Something I've been thinking about lately apparently has been thought of by others before me and is called the alienation of labour. I'm not sure that my thoughts fit the bill perfectly, but here is what I've been thinking:
What does it mean to be a checkout-chick? I don't mean to bag checkout-chicks in particular, the same comments apply to most professions. What does it mean to be a C++ programmer for Citibank earning $250k per year?
For 8 hours at a time, beep... beep... beep... price check.... beep. How did we get to this?
Here's what I figure. There's a subsistent community. Everyone grows a bit of everything, milks Betsy, kneads the dough etc. Then someone (Bill?) says "Hey Bert, my beets are awesome, and your lettuce is fantastic. How about I grow beets and you grow lettuces and we swap. That way we both get awesome veg, and we don't have to work as hard." Bert goes along with it, and then before we know it someone says "Hey, I'll throw the farm in and start a store. Bert, you grow lettuce, Bill, you grow beets,..." etc. Suddenly there's bank tellers, store clerks, accountants, managers, ticket inspectors, bus drivers, and checkout-chicks.
I'm not against Bill's idea. I think it was a good one. But the end result sucks. I'm a theoretical physicist and I'm pretty sure I have the best job in the world. But I also think I'm probably the exception (and I sometimes hate it). The checkout-chick is someone I come into contact with on a regular basis, and I know that based purely on our grades at school she ended up with the beep-beep job, and I ended up with mine. And then there's my friends who also got pretty good marks, but instead of getting an awesome job like mine, they became lawyers, and they now spend their time going through 300,000 pages of legal documents looking for the keywords "airplane" or "runway".
It's a fortunate situation for the guy that stretches himself every day. According to Aldous Huxley an ideal society is one where every citizen has that privilege. But it's simply not the case. And I think it is a mistake of history that we ended up like this. I can't believe that the way it was meant to be is that someone's entire job is to drive in circles to get people where they need to go: around and around and around....
I've tried not to make this sounds elitist, I'm sorry if it has. But surely the farming subsistence economy is more rewarding on average... no?
(for what it's worth I think the alienation of labour has more to do with the fact that people work for a company that they have no vested interest in)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Why would a C++ programmer get $250,000 pa? They are the quintessential geeks. They have no friends. They never go outside. They have no life. You stick them in a room and feed them pizza and coffee and they are happy. They don't need the money.
ReplyDeleteAs for the check-out chicks. For some people their work is their life. They find fulfillment in their occupation. For others, their life is everything outside of work, and their work merely provides the material resources to enable them to pursue the other things that define their lives.
I think a lot depends upon what motivates us.
Paul tells us in Colossians that whatever we do we should do it all in the name of Jesus. That is a challenge for us regardless of the work we do. How does the check-out chick present Jesus at the end of a long day when she is dealing with an irate customer? Indeed, she (or he) may find their job extremely satisfying because they have the opportunity to represent Christ to so many people every day. I don't mean by evangelising, but by being present, as a part of the body of Christ, in the lives of so many different people each day.
In fact, I think that the christian check-out chick probably feels very sorry for you. She would feel, like most people, that the work you do is boring. You don't deal with as many people each day as she does. Isaiah says, "Arise, shine, for the glory of Lord has come upon you." Is that how she starts her day? Again Paul says, "We with unveiled faces all reflect God's glory." Is that how she goes to work? And at the end of the day does she come home to "well done, good and faithful servant." If that is the case then it sounds like a challenging, rewarding and fulfilling life to me.
I'm sorry, I think I diverged a bit off topic. But to finish - I used to be a farmer, well really a pretend farmer, the cows knew I was useless. And it was no fun at all!
I agree with all those points, that's for sure (although surely a programmer in a management position can get payed that sort of money). And yes, in my experience I've found that most people feel sorry for physicists.
ReplyDeleteCertainly your Christian perspective on your view of work is good.
Nevertheless, I stick by my comments that it is a weird world we live in where the majority of jobs are increasingly narrow in scope, and increasingly removed from... survival, and I would argue that it is not ideal. I appreciate that the Christian can faithfully apply the Bible to their peculiar context and have a positive attitude about it. But that doesn't tell us whether society is good. I mean, the faithful application of Jesus to being in prison or having cancer doesn't make those things necessarily good.
You may not have liked farming, and neither would I. I couldn't be more pleased that someone will pay me to do something as pointless as physics. But it's a thoroughly middle-class thing to be able to pick and choose jobs.