Your mid-week read!
Deryn Thomas reviews "Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living" by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle
Your mid-week read
“A Different Dream of Labour”: Deryn Thomas reviews Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle
The momentum of the pandemic has facilitated an important shift in the way many people think about wage labour, employment, and capitalism. It has brought about critical changes to the conditions of work, making work more flexible and more forgiving, and workers more empowered in the workplace. Many have benefited immensely from these changes. But how far do we wish to take the critique of work? Are we to embrace the all-too-frequent nihilism inherent in many visions of a post-work future? In this wonderful review, Deryn Thomas takes us on a journey from Thoreau to Weil to Arendt in an attempt to figure out what it would look like to make our concept, culture, and practices of work more human(e). You can read her review here.
Surprised there have been no comments so far - an extremely fascinating essay raising many points.
One thing struck me (a retired old geezer) - there seemed to be no mention of purely economic and social implications of a less-work culture. I've never read any descriptions of Utopian scenarios which tell how people could actually afford them; how do they pay for goods and services, save for pensions, pay taxes, send their children to school? Cash from the "state", perhaps barter - I don't think so!
The comment "[t]hese are today’s realities of work. Much is underpaid or unfairly compensated" surely reflects the inequalities of the present economic system; begs many questions which really do need to be addressed.
I used to tell my students that they were actually "at work" - they'd laugh, but I said they were learning to learn, and then applying that learning appropriately in the future. Classwork provided the tools. That's work, pal!
Thinking about workers in the past, and in my experience, such as it is, there was a lot of basic satisfaction in learning your job and being able to apply it, whether engineering (apprenticeships), journalism, teaching, milkman, chef, even labourer (they had their own codes etc) and, of course, philosopher.
Pure satisfaction at doing a job seems to be at a premium today; shame.