Post by account_disabled on Apr 26, 2018 8:32:00 GMT
Hi,
I found the article on which I based this post most opportune and revealing.
I have always thought that "hard work" was oft used in lieu of "efficient work", the latter being
far more rewarding and conducive to happier working environments, hence reflecting on the overall frame of mind of the worker.
"Phil Laut, the American financial author, has defined hard work as 'doing what you don't want to do', and suggests that to operate with integrity, you should forget work and do what you want. This revolutionary viewpoint directly opposes certain beliefs which have become codified into our work ethic courtesy of the Puritans. Puritan sects were greatly over-represented among the early major industrialists (quoted in Ashton's History of the Industrial Revolution), and their belief that suffering is required to redeem our 'original sin' as human beings became part of their work ethic. This is a notion which continues to underlie our attitude towards work even today."
"This is why, in our society, work is closely related to, and often motivated by, guilt. To sweeten their view of work and provide positive motivation, the Puritans believed that honest toil, if persevered with, led to mundane and spiritual rewards. The modern equivalents of these archaic religious beliefs are:"
i) that hard work is the main causative factor in producing material wealth, and,
ii) that hard work is character building and morally good."
Notice the correlation between working hard and being morally sound, which is archaic at best, and detrimental at worst. The reward after years of toiling is a nice bait, and it has worked for some people, however the majority of "hard working" Americans fall under the following category.
"The available statistics don't support the belief that hard work leads to wealth - for example, US government figures from the eighties showed the average savings of a person reaching retirement age in North America to be less than $500. This is the typical level of financial reward a person can expect for forty years of full-time hard work - based on government data for an entire generation of working Americans."
Of course, you'd still have the "morally sound" good portion of the equation, but is it really true? Are people supposed to toil and suffer in jobs they hate simply because some archaic tenet owed to the puritans says so?
"Whatever its correlation with material wealth, hard work is undoubtedly seen as virtuous - the greatest tribute paid to the deceased seems to be 'worked hard all his/her life', although this epitaph sounds more appropriate for an item of machinery than a human being. There is, in fact, a lot of evidence to suggest that our work ethic is extreme and pathological in its effects. For example, a major UK survey (quoted recently by The Guardian) showed that 6 out of 10 British workers dislike their jobs, suffer insecurity and stress, fret over inadequate income, feel that their work isn't of use to society, and find themselves exhausted by the time they get home. A 1995 National Opinion Poll (NOP) revealed that 50% of British workers say work makes them depressed, and 43% have problems sleeping because of work. So unless you regard stress-related illness as character building, these findings don't really support the idea of work being morally uplifting."
More telling stats. People are simply going through the motions and trying to disprove a trend that is very much in place for the vast majority of people : Hard work doesn't necessarily pay.
"The hard work ethic has also conditioned us to see happiness as something that must be earned through toil. In effect, this is saying you have to suffer in order to get happiness, or to put it another way, you must be unhappy to be happy. The underlying idea behind this insanity is that you are infinitely undeserving - that reward, ie happiness, will always be contingent upon the endurance of some unpleasant activity. The problem with this way of thinking is that it endlessly perpetuates itself - you can never totally relax because nobody ever comes along to say, once and for all, that you've worked enough (the religious beliefs which originally gave rise to this mindset don't permit you to relax until after you've died)."
[..............................................................]
"A popular cliche says 'nothing worthwhile is easy'. Another version of the same idea has been used as a political slogan: 'if it isn't hurting, it isn't working'. Beliefs like these don't only describe viewpoints, they also program our expectations. You are effectively programming yourself to experience hurt and hardship if you accept this idea of 'no pain, no gain'. How can you despise ease and laziness then not feel guilty when you take a rest? Try an alternative slogan: 'anything worthwhile is best done without effort', or 'if you can't enjoy it, don't do it'.
So what is it with this philosophy of self deprecation and self inflicting pain? It might be all well for those who expect to be rewarded in some dubious afterlife, but with 14% of the world's population being non-theistic, that concept goes out the window, leaving them with the more unrewarding notion of "work hard and then you'll be able to make the payments" scenario, which I'm sure is NOT what hard working people expect to get out of their efforts.
So, my contention is that hard work does NOT work. There are many exceptions to that rule, but there might be other elements that made that hard work pay off besides the toiling. As someone said when asked how he was able to amass such a fortune: "I worked hard, and then one day I won the lottery".
