Friday, November 21, 2003

(seen at What is The Message? in this post)

In Israel, there is apparently an expression used to placate those who hold low-paying, low-status "mcjobs," that goes something like this: "There is no job that doesn't respect its owner." In other words, if you have a job so menial that no one will respect you, at least the job itself will respect you. In Hebrew, it's roughly pronounced, "ayn avodah shelo marbedet et b'aliyah." Probing the cliché by twisting a few of the words gives, "ayn kavodah shelo avodat al b'aliyah," which means "there is no capacity (void) that doesn't work on its owner."

At first, the sentence appears to make no sense. But with a little thought, we can interpret the probe to provide an insight into greed and desire. If one is greedy - has an unfilled capacity - that greed will continue to "work on its owner," eventually corrupting the owner to fill it, one way or another. In a way, it is a reversal of the "money burning a hole in one's pocket" cliché. An interesting probe, to say the least, and one that works in the best way - taking a trite idea that applies to one class of people, and sharpening it to probe those at the opposite end of the economic spectrum.

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