Lessons on labor and the futile attempt to rewire society’s economics toward good, meaningful work.

Originally appeared on Medium.com

In the small village of Cortez, Florida — tucked away in a neighborhood bordered by a burgeoning state highway full of tourists and professionals who are often impeded by an antiquated two-lane bridge unable to account for the to-do list of 21st century America — sits an old fish market that appears to be stuck in colonial expansion.

Arriving at the market involves meandering through dilapidated side streets toward the bay where an old warehouse occupies your purview. The approach is a game of avoiding the remains of congealed fish; of which the smell is a fair warning to the gross doom. To the left of the property sits an abandoned-looking house, no doubt still occupied. Tucked between the contrast of the commercial warehouse and the fading residence is the market set against a worn dock playing host to a vibrant cast of birds.

The most eye-catching feature, however, is one that is the most unexpected. It sits on the edge of the property, visible to anyone entering or exiting the market and, with a faded picture hinting that the sign has not been touched for decades, a message matching the assumed ideology of the laborers enhances the contrast of modern America just a couple blocks away:

“Work (wurk): A productive use of time that gives life meaning.”

On my occasional adventures to the Florida warmth, I always make sure to visit this serene space; partly because the fresh fish, unavailable in my home of rural Ohio, is spectacular, but also because the spirit of the space reverberates with a humanity rare in society’s progress. In all my visits, I never ventured to inquire whether the owners intended such an economic philosophy, but I suppose I have never actually needed to; for such a sign leaves quite a stake in the argumentative landscape concerning economics, labor, and human existence.

I, however, have not always been so keen.

I have been married to my spouse for ten years, now. We have three children and often find ourselves contemplating the difficulty of raising them. As many parents often remark, my spouse and children have probably taught me more than I have offered them. One lesson far exceeds the others and, just as unexpectedly as the economic philosophy of the fishers in Cortez, my children and spouse brought about a similar, abrupt confrontation.

I grew up knowing the importance of hard work. My family built our own house; bearing the difficulty of manual labor on nights and weekends while my parents used their employment to fund the overzealous project. As may be expected from a ten-year-old, many complaints sprung from my lips about such an endeavor only to be met with the gravitas of a father reminding me, “We work hard in this family.”

I assume most families in the 20th and 21st centuries carried the same sentiment. The United States was not only founded under the premise of exceptional work ethics but also came into existence during a time where the particular notion of work now dominant in a global economy was building steam in congruence with the factories and business plans that were driving the world into its future. Such emphasis on progress was a sociological anomaly compared to human history — the entire world was captivated with the potential of progress, comfort, and the accumulation of wealth in the endeavor of grinding through the challenges of building the product, making the sale, or generally investing one’s physical and mental life to the notion of hard work. From Adam Smith to Karl Marx, labor and work dominated the conception of human life as the 20th-century reprised into the 21st. In fact, some of the most foundational sociological works — such as Emile Durkheim’s treatise on the correlation between capitalism and suicide or Max Weber’s notation of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” — resulted from a world truly believing in the benefit of hard work. As it goes, to mimic the sentiment of Benjamin Franklin, hard work became a virtue; the exertion of one’s physical, mental, and emotional capacities for the outcome of productive ends and profitable gain. This directive was and is a prized possession. It was our contemporary “crush it” culture in its infancy.

Life became synonymous with work as work became the primary experience of life.

I was hypnotized by my rearing to work hard while inheriting this cultural ethos modeled by the entrepreneurs, businesses, and successful heroes of the day. Because of this I found myself sitting on the couch with my spouse, head collapsed in my hands, while she told me she wanted to get a divorce.

My time, energy, and ability focused solely on productive gain for the ends of a salary and recognition and it was at the expense of my family. A father who was not present, a spouse who offered no love or care, and a person who had very little left resembling a human being were not someone my spouse wanted to be with. I never took paternity leave with my first two children (yes, I know that is the norm for hard-working, manly men), I consistently scheduled work and meetings at every hour of the day, and I believed that I had to crush it seven days a week even if it was at the expense of the very people I claimed to be doing that work for. I had folks to win over, content to create, and a ladder to climb.

