posted
I was arguing with someone I met online about the value of hard physical labor. I am, or at least was, of the opinion that it should only be done if you have a specific goal in mind, that it's not really an end in and of itself. My dad was a school principal, he has tended to hire other people to do a lot of his work around the house that requires much skill, like building things, fixing cars, etc.. Her dad, OTOH, is a builder/contractor, as are a couple of her brothers. I definitely am known to engage in hard labor if it has an entertaining and unusual goal, like growing bananas in a cold climate (lots of hauling around fertilizer and soil amendments) or carrying Luna 9 around the house. However, it has to be entertaining. Dunno. Thoughts?
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:I was arguing with someone I met online about the value of hard physical labor. I am, or at least was, of the opinion that it should only be done if you have a specific goal in mind, that it's not really an end in and of itself.
What counts as an end? Most people do things, physical or not, for a reason. They may do it for money, for exercise, for necessity (some people can't/don't hire people for jobs they can do themselves), the pleasure of doing something difficult for themselves, to burn off energy/emotion or for the mental returns of physical labour.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I like doing physical labor, even if it's not necessary, just because it makes me feel good. So why not?
Posts: 930 | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hard work is good for the body and the mind, to know that you can accomplish something in that way.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just read an article that kind of relates to this subject. I'm of the opinion that lacking the expertise for many projects is not very good excuse in the age of the internet. Even as a well paid professional I will continue to do some things myself. That being said, it is not necessary to do everything yourself and sometimes you even know how to do something already and just don't have the time or inclination.
posted
I feel like hard work might have value in and of itself. I was always taught, however, that the real fun comes in finding the most efficient means to your end. What's the fastest and most effective way of doing something? In a way, it's trying to minimize the amount of hard labor you have to do.
I also have "figure it out" abilities. I think that's one of the most important aspects of the 18 years of school I've been through. Even if I don't know how to build a house, I can figure it out, and probably succeed.
A corollary to this is that my friend Kevin was an extremely hard worker, but he didn't work smart. He studied his butt off constantly, not realizing that his methods were not effective, and he still got C's. I tried to tell him, but he was convinced that just putting in the hours was all he had to do. This "hard work for the sake of hard work" attitude is wasteful, if you ask me--of time and effort.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by steven: I definitely am known to engage in hard labor if it has an entertaining and unusual goal, like growing bananas in a cold climate (lots of hauling around fertilizer and soil amendments) or carrying Luna 9 around the house. However, it has to be entertaining. Dunno. Thoughts?
I engage in hard labor not because I find it particularly fun or interesting, but merely because it's a fact of life. There are lot of things that I would rather not do, but recognize that it's much better for me (physically, spiritually, financially) if I undertake them myself. I always feel a particular sense of pleasure and peace upon doing something physical whether it's cleaning a basement, building new shelves or working in the gardens.
Maybe that's why I chose the particular community in which I live. Manual labor is very important to my particular flavor of nuns. We are all required to assist in the monastery work. For us, it is a way of allowing our body to be useful without taxing our mind so as to be able to open up to God and to our own inner thoughts.
Posts: 340 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
I also have "figure it out" abilities. I think that's one of the most important aspects of the 18 years of school I've been through. Even if I don't know how to build a house, I can figure it out, and probably succeed.
I hope you don't mean that literally...
quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin:
A corollary to this is that my friend Kevin was an extremely hard worker, but he didn't work smart. He studied his butt off constantly, not realizing that his methods were not effective, and he still got C's. I tried to tell him, but he was convinced that just putting in the hours was all he had to do. This "hard work for the sake of hard work" attitude is wasteful, if you ask me--of time and effort.
Well, when I think of "hard, fulfilling" labor, I do NOT think of studying. Studying just makes me tired and grumpy, and does not leave me feeling accomplished. Working outside, exercising, these are the things that are good for your body and mind. Even writing a good history paper feels more fulfilling than straight up studying, though not as fulfilling as exercising my body. But still, the concept of "work smarter, not harder" is a very good one .
Posts: 930 | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
When I work in the garden (as rarely as possible), I feel grubby and itchy. I felt a sense of pleasure and peace recently when I paid someone to clean my house for the first time. I get what you're saying, katdog, and using physical labor to get closer to God makes sense to me, even though I haven't experienced it. I actually expected to feel guilty for sitting around my house while someone else worked, but I didn't. I felt a profound sense of relief.
I think hard work is good for me...I just know for sure that I don't get the same fulfillment from hard physical work as I do from taxing mental work. I exercise because I know it's good for me, and it does feel good on a certain level...but not nearly as good as spending a day working hard on revamping my curriculum.
