Work Is a False Idol
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What am I missing?
http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/do...
This does not mean that, from the objective point of view, human work cannot and must not be rated and qualified in any way. It only means that the primary basis of tbe value of work is man himself, who is its subject.
This leads immediately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work".
Through this conclusion one rightly comes to recognize the pre-eminence of the subjective meaning of work over the objective one. Given this way of understanding things, and presupposing that different sorts of work that people do can have greater or lesser objective value, let us try nevertheless to show that each sort is judged above all by the measure of the dignity of the subject of work, that is to say the person, the individual who carries it out. On the other hand: independently of the work that every man does, and presupposing that this work constitutes a purpose-at times a very demanding one-of his activity, this purpose does not possess a definitive meaning in itself.
In fact, in the final analysis it is always man who is the purpose of the work, whatever work it is that is done by man-even if the common scale of values rates it as the merest "service", as the most monotonous even the most alienating work.
I'm not identifying with it very much, but it's interesting.
I don't understand why this is controversial. If someone wants to get by on odd jobs and spend their time reading, exercising, and relaxing, why should anyone have a problem with that? Mr. Luo seems to understand the consequences of the lifestyle he's chosen, and he's willing to accept them. Likewise, the woman who doesn't want a career is free not to have one, assuming she is willing to accept the consequences of her actions.
He's very well compensated, but works insane hours and is never happy about working at his company. It's always "maybe this next role will finally be the thing", then he gets it, and then a few weeks later he mentions something that's wrong with it.
Which is fine. It's his life choices and no one can argue he's not successful. But he never seemed particularly accepting of the life choice I took some years. Those years, I took a break from full-time employment and spent my days going deeper into a coding language out of intellectual curiosity, studying online courses in area I didn't have much familiarity in, and biked in the afternoons for hours to get exercise.
His opinion was mostly "Don't you work? What are you doing with your days? I could never do that." Meanwhile now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking, "wait how could you not conceive of doing that? You're always talking about how much you hate your job. It's been a decade of these conversations!!!"
I'm back in the full-time workforce, but a part of me wishes I was in that part-time lifestyle because my happiest moments at work are when I'm pushing myself on a side project to shore up a weakness in software development instead of extracting value at the skills I'm already good at.
Personally I decided to not try and climb the career ladder by instead having my own 1-man consulting company. This way, I work as much as I need to to live comfortably, while also allowing myself to take 4-6 months off work every year.
I'm literally having more vacation in one year than that guy has in his lifetime. That's success.
The right-wing sentiment that's been whipped up various times is that this type of lifestyle leads to welfare dependence, which comes at the expense of those who have the ambition and willpower to be productive. The sense that unproductive people would be entitled to the labor and profits of productive people has evoked anger among many. I'm not sure how strongly such a sentiment holds today when it's more obvious than ever that the money supply is less controlled by those productive people and moreso by centralized banking cartels and the elites who revolve around them. And yet, the people in our society who value self-sufficiently enough to work themselves to death cannot have their resentment towards supposed careless dregs quellled by a discussion on economics. Deeply rooted personal beliefs paint reality in black and white. For some, it's just prejudice. For others, it's the grounded fear of a former life at the bottom of 3rd-world society. For them: work, order, and riches are life; while play, frivolity, and consumption are death.
It's interesting to note that kind of unproductive lifestyle is not too different from the lifestyle of some capitalists, for instance those who inherit or live off interest/capital gains.
They might have a pile of money, but that money is going take the fruits of labor from the same pool as a welfare recipient without adding anything to it.
The thing to pursue in life is joy. Some find joy in their work.
An idol in our society is materialism, 'the joy of stuff'.
Materialism is not the same as capitalism, any more than the body is the mind.
However, there are misguided people who'd lead others to conflate materialism and capitalism if possible.
All idols are false, and ultimately are (if you think Stringfellow was right) just a different ways of saying death.
And worshiping them ultimately ends in “the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
This feels like a bad magazine article
Have you actually looked at their news pages? Because I can't believe anyone could genuinely think that if they had honestly looked at the publication for more than a few minutes.