I recently resigned my job in order to see what it was like not to work for a while. In my journal about this "experiment," I've repeatedly tripped across that venerable phrase, the "work ethic." I think I've discovered two ethics, one social, one part of our nature. And they are not necessarily the same thing.
The term "work ethic" originally had a religious source, coming out of the Protestants' belief that one could worship Mammon for the greater glory of God. When the religious aspect died out, people used the free market to justify laying up treasure, and accumulating wealth became supposedly the best protection democracy had. That democracy has been wealth's first victim is patently clear, but the work ethic is used to smooth this truth over, a kind of fraud built in to keep the masses making some people richer than they need to be while convincing them that such behavior is for their own good.
But such propaganda wouldn't keep people getting up in the morning if there wasn't something in people that really wants to work, something that wants to "make good." It's a work ethic that comes out of people's inner desires to express their creativity, an internal drive to accomplish something worthwhile.
Lately I've been reading a number of books about the alienation many workers feel about their jobs. Why should this be so? I think it's because of the incompatibility of the social work ethic and the individual work ethic. The social work ethic can only be effective if it makes people conform to the exploitative nature of the system. This directly contravenes the individual work ethic. Where the social work ethic demands control, the individual work ethic demands liberty. But the individual work ethic simply doesn't have the power to displace the social work ethic, and workers must make do with whatever they can get. But imagine an economic system which made the elements of the individual work ethic, with its emphasis on creativity and judgment, the guide for the system. That would be good.
Is the work ethic in decline? Certainly in the social work ethic. If the social work ethic is weakening, its downslide is ironically caused by its successfully having convinced people to give over their best parts to the economic system. Some of these best parts no longer want to be given over; thus, we see a "decline" in the ethic, which really is a loosening of its grip on our lives. And this, too, is good because such resistance might lead to more humanity in the system.
There's a bumper sticker which says "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go." Wouldn't it be better if we could say "I grow, I grow, it's off to work I go"?
Autumnal
Addiction