Posts: 834 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Here's something weird: when I'm sedentary, my mind does not wander. But when I'm at work, hanging drywall or sommat, I think up some crazy stuff and keep myself entertained with mental exercise. It's somewhat similar to what others describe happening to them in the shower.
As a result of this, I am not really big on physical downtime, internet browsing being the notable exception. I even hate just lying in bed trying to go to sleep, so I consume books with reckless abandon until I zonk out.
When i exercise regularly, I take the product of that time and usually incorporate it into writing.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
I think society as a whole is diminished as soon as we start to think of labor as something to be avoided.
If you go to a Pete Seegar concert (do it soon, the guy's 88 years old) you'll see him use a sledgehammer to keep time as he sings a labor song. It's a little scary, because he's actually hammering a wedge into a knot in a log, and it it weren't for the knot, the log would split. He's really hitting that thing.
Now some people might think that this is a quirky part of Pete's act, but in fact it goes to the root of his overall message. Pete's politics have always been closely associated with labor (hence the association with communism). His songs tend to revolve around labor; working together to achieve an end, whether that's building a ship, cleaning up a river, working on a chain gang, or building a railroad. His songs reflect that ethic. His trademark is getting his audience to sing together, to find harmonies and rhythms that work together. Like singing, working together doesn't mean in unison, it means in harmony. Each worker puts their own skill and their own style into it, and the result is an example of "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts."
Then there's the social aspect of laboring together. Barn raisings, quilting bees (yes quilting is labor). Sure you're working together to build a product, but it's the cameraderie, the gossip, the learning and sharing of skills and styles that builds a culture. Even hard unskilled labor like breaking rocks and coal mining has enhanced our cultural self awareness. Where do you think "I've been working on the railroad," "Take this hammer and carry it to the captain," " Sixteen tons," came from? Even slavery's collective experience of labor gave rise to musical forms in spirituals and gospel music. Imagine how much poorer we'd be if slaves were forced to work in isolation, or not allowed to sing in the fields?
Finally there's the environmentalism. Many of the problems we face today have to do with the perspective that physical labor is better done by utilizing fossil fuels instead of muscle power. "Split wood, not atoms" is a common Seegar phrase, and while I think it's a false dichotomy (split atoms, not coal molecules doesn't have the same ring to it), I think the point he's making has less to do with environmental impact of the fuel than with the laziness of people that think that the physical labor of splitting wood is somehow beneath them. Ride your bike, take a walk, use a handsaw. Nowadays even hammers aren't muscle powered. Why? The same people that drive SUV's and use nail guns drive to the gym and lift weights. But there's something natural and organic to gaining your exercise through the same labor that built the Empire State Building (yes, the Empire State Building was built predominantly with muscle power), riding your bike to work, or splitting wood to heat your house. Like Pete Seegar does. At 88 years old.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Nowadays even hammers aren't muscle powered. Why? The same people that drive SUV's and use nail guns drive to the gym and lift weights.
This is a generalization, but I don't think you mean it to be a representation of reality, just an illustration of your point, which I understand. I agree with you about society being dimished when people see hard labor as something to be avoided, but using a nail gun and a circular saw is hardly an abandonment of manual labor. I have experience in that manner, and I prefer those methods. I would really rather not use a hammer and screwdriver for every single nail and screw. It's bad for the elbows.
While labor can be spiritually and physically fulfilling and is certainly beneficial to everyone, I find the glorification of physical labor troubling. It shouldn't be, and isn't, an end unto itself.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:I find the glorification of physical labor troubling. It shouldn't be, and isn't, an end unto itself.
See "Holes" and "Cool Hand Luke" for an exercise in labor as an end unto itself. That's just cruelty, justified by the phrase "it builds character."
But I have trouble with your phrase "glorification of physical labor." If a hammer damages your elbows, then fine, a nail gun is justified. But physical labor should be the default, not the exception. Modern humans are prone to repetitive use injuries in large part because we don't have the proper muscle tone to stabilize our joints. That's not the hammer's fault. It's the lack of exercise.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I spent a summer working construction, in between my Sophmore and Junior years in college, building a roller coaster. It was a great time, I found it very rewarding. I grew in all sorts of ways, including the sense of "realness" I got from the work I was doing.
There was a fellow, Boyd Schiss, who worked our crane, and was sort of a go-to guy for building anything. One day, toward the end of the summer, I was sitting with him and I said, "Boyd, maybe I should quit school and just do this for a living." I wasn't really considering it, I'm not cut out for construction, but it was sort of a romantic idea that just struck me. Work with my hands, create something real, etc.
Anyway, Boyd turned to me and very seriously said, "Don't be stupid. Finish school and get a good job. Trust me, you don't want to do this forever." It struck me, the wisdom of that; Boyd was compelled to work this job, because he wasn't really suited to anything else. And he saw the value in *not* having to do demanding physical labor to provide for your family. It reminds me of Chuckie's warning to Will in "Good Will Hunting." <edited for language>
quote:Tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this [stuff]. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. You're too much of a [coward] to cash it in, and that's bull****. 'Cause I'd do anything to have what you got. So would any of these guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years.
In principle I agree that there's value in feeling a connection with the physical world, through raising crops or building barns or splitting logs or whatever. But I'm grateful that I can choose to do those things for personal fulfillment rather than being compelled to do them for survival.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
Then there's the social aspect of laboring together. Barn raisings, quilting bees (yes quilting is labor). Sure you're working together to build a product, but it's the cameraderie, the gossip, the learning and sharing of skills and styles that builds a culture.
I agree with this completely. I spend a lot of time cracking nuts, peeling apples (and carrots and potatoes, and on and on and on), and baking bread with groups of people. Sure, we could buy a can of mixed nuts, a jar of apple pie filling and a loaf of bread from the store and enjoy an evening of sitting around doing nothing but gossiping and carrying on. I think, though, that we get so much more from sharing in the labor and not sitting idle as we all our lives.
I also don't think anyone here is saying that physical labor should be "an end unto itself." If somebody sent me out to move a pile of leaves from one side of the grounds to the other just to "teach me the value of hardwork", I think I'd pack up and leave. Manual labor is about accomplishing that which needs to be accomplished. Thus, I have no problem going to rake all of the leaves off the front lawn so that it can be used for a picnic.
Posts: 340 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
After tearing off the dinning room floor, I commented on Saturday night that I like to do some real work maybe once a year so I can remember how good it feels to stop and lay down.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
Oh, god, someone got me one of those pampered chef apple lathes for Christmas one year. I hate it with a passion, especially because I make apple pies a lot, and I'm good at peeling apples. I also dislike the shape the apple pieces come out in, spirals instead of wedges. They just don't hold the spices and juice the same way.
quote:If somebody sent me out to move a pile of leaves from one side of the grounds to the other just to "teach me the value of hardwork"
That was the Cool Hand Luke reference. Luke is made to dig his own grave, and then fill it back in, repeatedly, until he gives in.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hard physical labor is much like exercising in the sense that a chiselled body shows discipline and perseverence, except that the rewards maybe a patched roof instead of a toned six-pack.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's all about balance. You have to have SOME physical labor in your life, to experience the joy of it, but not so much that it becomes torture.
Posts: 930 | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: That was the Cool Hand Luke reference. Luke is made to dig his own grave, and then fill it back in, repeatedly, until he gives in.
Sorry, I don't see a lot of movies so I didn't get the reference!
Posts: 340 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think there is a big difference between "physical Labor" and "building/doing something with your own sweat and effort."
I finished a wooden fence for my back yard recently. I had conceived of the idea for it, dug the holes (6 with a shovel, 20 with a machine since the rocky/root filled soil I lived in made digging a 3 hour job), mixed and poured the concrete, then bored and laid every single fence post. While my family and friends helped with a dozen or so, and my wife helped considerably more, I spent a lot of time building it.
When it was done I felt great, but I believe that while I was building it, I felt better.
I have never been into exercise, since to me it seemed the only thing I was building was my own body, and I personally wasn't into that type of building.
Torture, ala Cool Hand Luke, and prison pictures from around the world, often contain times where prisoners did labor that had no goal. They worked without creating, and that was torture.
When we build something we trade our pain and sweat and time for a finished product. To glorify the pain and sweat and time as the product worthy in itself is wrong.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've noticed how much happier my husband is when he gets his hands dirty and does some serious physical work. It not only mentally refreshes him; it also causes those great feeling endorphins to refresh him in other ways. It gives him an “all’s right with the world” feeling, if only temporarily.
Come to think of it, it affects me the same way.
He's a busy man. He doesn't really have the time to work in the yard, making it the prettiest on the block I might add, yet he makes the time, because of how it makes him feel afterwards.
I know he's proud of what he's accomplished, but he's also proud that he put that sweat and pain into it, to accomplish it. He's old school in the no pain, no gain department.
Posts: 3771 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I get what you're saying, katdog, and using physical labor to get closer to God makes sense to me, even though I haven't experienced it. I actually expected to feel guilty for sitting around my house while someone else worked, but I didn't. I felt a profound sense of relief.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
