> Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
This, of course, can go either way depending on perspective. If you put all of yourself into your main activity, you're doing it for yourself, not for someone else. Whether you're being paid by someone else isn't relevant, IMO; what if you'd do it for free, or if you could do something else more profitably (so you're paying, in opportunity cost, to do it)?
Money is far from the only, or even main motivator for most people - even for poor people, they'll often stay geographically close to their friends and family rather than migrate to a better life; it's mostly the desperate at one end, or the cosmopolitans at the other (for whom the world is small, so the geographic switch is less material), who do move.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
This, of course, can go either way depending on perspective. If you put all of yourself into your main activity, you're doing it for yourself, not for someone else. Whether you're being paid by someone else isn't relevant, IMO; what if you'd do it for free, or if you could do something else more profitably (so you're paying, in opportunity cost, to do it)?
Money is far from the only, or even main motivator for most people - even for poor people, they'll often stay geographically close to their friends and family rather than migrate to a better life; it's mostly the desperate at one end, or the cosmopolitans at the other (for whom the world is small, so the geographic switch is less material), who do move.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
-- Ecclesiastes 9:10