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Step 6: Tom Sawyer & Chores

Attempting to complete my DIY task list, I stopped by Lowe’s during this “stay at home” quarantine. It was absolutely packed with people, which made me reconsider the role of chores and the DIY list in our culture.

This is part 1 of a few episodes on our attitude towards labor and chores, but I find it fascinating that during this quarantine time the chore list has become the must-do list. At the cost of your life, that flower bed must be built and planted. It seems to reflect a change in attitude due to a change in lifestyle, and while I mainly lay a foundation for attitude manipulation in this podcast, I want to dive into the compulsion to work, and how our leisure time has become labor time and means to define ourselves.

To consider the attitude change, I discuss Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” parable with the picket fence and the difference between work and play.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Mark Twain

I am curious as to how the charlatan is the seeming protagonist, and how intelligence becomes a rationale to adjust (manipulate) the attitudes of others, but not your own attitude.


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Resources

Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” and the picket fence [link]


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