Notes - Work Week/alien humility as a social-economic force

        Mid-morning. You exchanged Valentine cards and Cadbury chocolates. Milk and a banana for breakfast as you are having early Chinese with Bud C. and Rich G., both still working men.

          

         I remember in the books that the Marsupial-humanoids do not have retirement as such. Everyone works. What would I do in such a culture? Teaching takes too much daily energy. I could drive a truck though, that would be a good job.

         The Marsupials only worked up to ten hours a day three days a week, orndorff.  Older people did not work so long, besides they live five hundred years, well, four-fifty to five hundred as an average. And with four days off a week, on average they don’t look at a work week the same way you do. They still have energy, don’t you see. Three days a week is not exhausting and they are free to do as they wish otherwise. Hobbies, family gatherings, friends, plenty of time to enjoy their worlds. You cannot make comparisons as their whole value system comes into play. They think of themselves as servants to the species first. There is ‘human’ dignity in all employment; besides, they are all paid the same amount, even those who are mothers of children up to the age of sixteen. Allowances are made for each individual as to what sheorhe can physically and mentally do and enjoy doing. In service it helps if you enjoy, and one usually enjoys what sheorhe does well. Satisfaction and inner contentment with self in relationship to the society as a whole is an important commitment. Humans have their values too, and they only have one planet. Things are not the same. And, they are not marsupial, they do not share so openly culturally. Different worlds, boy, but in here ‘HeavenOrHellBothOrNeither’ still works when you are dead. No one’s perfect, boy. You remember, their worlds are not utopian. Everyone pays, boy. No one comes in or goes out of this universe without paying. That includes me too, old man. Keep that in mind. Enjoy your lunch. – Post. – Amorella

         You arrived at China City Buffet on Mason-Montgomery Road fifteen minutes early, anxious to show your new machine to electric and computer hardware/software engineers who might have a greater appreciation for the MacBook Air and its innards.

         I love to hear engineers talk the talk. Love the thought processes of scientists and the like – reasonable practical people who remind me of the Ohio farmers I have known in life. Different applications but the same thought processes. Horses and tractors. I remember at four or five seeing my great Uncle Doc Haines who lived up on Freeman Road, three miles north of Westerville in Delaware County uses to great work horses to plow smaller plats of land and the new Ford tractor to work the larger ones. The horses liked to work and he allowed them to do so as long as they were healthy. I thought that was a good thing, very considerate on his part. I had already been taught to be polite and as far as I could see Uncle Doc was still polite to those horses. I wish I could remember their names.

Uncle Doc didn’t live long enough to buy a new tractor, but I feel he would have because of the practicality of innovation. I always remember riding on one of the horses while they pulled the sleigh with milk cans to gather up the maple syrup in early Spring. Wonderful early memories of farm life though we never lived on a farm ourselves. Potbelly stove in the middle of the living room and a hand pump (well water) at the kitchen sink. The smell of grain in the bins and hay in the barn. Barn cats. Raw cow’s milk. Cows, chickens, geese and dogs. Uncle Doc and Aunt Theo raised cocker spaniels, my favorite breed. Theo only dog we owned as a family in Mason. Lady is a character in the books along with Robert’s fox terrier. I had a well settled yet diverse childhood.

After twenty-one hundred hours and earlier lunch was missed by Rich G. You and Bud hadn’t seen each other for over a year as he remembers it so you both had time to catch up. Once home you and Carol took half the almost twenty year of crab apple tree to the curb and cut it up into smaller pieces for the city to take away later his week. The fifteen foot limb that was perpendicularly attached to the main trunk will be drug into the woods for small critters’ homes and spring and summer insect feastings. You also watched last night’s Masterpiece Theatre and tonight’s ‘Chuck’.

         You still didn’t tell me what I would be doing as an old man in Marsupial-humanoid land.

         Perhaps you would be an artist, orndorff, and sell your trade to those few interested. Don’t forget, no one kept their jobs longer than five or ten years in a row. Part of the rules. And it was no different for them as far as everyone gets the same pay no matter what. Humans would have great difficulty with that even if the pay was the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars a year for life. Pride was spent of good service, not an easy task for some. It is unfair in a sense, as some people are better at tasks than others, but life payment with a straight ten percent out for all taxes means ‘security’ for the individual, the family group and society as a whole. The representative world family could not make the budget work so they forgive the debt (humbling enough in itself, but the health, education and welfare of the individual is considered priceless, so what else are they to do) once a year and start over, only the representative ParentsinCharge does this, the world otherwise lives within their means. It sounds good and even utopian, but a few couldn’t live within the social economic system and chose a quick painless death if they wished. That’s the way it was after they learned from the humans. No need for armies, one just sacrificed herorhimself for the good of the group.

         I remember some of this. I did forget the Marsupials learned from the Earthlings too. They learned to be more individualistic and accept more openness among individuals and family groups. This is what happens when ‘aliens’ meet like ‘aliens’. Everyone pays something in ‘the changes that occur.’ Society was not as simple as it sounds. Both species are complex in their humanity. I like it that way. The books were interesting and fun to write. I learned a lot about myself in the process. What I learned most from the Marsupials is the uses of humility (as a concept) rather than pride as a social force. I would have never thought that in a million years. As a romantic I still like it. As a realist I know it would never work on Earth. It does fine in a fiction though. I love fiction. 

         The books are for you, orndorff. And, for those who want to read them. You have no choice but to open them for sharing. Ironic, huh? Perhaps one day you can find a legal way to place the first three books for free reading on the Internet. Post. – Amorella. 

         I would like that very much, Amorella.