Our 15th prompt comes from Jullu. He says:
I ‘enjoy’ work (in the sense of paid labour) is a paradoxical statement. We work to earn our keep. There’s nothing to enjoy.
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Jullu,
Your prompt has come at a perfect time. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past month thinking about work and its place in our lives. Why is it important? How did it become important? And, what does this mean for us moving forward?
During the agrarian revolution, we moved from being hunters and gatherers to being farmers – cultivating barley, wheat, lentils and so on. Later on, we domesticated animals. With this, we built settlements, and as a result our population increased exponentially. We began to trade because we realized that it wasn’t ideal for every single person to grow every single thing/keep all the domestic animals – we could just trade what we had for what we wanted/needed. We developed social structures and norms, our languages became more nuanced, we started writing to keep abreast with what was happening, and very quickly realized that control of the land was the most important factor of success in this agrarian system.
Feudalism came with the agrarian revolution. We had kings, who held all the land under their territory, and would decide who to lease it to. In return, the king expected loyalty, money in the form of rents/taxes, and soldiers whenever he found himself at war. These wars, of course, were usually about expansion of resources, with the aim of acquiring more land and people to work for you. It was always about the land. Then we had the barons, who leased land from the king. These barons (origin of the term land baron) owned large swathes of land called fiefs. Sometimes they granted access to other people, called lords (origin of the term landlord), other times they ran their baronies themselves.
They created their own justice systems for their fiefs, had their own money and levied their own taxes. Under these people, there were knights and serfs/villeins. Knights provided military service in exchange for land as and when it was demanded by the king, while also protecting the land lords and barons. Serfs were at the bottom of this hierarchy, providing food, free labour and service whenever it was demanded. Most people lived in serfdom, and were dirt poor. They had to work on the lord’s land to earn their keep, and there was little hope of ever moving up this hierarchy. People were born into this indentured servitude, and the crown, baronies and fiefs were hereditary.
Later on, we had the industrial revolution, and with it came the steam engine, factories, special purpose machinery and mass production. The prevailing system transformed, and capitalism was born. The poor and working classes now earned wages for their work at these factories, a middle class developed to do clerical work that enabled these factories to run, and the elite owned the factories. Profit was now a possibility. Under capitalism, cities grew and common people now had a shot at becoming wealthy, they just had to work their way up. The factors of production were now land, labour and capital. Many of them had no land, nor did they have capital. What they had, and could sell, was their labour. And so they did.
Fast forward to today. Why do people work? The key reason is because they need to earn money to support themselves and their dependents. Housing costs money, so does food, clothing, schooling, healthcare and many other things we need to stay alive. We have attached monetary value to the activities we value as a society/nation/world, so people perform these activities and get paid.
Because of how much time we spend working (many people work 8 – 12 hours, some even more), we attach our value and respect (both of the self and by others) to our work. If you are not working, then do you matter in our society? Do we value you? Are you important? Our work contributes largely to our identity, which is why you will find people who are jobless experiencing existential crises. Work also enables us to feel like we are contributing to a goal, be it our own, that of our family, that of our organization, or that of our state. We can apply ourselves in ways that make us feel “useful.” Like we are part of something.
Work also helps us feel like we are in control of our circumstances and of our destiny. If we have a goal or an interest in something, and are fortunate to work in a field that explores that interest or leads us closer to our goal(s), then I believe that work can be enjoyable. Because we are applying our time, focus and energy toward something that matters to us. In many ways, our existence is a thankless, perplexing one, and we have to assign meaning to it as we go along. The chief way we do this is through our work. Many people do not enjoy their work, understandably. It does not satisfy them because it does not help them achieve their personal goals (other than that of earning money to get by), it does not challenge them or improve their skillset/mindset. Many people may not find their work meaningful. But, some people are lucky to, and to them, we say congratulations.
Of course, this raises questions on why we attach people’s worth to their work, and on how we can ensure that more people find their work meaningful – work that allows people to engage their talents and passion. Questions on whether most of us are basically wage slaves. Questions on whether we must require people to work for their food, clothing, shelter and other basic needs – surely, must people earn a living? Questions on whether those things should be a given either through a guaranteed basic income, or as provisions from the state. Questions on why, now that we are able to automate much of what we do with technology, we work even longer hours (John Maynard Keynes would be greatly disappointed in us). Questions on why we think land and capital are more important than human beings. I hope to be able to explore these questions with time on this site.
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This post is part of a daily writing experiment that I’m running for a year. I’d love it if you took part! ?
Interesting prompt! My thoughts: Work is more often understood narrowly as ‘paid labour’- a job, hence inadvertently or by design perhaps why care work is not considered as work per se. But it (work) is a wider concept than that- paid labour. Jobs are what enables us to ‘earn’ a living as it were, however, work should be treated more broadly as you note. Work is a wider concept than jobs and should ideally include care work, voluntary work and the like.
Thank you, great input as well! Yeah, we tend to value things based on the monetary value they’ve been assigned, and voluntary work, care work etc tend not to be seen as “real” work as a result. I hope that changes soon.
Thankfully it is, slowly, especially as far as volunteerism is concerned.