Is it truly our measure of worth?
Better question: SHOULD it be?
Where does it come from, this self-reaffirming need to do have done something “productive”?
You all feel it, that feeling when you look back at something you have done well, we call it satisfaction, we call it a sense of pride. There is something to be said about the adage, “Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well,” but so often it only applies to what we call work. What of that mouthful of food you are chewing? Do you feel the texture, let the flavors dance upon your palate, be fully in the moment of appreciating the act of eating it? Living fully aware is close to impossible. We are not conditioned to be that way.
Even Marx argued that labor is central to a human being’s self-conception and sense of well-being. Even as revolutionary as his thinking was at the time, that humans are alienated from their own humanity by not being “owners” of their own units of labor, and the products of their labors; he still comes from a decidedly Western standpoint.
I get it. I’m Polish. The Germanic tradition of hard work was instilled into me with my Mother’s milk, a generation removed from that land and into the relative safety of the 60’s. It is, after all, a fairly hostile climate; and utterly necessary to over-produce and store to survive the harsh Winters. That self-preserving tribal urge cannot be reduced easily even with the layers of technology that eased the fear of immediate death by an ill-prepared village. Sure, now we can “work” and procure from a better gatherer/storer and survive; but that measure of worth being work is still just a primal reactionary response.
I’m not arguing against Marx, here. Rather, in arguing FOR Marx, I always butt up against the rationale of his opponents about the “slacker factor.”
It goes like this, their argument, “If you could quit working right now, and have everything taken care of anyway, would you?” I inevitably look at my life and labor, and lack of quality of life because of the degrading labor I do and say, “Yes.” If I owned a piece of the restaurant that employs me, if I was in charge of my own labor, would my mind be changed? No.
Would I do nothing, sit endlessly, wallow in hedonistic pleasures, food and masturbation and sleep? Well, sure. Some of the time. We all do that some of the time even when we are busy.
What I would do is WRITE, create, play music, garden, feed friends; none of which qualifies as “work” under our system, yet all require the expenditure of energy.
This leads to their second argument, “Who determines the value of a doctor over a sanitation worker? Their skill sets? Their motivation and hard work to become such?”
It immediately reminds me that the system feeds the idea that aggressive super-driven people are “better” than those not so inclined. “Look at that guy, he went to college and worked 2 jobs, and really earned his position.”
There is no measure in that for what kind of man the Doctor is. Is he kind? Did he cut throats to get ahead? We have lost the capacity to judge humankind at its most basic form, that being the spirit of a man, and only reward what physical labor he is able to produce. “Physician” should be a calling, not just one route for a driven-to-succeed man to make a LOT of money. I’ll speak to the more menial of tasks later.
What if ideas had the same value as work? What if, like the during the Classical Age, that being a student for life was seen as the highest calling to which one could aspire? It was the value of ideas and questioning that lead to our Math, Sciences and Philosophies. It is little wonder we are still studying those things almost as written by their original masters; for as soon as Society ceased embracing knowledge for knowledge’s sake; most original thought ceased. What if, like Jonas Salk, a grand idea like the Polio Vaccine was given to all of humanity, rather than allow it to be an entity to be traded in? Of course, Salk’s medicine is still sold at a price.
I ask of you, what is THE single most important commodity to you in this short life?
It isn’t your labor.
It’s your TIME.
No one lays on his deathbed wishing she had cleaner floors, or he had worked more overtime. Truly, having been the caregiver of many of the dying, I say to thee, they wish they had laughed more, loved more, forgiven more, enjoyed their short respite on this planet more fully.
It is this that Western Mindset kills…. moreso with Capitalism than Communism, to be sure. But both are born of the same judeo-christian tradition, that man must struggle hard in this lifetime, and that there is glory in hard work, that it is the fruits of his labor by which a man be known.
There were other ways once. Mores and ways that the Westerners destroyed wherever they set foot. Let me take you on a short trip.
To Raiatea, Tahiti, and the South Pacific Islands once chronicled by Michener, found by the men in WWII to be a strange and wonderful land.
You see, food, laughter, love and sex were as freely shared as the very sea air when they got there. There was no ownership. There was no work-ethic. There was the very communal sharing of, well, everything. It was common for a woman to give away her first baby, and later in life take in another’s. It didn’t matter much, you see, for the whole village did indeed raise the children. Parent’s didn’t “own” children in the way we think of now. They were a gift everyone wanted. Work, per se, happened as needed. Somebody needed a new roof, everyone picked a day, and made a new roof. Until one leaked again? Why worry? This communal ideal is far easier in a lush and tropical paradise, where the trees hang ripe with fruit all year and the fish were plenty. Far easier to learn and live than in the brutal colds of Eastern Europe.
The thing they valued most was quality of life. There was an aspect of true love of “other” to the point they really didn’t differentiate between other and self.
It was, in fact, paradise.
Taken separately, the toga-clad philosophers of the past, and the barely-clad pure socialists of the Island, you may not see the correlation. I do. They valued goodness, kindness and actual humanity over the accretion of material goods. Wealth was in how you spent your time, not how much you stockpiled.
Now we have no time. Our time is spent chasing “stuff”; stuff that increases our happiness and quality of life not one iota.
Contributing Editor DIANE GEE runs The Wild Wild Left, besides her fiery Facebook venue, Links for the Wildly Left, perhaps the most engaging and didactic of all left groups on FB.
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