Why work?
The myths of work
I was thinking about work some days back. I have been thinking about this capitalist economy we all participate in, since longer, since I read the solarpunk novellas: A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy.
In certain moments I do question the value of the work I do. How necessary is it for my survival? How often is it something that I want to do? What is the cost of all this work? What is the cost of the this incessant growth at all costs would we seem to be living in.
Today, I read The Mythology of Work and it felt like it was written just for me. Or why did I not write this? Or, I wanted to write just this.
Most work that we do, has a separation from what we need to survive. We are not growing our food, most of us, at least. And that is the thing we need to live.
/myths about work
- Work is necessary
- Work is productive - sure, but what does it produce? What does it destroy?
- Work creates wealth - this as well is not zero-sum. For someone to be wealthy, others have to be poor.
- You need to work to make a living - how are you living exactly? Every step of the let’s get wealthier ladder, expects you to do more to stay on that ladder. Spend more. Work more.
- Work is a path to fulfilment - on the contrary, everything teaches us to defer our happiness. That’s all we are taught - obey people higher up than us.
- Work instills initiative - we lose initiative for everything other than toward work.
- Work provides security - You can be fired at any time, if the leaders do not handle the money correctly.
- Work teaches responsibility - Not really. Being an employee absolves you of responsibility. You are just following orders. It shouldn’t but it does.
Work is entwined with our shared existence. When they say AI will take our jobs, we are worried. What would we do? Let AI take the drudgery, if it can, let it clean the sewers, cut the grass, build our buildings.
We may be left with better, less tedious work.
/why I work
This is what I tell myself: I work so that I have the freedom to do what I want to do, some day. I am fairly certain that some day would come very late or not at all.
Work is a means to an end. I do enjoy my work, but I understand that is a luxury not many people have.
A friend used to say that he did not care for the work that he did. What mattered was the money that he got at the end of the month.
I did not agree with him. It matters if you’re happy with the work you do. You spend around 40-50 hours per week, working. If you did not enjoy yourself for this much of you waking hours, you could not be happy.
/further reading
From The Mythology of Work:
For hundreds of years, people have claimed that technological progress would soon liberate humanity from the need to work. Today we have capabilities our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, but those predictions still haven’t come true. In the US we actually work longer hours than we did a couple generations ago—the poor in order to survive, the rich in order to compete. Others desperately seek employment, hardly enjoying the comfortable leisure all this progress should provide. Despite the talk of recession and the need for austerity measures, corporations are reporting record earnings, the wealthiest are wealthier than ever, and tremendous quantities of goods are produced just to be thrown away. There’s plenty of wealth, but it’s not being used to liberate humanity.
How many people who never miss a day of work can’t show up on time for band practice? We can’t keep up with the reading for our book clubs even when we can finish papers for school on time; the things we really want to do with our lives end up at the bottom of the to-do list. The ability to follow through on commitments becomes something outside ourselves, associated with external rewards or punishments.
