nonsense of Whiteman and address the issue of his driver damaging my car.
‘Stop pointing your f**** fingers at me!’ he yelled. ‘Look I am a very busy man and you should count yourself lucky that I came here. See, I only need to make a few phone calls and this matter will be over, in my favour’. What he said, in addition to the garbled accent got me into a rage. Who was this cartoon character? Who was this white clown trying to show off his importance in MY OWN country, just because he could afford to move around with an armed policeman? I also yelled back at him and Officer Ojo tried to calm things down. The police guard at this time drew closer, menacingly fingering the trigger. We all then decided to go and take a look at my car, which was parked some distance away. He saw the damage and I guess he sensed I was spoiling for a fight. He changed tactics.
‘Look I am going to help you,’ he said pompously, raising his eyes to look at me from his short frame.
‘Help?’ I looked down at the disheveled hair on the oblong head of this arrogant squat man.
‘See, your car is damaged; it’s not the end of the world. How much do you think it will cost to repair it?
‘80000 naira,’ I said.
‘Ok. We share it 50-50. After the repairs I will give you 50% of the cost’.
‘Do you want to follow me to confirm the cost?’ I asked.
‘No, I am a very busy man.’
‘How do I get back to you?’ I asked.
Pointing in the direction of Old Airport Road, he said, ‘just come there and ask of me.’
I said, ‘who are you?’
‘Gerry’
‘Gerry who?’
‘Just Gerry’
‘Can I have your number?’
‘Let me write it in your palms’
‘No,’ I said.
‘But I write in my palms,’ he said, stretching out his palms and the hideous tattoos on the whole length of his arms.

‘Well, you are in construction. I am not.’ I said.
He searched the breast pocket of his dust-covered vest and came out with a pen. Then he pulled out a torn piece of paper from one of the baggy pockets of his grimy brown trousers. He scrawled frantically and handed the paper to me. I looked at it and repeated what he had written to the hearing of all.
‘Gerry PW Limited Old Airport Road, Jos. 08134617117’. I asked Officer David Ojo for his number and from his phone he read it out to me.
‘08036923790 of Police Headquarters Jos.’
It all seemed to have ended amicably until two days later, which was the 18th of September, when I got to the PW Ltd Camp at Old Airport Road to show Gerry the bills for the repairs. When I was ushered into his office, a stuffy makeshift metal container box, I noticed this time that there were two armed policemen hovering outside the office. I showed him the bills. He looked at them and made two phone calls, apparently to confirm the prices I had given him.
‘Your Toyota man has done you 419 o!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The cost of repair is too much o! I don’t think I can pay this o!’
I looked at him shocked and disbelieving that such nonsense was coming from him.
‘But I told you two days ago that it would cost 80000 naira and I asked you to follow me to confirm the cost.’ He was quiet. ‘You refused to follow me claiming that you were a busy man.’
I continued in a measured tone, ‘and you said you’d give me 50% of the cost,’
‘I said I’d help you,’ he hummed, in his irksome accent.
‘Help?’ I was beginning to boil. ‘I don’t need your help. It is justice that you pay for what your driver has damaged. You agreed to that!’ I was now shouting and could see through the window his guards drawing closer.
‘Calm down sir, calm down,’ he gritted his teeth as he tried to pacify me.
‘Why should I calm down? Look, I am on my way to Abuja now and I just thought I’d come here, pick up 40000 naira and continue on my journey. But what you are trying to show is that you don’t care about my wasted time and resources.’
‘I’ve not shown you any disrespect since you came into my office. Calm down.’
‘It is disrespect to say that you won’t keep your own part of the negotiation. Look Gerry, if I had the slightest suspicion that you were this dishonest, I wouldn’t have left you to leave that spot two days ago.’
‘I’ve not shown you any disrespect since you came into my office. Calm down,’ he repeated.
‘Ok. Show me some respect. Give me my 40000 naira’
‘Sorry, PW Limited gives only 5000 naira for any vehicle damaged by our trucks. There was no life lost. But I am ready to give you 10000 naira.’
‘Mr Gerry, are you saying that you are acting according to your company’s policy.’
He said, ‘yes’ with the assuredness of a boy whose father had asked him to go steal from his neighbours.
‘That is stupid and callous. Do you know how much a pair of Toyota Yaris headlights cost? Do you know how much auto based paints cost? What about my fender? Do you know how much a new one costs?’
‘See I am not from your culture, but here we only give 5000 naira as long as no life is lost.’ The guards and other workers had heard our dialogue. None was bold enough to come in and arbitrate. They were too scared of their tattooed master.
I looked angrily at this caricature of a Whiteman and wondered what to do to him. I knew that I couldn’t do much. I was in PW’s construction site, more or less, a maximum security prison. I was out-manned, out-armed and out-witted by this dubious character, who had led me to believe he was honourable because he worked with a well known construction company.
‘I am not collecting your miserable 10000. Send it back to your poor folks at home. They need it more than me.’ I walked out of his office.
As I walked towards my car, I was amused by the tricks of poor unconscionable Gerry trying to make ends meet in Naija. Gerry’s problem may stem from his perception of 5000 or 10000 naira as a big deal to Nigerians. As one of his workers told me, he was a roadside mechanic in Ireland but here in Naija he is ògá, lording over Nigerians who are more educated and even more intelligent than he is. May be none of the daily paid workers earn up to 10000 naira a month. Ten thousand naira may just be the world to Gerry and his PW Limited masters.