If nothing else, then, my family taught me the unavoidable lesson that I, unfortunately, am mortal. I am limited.

Regrettably, human beings have this complication of being quite finite. In contrast, the cultural premise of modern work tends toward the myth of limitlessness. Our industrial naïveté proudly has proclaimed that we have unlimited time, unlimited resources, and unlimited capacity. Such is the progress of our unmatched enlightenment in the history of civilization. Not only is our supply supposedly infinite, but our demand can also be infinite, too. All because, according to what we’ve managed to tell ourselves, we are infinite.

It’s as if the desire to escape death has produced a culture that mythologically posits immortality. No longer do we need the ancient tales like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Civilization has finally found its transcendence and it was right where eons of history never thought to look: hard work.

In the end, the ultimatum became obvious — I had to choose my divorce. Under the constraints of the actual limits of human consciousness, something had to go. When you recognize that you, in fact, are going to die, there awakens a humility to embrace your finitude. Despite our desire to be like gods, we might do better if we accept the reality that we must choose how we are going to fill the only hands we have. When one tries to juggle life and work — or “balance,” if you will — the end result is that you never actually hold anything.

I had to choose and, in that moment of complete desperation, palms drenched in the tears of failure, I found the beautiful possibility of being human.

Which, beginning there, offered a deeper clarity for what it means to work.

It’s easy to forget the immensity of the world among the peacefulness of a field. Seeing the sky whipped with clouds on an early summer day offers a proper sense of proportion. I sit here, sweaty from toil with hands covered in dirt, and bask in the glorious success of having just transplanted an array of sunflowers. For a moment, the problems of the world leave me. As a pandemic lingers and social woes hint at the crumbling of society, I have found a moment where the smallness of life makes the most sense.

My relationship with work has changed five years after that cataclysmic moment on the couch. The following year was full of conversations; some logistical (how should we rewire our workday rhythms? What tasks can I get rid of?) and some emotional (what does it mean to be present? How do I make my family a priority?). The transformation was difficult, but it was poingantly successful. My life, my work, and my family looked much different as a result of my spouse’s confrontation and my children’s yearning for belonging. Our conflict led to imagination.

Part of that imagination continues to trickle through my mind in moments where I sit on our property, looking out at the vast countryside after the physical exertion that producing food requires. There is one question that predominantly lingers on my mind:

Is our version of hard work a human thing?

If not, what should work look like?

Is good, meaningful work a possibility or an oxymoron?

What is Labor?

From Adam Smith to Karl Marx, most judgments on the modern, industrial adage of work aimed to establish its economic vitality or critique its social strain. Much ink has been carefully crafted to discern if our version of hard work is a good thing. What I found in that desolate moment on my couch was that these other questions have been mostly left unanswered, if not even unasked.

For that, one must begin to contemplate the basic essence of labor.

Labor has been generally defined as:

An action or exertion to develop the world through the deployment of human abilities, time, and energy.

Such a broad stroke is intentional as it distances the narrow confines of our contemporary understanding of work to a generic, rudimentary inclusion. If labor is anything that fits above, work includes quite a bit of our daily activity. It also implies that work is a natural outcome of being alive.

You’re going to work.

What kind of work you are going to do and how it will compose your identity is less conclusive.

Whether work involves a career, profession, employment, or the idea of the day job — a designated activity within certain time constraints — is not confined to a general perception of labor. Even more, the inclusion of a wage at the end of a segment or work is not necessarily involved. Hobbies may involve labor, barter economies remove the conception of a wage, and subsistence work like farming implicate production, but without a salary. These, too, are work.

Extrinsic & Intrinsic Labor

We have the industrial revolution to thank for our narrow specification of work. As economic practices necessitated the incentive of wages, work became anything where you exchanged your labor for a wage. Enter the modern conception of the day job.

Sociologically, this is referred to as extrinsic labor — where one uses their abilities, time, and energy to gain access to something that does not explicitly deal with the work itself. Work becomes a means to an end (usually monetary) and is a distinct activity, often with its own defined sphere of operation. You go to work. You get paid. You go home and live your life.

Relatively new to human history, work was no longer a verb, but a noun.

