Godliness And Labor

Our services and promise of service to the Gods often rewards us with boons. Some of these boons can be simple but welcome, such as less painful joints for a few days in our older age, or for better chances conceiving when trying for a child. Some boons can be what gives you the edge in a battle, perhaps Dagaal or Morodon gives you a boon of protection and makes you harder to hit, or reinforces your blows to shatter your opponents more effectively. Regardless of the boon, they never come without the receiver meeting some type of criteria. Typically the bare minimum is one must pray to the God they wish to receive the boon from, and the other is they must be an eligible recipient, for example the 8 are typically unwilling to give more than minor boons to non-Nomidians. This creates a symbiotic relationship between mortals and Gods, but not one of unconditional love. It is very rare that Gods offer boons to those who do not ask or worked for them. Even Clerics often worship and work on behalf of the god they serve under the promise of divine magical power or a higher position in the appropriate heaven. Clerics often “love” their gods in the sense that they often share the same values, and work hand in hand to enact those values onto the world. This goes for Clerics of Duufaan who value law, hierarchy, and Nomidian domination, and Clerics of the Bitch of Pain who value power, pain, and pleasure.
Gods can be subtly influenced by their worshippers and vice versa. This influence only extends so far, if every Duufaan worshipper suddenly interpreted them as a God of Chaos and Anarchism, Duufaan would merely start to fade or loose power, but if their followers started interpreting them as a God of Justice, it would not be impossible for that to be added to their portfolio at least as a pseudo-portfolio, which would give them some minor amounts of power. This means its not only okay, but should be encouraged when groups of people have an alternative, but reasonable, interpretation to a God’s tenets and portfolio. I, and many other Goliaths worship Kavaki as a God of Emancipation or Freedom, since he is often the only connection, we have to our roots upon obtaining freedom from the Great Enemy, and the 8 are often quick to cast us aside. Kavaki’s portfolio does not necessarily include Emancipation or Freedom, but given the work being done in his name, and a lot of his followers within the 5 kingdoms being ex-slaves or related to ex-slaves, it is not unlikely his portfolio is poised to gain a new addition. He is our light in the dark, and our anchor stone against the battering storm.
“Freedom”, what does that mean? It is certainly a nice sounding word, but if you asked a dozen people what it meant to them, you would likely get a dozen different answers, unless one of those people gave you the literal denotation of the word, but even that definition shifts subtly between fields of study. From an economic perspective it could mean the means to buy and sell what you want, when you want, but it could also mean the ability to support yourself and your family without dependence on loans or welfare. But if one needs to work 11 or more hours a day to ‘earn’ that support, they would be spending their whole life simply working and sleeping, that doesn’t sound like freedom to me. For the sake of this pamphlet “Freedom” means the ability to do what you want without fear of death or financial despotism, up to the point where you start impeding on other individual’s freedom and well-being. Imagine if you, dear reader, were able to support yourself, your spouse, and your children, by only working 6 to 8 hours a day? What would you do with your extra time? Some of you would spend it playing with your kids, teaching them about the world, others would spend it with their spouse expressing their love and desire to be with one another, more still would spend it making extra money to buy nice things, splurge a little bit on that winter jacket, and many many others would spend it enriching their minds and spirits. Many people would like more time to educate themselves. Perhaps you want to be a priest, but finding the time to read all those texts, and critically analyze is impossible given how much effort you need to keep food on the table. Or maybe you want to find a solution to food spoilage, so you spend your days researching food preservation and fringe academic fields to come up with something new. Regardless of what you chose to do with your free time, it is likely to enrich yourself and those around you.
This extra free time would leave to a spiritually enlightened community. This does not necessarily mean a more religious community, although having more time to read the scriptures of your god, and pray would inevitably be a thing many individuals chose to do, and I would encourage them to do so. What I mean by spiritually enlightened is more connected to the world and people around them. You would go on walks and learn the personalities of the local fauna and flora, the troubles of your neighbor, their virtues and vices. Perhaps you and your neighbor discover a love for wood carving together, or perhaps you discover they have a problem with alcohol, and offer your time and presence to help them overcome it, or vice versa. (A footnote is written, recommending the reader look into topics on “animism” and the same footnote gives some text recommendations)
Even something that seemingly doesn’t benefit your neighbor or even further removed community members, likely benefits them in ways not consciously thought about. Lets return to the example of playing with and teaching your kids. Your children will obviously enjoy and benefit from having a positive influence in their life, and the benefits those children get will help them become healthy, functioning members of society, decrease the likelihood they resort to crime or degeneracy. It will leave their minds open to development, making them able to learn more effectively than without the care you gave them, and an educated population with a strong moral compass is a recipe for paradise. Even those that use their free time for something purely “self-interested” like making money, benefits the community. They are not only partaking in the inflow/outflow of money in the economy, they’re encouraging the production of luxury goods, perhaps even taking part in producing them themselves as a means to this monetary gain.
Now, its all well and good to fantasize about the “what-ifs” of a 6 hour workday, but how would we make this logistically possible? I mean, how could it even begin to be possible to cut a workday by 45-50% and still keep production high enough to ensure the needs of the community and the countries’ needs are met? Well the simple answer is that the productivity needs of the community are already met, chances are the industry you work for is owned by a member of the Noble or Burgher class. They are a class defined by two things; their immense amount of wealth, and their ownership of the means of production. They do not work with their hands to make the planks of wood that go into a boat, or entwine the fibers that are weaved into a shirt, nor do they design and nail these boats together, or transport the shirts from one community to another, as a merchant would. Their only claim to wealth is that they own the tools and materials you and your fellow labor with. And how did they come to own these tools? Well they were born into it, their ancestors were members of a noble house, or exploited an economic drought, or stole countless riches from now dead nations, but regardless of whether this happened three generations ago or eleven, the wealth and ownership of the means of production obtained through blood was passed down hereditarily along with the boots that stepped on the backs of workers like us. I’m going to single out a community that has been on many people’s minds lately, Hollow Oak. They produce multiple tons of cut and treated Hollow Oak every week, they had a relatively healthy economy on paper for many years, but any visitor would tell you that the people of Hollow Oak are working around the clock in extremely dangerous and strenuous labor, with barely any money to speak of. All the Hollow Oak cut and processed within the region was owned and sold by three individuals, one of which doesn’t even live within the region. These three individuals were making hundreds of gold a day (800 or more) doing nothing but sitting in their ten thousand gold homes smoking expensive imported tobacco, while the real workers risked life and limb to cut and carry those trees from the forest to the mills. (A footnote gives text recommendations of texts recounting the history of the wealthy families of Eastrin and Billowan and how they obtained that wealth.)
So my dearest reader, and fellow laborer, I appeal to your rationale and sense of higher moral duty, find a god that aligns with your values, a good and just one, pray to them, and use their boons to bring about the change the world needs. Not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of those around you and the wider community.