The Art of Tetman Callis

“The capitalist world, and in particular the heart of it, the world of buying and selling, offers almost nothing a young man wants: the instincts of youth are at variance with the demands of business, and especially with those of clerking.  What young man is by nature diligent, sober, and regular in his habits?  Respectful to ‘superiors’ and humble before wealth?  Sincerely able to devote himself to what he finds boring?  One in ten thousand, perhaps.  Bur for the great majority a ‘job’ is, depending on temperament, a torment or a tedious irrelevance which has to be endured day after day in order that, during one’s so-called ‘free time,’ one will be allowed to get on with living.  The situation is the most commonplace in the world.  I believe it is the cause of that settled cynicism with which nine out of ten regard the ‘social order’: they know that, short of a total revolution in the conduct of human affairs, any conceivable social order will for the great majority mean the boredom of routine, the damming up of their natural energies and the frustration of their natural desires.” – R. J. Hollingdale, Arthur Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms