English philosopher John Locke wrote that energy (labour), when mixed with that which was part of the commons, brought that piece of the commons out of the commons, thus making it one’s property. Unfortunately, the commons were not something to be protected, or even cherished, but something waiting to be snatched up. In fact, Locke justified the taking of the Americas by white Europeans because the Indians failed to mix their energy (labour) with the land (set the veracity of such an argument aside for now).

Labour (mixing one’s energy with the land) has always had a cherished place here in the States. Locke’s own thoughts on labour and property were also instrumental in the establishment of this nation. Jefferson lifted from Locke what has become perhaps the most famous of all lines in American literature: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It was that last part that Jefferson lifted from Locke. The original was a tad different, rather than the pursuit of “Happiness,” Locke posited “property.”

In fact, the purpose of government, for Locke, was the protection of one’s property. Property was sacrosanct for Locke, though the old views of divine rights, serfs, and landed lords didn’t fit in to Locke’s ideas. Kings and landed lords were not likely to mix their labour with the land. Kings and other royalty acquired and maintained property by way of superstition and/or religious claims. This was not the way of the new world. Reason, not superstition, was the soup de jour.

There is beauty in the simplicity of the idea that one can stake a claim to only what they mix their labour/energy with. Philosophically speaking, at least in western philosophy, it seems to make sense. There is a rational explanation to back up one’s claim that “this is mine,” which has more force than saying, “God has granted me this,” or “Destiny has made manifest my right to this.”

Locke’s arguments may have won the day against kings and lords, but the landed class was having none of it. Jefferson was a part of the landed class and, like the kings and lords before him, he did very little mixing of his labour/energy with the land, though he was known to “mix it up” with his “human property.” Jefferson conveniently replaced the word “property,” with all its labor-mixing connotations, with the line “pursuit of Happiness.”

Spiritually, the idea of labor and property has resonance. The quiet dignity of a day’s work, the sweat of the brow, communing with nature, and tilling the soil are all good for the soul. Psychology has even weighed in on this matter. There is a calming quality that accompanies labor-intensive activities such as gardening that one doesn’t achieve from unwinding with a beer and TV. And one need not be a Marxist to understand that labor-intensive activities lose their therapeutic advantages when one is alienated from the fruits of one’s labor.

Even scientifically speaking, the transference of energy from ourselves into the ground is as compelling as any force in nature. We truly are the children of the sun. (Some at NASA would have us be the children of the moon, and, like any good child, NASA is looking to raid its parents’ deep pockets.) We are forever chasing that energy in one form or another. We engage in our wildest fantasies and we bring science fiction into reality everyday. In a real sense, we are all time travelers, able to traverse the present, the future, and the past. We dig deep into the earth to extract captured energy from the sun, hundreds of millions of years old. (That time is up…the future is now…oil is dead…long live oil!) Back to a time before animals, when plants ruled the earth. Oil is what remains of other progeny of the sun, little pustules of energy. We effortlessly step back from the past, oil in hand, or tank, if you will (Is there another way? What happened to the electric car, Dr John S Dunning?), mixing that ancient past with our present, future be damned. Sometimes, thankfully, we live in the future. Rather than taking energy from the past, we mix our own labor/energy with the earth for what will be—captured bits of the sun in the form of plants, energy for the future (Plants all the way down, or is that up?—reaching for the stars, climbing ever upward—cellulose skyscrapers.).

We prize energy like nothing else, we fear it like the plague (few things scare the dieter like the dreaded calorie), we sell it, trade it, and steal it. Sadly, we assign certain worth to those who mix their labor/energy with the physical world versus those who mix their labor/energy with the abstract—energy also divides. There may be dignity in mixing of our labor/energy with the earth, but, although all energy mixing is equal, some is more equal than the rest. In the end, as you will see in the “Lost Socratic Dialogue,” the byproduct of the physical laborer is the same as that of the professional—merde!

We humbly submit the fruits of our labor/energy to you. Most of what you find will look familiar to you, some of it will look new. We are introducing two new columns for your reading pleasure. Because there often is far too little to feel good about, Vahram Antonian (of dOWNSIDE uP fame) introduces “The Undercurrent Spotlight,” a monthly look at those who give of themselves, everyday heroes, if you will. And Beula Bean traverses the often treacherous world of relationships in her Dispatches From the Trenches of the Sexual Battlefront.

Enjoy.

That’s all for now, more later…