Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism
GUEST COLUMN
“You are worth about $5.50,” gloats the statistic-monger. “If you were cremated, the chemicals in your body wouldn’t be worth as much as a ticket to a first-class concert.”
“Four dollars an hour,” says my boss, equally pleased.
I do just enough unskilled factory work (for Manpower) to cover my room and board. The money itself doesn’t affront me, as if I had gotten a low bid at the auction block. But what does affront me is the suggestion that the money could in any way compensate me for my body, my life, my time, myself.
Raw materials went into the factory and came out ennobled and man went in and came out degraded (Pope Pius XI).
You May Also Enjoy
Where we drift as a culture is determined more by the decisions of corporate managers -- and the values that dictate their decisions -- than by any other single influence.
Obsession with work and “workaholism” produce dangerous effects that lead to a desensitizing, deadening, and dehumanizing of the spirit.
When we move from the spiritual good of love to its material, concrete incarnation, we move into the realm of material goods that diminish by division.