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The New Worker Aesthetic
I hate to make myself sound old (I’m only 26 after all - okay, 27 in a month and a half), but I’m reaching a point where I can say that I’ve seen things change within my own lifetime. And it’s only when those things begin to change that you really even begin to notice that there were even “things” in the first place.
Maybe it’s just the Pacific Northwest, or maybe it’s just the odd mix of hooligans I have come to call my friends up here, but I have started to see a trend happening with regards to jobs. Before I ever took a job doing manual labor myself earlier this year, I started realizing that - with only one exception I can think of - all of my closest friends are working service-industry jobs. And not just service industry jobs, but many of us were working in extremely “blue collar” jobs, like construction and landscaping.
And it might just be me noticing my old attitudes about people and the world falling away, but I remember a time during the 1990’s when these types of jobs were more looked-down on, because we were taught to strive for “better” jobs with then-booming tech companies, or in marketing or finance. And certainly there are still people who go that route, but I have noticed a dramatic counter-reaction against such things, if only among the people I surround myself with. Most of us have given up on the ideas of “careers,” or of “building our resumes” and few of us seem to care much at all about money, just so long as we have enough of it to pay rent and buy a few drinks.
Maybe I’m just sliding into some kind of late-twenties complacency though, but I really do sense a change in the air. And I don’t think it’s just me or just us. I only came to realize what it was recently, after buying myself a pair of over-alls, and sort of sensing the identity shift within myself that went along with it. After I’d done it, I realized it was some kind of statement about realigning my values to something more “earthy,” to something more rooted in the physical, the here and now, life and the community I find myself in and have created around me. Not that I am some kind of avatar of cultural change, but that was first how I noticed it: within myself. Which then enabled me to see it in others, and to pull together one of the threads which unites us all. Who are we? Where are we going? And what are we going to need to get there? The thing I think many of us are realizing now is that the values which popular culture and “proper” society have bred into us are not the values which work on the street, in our lives, or when we get down to brass tacks. And I see a revival of exploring what those things really are, along with a revival of the idea of hard work, and using your body and there being something noble and good in actually earning the money you make at the end of the day, and being tired because you’re tired - instead of tired because you find your life to be endlessly tedious and confining.
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November 18th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Glad your happy with working hard Tim. If you stay in the gardening field you may be able to do that type of work for some time. It is noted to be one of the toughest and most physical jobs possible to do. Of course a number of years ago it even was much harder.
I suppose it could be possible for you to play hard as opposed to work hard.
The idea of being rewarded with pay for an exhausting day of work is pretty much an anachronism.
It sounds like you are romanticizing it . Why must it be either cooped up in a stifling information age position, or toiling away plantation style. ?
Most jobs are being automated. Stay healty.
November 18th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Well yes, that’s exactly my point.
You’re right - I would much rather be experiencing an exhausting day of work and *not* get paid for it - but to simply have that be my life and what I choose to do. I want to find a way to remove the financial aspect as a motivation in my actions altogether.
November 18th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
I think thats a great idea.
November 18th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
I seriously think I don’t have the skill set for manual labor. I mean,seriously, its not a choice of it being beneath me or not, I’m just not got good at it. I’m not efficient, I’m slow. Even though I am fairly athletic and healthy.
So I work entry level jobs that are really easy, like taking care of developmentally disabled people, to me its easy. I have lots of free time and it pays pretty well.
I am hoping I can pull off being a writer because I can’t do lots of other jobs, like retail,and I don’t have a degree.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Hah! I’m younger than you and all of my former high school classmates are now single mothers with two or three kids working multiple jobs attempting to pay the bills & rent and are all aiming for a certain level of “status.” I suppose that means buying the new PS3 and expensive televisions, who knows? I certainly did not grow up in a community full of middle-class white kids who aimed for grad school (though of course there were some who did).
Your little social network might be sick of money, as well as mine and others along similar lines, but the majority of the population who has even a little bit of it is blazing forward towards the heights of materiality.
November 19th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
I recently refused 3 job offers from major tech companies (tech writer) and took a job as a gardener for a 3rd of the money.
But I had the luxury to choose to do this due to:
-my wife cooperating as she saw that I was happy working as a gardener:)
-my being committed enough to work as a ‘grunt’ for two years and then to spend my sweat-earned money and time in getting professional gardening qualifications
-having already ‘proven’ that I could earn a lot of money, I had the ‘permission’ to do work I love more while earning less
-slowly implementing the principles of Voluntary Simplicity
I know from experience that I prefer the body-on gardening job since:
-I leave the work at the work site and am not on a 24 hour cellphone-radiation leash
-I work with growing things and see the sky during the day and breathe unconditioned air
-Manual labour is meditative for me, even though much of it might not be ‘romantic’
-I can be back at home early enough to spend time with my wife and son, as you can buy money but not time
But everybody has to pursue their own quest for happiness, only somebody who has gone through something similar will understand.
Hope these ramblings of an old man (35) make sense:)
November 20th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
I work with my hands for a living and love it…been doing it for 7 years now. A few years ago, I noticed most of my friends do physical work for a living, as well. Except for me, they all have advanced degrees etc, but we prefer working with our hands. Most of our wives or girlfriends work white-collar jobs. It seems to be a male trend to me.
