It is the way of the World. When a child is born the family teaches it how to be human. When the child is old enough it is sent to school and the education system teaches the person how to be a good worker. When the child is propelled from or drops out of the educational grinder it is no longer a child but an adult. The adult does what can be done to survive and progress in a life of toil, raising a family and perhaps also struggling against a 30-odd-year loan set against an attempt to acquire a relatively modest abode. Finally the adult grows old and is allowed to retire upon a meager pension.
That just about sums up the typical working-to-middle-class life.
Without wishing to call into question the worth of the typical hard worker, it is my wish to question a system which has had people toiling since time immemorial. Why do we do it to ourselves?
One might argue that we do it in the name of progress and that a world without work is a world set to regress. This would be a very valid point.
One might also argue that we do it in order to sustain ourselves and that such is therefore a matter of survival. Another good point.
One might furthermore argue that we do it because a higher power wishes that we do so. Such an argument might also justify personal suffering on the basis that such confers some kind of spiritual worth on the self.
But then one would come to a bit of a potential dilemma. We may be working to live but mightn’t this also have been distorted into a reality where one lives to work? After all, we have progressed far since the days when agriculture formed the predominant part of the economy and we have also progressed significantly since the days of the industrial revolution.
The reality is that the current system, while perhaps somewhat less work-intensive than agriculture, has served to divide family units, unlike the preceding system where work brought family units closer together. Not only are individuals belonging to a family unit alienated from each other but they are also alienated from the fruits of their labours, getting paid for their times and then having to use that pay to purchase some of that which has been produced.
So again… do we really have it right? Is it really so essential for humans to become little more than producers of products? How does this further the purpose of humans? Has any progress been attributed to an individual who was unashamedly and absorbingly just doing his job? No. Even inventions on the job come about as a result of humanity’s need to break from the mould provided. The mind strays while the body works - usually unproductively but occasionally something important happens.
It is within such moments, productive or not, when the worker remembers how to be human again.
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