Continuing in CoPhi with Why Grow Up?, we note a "hallmark of modernity" in the reversal of Plato's and Aristotle's preference for contemplation over activity. Those who only sit and think would think better to get up and do something, or make something, or till the earth. Create fungible assets. Invent money. Accumulate capital. Buy and spend, create a tax base.
You wouldn't have known it to watch him--the walking scene in The Last Days of Immanuel Kant rivals paint-drying for dramatic interest--but Kant thought action the source of meaning in life. He moved, albeit at a snail's pace, but with consistent devotion. Just a little perambulation is all it takes to get the mental juices going. As Rebecca Solnit says, 3 mph is plenty.
In a truly humane society, said Marx, we'd hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and do philosophy ("criticize") after dinner. (And rear cattle?) Hmmm. That really doesn't sound like utopia. I'd rather be reading, walking, biking, talking, and eating someone else's catch in the evening. As for philosophizing, that would be more-or-less constantly in the air.
"We are about to lose what makes us human, Arendt says: our freedom to express ourselves. We are about to get used to being less than human, less than we should be. We are getting used to being a mass, a labor force, human resources, things."
Or move, at least. Don't just sit there. But of course, peripatetics are also contemplatives. They may or may not be good pursuers of property, but they're excellent pursuers of happiness.
In a truly humane society, said Marx, we'd hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and do philosophy ("criticize") after dinner. (And rear cattle?) Hmmm. That really doesn't sound like utopia. I'd rather be reading, walking, biking, talking, and eating someone else's catch in the evening. As for philosophizing, that would be more-or-less constantly in the air.
Hannah Arendt distinguished labour and work, the former being driven by necessity and the latter by freedom, "the creation of lasting objects." How many of us really work, by that definition?
Did Sisyphus work? Did he create value in his "struggle toward the heights"? Well, we're still talking about him. An intellectual legacy must be worth something. Arendt says "works and deeds and words" all count. Writers should be happy, it really is nice work transferring thoughts and feelings from one mind to another by means of symbolic expression.
But most jobs don't rise to the level of work in this honorific sense, said Growing Up Absurd author Paul Goodman, they're mostly useless, harmful, wasteful, demeaning, and dumb. That was in 1960, already, on the cusp of the New Frontier. "Is it possible, how is it possible, to have more meaning and honor in work? to put wealth to some real use? to have a high standard of living of whose quality we are not ashamed? to get social justice for those who have been shamefully left out? to have a use of leisure that is not a dismaying waste of a hundred million adults?”
But most jobs don't rise to the level of work in this honorific sense, said Growing Up Absurd author Paul Goodman, they're mostly useless, harmful, wasteful, demeaning, and dumb. That was in 1960, already, on the cusp of the New Frontier. "Is it possible, how is it possible, to have more meaning and honor in work? to put wealth to some real use? to have a high standard of living of whose quality we are not ashamed? to get social justice for those who have been shamefully left out? to have a use of leisure that is not a dismaying waste of a hundred million adults?”
And the culture of advertizing creates (in political scientist Benjamin Barber's words) "an ethos of induced childishness: an infantilization that is closely tied to the demands of consumer capitalism" where the chief product is consumer lust.
Is there a realistic alternative? Can we learn to consume wisely, and not be consumed by things? We must, for "our present conditions are unfit for grown-up human beings."
Is there a realistic alternative? Can we learn to consume wisely, and not be consumed by things? We must, for "our present conditions are unfit for grown-up human beings."
So how does a young person go about finding meaning in work?
Or is that the wrong question? "Even if you cannot find meaning in the means you use to make a living, there are plenty of other places to find it." Volunteers in service to others are living purposively and meaningfully, whether they're getting appropriately remunerated for it or not. Someday, maybe, the world will become human enough to realize that.
But "is anything less grown-up than worrying about" what others think?
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