I’ve worked fairly hard to develop enough of a clientele ensuring a decent amount of money, while keeping a nice chunk of time available for other interests, including wife and future kids.
One more thing, re: financial motivation: I’m financially motivated, although in the world’s eyes they’d laugh at that. we live very simply and don’t need much, but the motivation is there to an extent. At the same time, I truly love the work. That is what motivates me. if a person can’t afford the cost, I am happy to provide my service for little money. Money is a reality, but it isn’t a motivation. Having an excuse to do the work is.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Yes, you’re right!
Well put!
November 20th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Money is the reality and motivation that makes our peculiar culture go round. The world culture also. It is foursquare the motivator.
Little pieces of paper with little glyph like markings on them . Ha.
Money talks and you will not be riding or eating without it.
November 20th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I get around on bike mostly. Food–I garden and I have farmer friends and grocer friends I barter with.
You’re right though, I lament alongside Allen Ginsberg over not being able to pay the mortgage with my good looks.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
I think their is a glamorization to beyond a mere romanticism that goes along working with your “hands”. I worked industrial construction briefly and the level of machismo and self importance in what people did and the importance they placed on it I think rivaled any renaissance guild.
Granted the buildings would never get built without tons and tons of machinery, the workers all seemed to act as if they personally built the buildings, and the machinery were just more of the outer world they had to subdue. Which sure was somewhat true, but I think alot of it to is a compensation for people who really are dependent on their tools for accomplishing the majority of their tasks. I think it’s this amplification of their intention that gives them their power and self worth, pressing a button and moving thousands of pounds, or in another realm executing thousands of lines of code. Everyone works with their hands, and body, more physical jobs just make this more readily apparent, allowing more swagger and tangible braggin rights, (I built that) but as Bertrand Russel said their really are only two types of jobs, moving things from point A to point B, and telling others to.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Funny brekin.
You are so right . The machine age really started with the steam engine . Before that it was all human labor , with animals , and really the basic mode of society was cast that way.
Mechanical energy took over from human energy in about 1913 , and then like you say, we manipulate the machines around to do things.
A human can put out about 1/20th of a horse power of energy .
A machine and incredible amount.
That’s lots of energy in our hands to wield around . No doubt understandable that the workers reflected that in their estimation of things done by themselves.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Not sure I follow what you’re saying - as we are all using the same tool to accomplish our tasks: the body and mind.
Why shouldn’t people be proud of the work they do - no matter what it is?
November 20th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
We all use our self, to varying degrees, but your not a carpenter if you don’t have your hammer and nails, or a cop without your badge and gun. Alot of people identify with their “tools” or the trappings of their tools, at the expense of their “selves” which I would say is not a tool, but the thing itself, you may become a tool when someone uses you for some other aim.
I don’t know if I was clear but I guess what I’m trying to say is alot of people who sing the song of working with their hands as somehow being more purer or closer to real work aren’t talking about basket weaving or digging up roots but having a tool that magnifies their “handiwork” 10, 100, 1000 fold.
I think it would be great to be proud of what one does as work, and their are different measures, but ultimately I think you have to look at what your work does to promote good things, natural systems, that benefit life. A little shame is a good thing, if a person goes home and feels great after finishing acres of pavement for another strip mall, then I would feel better, and it may be in everyone’s interest down the road if they didn’t feel proud about that.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Yes! Thats a huge thing i’ve been thinking about in my life lately.
Ohh… i see what you’re saying
November 21st, 2006 at 6:22 am
Enjoying work is very important. A good working environment - access to the ‘real world’ - is also very important. The quick reasoning here is that you spend most of your waking hours at work, and the natural world is where all the new ideas will come from. But deeper thinking about this sort of thing reveals a very big rabbit hole.
November 21st, 2006 at 7:04 am
Which is…?
November 21st, 2006 at 11:07 am
Er … I mean things like ‘what do you mean by enjoy?’: does earning money to enjoy yourself count? That is, does the work have value in itself, ‘intrinsic’ value? Or is it merely a means to an end? What IS intrinsic value, anyway? And what has intrinsic value, if there even is such a thing? And then consider the working environment: if a good working environment is conducive to inspiration and productive work, what do we mean by ‘inspiration’ anyway? Where do creative ideas come from? Same place as scientific hypotheses, methinks: we observe the world, and as if by magic a hypothesis appears…
My take on this is that it’s all to do with maintaining a sense of identity. That’s what living systems do: they distinguish themselves from their environment. So a job where you’re a zombie following mindless rules all day is no good at all. The best work is done by people with minds separate from their environment, people maintaining their own identities. From these isolated systems flows creative thought. There’s a paradox to be found here: if you understand an intelligent system completely, it’ll no longer be intelligent… gives the run around to von Neumann and his ‘If you can tell me exactly what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do exactly that!’. And we LIKE paradoxes. A paradox is a sign that there’s something really interesting nearby, just out of the corner of your eye… Worth reading about John Searle’s Chinese Room and Fritjof Capra’s ‘The Hidden Connections’.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:45 pm
blue or white–if you don’t take care of yourself, work will wreck you.
October 21st, 2008 at 5:32 pm
[…] America’s future is Green, Green Industry, Green Agribusiness: supporting local communities, exporting specialty items, regional culture and excess food to other continents. At the heart of such a radical re-organization stands squarely the work-a-day American, in all his glory. Should be an interesting couple decades. […]