This kind of work — where you deploy your labor to gain access to something external — is critiqued for the disconnection it creates with the use of abilities, time, and energy from the person. When work is a means to achieve a salary, a majority of one’s life becomes disassociated from what they consider their lives. You end up with a culture viewing, for example, parenting as a way out of work while a bunch of stay-at-home parents try to convince the average employee that their time, energy, and abilities are just as consumed, if not more so. Further, we begin to view our identity as a means to acquire wages, wealth, influence, and power with our limited abilities, time, and energy. Life becomes the equivalent of what job we have. Or, maybe, a balancing act unfolds. Either way, it is at the expense of something.

Too much separation between life and work while trying to balance relationships with distinct activities inherently disassociated with the spheres of those relationships often leads to conversations on the couch about divorce. Or just relational nonexistence.

Yet, that is just one form of work and labor. There is another. Intrinsic.

Intrinsic labor is described as work being a byproduct of one’s livelihood where, instead of being a distinct activity, is the actions and exertions that result from the lifestyle of relational survival. Work is not a means to an indirect end of wages, but to material and relational satisfaction. The daily use of ability, time, and energy is integral to the way of life desired and its daily necessities.

Instead of obtaining access to something exterior to one’s life, work is a natural extension of one’s life.

The difference may seem arbitrary. In some cases, it is. When viewed through economic history, however, intrinsic and extrinsic work have led to very different societies. Extrinsically, our most visible illustration would be the modern businessperson in a large, corner office overlooking the metropolis of other wage-earners. The antiquated farmer or stereotypical tribal faction embodies the intrinsic.

I’ll leave the details to actual scholars such as Marshall Sahlins' seminal socio-economic treatise Stone Age Economics. He discusses these various forms of labor, but specifically explains the intrinsic form as a “Domestic Means of Production.” These would be our generalized peasants or nomadic tribes.

The actual description of such an economy is worth noting. The household or family unit would be the basic structure of such a society with a collective dynamic between households in specific proximity. Households would share space, time, desires, materials, and resources so as to ensure the survival of the collective through a relational exchange of resources.

Survival is the keyword. Sahlins argues that such societies were, technically, more affluent than any modern society because affluence is simply the sufficient meeting of needs. If your material wants or needs are high, then you are less likely to satisfy them; or you need extensive accumulation and, therefore, exponential labor to satisfy them. These societies intentionally decreased their material needs so as to require less labor. They were underproductive on purpose. Labor power went unused, technology was not fully utilized, and natural resources were continually untapped. As opposed to aiming for maximum capacity, they obtained only what was minimally needed. As a result, their work, use, and development only occurred to the extent that material wants were satisfied.

Sahlins provides extensive data of how such societies were notably idle with irregular work patterns, short working days (sometimes averaging only a couple of hours a day), and a lack of distinction between work, play, and ritual. The original Four-Hour Workweek, I suppose. Appropriately, this is called a “Production for Use” economy. Production stops when livelihood is accomplished.

Modern laborers ought not to strain too hard to recognize the contrast to our modern economic horizon which Sahlins notes is a “Production for Exchange” economy — the industrial age’s ethos of hard work, accumulation, and the day job. Particularly, this extrinsic form of work is based on making money to acquire things to further our potential work to acquire more things and continue the infinite cycle of exchange until our finite bodies can no longer remain.

In one form, wealth and accumulation supersede livelihood as the priority. In the other, livelihood dampens the exertion of labor. The difference is a qualitative way of living versus a quantitative pursuit of wealth. The standard that defines one’s existence determines the relationship between labor and work.

So, is one more human than the other?

Capitalism, Marxism, & Alienating Labor

Criticizing capitalism is almost a cultural trope at this point. In some ways, capitalism has become the scapegoat for any malady that involves a system — often by people who greatly depend on capitalism’s offerings while using said offerings to make their claims. The debacle between Adam Smith and Karl Marx has notably devolved, I suppose. The difference is still current, however.

Capitalism offered a way of out mercantilism. To its original adherents, it was the promotion of the human person. People could be in control of their production, not governments. Further, capitalism sought to play to the dominant views of human nature spawning from the figures such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. If you can channel human beings’ intrinsic selfishness and competition, it can actually benefit society. And it has. There’s a reason technological and cultural innovation exponentially increased as the age of enlightenment birthed the industrial revolution.

