Wednesday #42 - Is It Really All That Happy?

What's the happiest place on Earth? Simple: Disneyworld! But is it really? let's think about it for a moment, and seriously contemplate what is so wrong about Disneyworld... Have you figured it out? No, it's not the stupid new rules about the fast pass system, and it isn't about the price of the whole thing either. It's the rules that the staff (or cast members) are bound to, essentially creating a subservient unter-mensch to serve the paying customer.

     Let's talk, shall we? The restrictions that Disney places on its employees are, in a word, ridiculous. Yes, some of themmakesense, like cast members cannot smoke at all in costume, or chew gum, or eat in public view, but there are some more ridiculous ones too. 

     For example, should a cast member not know the answer to a question given to them by a guest, they can't just say "I don't know."

     That's right, Disney is great because of slaves. Kinda shatters the innocence, doesn't it? I know you probably feel bad, and that's totally understandable, but you also shouldn't feel bad. Those people, the cast members, volunteered for that position, and still have to voluntarily get out of bed each morning and go to their job (er..  role), and continue to abide by the "crazy" rules. 

     But what exact,y does this mean for us as a society? Could it be that we actually like slavery? Of course we really don't, because the last time America did slavery we made little kids work in factories where they could lose fingers and chunks hair with scalp, or their lives with a slight slip up, and before that, we separated families and cultures, forcing on innocents back-breaking labor and whippings. Consider however the benefits that these systems had though. The slavery of the South had massive, positive, economic effects, and essentially paid for the Reconstruction efforts after the American Civil War, not to memtion the fact that the trade made possible by the slave trade and the resulting cotton inudstry allowed the U.S. to get a foot into international exchange, a doorway that proved necessary for Americas rise to as a world power. This apotheosis was aided further by wage slavery in the Industrial Age, when America was able to turn from a mostly agrarian nation into an industrial powerhouse (which won us WWII). Because the factory worker was barely paided, the profits made by the robber barons who owned the factory allowed for greater production amounts, more factories, more revenues for America (as a whole), and created the industrial system that allowed for the rise of a middle class in the next century. 

     Understand that I don't support slavery. I think that its a terrible system, and the fact that it was abolished in both forms says something about how terrible it was. All that I am trying to do is cause you to look at the world with a different light. 

Much Madness is the divinest Sense

By Emily Dickinson

much Madness is the divinest Sense

To a discerning Eye -

Much Sense - the starkest Madness

'Tis the Majority

In this, as all, prevail -

Assent - and you are sane - 

Demur - you're straightaway dangerous -

And handled with a chain

                                       "Never give up; never surrender." - Tim Allen, Galaxy Quest