Livelihood

November 30, 2020 at 3:45 pm

Livelihood: a means of securing the necessities of life

Memaw” Ivey, as she has been affec­tion­ate­ly — or deri­sive­ly? — referred to, tweet­ed the other day. Maybe it’s the empha­sis of this being a reit­er­a­tion. Maybe it’s the con­cise­ness. Something about it sounds more like an ulti­ma­tum than a life les­son, pre­scrip­tive rather than descrip­tive. Something about ‘can­not’ is so defin­i­tive in the statement.

You can­not have a life with­out a livelihood.”

Why do I get the feel­ing that’s the polite Southern way of say­ing, “If you don’t have a job, you don’t deserve to live.”

It’s true that if you don’t get water, food, and shel­ter — at the bare min­i­mum — then your life will end. There is a fun­da­men­tal aspect to the state­ment that is under­stand­able. It’s also false.

There are plen­ty of peo­ple right­ful­ly exempt from such an expec­ta­tion. Different lev­els of phys­i­cal and men­tal abil­i­ty might pre­vent some­one from being able to take care of them self. We cer­tain­ly don’t expect chil­dren to go it alone and secure their own neces­si­ties. On the other end of the age brack­et, we believe the elder­ly have a right to life with­out con­tin­u­ing to work. So it is pos­si­ble to have a life with­out a livelihood.

Of course, Twitter’s char­ac­ter lim­i­ta­tions pre­vent nuance. Governor Ivey would never say peo­ple who can’t pro­vide for them­selves for­feit their life. That does­n’t sound as nice as, “You can­not have a life with­out a livelihood.”