The Social Codicil 3

The Social Codicil 3:

No Shovels

 

There's no value in hard work.  Nor is there honor.

It's a ridiculous idea, and I'm tired of people saying it.  Ahoy matey, once again there be nuance ahead!

There is value in the outcome, and that outcome may only be achievable with long, dedicated hours of hard work and discipline.  Been there, done that.

But the work itself? It's an obstacle; not an end in itself.

Sure, when you get done digging a ditch, you may feel a sense of accomplishment from this thing you made. But you can get that from lots of things. Including the endorphins from any physical exertion.

The value is not in the work, or perhaps even in the ditch itself. It's the service that ditch provides (e.g. drainage) that has value. And you can justifiably feel good about creating something helpful.

But there's no intrinsic value in the hard work itself. If there was, you wouldn't use a shovel.

I'm serious. Think about it.  If it were true that the harder the work, the more valuable it is, then we'd stop using tools altogether.

Try these: 

Dig an industrial sized drainage ditch with your bare hands, and tell me there's more honor in it than if you used a backhoe.

Tear up cement with your bare hands, and tell me it's more honorable than using a jackhammer.

Put John Deere out of business and go harvest those acres with a scythe. 

See my point?

That's why I get so tired of people saying there's honor in blue collar work, but not in white collar work. It makes no damned sense.

Or the famous phrase, "Don't call me 'sir', I work for a living!"  Really? Sucks to be you, dude.

The problem is that this attitude is at the core of our economy. You must work, they say, for without work life is without meaning. You must earn your way; you must toil to have honor, and thus to be a citizen worth anything.  And the harder the toil, the more supposed honor. Sure, you don't make a lot of money, but you're a hard worker!  You'll benefit from it someday, we swear!

Worse still is the idea that we must work hard to gain material things. You must work to have value, and value = things, so work harder to have more things.[1]

This ridiculous attitude is why so many people hate welfare and a Universal/National Basic Income. "I've had to work hard all my life to climb the ladder, so I believe that anyone who doesn't work hard or hasn't successfully climbed the ladder is just a freeloading scumbag."

This, of course, reminds me of the discussions of hazing on sports teams and in fraternities. The worst reason to do something bad to someone is because someone else did it to you. Break the cycle.

But we've already replaced your bare hands with a backhoe and other digging equipment to make it easier.  What happens when we replace the equipment operator with AI?

Perhaps you'll find other hard work. Until that is automated too.

Will you someday be there amidst the industrial machines on your knees digging with your hands in the dirt in the hopes of retaining your honor?

Or will you discover another way to find meaning and value in life?

Blue collar jobs may the first on the chopping block, and the easiest to illustrate with for this explanation, but white-collar jobs are not immune to either side of this.

Doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, and more have a tendency to equate long hours and self-sacrifice with honor and accomplishment.  And even those professions are finding more and more aspects of their jobs being automated.

So how does this relate to back to part 1 and Rousseau?  Because the traditional analysis of his work would say to shut off the machines, and go dig with your hands.

I disagree. I say he wanted us to find value elsewhere. Mainly, in the improvement of the self (amour de soi), and community (the general will).

Or rather, to make a stronger, smarter, more self-reliant person... who will then make an ideal citizen... and who cares about you regardless of how you make a living.

For most of his life, Rousseau made a living copying music for just a few hours each morning. It didn't pay much, but he had all of his basic needs met.[2] He was also an extreme introvert.

The great thing about his daily work was that it left a lot of time for what he truly loved - walking around and looking at plants.

That activity... as pointless as it may seem on the surface... yielded some practical botanical information he passed to others, and more importantly allowed him time and space to think and compose his most famous works.

He found value in something besides work and the rat race.  Your boss just got very nervous.[3] 

In our modern environment, the best response is to connect with people. Connect with that which makes us human; our empathy, our intelligence, our capacity for growth and innovation. Not via social media; by real connection!

Next best is to do things you love.  If you didn't have to work for a living, what would you do with your day?

Okay... what would you do after you got bored of binge-watching Netflix and finished beating the NG+?

What if you had more time for hobbies?  What if you had time to read?

What if you could just go for a friggin' walk once in a while without having to justify it as "self-care"?

Better yet - what if you could do a job because it matters, rather than because you need the cash to survive and buy your kids more iPads?

It's not so far-fetched.

Perhaps you saw the meme going around about Nikola Curtin - the researcher who developed a new anti-cancer drug... and donated the royalties she received from it to charity.

Ack! How could this be? Doesn't she know that the point of all that hard work is to have honor, and honor means climbing the economic ladder so you can retire and not have to work anymore??

No, she doesn't. Neither should we.
 

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[1] This is actually baked into our study of economics. Traditional economic "science" includes the assumption that if you can have one more of something, that's a good thing and you must want it. Like, if you negotiate a deal to get 3000 chicken eggs for $10, but could possibly have one more egg, you definitely need to get that one more right away. Because more is always better, whether you have room in the fridge or not.  [Note: things have changed drastically since I wrote the first draft ten years ago.  Soon it could be $3000 for ten eggs.]

[2] Rousseau also mooched off a lot of people - especially minor nobility - but largely just got free rent from it. His books made a little money, but his publishers were shady, and his books were bootlegged all over Europe - when they weren't banned. Either way, his main source of money was the music copying.

[3] There's also a dating analogy here. Instead of spending your time pursuing others, you're better off improving yourself and finding some culture and hobbies, thus being the type of person others will pursue. I.e. your social self will benefit by improving your solitary self. Or like the song says, "I can't be right for somebody else if I'm not right for me."