We are not machines

Evidence of the hypocrisy inherent in our society - which supposedly worries so much about our health as to forbid anyone smoking in bars - is the monstrous rate of work to which it subjects the average citizen - those who do have jobs, that is, on whose work the whole immense budget of the state depends. While some are idle, often against their will, others work such long hours that their health is adversely affected. Working hours have returned to those of the 19th century. The eight-hour day has become a nominal figure, and 12 or 14 are not unusual, both for wage-earners and the liberal professions. Many employers have profited from the crisis to lay off some of their personnel and to practically enslave those who remain, who have to do the work of the others for more or less the same pay.

What I find striking, however, is the exploitation even of "privileged" persons, by which I mean not those who have been privileged from birth, but those who have been lucky, or have some gift or talent - for example, professional athletes.

A few weeks ago I was amazed when, at the end of a long season, already preceded by last year's World Cup, the top Spanish players were not to have any rest; the Federation having set up some friendly matches in the United States and Venezuela, so conveniently near. As for players from Argentina, Brazil, etc, they had to fly to their continent to play in the Copa de América. I think it is just a question of time before they are all worn out, and their sporting lives drastically shortened.

As for tennis players, year after year I am perplexed as I watch them finish one tournament in Melbourne, only to be back at it in Miami or Stockholm the next day. And so on, all season long. Then the federations that oblige them to keep this schedule, and the fans who demand to watch them, howl to heaven if they are found to be taking performance-enhancing drugs. I can't believe that there are athletes who don't dope - not so much to get higher scores, as to keep up the demented, frantic rate imposed on them. Players in the American NBA not only dispute games every two days, but spend their existence in airplanes taking them north, south, and coast to coast.

In fact, I don't understand how, in numerous professions - bicycle racer, taxi driver, pop singer, construction worker - anyone could get along without consuming substances, just to keep going. Or why drugs are prohibited by the same people who make them almost indispensable.

It seems as if the barbarous, retrograde idea that all the juice has to be extracted from human beings - especially those who produce big money - at all speed and to the last drop, and who cares if they break down sooner than later, has now taken hold. Like machines, when they break down or wear out they will be replaced by others, who are impatiently waiting their turn to taste their brief passage of glory (athletes, singers) or merely of remunerated employment (the rest of the herd). Use them up, and bring on the next. This is the way the labor market works, for the privileged and ordinary alike. Some of us decline to enter the machine, though we pay for it. When I published a new novel two months ago, I read several comments that began: "After more than three years of drought..." I don't know how long these people think it takes to come up with a novel, but I think you can rest between one and the next. I have often been asked if I was "writing something new," even while I was manifestly occupied in the usual routine and travel of promoting a recent book.

Yes, sometimes we all feel like the bicycle racer who, having just finished the Giro de Italia, is approached by a chirpy reporter who says: "Well, now for the Tour de France." Something has been forgotten here: we are not machines.