But every forward-leaning solution also has its detriments. The role of competition and individualism became the most sparkling critiques of capitalistic economics. Getting ahead, accumulating profit, acquiring luxury, and grabbing once unavailable power evolved social stratification beyond anything human history had known. But the problem was rooted in work.

Marx, in response, popularized the term “Alienation.” The argument is that, through general labor, a human person is capable of realizing a vital component of human flourishing. Through externalizing the internal consciousness and mental experience into tangible action, work and production allow a person to understand themselves and their meaning. The important assertion is that anything which stifles that capability or removes that assumed human agency is essentially dehumanizing; which leads to the experience of alienation.

Marx, too, is an easy target. Especially since Marxism resembles little of what Marx wrote and the context of his ideas are often set in an imaginative vacuum that doesn’t account for his social location, his dependence on Hegel or influence by Feuerbach, or the fact the Communism quickly became its own school of thought. The real consideration of alienation, however, comes down to its articulation of work.

As work became a noun and embodied a full-on extrinsic understanding, work no longer exacted livelihood. It was purely the exchange of labor for a wage in the minds of the majority of Western human beings. At its worst, work was a series of mindless gestures that would only be done if appropriately incentivized. A factory making pins is the most alluded to example.

As labor became a form of currency, the incentives implied that the worker wasn’t actually invested in the work itself (it is a means to an end) nor the employer to the worker; both of which were the point of capitalism — let people be individuals who use the other to satisfy their own ends. There is no connection between the worker and the work or the employer and the worker and the potential for existential satisfaction alongside material satisfaction is lost. Alas, people began to hate their day jobs. No one wanted to work.

Emile Durkheim’s most notable addition to sociology was about this fascinating development. As people began to be disconnected from their labor, from what they produced, from their own lives, and from each other, suicide was spiking in unprecedented numbers. Durkheim’s fascination, however, was that this was only happening where industrial capitalism had taken economic root.

Some people hate their day jobs because the work is difficult or intense or they have a weird co-worker that just exhausts every ounce of their energy. Others hate their day job because it is disconnected from their humanity. An enormous chunk of time, energy, and ability is being given to something extrinsic. In some cases, one may include that what they are doing with their ability, time, and energy is completely and utterly meaningless.

Because it is completely and utterly disassociated from their life.

Yet, if the goal is quantitative — to accumulate and acquire extensive material ends — this appears to be the natural circumstance our kind of work is destined for.

I’m fascinated by the assumption that most of our lives ought to be spent procuring resources, climbing ladders, and gaining esteem so that we can provide a lifestyle that we now have much less time to enjoy. We make our existence solely confined to accumulation where — though it is cliché to say — we get to the end of our lives and wonder if we have wasted it. In its basic and primitive form, the human experience was contained to 10–20 people, then slightly larger communities. All of which lived with meager material survival that would find our modern amount of luxury, ease, and comfort unimaginable. Yet, the other side of that dismay is that we, in our unprecedented gains, are also surrounded by strangers.

Which are the better human circumstance — the cultural heroism of success and wealth without being connected to or invested in daily livelihood and its accompanying (often messy) people or connection and meaningful work with nothing? Or is it possible to have both?

Our limited nature implies that these two outcomes are mutually exclusive. Economic choices seem to be a package deal. What’s worse? It’s not completely your choice. A person exists in relation to the world around them. Much ink has been spilled concerning sociological interdependency. One’s social location determines the economic norms which necessitate particular approaches to work. In order to function in a particular society, it thereby determines your human function as a part of that society.

You could change jobs (which might just be a less bad experience of the same problem). You could nail your dream job — work that actually matters on your own terms. You could retire early if you’ve enhanced accumulation in your early years. Or you could check out (while still needing to depend on someone else to play the game for you), move to an isolated island, or live off the land and thereby not enjoy the access and commodities that the rest of society is dependent on. But only a small percentage of the population might achieve such abnormal peculiarities.

