The gospel of work
By: Anirban Mukherjee
Tags: History, Viewpoints, Work

There are things in this world that mean a lot to us, sometimes these are the very institutions around which our entire lives are structured. For some it is religion, for others it could be marriage. There is one among them that cuts across like no other and that is the institution of work. Humankind in the modern era has learned to define itself through individual labor in a way that is almost unprecedented. At a gross level there are simply a lot more people at work on any given day, producing more piles of stuff than at any other time in history outside of the world war years. If this evokes a sense of dehumanized masses, pinned down the wheels, think again. Today we actually advertise our work on social media, draw out prospective business conversations with well-articulated LinkedIn introductions. No longer being content with being skillful, we want to be wowed by the interest of others in our work. Lying just below the topsoil of every tweet is a silent pitch, nudging every like on a social page is a half-hearted come-on from a potential suitor-employer-client-partner. This isn’t about the business of projection or image management. This is about the centrality of work, about its omnipotence in our lives.

This manic obsession with work comes a-calling from blog headlines to syndicated newspaper columns. How to make your desk a peaceful and productive place? Make it white. And empty. Yes it must look like there’s nothing being done on this desk. Place a little green cactus on one corner. Yes, life is real and nature exists. Add to these the whole range of ‘how to start Mondays like a boss’ ’10 things successful people never do at work’ and we can clearly see that work and not the workplace is key. Much has changed on the workplace front and in many ways it remains the same — for starters, a place where something of value is produced. The playful work space is as much a product of inexplicably long work hours and disorienting shift system as much as it is a product of a creativity and enjoyment. The slogans around work have changed, from work-life balance to work as play, but underneath all that softening it has been about the primacy of work and how everything gets reorganized around it. This hypnotic power that work wields over humanity does not limit itself to those who are recognizably industrious or productive in a typical sort of a way. Young minds swelling with new experiences and ideas carry around digital folders of their ‘projects’. Those who may have been idle layabouts blowing perfect smoke rings and quoting obtuse philosophy have now embarked on quests to rediscover lost cultural artifacts. It must be admired — this capacity for industry, this relentless pursuits of goals. Where does it come from, this insatiable appetite for work?

British philosopher John Locke once famously endorsed the takeover of native American territory by force as morally correct by arguing that the natives neither fenced their land nor tended to them in order to beautify, nor were they engaged in regular forms of agricultural production. This absence of any recognizable form of work and an inability to view land as a precious natural resource made a strong case for colonization according to him. British colonialists used their criticism of peasants in Bengal, who according to them were wasteful and indolent, thereby strengthening their case for occupation. In contrast, British surveyors found parts of Gujarat well-cultivated with an equal emphasis on productivity and aesthetics and were reminded of the pastoral charms of their home country, leading them to observe a policy of encouragement and support for the local peasant communities — whose labor and industriousness went towards producing not just profits but also leisure that could be a source of enjoyment for the powerful.

Bertrand Russell another English philosopher wrote in his essay, ‘In praise of idleness’ — “to this day 99 per cent of British wage earners would be shocked if it were proposed that the King should not have a larger income than the working man”. Russell suggests that the source of this virtuous gospel of work can often be located in a person of ‘comfortable idleness’. He also went on to state that the idea that the poor should have any leisure is absurd to the rich. The gospel of work appears before us in many different avatars and one of the most exalted of these is the honest poor. The story of staying true to hard work despite the deathly squeeze of poverty, of how work keeps you honest is one that is easily seared into people’s consciousness. Keeping people honest, building character, being responsible and nation building have all been popular slogans for the get to work campaign. Today we read about struggles to clear out forests and hills of tribal people so that other people can get to work. The spirit of John Locke is alive and kicking in this thinking that sees little legitimacy of human existence without being set to work in a recognizably honest manner.

Some great thinkers of all time have also held work in high esteem. Gandhi was a big proponent of being able to work with one’s hands and devote one’s time to a practice through which one has an experience of life that is embedded in both nature and community. Though, I sincerely doubt if he was talking about 12 hour work days, night shifts and constant jet-setting across continents spending more time mid air than actually spent at work.

Working at the time of Locke was primarily to do with land and one’s body. This kind of work, though highly demanding had its own schedule. The human body has its limits and agriculture has its rhythm. By the time Russell published his essay on idleness factories had reinvented work. Working hours often stretched beyond 12 hours in a day and more if you were a child worker. Today working is relatively easier and less taxing on one’s immediate physical state. The response seems to be to work incessantly. We think about work when not working, socialize with co-workers so that everyone has a shared sense of the importance of work, we moonlight, we try to make work more interesting or work in more interesting areas. Today we traverse from pursuing an interest to it becoming all-consuming work, faster than our imagination can get there.

In this morally uplifting pursuit of being industrious we tend to ignore the importance of allowing for anything of substance to collect within ourselves and around us. Every other year I read a little news report that announces a reduction in working hours in some European country and I find myself sneering, drunk on my very own home brew of work ethic. Except it would be worth an experiment to see what happens if we did work a little less. Would it only produce idleness? Or would there be seeds of a new outlook towards life. One where we don’t necessarily make hard work out of everything we love.