THE FALLACY OF HARD WORK IN THE INFORMATION AGE!

THE FALLACY OF HARD WORK IN THE INFORMATION AGE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© April 23, 2014

REFERENCE:

This is another vignette from “Six Silent Killers” sure to clash with cultural biases that have been programmed into the mindset of many.  On the other hand, those who have taken charge of their lives, rejecting such programming, are doing swimmingly well in this uncertain economic climate.

“The Work Ethic Lives! Americans labor harder and at more jobs than ever.” 

This was an attention grabbing Time magazine (September 7, 1987) lead-in to an article which, curiously, insisted that hard work is ennobling and that people forced to work two and three jobs to live in style is proof positive that the American work ethic is alive.  I don’t think so. It suggests quite the opposite, for hard work is scarcely relevant, much less exalted today. 

Working hard is like treading water in place, knowing if you ever stop treading you will drown. There is a community of workers in conventional jobs who feel precisely like they are treading water. There is a limit to endurance, then what? Working two and three jobs is avoiding the issue. It is not evidence of a work ethic, but of unconscious incompetence or the search for the easy way out.

There is no easy way out. Workers who have seen their jobs vanish must either be retrained in more productive work or retire. 

They cannot keep treading water. If they are unable or unwilling to learn new skills, they may well become a casualty. Conscious competence demands that workers make reality checks periodically, and that they assess their competence against that reality.

Moralizing is not the answer. The economics of warfare has no heart. The question every worker must ask himself is this: What can I do now that I am not doing to get out of deep water and onto firm soil? Workers are under siege, and this is no time for half measures.

Unfortunately, there is a jaundiced appetite in worker consciousness for a strenuous schedule. Even if a worker is not making progress, he gets social sympathy for working hard: “Isn’t it just wonderful how hard Sam (Sally) works. Why, I believe he (she) is working two jobs.” Workers take pride in boasting about how hard they work. It is much less acceptable to boast of how smart one is working: “I only work 20 hours a week and make a good living. Isn’t that great?” Most people would not think so.

First, they would be suspect of your boast, next they would put you down for bragging, and then they would hate you for making them feel a fool. Few are likely to tell friends it is taking them half the time it once took to earn a living. People take exception to those who show themselves as clever, while the same people welcome someone who complains of working hard. They can identify with the latter, but not the former. Why?

Workers hate to make hard choices. The fact that hard choices make it easy for them eventually has little impact on their decisions, nor are they aware that easy choices eventually make for hard lives. Research shows that most careers of workers are accidental, not planned. Most workers fall into their jobs and don’t consciously seek out their careers. They stumble into their destinies. 

So, workers recite to colleagues how tough their schedules, how many hours they work, how many jobs they juggle, failing to see the imbecility of this. Many workers prefer self-deception to committing to some kind of work they passionately believe in.  Instead, their energy is engaged in menial diversions.

There is graphic evidence of this. The graduate schools of many American universities are the best in the world, especially in the pure sciences and technologies. The students that dominate these graduate school populations are foreign students, primarily Oriental. The mathematics, physics, chemistry, and graduate engineering programs, especially in electronic and computer engineering, have anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of their graduate students from foreign countries.

Obviously, one of the reasons for this brain drain is that these curricula require extensive preparation, from grammar school, high school, and through undergraduate school. Europe and Asia excel at preparing students from preschool on for rewarding careers in science and technology. Meanwhile, Americans exalt students with athletic prowess who can throw a ball through a hoop, kick it through a goal post, or hit it out of the park.

If not athletics, Americans exalt students who chase the buck in business or law schools. We produce more MBAs than the rest of the graduate schools of the world combined, and in Washington, D.C. alone there are 65,000 lawyers. American universities have some of the finest liberal arts and fine arts colleges in the world, which again draw widely from foreign lands. Schools are here, opportunity is here, but where are the American students?  

Chances are they are looking to find a way to acquire a degree with the least amount of psychic and intellectual effort.  Or the more cynical approach is to find a way into a prestigious university, preferably an Ivy League university, cough up a quarter million dollars, then coast to a degree.  Once the degree is in hand the prestige of the pedigree will speak for itself.    

This, of course, is equally asinine as is the bravado of working hard doing two or three jobs.  Both extremes give work a bad name.  Clearly, such people are not in charge and have contempt for the idea of work.  That is not the point of this piece.  Work can be love made visible, a spiritual and enhancing endeavor as these two Indian Masters suggest:

“Every one has been made for some particular work, and the drive for that work has been put into his heart.”  

Julai al-Din Rumi (1207-1273)

”If you wish to work properly, you should never lose sight of two great principles.  First, a profound respect for work undertaken; and second, a complete indifference to its fruits.  Thus only can you work with the proper attitude.” 

Swami Brahmananda (1863-1922)