Tom Walker wrote:
>
> Futureworkers may be interested in this review essay by Alan Wolfe from the
> September/October issue of American Prospect. In the article, Wolfe
> discusses works by Daniel Bell, Shirley Burgraf, David Gordon, Arlie
> Hochschild, John Hood, Benjamin Hunnicutt, Sanford Jacoby, Robert Lane,
> Myron Magnet, Edmund Phelps, Jeremy Rifkin, William Julius Wilson and Robert
> Wuthnow.
>
> http://epn.org/prospect/34/34wolfnf.html
>
> "The debate over the moral meaning of work begins with an argument about
> whether work is basically degrading or ennobling. Is work, as Herbert
> Marcuse argued in Eros and Civilization, such a restraint on people's
> capacities for freedom that, in a future utopia, it would become the
> exception and leisure the rule? Or....
[snip]
I have long differentiated between two things: *labor*
(shovelling [whatever]) and *work* (as in Bach's *work*s).
The distinction should be obvious, but sometimes persons
try to do a sleight of hand. I once had a manager who
had a poster in his office to the effect that whether
one was cooking hotdogs in a burger joint, or engaging
in what people generally take to be creative work,
one could *take pride in doing the job well*. I
thought this was a ruse for low-wage employers
to try to trick workers into giving value without
the employer having to pay for it. (A recent issue
of Newsweek has an article about how self-esteem
that is not based on a realistic sense of accomplishment
can lead to "narcissistic character disorder",
resulting in reactions, when the falsity of
the person's self-image is exposed by reality,
like mas murders....)
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