For More Details:
animated introduction examples
I found the article on which I based this post most opportune and revealing.
I have always thought that "hard work" was oft used in lieu of "efficient work", the latter being
far more rewarding and conducive to happier working environments, hence reflecting on the overall frame of mind of the worker.
"Phil Laut, the American financial author, has defined hard work as 'doing what you don't want to do', and suggests that to operate with integrity, you should forget work and do what you want. This revolutionary viewpoint directly opposes certain beliefs which have become codified into our work ethic courtesy of the Puritans. Puritan sects were greatly over-represented among the early major industrialists (quoted in Ashton's History of the Industrial Revolution), and their belief that suffering is required to redeem our 'original sin' as human beings became part of their work ethic. This is a notion which continues to underlie our attitude towards work even today."
"This is why, in our society, work is closely related to, and often motivated by, guilt. To sweeten their view of work and provide positive motivation, the Puritans believed that honest toil, if persevered with, led to mundane and spiritual rewards. The modern equivalents of these archaic religious beliefs are:"
i) that hard work is the main causative factor in producing material wealth, and,
ii) that hard work is character building and morally good."
Notice the correlation between working hard and being morally sound, which is archaic at best, and detrimental at worst. The reward after years of toiling is a nice bait, and it has worked for some people, however the majority of "hard working" Americans fall under the following category.
"The available statistics don't support the belief that hard work leads to wealth - for example, US government figures from the eighties showed the average savings of a person reaching retirement age in North America to be less than $500. This is the typical level of financial reward a person can expect for forty years of full-time hard work - based on government data for an entire generation of working Americans."
Of course, you'd still have the "morally sound" good portion of the equation, but is it really true? Are people supposed to toil and suffer in jobs they hate simply because some archaic tenet owed to the puritans says so?
"Whatever its correlation with material wealth, hard work is undoubtedly seen as virtuous - the greatest tribute paid to the deceased seems to be 'worked hard all his/her life', although this epitaph sounds more appropriate for an item of machinery than a human being. There is, in fact, a lot of evidence to suggest that our work ethic is extreme and pathological in its effects. For example, a major UK survey (quoted recently by The Guardian) showed that 6 out of 10 British workers dislike their jobs, suffer insecurity and stress, fret over inadequate income, feel that their work isn't of use to society, and find themselves exhausted by the time they get home. A 1995 National Opinion Poll (NOP) revealed that 50% of British workers say work makes them depressed, and 43% have problems sleeping because of work. So unless you regard stress-related illness as character building, these findings don't really support the idea of work being morally uplifting."
More telling stats. People are simply going through the motions and trying to disprove a trend that is very much in place for the vast majority of people : Hard work doesn't necessarily pay.
"The hard work ethic has also conditioned us to see happiness as something that must be earned through toil. In effect, this is saying you have to suffer in order to get happiness, or to put it another way, you must be unhappy to be happy. The underlying idea behind this insanity is that you are infinitely undeserving - that reward, ie happiness, will always be contingent upon the endurance of some unpleasant activity. The problem with this way of thinking is that it endlessly perpetuates itself - you can never totally relax because nobody ever comes along to say, once and for all, that you've worked enough (the religious beliefs which originally gave rise to this mindset don't permit you to relax until after you've died)."
[..............................................................]
"A popular cliche says 'nothing worthwhile is easy'. Another version of the same idea has been used as a political slogan: 'if it isn't hurting, it isn't working'. Beliefs like these don't only describe viewpoints, they also program our expectations. You are effectively programming yourself to experience hurt and hardship if you accept this idea of 'no pain, no gain'. How can you despise ease and laziness then not feel guilty when you take a rest? Try an alternative slogan: 'anything worthwhile is best done without effort', or 'if you can't enjoy it, don't do it'.
So what is it with this philosophy of self deprecation and self inflicting pain? It might be all well for those who expect to be rewarded in some dubious afterlife, but with 14% of the world's population being non-theistic, that concept goes out the window, leaving them with the more unrewarding notion of "work hard and then you'll be able to make the payments" scenario, which I'm sure is NOT what hard working people expect to get out of their efforts.
So, my contention is that hard work does NOT work. There are many exceptions to that rule, but there might be other elements that made that hard work pay off besides the toiling. As someone said when asked how he was able to amass such a fortune: "I worked hard, and then one day I won the lottery".
For More Details:
animated introduction examples