my favorite colors

weberian maze

2006
acrylic on paper
44 x 36 cm
explanation

I read a text by weber in which he argues that the profit motive isn't the biggest instinctual driving force in human nature. for example, one of the things that frustrated colonial administrators in some parts of africa and latin america was that if plantation owners offered indigenous workers a higher wage as an incentive to work more, the automatic reaction of the workers was to work less. according to weber, this was because the instinctual response to a wage increase is not to work more so you can earn a surplus, but to work less and still earn enough to survive.

europeans thought indigenous peoples were lazy because the focus of their lives wasn't money.