OK, I'll admit it: I'm absoluetly gob-smacked that today is just another holiday. It's Good Friday, fer Chrissake (with a tip o' the hat to Salinger), and while we're all happy that we have the day off (that is, for those who work for companies that recognize today as a holiday: some do, some don't, some only half-way), most people I know have no idea why we should care (be aware of the fact) at all.
OK, I have to insert a personal comment here: in the US (my other "home"), Good Friday really wasn't a holiday. I never got the day off; here in Germany, it has the status of an almost-official holiday, and most people get the day off with pay). This fact, in and of itself, is worth reflecting upon. In a country that prides itself of its "Christian values", the day is, at best, a half-day-not-having-to-work-day, while the world's export leader still has it enshrined as a full-fledged day-off-work-with-pay day, go figure.
But this brings us directly to the point:
A culture's values are reflected in it so-called holidays; that is, those days on which its commercial interests are willing to spend money even though they get nothing in return.
Let's face it: a truly modern-capitalistic organization can't be in favor of any holidays; that is, working days with pay. How could they be? Profits are generated through work, not through non-work or the absence of work or not working, or whatever. Holidays; that is, days without work, are unjustifiable. How is it possible, why should one pay wages for a day in which nothing constructive is done? Oh, I understand the logic, but at the same time I have to ask whether the logic is reasonable in the first place.
This is no pseudo-issue. It's real. Money may "work" 24/7. Profits may be generated 24/7. But, human beings don't function 24/7. I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I need to sleep.
And so, here we are with this "pseudo-holiday" that "business" would like to eliminate, but which, people be damned, it just can't do. And why? Well, it turns out that the answer lies neither in the holiday itself nor in the weakening cultural framework that imposes it.
For all the materialistic, money-talks-nobody-walks mentality that we like to propagate, the truth of the matter is that we have to accommodate and deal with people anyhow. For all the blustering about growth and ROI and stability in the future, we're all still dependent upon the fragile, unknowing, fallible human beings who do our bidding, to the best of their ability.
We've set up a system in which it appears that the "knowers" know what they are doing, but this is increasingly showing itself to be a facade. We like to think that this is how things have always been, but we're increasingly coming to realize that this is just the way we've made things for now. We want to believe that those who say they know actually know, but we're seeing day in and day out that the "experts" sleight-of-hand can't possibly be the way forward.
According to the "'myth' of the day", someone called power's bluff. Why is it that we still think that power has the winning hand?
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