The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXIII

[Traitorfish]

Why is hardwork a virtue?

Internalised work-discipline. What better way to convince people not to slack on the job than by convincing themselves that to do so is a moral failing?

 

[Flying Pig]

It's also linked with selflessness versus selfishness - almost all of the time, your work benefits somebody else, or the 'greater good', in some way. To place that above your own comfort is selfless; to place your own comfort above the greater good is selfish.

Remember, of course, that there are multiple explanations for everything, and TF's may well be just as valid. I'd also advance a similar argument that the 'Protestant work ethic' is part of making Protestantism seem respectable, rather than allowing it to be labelled as a parasitic sect of idlers.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

I wish I had the Protestant Work Ethic, I tried reading some books on improving self-discipline once, but I couldn't help feeling it was just another, more guilt-ridden, form of procrastination.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's also linked with selflessness versus selfishness - almost all of the time, your work benefits somebody else, or the 'greater good', in some way. To place that above your own comfort is selfless; to place your own comfort above the greater good is selfish.

Seems like more of the same, from where I'm standing. The "somebody else" who your work usually benefits is your employer, and we know this full well, so for us to believe that the prosperity and authority of the employing class is necessarily identified with the greater good of all, even within a single firm, presupposes an ideological framework rooted in a deeply-internalised social discipline.

 

[Peck of Arabia]

It could be internalised, couldn't it? the "somebody else" you could be grafting for could be you in the future, foregoing the pleasure your present self could potentially enjoy; that's the reason I wouldn't mind a better work ethic- not so some higher up somewhere can make a workhorse out of me.

Or would that be classed as something different?

 

[Chukchi Husky]

It could be internalised, couldn't it? the "somebody else" you could be grafting for could be you in the future, foregoing the pleasure your present self could potentially enjoy; that's the reason I wouldn't mind a better work ethic- not so some higher up somewhere can make a workhorse out of me.

Or would that be classed as something different?

That is what "Carpe Diem" is supposed to mean.

 

[Traitorfish]

It could be internalised, couldn't it? the "somebody else" you could be grafting for could be you in the future, foregoing the pleasure your present self could potentially enjoy; that's the reason I wouldn't mind a better work ethic- not so some higher up somewhere can make a workhorse out of me.

Or would that be classed as something different?

If that was the case, then work wouldn't be regarded as inherently virtuous, but simply as a means to the end of greater pleasure. You would have no reason to regard work as being virtuous beyond the extent which it increased your potential pleasure, and in fact work which hindered your potential pleasure- working a job that negatively increased your life expectancy, for example- would be actively counter-virtuous.

Of course, this is something that we're already seeing in capitalist society, because very few people seriously believe that toil is inherently valuable. Work is tacitly acknowledge as an unpleasant burden, so we frame it primarily as a means to leisure out side of the work place, and when we do attempt to imagine it in terms of self-improvement, it's one achieved through creative expression, social interaction, or whatever, rather than through toil itself. Employers don't merely tell you that the job is a job, with the understanding that whatever opportunity for self-improvement is inherent in that category, they tell you that it allows you to express yourself, to serve the communicate, to blah blah post-hippy buzzwords blah.

This seems partly because the old, puritan work-values sit uneasily with the consumerist, post-modern public culture of the developed world; toil and iPads are uneasy bedfellows. But it's also because the technological development of work itself to the point where most of it lacks not only craft-values but even real, blood-and-sweat exertion as somehow ennobling has become untenably ridiculous. We can believe that a skilled worker, who knows his craft and performs it well, is engaged in a self-ennobling activity. We can even, at a stretch, find that sort of nobility in the raw, masculine exertion of a coal-miner or a dock-worker. But standing at a conveyor belt, pushing the same button all day? Standing at a shop counter, repeating the hello-thankyou-haveaniceday theatre for ten hours? Sitting a desk, mashing numbers of no significance into a spreadsheet for ends you only half understand? It's not happening.

 

[bhsup]

You guys realize that madviking started a new thread last night, yes?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=499591

 

[Peck of Arabia]

I didn't want to move on to a new thread just yet in case it broke up this interesting topic we're on.

...wait, it seems the conversation's carried over nicely to the next thread. I'll be right there

 

[Grisu]

Moderator Action: Thread closed, new thread is here

In the future, please wait until the thread has actually been closed before making a new one