Do we really not like working? There is
this general perception in many minds that people just don't like to
work. I hear references to this quite frequently. One comment that
sticks out, that was said to me recently is, “That's why it's called
'work' - you're not supposed to like it.” Implying that there is
something inherently within 'working' itself that we don't like or it's
something we just don't want to do.
It's actually become a rather generally
accepted belief that we don't want to work. It is a frequent, almost
daily, occurrence where I hear a fellow employee say things like 'I wish I wasn't working right now', 'I'd rather go home and sleep', 'I hate working' and so on. Occasionally, when one says 'I just want to go home and sleep' it's because they work multiple jobs and
have only had 3-4 hours of sleep. But more often, it's because sleep
seems like a nice option compared to working. And often, the tendency would be to judge
this from an outside perspective as 'lazy', but judgment never leads
to understanding, and therefore to solutions. So, when we rather ask
'how does a person come to see sleep as a better option?' well, this
has a lot to do with the fact that most people don't really have much
other options. When you're a low paid employee, you don't have any
money to do anything with, so sleep is an affordable way to pass some
time. There are of course, other dimensions to that point
specifically related to sleeping, which we won't get into here but I
do recommend a google hangout that talks about the topic of Sleep
Addiction to get further insight into that relationship: Are You A Sleep Addict? Tips and Support
So how is it that we
came to believe that we 'don't like to work' in general? Some of this
has to do with how we as children are raised in such a way that is
often about letting us enjoy ourselves without any responsibilities and being free to just play however we like, before it's 'too late' to do that anymore, and we have to
buckle-down and get jobs to support ourselves or at least to get some
spending money so we can stop begging mom and dad for this or that.
So already we start to see working as something we don't want to do,
because of this initial emphasis on 'being free' vs. 'play time is
over', and then when we suddenly have to earn our own way. It can be
quite a shock to our system, because suddenly you are very much not
free to do as you please, and in your typical job you're not even
free to just go to the bathroom when you need to, or to take a break,
or have something to eat.
In looking back at my own
experience, as I was coming into my teen years and starting to get an
idea of what I was going to have to do, in terms of 'going out into
the world' and getting a job, and starting to look at what kind of
jobs there are and what options are available to me, it really didn't
look so good. I mean, I had a lot of interests that I would have been
very interested to pursue, but when I looked at how such jobs
actually existed in reality, it didn't seem so cool. So for example,
I found working with plants and animals to be really fascinating, and really liked the
idea of therefore becoming a farmer, but when I started to learn in school what farming is really
like in the system and that it is really not about being close to the plants and animals and getting to learn about them and work with them to support
their growth and provide us with quality nourishing food, but rather
is about operating large machinery and factory farms (this is back in the 90's before organic
farming was on the map or at least not in my textbooks) and using
chemicals and basically a rather impersonal large scale process, this
was not interesting to me at all. So I thought, I guess I don't want
to be a farmer.
The idea of cooking well crafted and
quality meals was also interesting to me, I found a passion for
baking and exploring what is possible within that, but it was the
same thing here where this doesn't equate to for example wanting to serve people
fast food that we push out like a factory that is low
quality and with no room for any personal expression whatsoever
within it.
Also the idea of becoming a doctor sounded really nice, getting to help others and make a difference in lives. In fact such jobs are some of the most satisfying according to polls. But such jobs are simply out of reach for so many who don't have money for the many years of college required to get such a job.
I mean it's like, anything you might
have a passion for, has been tainted by the desire and focus for
profit first above all else and made into a high production industry,
even though much of what is produced is in fact wasted anyway. And that is what most of our available jobs exists as. I
mean, who facing these options, really wants to be a part of any of
that?
And since this is all that is available
to you as 'work', and this is what we've collectively agreed upon as valid 'work' you come to think you 'don't like to work' period.
Because, most of us have never actually experienced a positive work
environment, where you can do quality work, where you are valued,
where you are properly compensated for your time and labor, where you
have the ability to really put yourself into your work and see a
result. We've never had real fulfilling quality work, so we don't
even realize it exists, or has the potential to exist, and that even the jobs we have today don't even have to be so bad.
And this causes a rift, because there
are those who have managed to find somewhat more satisfying work, at
least because it pays well enough, and where they are valued somewhat
and not just treated bluntly as a resource to be used up and spat out
and manipulated through the fear of being so easily fired and
replaced, and not having to work in typically unpleasant and harmful
conditions which can lead to all sorts of problems like arthritis and bone spurs in your joints due
to performing repetitive motions over and over, and not even being
able to afford proper benefits to care for yourself, to name just a
few things that so many are experiencing in our low paid jobs. Those
who have never gone through such adverse conditions are disconnected
from that experience and don't even realize that it exists, or just
how bad it is, and therefore can believe that people who don't want
to work are just 'lazy', not realizing that if they too were in that
same situation they would not want to do such work either.
This also has to do with the idea or
belief that because a job is low paid, that must mean that it is
easy, but this is so rarely the case, and again you can only believe that if you haven't actually experienced such a situation for yourself. So something to watch out for is where we would make assumptions about what something is like without any direct experience or cross referencing with those in the actual experience. This ties in also with the myth of so-called
'unskilled labor', but this is a topic for another post to come.
So when we look at how 'work' exists at
the moment, the vast majority of it is not what anyone would want to
do, and for good reason, because it hasn't been designed in such a
way that is supportive, to ourselves as individuals, or to our world
as a whole, but are geared simply for the purpose of maximizing profit, and for the most part we do our jobs simply out of sheer
necessity for survival. Yet, you can imagine, if our jobs were
actually aligned to be supportive, then that resistance to working
would simply not be there, because we already see that happening from
just comparing jobs that are more compromising with less pay to those
with better conditions and better pay, and people are generally less
disgruntled, there is less turnover rate, so I mean, when we look at
these points it's really quite obvious, and we should know that no
one wants to work in poor conditions for low pay, and no one deserves
to for any reason. You just have to ask yourself if that is what you
would want for yourself? This is why I support the Living Income Guaranteed movement, which calls for a living income for everyone who
needs it, and would raise the minimum wage to a real living wage,
because through that we will be able to change our relationship to
labor and sort it out so that it really is supportive and not
something we dread to do but have to just for our survival. I mean,
is that really the kind of world we want to live in?
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