The Economic Package Deal

You only have so much time and energy and capability. An economic form of work that consumes your identity will provide the utmost extravagance and possibility but at the expense of your relationships and time. An economic form more qualitative and intrinsic could obtain minimal material satisfaction and existential meaning, but you will not have done the hard work to accumulate your heart’s desires.

It is easy for us to see the quaint art of a simple figure in the landscape with a simple abode and yearn for that contentment. It’s also possible to see such a figure in real life and assume a pathology. Yet, a decision must be made. This romanticized contentment makes certain things impossible in the economic package deal. You have to choose what you will accumulate with your time, energy, and ability. If our world really wants the intrinsic form of existence, we would need to change our entire approach to work. It requires a different standard of living.

Do we want to prioritize accumulation for the standard of gaining access to high material wants or do we want to prioritize simplicity for the standard of contentment and meaning?

By saying yes to one, we will need to say no to the other.

Because we are limited.

I do happen to stand by the assertion that these forms of work and, therefore, lifestyle are mutually exclusive. If the standard is the cultural success of modern achievement and increased profitability to provide infinite means then it will determine how you understand work. If the standard is health and love and meaningful relationships, then certain priorities become non-negotiable and certain attainment becomes impossible. What is the life you want to create?

Essentially, what do you want to be buried with when your life extinguishes into the universe like vapor?

My experience points to the relationship. I’ve officiated hundreds of funerals. In the end, no one remembers your work output, your business success, or your profit margin. No one fondly recalls the moments of material extravagance. They remember the relationship. Because in the end, that is all that matters. The human being desires to belong. There is a chance that our economic choice on work is at the expense of that belonging.

Maybe you will be buried with a full schedule, a full bank account, and a futile attempt at immortality where you wish you could have it all back. Maybe you will be buried with a meager life where you poignantly held only a few things with love.

The point being, we have to choose.

Our culture certainly promotes that we spend our time pursuing this abstract objective of accumulation and rising to the top of some mythological heroism. Work is simply the medium of the pursuit. But in pursuing this objective, I can’t help but wonder what we are avoiding. Max Weber articulated this in what has become known as the Iron Cage:

“No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or if there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrifaction, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

When nothing is enough, you give yourself permission to feel as if you are accomplishing much and winning according to the constructs of wealth and fame. Yet, we might actually be consigning ourselves to a narrow experience of the vast world. I wonder if the Christian tradition was right in claiming that the achievement of gaining the whole world will cause you to lose your life. Maybe it could be said that in choosing to have infinite accumulation, we are choosing to forego that which holds our soul. It takes humility, strength, and fortitude to acknowledge your limits and compromise desirable things that aren’t all achievable in the constraint of your life. It takes even more to set those aside so that you might be buried with a small, weathered, yet well-lived life.

I have yet to meet someone who was wildly successful by our cultural economic standards and felt satisfied.

I have yet to meet someone who accomplished and juggled everything under the sun and proudly proclaimed it was worth it.

I have met folks who did these things, who accomplished the never-ending feat of procuring it all, and mourned that they never enjoyed the fruit.

I have met folks who experienced the world in unadulterated individual freedom, disconnected from every source of life, and concluded that it was all akin to vapor.

I’ve met people who walked away burnt out, empty, and yearning to have it all back.

I’ve also met the wise simpleton of primitive affluence who was content with enough — who held life well, enjoyed the connection within the lack of accumulation, embraced their finitude and, therefore, their life.

The Remarkable Deal We Won’t’ Surrender

Is an alternative to our modern conception of work possible? In short, I don’t think so. Yes, extrinsic work disconnects us from ourselves, each other, and the places we are, but the pursuit of individual attainment — while not providing much in the way of meaningful ends or even a meaningful journey — provides too much to let it go.

Just consider the amount of sociological interdependency necessary to buy a tomato from the store. From global trade to mechanized transportation and the swath of logistics to get and purchase that tomato, we are absolutely dependent on a social life that we desire and depend on. Do you like going to entertainment events, watching television, being able to drive to see family or friends, or having things like cell phones? In order for those things to exist, we need this kind of economy. We could improve the economic conditions to make it less shuddersome, but extrinsic work is necessary for this complicated package deal.

