Work builds character

Perhaps you are nodding your head in agreement with the title of this post: Work builds character.

Are you sure?

Let's suppose the work is with the mafia.  Does that work build character?  How about as a butcher?  A teacher? A soldier? A ...? You get my point.

Perhaps you then argue that "work builds character" is applicable to young people. To kids. To Teenagers.

If we are what we repeatedly do, well, "to see if work really builds character, then, we need to ask: What do we repeatedly do at work?"

In the first chapter of his 1776 treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith marvels at the division of labor in a pin factory. He writes that someone who had to perform every step of the pin-making process himself would struggle to make a few pins a day. Put him on a team of ten, though, and assign him only to sharpen the point of every pin that comes down the line, and he can contribute to the manufacture of thousands.⁸But who do you become if you sharpen pinpoints all day long? Do you advance in virtue? Do you attain moral excellence? 

You can now see where this discussion is headed.  Imagine the work that the "cleaners" do every single day as Facebook content moderators.  What character does that build?

So what should we do? Repair the whole rickety heap of our work ideology? Redesign work so that it delivers the dignity, character, and purpose it’s supposed to? Pass laws that limit employers’ control over workers’ bodies and public behavior? Push for transparency regarding the actions workers perform, and establish norms that they specialize less narrowly and have rotating duties? Set humane limits on service work and eliminate the pointless tasks most professionals do during the workday? It wouldn’t hurt to try. These are all worthy short-term goals that would help work in America live up to its promise. But making these changes would likely either reduce productivity or increase costs, leading companies to accelerate the rollout of machine labor in every aspect of their business. The changes would be self-defeating. Eventually, there would hardly be any jobs at all.

What exactly are we working for?

I am not sure if we ask ourselves that question even once.  We seem to have been brainwashed into believing that we have to work, and work is the answer to the question of our existence.  So much so that if we come across a person who cares not about work, but who does not depend on others either, we have only negative things to say about them.

Of course, I am channeling my life here, as I always do in my blog.  I know damn well that I could "work" a lot more than I do.  Instead of playing bridge, I could spend time writing essays. Or even books.  But why?  What for?  The typical response is about fame and fortune.  But, what is the big deal about all that fame and fortune that I might have given up, and am continuing to give up?  What does this say about my "character"?

A few weeks ago, a big-time economist, with plenty of fame and fortune, and with a lot more left in him, died. He committed suicide. I have no idea about what troubled him that severely for him to end his life.  What a tragedy!  Imagine if he had sacrificed a chunk of his fame and fortune, and had worked "only" as a high school teacher, and enjoyed his life.

We are born. We live. We die. Within this there is work. "We just need meaning, wherever we might find it."  I am confident that work does not offer any meaning to our existence.  It does not build any damn character either!