|
|
This section will attempt to focus on the personal side of work. Its starting point will be to uncover experiences, thoughts and opinions from a cross section of individuals.
Everybody has some experience with work. Whether it be personal work or paid work. On the one hand we have work from our daily chores, child rearing, house cleaning, cooking, and on the other, for those with paid work, there are the set of tasks that make up the individual's paid work life.
Everybody has their own combination of interpretations, opinions, experiences, problems, and successes. How do these experiences compare. Do we all interpret work in a fairly narrow range of emotions, or is there a wide emotional response to work. What are the situations that evoke specific emotions and experiences. How do people deal with the pressures and stressors of work. Are they generated from similar sources. How do experiences compare within and between occupations. These are some of the questions that the experience of the personal can uncover.
We will start this section by posting quotes and thoughts from various thinkers, artistis and others.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 1930. " And yet as a path to happiness work is not valued very highly by men. They do not run after it as they do after other opportunities for gratification. The great majority work only when forced by necessity, and this natural human aversion to work gives rise to the most difficult social problems."
Merriam- Webster's Dictionary, 2004 "1 : activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something: a : sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result b : the labor, task, or duty that is one's accustomed means of livelihood c : a specific task, duty, function, or assignment often being a part or phase of some larger activity."
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844."The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object...Whatever the product of his labour he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him...the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long; therefore as activity is not voluntarily but naturally divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood... [after a revolution in society] makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of a Man Under Socialism,
"At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture - in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.",
|
