"I don't like work -- no man does -- but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- what no other man can ever know." -- Joseph Conrad
"The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this -- with work you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need -- this life is hell." -- W.E.B. Ddu Bois
It's worth it many times over to buy Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin just for what they say about "work" in Chapter 7. They quote >>>from Working by Studs Terkel:
"This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence -- to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us... It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."
Most importantly, Dominguez and Robin indicate that for most of human history (and prehistory) people have had to work only two to three hours a day to survive. To me it seems that, given all the machines and technology available in our "modern" world to do all kinds of work, it shouldn't be necessary for anyone to work more than about one hour a day to be able to survive comfortably!
Most people seem to think that work is what we do for a living and that in order to work you must have a "job." Dominguez and Robin indicate that the way most people define work is part of the problem. You can start deconstructing your idea of work by reading The Strange "Job" Concept. Dominguez and Robin quote from Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt's Work Without End:
"Since the Depression, few Americans have thought of work reduction as a natural, continuous, and positive result of economic growth and increased productivity. Instead, additional leisure has been seen as a drain on the economy, a liability on wages, and the abandonment of economic progress."
Confusing "be" and "do" is also part of the problem, according to Dominguez and Robin. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You're supposed to answer that with what you want to do. So most people think and talk in terms of, "I'm a doctor, a nurse, a policeman, etc." It would be more accurate to think in terms of, "I'm a human being who sometimes does medical work, etc." Dominguez and Robin suggest we redefine "work" as "any productive or purposeful activity, with paid employment being just one activity among many..." They emphasize that "breaking the link between work and money" opens us up to many other options.
The reasons why so many work for 40 hours a week or more to be able to pay the bills, rather than 5-7 hours, will be covered in Advanced Money Skills. See also: (a) What I Learned When I Quit My Job: Part One by D.J. Swanson; (b) Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery: "Re-thinking the work ethic"; (c) The Abolition of Work by Bob Black.
