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Is it controversial to say that horses don’t work, dogs don’t work, and AI computers don’t work — and that only human beings work? Perhaps. But that is because too many people confuse doing things with work. Doesn’t every living creature do things? Even those AI systems that are being developed — one of which managers claim will be able to do the work of five employees — merely do things. They have no self-awareness and no intentionality. They are just a cascade of binary clicks rolling along the circuits until the electric plug gets pulled.
Work is a human endeavor. It does not exist to just improve some faceless economy. Workers are not widgets living in some ironic hell as portrayed on TV. Work exists to advance the worker and, in that way, change the world. Yes, it involves suffering, but life doesn’t just begin Friday afternoon after the five o’clock whistle blows.
Work requires self-mastery, which is a positive good. Why? Because if you don’t possess yourself, you cannot make a gift of yourself to others in your work or any aspect of your life. You are too wrapped up in yourself — wrapped in cellophane and packed in bubble wrap. How can you make a personal gift of yourself to others like that?
Is it too blasphemous to the current gospel of loafing and fishing to point out that the perfect model for man, Jesus Christ, worked at a job for 20 years? Was his job not as hard or harder than yours? Did he not give his all to the people he worked for? Were all the customers cheery and nice to him? Did they not haggle and complain?
Too many children are raised with the goal of taking care of themselves.
