Considering the miserable subject, this was a fun post.
Classically, we don't want to work - which is why we follow the "least exertion" principle. We want the fruits of our labor - preferably without the labor.
So, we don't want jobs, but we take them reluctantly because without them we are soon hungry. Religion comes into play always to make us do the miserable jobs because we will get a later reward - or because it's penance for our inadequacies.
So, (from my well known point of view) "the meek shall inherit the earth". This means you keep paying half your product to the landlord - but you'll be in good shape after you are dead. Something to look forward to.
People who know more of the bible than I can know doubt find plenty of admonitions to keep working - for your reward will come later.
I'm sure you have seen the civil war film Shenandoah with Jimmy Stewart.
"Virginia needs her sons"
"Virginia doesn't have any sons. I have sons and they aren't going to war."
Stewart was prevailed in to say Grace before a meal. (Mother would have liked him to give thanks.)
He said something like:
"Lord, we spent long hours planting the seed and nurturing them through the rains and the sun. We worked from dawn to dusk at harvest time to bring in the grain."
"But, thanks anyway, God."
Religion has always been used to make us satisfied with our lot - particularly when our lot has consisted of unremitting toil.
Harry
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Ed Weick wrote:
Ray, to the two points you raised about why people work - to keep people busy and out of trouble and to redistribute income - I would add a third: work is a form of punishment for original sin, or so the Bible (NIV) tells us in Genesis when God says to Adam when he was driving him from the Garden of Eden:
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food ... etc.
When I was a child in rural Saskatchewan, people would often quote that passage to rationalize their miserable lives and the lives of their children who, again through biblical injunction, were not spared the rod if they were idle.
The concept of work as punishment has been pervasive in Western culture, perhaps not always as a primary motive but certainly as an underlying one. The surface rationale for serfdom, slavery, the Gulag and work gangs may have been economic, social or legal, but to treat people so callously required a deeper motive, one which being cast out of Eden would have supported: "Because you are guilty (under God or his replacement, the ideologically based State), I can make you work by the sweat of your brow to the end of your days." If people had remained innocent in Eden they could not have treated each other that way.
We now live in a more secular, less ideological, world, but the concept of work as punishment is still with us in, for example, workfare programs, which, ostensibly, have been organized to teach people on welfare the value of work, but which are often punitively motivated and administered.
I would also add a fourth reason - people work because they want to earn sufficient income to keep themselves and their families in a state of independence. In pursuing this, people have had mixed results. Some have achieved it - one thinks of the pioneer farmer or merchant. Others have tied themselves to industries which provided them with good income for a time, but ultimately failed them - one thinks of the present day farmer or small merchant or the downsized blue collar worker. In the post WWII world, education and training was seen as the key to independence. It may have been the key for a time when job opportunities were abundant, but it no longer seems to be. When I graduated from university with nothing more than a Batchelor's degree in the late fifties, I had six firm, very good, job offers. Kids who graduate, even with post-grad degrees, now are lucky to have one.
And now I come to my final reason for work: addiction. Work is a form of masochism and thus related to work as punishment. But here you want to keep beating yourself with it, not others. You can't live with it, and you can't live without it! It's something some people suffer from, deeply. I'm one of them. I retired from official, nine to five, work fifteen years ago but have worked hard on a variety of contracts ever since. I'm now beginning to really hate work. But what I hate even more is not working. I'm not alone. There are many people like me out there. It's probably terminal!
Best (and not to be taken too seriously), Ed
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 ******************************* _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