I, for one, often romanticize about being a hunter-gatherer with primal affluence where work and life and rest unfold by the whims of necessity and contentment — but, let’s be honest, I’m not that romantic. I happen to be grateful for things like coffee, the internet, and going to the dentist. I wouldn’t be able to participate in society; including the norms of driving, communication systems, and eating food that I didn’t grow. I don’t want that level of difficulty. It’s quite woke to rail against capitalism and industrialism in an air-conditioned, single-family home using high-speed internet while drinking coffee grown on the other side of the world. Spare me the irony.

This unnecessarily verbose treatise on economics comes down to the realization that we want a simple life but not a simple world.

We complain about work environments while constantly benefitting from them. We complain about complicated work systems while demanding the complex world that requires those complicated work systems. If we want luxury, convenience, and unhindered freedom, we are going to have to play along and choose the mode of using our limited time, energy, and ability to extrinsically work. I think we would rather have the drudgery of work than a world of collective simplicity.

The romanticized belonging would make certain things impossible — things that I think we’d prefer.

At the least, we’ve made a remarkable deal.

We are sad, anxious, incomplete, disconnected, restless, and lonely because we’ve created an amazing, luxurious life of surplus at the expense of the very things that could provide what we’re looking for.

Further, obtaining those romanticized ideals would mean rewiring society. If we aren’t willing to switch to the metric system because of the overwhelming logistical challenges, why would we consider reformatting our very notion of work?

Just like those dilapidated buildings as the nostalgic fish market, I can’t help but wonder if such a propensity is forever lost to the past. Yes, our ancestors were unfortunate in thousands of ways, but they may have had the one thing we lack and desperately desire.

“Why Would I Want to Do That?”

As I sit on the edge of my field, I can’t help but be jealous of the sunflowers. In the end, belonging is all we will have. These sunflowers remind me of my futile attempt to make such a human feat real. We need to learn to belong together, but it would cost us too much. I yearn for the work I see in these growing stalks — a form of labor integral to their livelihood. Natural actions resulting in content satisfaction. Work is not a means to an end for them, but simply an act of being.

I just don’t think we want that kind of existence.

I don’t think we want that kind of responsibility, interdependence, and simplicity.

I don’t think we want that kind of belonging.

Which means we might not want that kind of work.

Luckily and unfortunately for me, however, I don’t have a choice. I chose my divorce. I consigned from extrinsic work instead of divorcing my family. Thus has begun the vain attempt to work meaningfully with contentment in a world that won’t allow it.

I suppose, then, that I’m learning. I’m learning to be a human being in an inhumane world. I’m learning to put a dent in a machine whose end is not in sight. I’m learning to have enough and be still. I’m learning to embrace my finitude, be unproductive, let opportunities go untouched, and have a proper sense of proportion in the vast universe.

I’m learning to embrace the option of good, meaningful work.

The most I can do in the small place I am is the dance of work that honors the place it is done, honors the art and craft by which it is done, honors what it makes, its use, and those who use it. Work that is modestly scaled, reflective of its context, and honors the sacred limits by which we all will one day succumb.

Like Voltaire, I’m learning to live well with my feet firmly rooted in the ground that I am. However, by tending to my own garden, it doesn’t leave me much hope. It does, however, leave me with a simpler life than I knew and blossoming relationships to which I belong.

The heat of the day is taking its toll. Fortunately, I have a faucet with water in my civilized abode. As I quench my thirst and my dissatisfaction — now staring out the window and feeling reprieve from the visible heat — I recall a parable of businessmen from the United States visiting a local in Mexico. They see an investment opportunity — more accumulation — because the local runs a boating business, but only has one boat and, therefore, few clients. They ask if he would like to buy another boat. The local responded, “Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, then you could serve more clients.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“So that you could make more money.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Then you could hire extra labor and scale your company. You could be renting out boats all day!”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Think about it, after several years, you could just be overseeing the rentals and you’d never have to take the boats out yourself. You could have full-time staff and a huge profit margin.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because then you can retire early. You could spend your days relaxing here by the ocean, enjoying your life, and spending more time with your family.”

To which the local boater slyly responded: