The Perversion of Work Ethic
To work is to be valued, but this is not the same as doing valuable and meaningful work.
I’ve been examining the nature and meaning of work since 2015. Quietly, reading material on the subject and having conversations with people, and it seems to me that how and why we work is perverted.
There is an imperative to work, and we don’t question it until half or more of our life is done. We come to a point in our life and career, and we wonder, ‘what the fuck am I doing?’
It seems that the imperative to work is flawed, and all that was promised either implicitly or explicitly was a spoof. Any human experience of work to the contrary is an exception to the rule. It is true, however, many people ignore the nudge toward the truth of the matter through an undeniable need created through their social circumstance or the chasing of a dream.
To work is to be valued, but this is not the same as doing valuable and meaningful work. The idea we are brought up with and that we believe almost unquestionably is an economic one. We are born into the machine of the economy, and we are subject to it. As such, to be valuable is to be valuable to the machine of the economy. It is an ideal, and it is not tangible or real in any sense.
