More on the subject of work

Here's more about this awesome excerpt from the new book I mentioned last night ("How to be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson). Now, there's admittedly a lot of humor involved here (which isn't bad) but also some really cool insights into how lots of us Westerners got all screwed up with the idea that we are supposed to be busy and productive at every waking moment or ELSE! For example, "The English historian EP Thompson, in his classic book The Making Of The English Working Class (1963), argues that the creation of the job is a relatively recent phenomenon, born out of the Industrial Revolution. Before the advent of steam-powered machines and factories in the mid-18th century, work was a much more haphazard affair. People worked, yes, they did "jobs", but the idea of being yoked to one particular employer to the exclusion of all other money-making activity was unknown." And after a really telling example about the work/life rhythm of pre-Industrial Revolution weavers, he goes on to say: "England, then, before the invention of the dark satanic mills, was a nation of idlers. But in time the new Protestant work ethic was successful. The Industrial Revolution, above all, was a battle between hard work and laziness, and hard work won. The thundering polemicist Thomas Carlyle did much damage in the 19th century by promoting the notion of the dignity or even the romance of hard graft. "Man was created to work, not to speculate, or feel, or dream," he wrote, adding, "Every idle moment is treason." It is your patriotic duty to work hard - another myth, particularly convenient to the rich who, as Bertrand Russell said, "preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect". Or as the late, great British writer Jeffrey Bernard put it: "As if there was something romantic and glamorous about hard work ... if there was something romantic about it, the Duke of Westminster would be digging his own fucking garden, wouldn't he?" Um, Wow. All props to The Guardian and the author. There's a lot more in the excerpt, about how even being ill has become something to feel guilty about, how sex has become another thing on the vast "to-do" list... So, I guess other people are thinking seriously and humorously about this issue. Very interesting. Check it out.