76 lines
9.4 KiB
Markdown
76 lines
9.4 KiB
Markdown
- What is the purpose of work?
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- I often encounter a strain of thinking (even espoused by priests!) that says that it's just to provide the means of subsistence. "Do the thing that earns you the most money and lets you spend the most time with your family". I find this shallow and lacking though, and I cannot but liken it to something that Franz Jaegerstatter said.
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- I can't find the exact quote, but basically, Franz was providing a defense for why he would not swear allegiance to Hitler. Many friends, even priests, were telling him - "You have a wife and kids. You need to provide for them! If you don't say these words, you'll be executed, and you can't provide for them." Jagerstatter said something to the effect of - "If I do this, then I will become a different person, and I will not be able to give myself as a model of sanctity to them, and that is a far greater loss."
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- While perhaps not as severe a case, the logic carries over to our work as well - if we partake in work that is spiritually injurious, if we are complicit with evil, no amount of expensive Catholic school, no amount of almsgiving, can compensate for this injury. Work is formative not only on the world around us but on our souls.
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- "We can't get second things by putting them first. We get second things by putting first things first."
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- I can be very critical so I just want to remind - that Christians aren't people who are perfect, but people who aspire to be perfect.
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- So, why are we supposed to work?
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- Aquinas gives four reasons (STh., II-II q.187 a.3)
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- To obtain food
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- To ward off idleness
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- For the sake of coralling concupiscence; training in penance
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- For almsgiving
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- "Manual labor is directed to four things. First and principally to obtain food; wherefore it was said to the first man: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," and it is written: "For thou shalt eat the labors of thy hands." Secondly, it is directed to the removal of idleness whence arise many evils; hence it is written: "Send" thy slave "to work, that he be not idle, for idleness hath taught much evil." Thirdly, it is directed to the curbing of concupiscence, inasmuch as it is a means of afflicting the body; hence it is written: "In labors, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity." Fourthly, it is directed to almsgiving, wherefore it is written: "He that stole, let him now steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need.""
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- Schumacher gives three (in Good Work):
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- To give a person a chance to utilize and develop his faculties
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- To enable him to overcome his inborn egocentricity by joining with other people in a common task
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- To bring forth the goods and services needed by all of us for a decent existence.
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- The institution to till and keep is given before the fall, not after it. Work is something we are made for - something that existed, and will exist, in paradise.
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- Every action has an equal and opposite reaction - work is formative on the workman.
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- What has happened to work? (The industrial revolution, response of marxism, etc.)
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- Subsistence farming -> Enclosure laws -> The 'rise' of cities and intensive manufacturing, division of labor, etc. -> powerered machinery -> automation
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- Inclosure took place between 1604 and 1914, privatizing around 7 million acres in Britain (UK is 60M A)
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- Industrial revolution starts in Britain around 1760
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- We have very much drifted from "work to eat" to "work to generate capital which can then be exchanged on the market for other goods and services"
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- Industrial capitalism emerges and begins being exploitative; it views man as machine
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- Marxism and other movements see this, but frankly, just doesn't have a deep enough critique.
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- Uses the term 'alienation' - great term, because what we desire is *communion*
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- At this point the church begins to speak up - he doesn't invent CST, but he makes it relevant to the world, and begins to use the world's language somewhat to speak of that which the church has always spoken of.
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- Leo writes of the communist view of alienation in R.N. pp 10
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- Marx espoused "labor theory of value"; that things are given value by nature of the fact that they were worked on
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- Human labor is creative - it depends not just on our hands, but on our eyes (and thus, our hearts, because you can't make judgements or even see the world without a value system)
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- Capitalists recognize this - the interpreter (e.g. manager) is a worker
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- The ideal is that every worker is an interpreter; industrial capitalists don't share this sentiment
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- (Automation is generally done first by turning a man into a machine, then building a real machine to replace the man-machine... or at least by first perceiving man as a machine.)
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- The ideal is that the worker should become a capitalist
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- “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” - Chesterton
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- But every interpreter must also be a worker, otherwise he loses touch
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- "The right way to do science is to start on a firm foundation of empirical evidence. Galileo developed the fundamentals of kinematics, building on medieval foundations, by observing balls rolling down inclined planes, swinging pendula, and – as legend has it – by dropping objects off the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Newton developed his Universal Law of Gravitation, building upon the observations of Tycho Brahe and analyses of Johannes Kepler, by studying the motion of the moon and comets, and the acceleration of apples and other bodies near the Earth. Maxwell developed his theory of electromagnetism from Faraday’s observations of iron filings and the studies of Coulomb and Ampere on charges and currents, respectively. His successors like Heaviside and Hertz brought Maxwell’s theory to fruition. Heaviside was a veteran telegrapher intimately familiar with how telegraphy works, while Hertz immersed himself in a wide range of experiments to create, manipulate, and receive radio waves. “**We must dwell in intimate association with the facts and with actual events**,” declared Aristotle, “**for in this way only can the premises be made to harmonize with the phenomena.**”"
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- Aristotle: "Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations"
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- Increasingly we find ourselves in situations where we... it's hard to speak precisely here. it's some combination / inbetween of:
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- inability to grasp the entire process
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- inability to commune with the process
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- no opportunities for growth
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- a shrinking inwards
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- Subsidiarity: "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them." - Quadragesima Anno
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- Group questions & time for clarification:
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- Comments, critique, outright rage?
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- What is the current trajectory of the state of work in the world?
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- What is going well? Where are things improving?
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- Where are the leverage points (the places we haven't looked, the inconsistencies in arguments/worldviews that can be pried at to reveal reality)
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- What can we do to improve our work?
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- Increase solidarity - commerce locally
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- Maintain the "freedom to not" / "freedom to walk"
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- Work to live, act, give alms, improve community, etc. - not to accumulate
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- Take ownership:
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- "Work for yourself before you work for others"
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- independent contracting
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- own your tools - sharpen your tools
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- swiss industry clusters, not hyper-vertical integration
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- "don't do for yourself what your neighbor can do for you" (especially when the thing in questions requires capital)
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- Have breakouts for in-depth personal discussion
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- How is my current work forming me?
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- How is my work forming the world?
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- What do I find unholy about my work?
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- How can I do holier work? (could be how we approach our current work, or finding new)
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- What can I do to facilitate my brothers and sisters in holier work?
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Misc stuff:
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- "Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. .... To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. ... Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. **If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.**" (RN 43-45) |