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Is the art of working dead?
In today's society, one seems to deem work as something one does when there is nothing better to do.
Is the artist of yesteryear gone forever? Dreams lost, passion gone, ambition gone, all gone forever.
"The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art" George Bernard Shaw
I think the idea of going to work and enjoying it is dead! I love to go to work, if i don't enjoy my job or get bored of it, i look for another. Why should i have a handout? Life tastes sweeter when you have earned it.
I am not a work-a-holic, i enjoy my holidays and my weekends but if i have to do extra hours i do without complaining or work the occasional weekend also, no problem, love the job and the feeling of earning my money. I started working at 15 and am now 36 and have not been unemployed for more than 1 week.
People cry they do not want big government, socialism, welfare, etc. and then stand around waiting for a hand out rather than working for something. Liar, liar, jobs exist; just nobody wants to do them. The art of working gone. Gone forever to a new age that has no ambition to make their own future. The handout era has arrived, as requested.
Firstly, the actual situation is nowhere close to nobody working; the global unemployment rate is somewhere around 10%, which means 90% of people who are able to work are working.
Secondly, not working for wages or a salary isn't equivalent to a lack of ambition or dreams... many ambitions are completely unrelated to paid employment.
There is a great difference between someone drawing a paycheck and someone working. Do you actually believe people work?
Your second point is exactly my point. People seem to think one needs paid in order to do work. Work is something one should do regardless of the pay. Most people would rather do nothing than to work, simply because it needs done.
Surveys suggest that office workers spend about 80% of their work time on work-related tasks. And common sense tells me that a lot of people do work, or we'll have no food to eat, no clothes to wear, no homes to live in, and the human race would have died out. So yeah, while there certainly are freeloaders here and there, there are more people who genuinely work.
I'm sure some people do feel that way and laze around in all their free time... but take a look at the internet, and see how much self-published literature, music or artwork have cropped up (most of it sucks, but that's another point); take a look at how many hobby clubs have sprung up; take a look at the entire industry of self-help manuals. Ambition is alive, and I think the advent of the internet as a new communication and educational medium has only boosted it. In the past most people, especially women, were happy to think of themselves as "ordinary folk" who will never amount to anything special, but now lots of people want to be the next star, and work towards that goal.
Surveys can be read anyway one wants to read them.
As you pointed out, people work less and socialize more. Facebook, MySpace, CreateDebate, etc. all social networks, where is the hard labor? China, Mexico, Korea, etc., not in the USA anymore. The art of working lays not here, but clearly elsewhere.
And common sense? Do you really think society wouldn't have crumbled to pieces and humanity gone extinct by now if nobody worked or had ambition nowadays, as you said?
People work less now than they used to, possibly; people have less ambition now than they used to, possibly. (Personally I don't see the former as necessarily a bad thing, and the latter I find highly suspect.) But to say that work and ambition are gone is such a gross exaggeration that I can't take it seriously.
"The question of common sense is always what is it good for? - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage." ~James Russell Lowell
It is not even disputable that people work less than they did 100 years ago. Women had to build a fire before even beginning to prepare a meal. Most chopped wood, carried it in to the house; and you think people work just as hard today?
Farmers had to hitch-up horses or oxen to work in the fields, work all day and then unhitch them before retiring for the evening. Yes, it is definitely a close call who worked harder.
Most people can't leave the couch to change channels on the TV and you question who has more ambition. Have you ever not slept through a history class?
Please, instead of trying to sound smart-ass, actually answer my question. I called to question your claim that people today don't work at all, which I find utterly absurd.
Also, note that I agreed that it's possible that people nowadays don't work as hard as people did in the past. You don't need to raise examples of how hard people used to work; I haven't even been disputing that point. What I did dispute is whether or not it's a bad thing for people to work less.
And I'm not sure what performing daily tasks to sustain life, like building fires and tilling fields, has to do with ambition. That's basic survival. Ambition is when you strive for more than the basics, like getting more educated, or getting wealthier, or getting more influential... or coming up with the scientific and technological breakthroughs that are the hallmark of the modern times.
I am a general contractor and if you want proof people don't work just hire them. Today people are incapable of doing manual labor. They truly think that work is someone one does when there is nothing better to do. Over the years I have employed about 70 people, most don't make it past day one. Several have lasted a day or two and never return to even get their paycheck. I have had several men cry because the work was too hard. I have heard bitching about the weather, too hot and too cold. I have heard just about every conceivable lie from people to get out of work. One guy even said his sister passed away. She is probably still alive ten years later.
I would suggest that when you know nothing, that you say nothing.
So you're saying that a lot of people are unsuited to, or dislike, manual labour. Ok, but clearly not everyone, because a lot of people are employed in manual labour jobs, and the work does get done because we have our roads and houses and all. And then there are plenty of jobs that don't involve manual labour.
Again, I ask this question: would the world still be running if, as you say, people didn't work anymore? You'd think that at least some people are working, some of the time, and they are at least working enough that we as a civilisation aren't starving and huddling cold on the streets.
California is still hiring migrate workers to pick fruit despite having many unemployed. The bureau of employment says they don't count picking fruit as a job that anybody on unemployment will fill. I wonder why this is so, could it be that no one besides people from other countries will do manual labor?
Working is something I do to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads. There are a lot of people not working some because they lack training others because they are too lazy to work. there are jobs out there and some are hard to get because they have raised the requirements for jobs and the competition to get these jobs is high too.
