A Stranger In The House : the website of Alan Hubbard.

Extract from:

The Woman Who Was Himself: 4 Novellas

...from Lorenzo @ Alzeimers

Once upon a time there was a sentence: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It may have been held out as a future hope, a condition to be aspired to, but that aspiration underlay - was a condition of, and reason for - every pragmatic ‘loving’ act; that hope sustained the sacrifice of the present; that hope, it was believed, would one day, for our children, our grand-children, be realised as what it truly was, the necessary circumstance and condition of all men and women in society. It seemed then, when it lay so far ahead that it was hard to keep sight of, closer than it does now when its practical ‘technological possibility’ is so apparent. Then Morris and Wilde - and you, when you weren’t too angry - saw potential human advance as a means to a different end, to a time when people would not have to do jobs they didn’t want to do or be prepared to starve; would not need to work for people or organisations they didn’t want to work for, or whose criteria for employment they disliked, under the threat of losing their income; would not be seen and see themselves as more or less worthy according to how much ‘status’ they had, how much more money than the next man or woman, how many other people’s income they might themselves define, or deny altogether. Early in our century there was talk of an eight hour day. Now work of any kind and amount, for whoever and for whatever purpose, is good in itself; to be ‘able’, ‘efficient’, ‘productive’ (terms that anyway beg many a question - hard working? skilled? energetic? ruthless? educated? lucky? etc, many of which themselves beg questions) is morally superior to being concernedly human. Ability (but we mean success) is to be honoured; while its lack (but we mean failure) is to be pitied as a sign of lesser worthiness. All men - let alone women - are not equal. And the technology that has grown qualitatively and quantitively beyond any Victorian dream is not there to make them so; indeed, by The Laws of Human Nature, it cannot. Complacency and derision drive political ambition and Swift is applauded as a stand-up comic, while Darwin coming into his own at last is rapidly being misappropriated, as possibly his truth determines.

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Excerpt from : Novella "Lorenzo @ Alzeimers