Worker Bees

-- By KippMueller - 12 May 2012

The "Life" of the Worker Bee

The worker bee spends her life collecting nectar for the queen. When she is not collecting nectar, the worker bee is in charge of keeping the queen bee's eggs alive by sustaining a proper temperature in the hive.

The most "successful" workers are the best collectors. Within the bee world, the best collector is the most impressive bee. She is hailed by her peers and celebrated for her ambitions and resulting success. She takes care of the eggs closest to the queen. Other bees recognize her success and attempt to replicate it, hoping to be the next to carry her title.

Of course, with a little perspective, one can see that the prestige granted to her is simply a power mechanism for the queen. Each of the worker bees reinforce that mechanism by participating in it and agreeing to its terms. Each worker bee buys into the narrative. And when she does, she is thus reduced to nothing.

Her life is stolen, whittled down to a vapid, futile existence. She seeks to get ahead in a game in which the winner loses.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Oscar Wilde

Why Doesn't the Worker Bee Revolt?

The worker bee's entire existence revolves around serving the queen bee. So why doesn't the worker bee ever revolt?

Because she, unlike man, does not possess the capacity to see how else it could be. She can't see life in perspective.

She doesn't have the ability to contextualize her life. To the worker bee, her life is simple: collect nectar until her death. She can't see what life has the capacity to be. Rather, she only knows how to make her life as worth while as she can within a closed system in which the rules were already written: To make a life is to collect nectar for the queen.

She can't see her own oppression. She lives a life of servitude, a slave to nectar. She is given enough to remain tranquil and willfully sell her life to a system that calls a select few queens and the rest servants.

She accepts goals indoctrinated as noble and true. But those mean nothing outside of her system. We as humans see no reason to celebrate a worker bee who gathered lots of nectar. Likewise, what creature outside of our socialized system and its irrefutable assumptions would celebrate the person who had lots of money? There is nothing inherently praiseworthy about seeking money. In fact, the goal on its face is exceptionally laden with greed and shallowness.

And yet it is what we strive for throughout our lives.

"Money often costs too much." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money

What can the most devout worker bee say of her life when all is said and done?

How can an enslaved investment banker who does not believe in the moral praiseworthiness of her job look back at her life with pride? What has she truly accomplished besides a life of servitude to materials? When she resides on her death bed, what can she recognize as achieved?

She may well conclude when all is said and done that regardless of how rich she became, she was stripped of her life by a prescribed, fabricated narrative.

Ironically, she may realized she died worth absolutely nothing.

I struggle with escaping the mentality of the worker bee. I, like all of us, am a slave to money. I am well aware that no matter how much money I make, I will want more. That is how the system works; there is no satisfaction. If I were ever to become satisfied, I would be dispensable in our capitalist society. My relentless pursuit of fulfillment is precisely what makes me useful to the system.

And yet, despite my conscious perspectivism, I continue to seek nectar. I often wonder how our lives juxtapose people living impoverished in third-world countries. I believe some of them may say their lives are better than ours, because they are not enslaved by a preconditioned system in which we are told to pursue a life of shallow and fruitless purpose. At least they can look at their lives as a product of what they accomplished and what they wanted for themselves. Will we say the same about our lives?

"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." Benjamin Franklin

Professor Moglen,

I would like to continue working on this piece as long as it needs. Thank you!