NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
September 4, 2011
God is in the details
My Gaelic, Calvinist ancestors (on my mama's side), were very clear about the meaning of Labour Day. As they said, that is the day when we work especially hard, to prove how much our efficiency has improved over the last year.Now, I will tell you a secret about them (if you promise not to tell my mother). I learned this as a child, visiting their native Cape Breton. These people were droll, on the edge of mischievous. My maternal grandmother, somewhat over the edge. "Post-moderns" since time out of mind, they tended to communicate in layered irony. Often as not, the ironies doubled or quadrupled, which is to say, cancelled out, and the truth is they were very hardworking. On this stock of Scotchmen, and similar cultural materials (Norman French; Methodist English; escaped Irish; relocated American) Canada constructed her work ethic. By any broadly accepted statistical standard, we are among the world's most productive people, and this despite the fact that, at any given moment, most of us don't know what we're doing. (Imagine if we did!) But what is work, the more philosophical may ask. We know what it is in physics (a scalar quantity, measured in joules), but what is it for a human being? It can be slavery. When a contemporary urban office worker describes himself as a "wage slave," he is intending an irony. But back up, and look at the building in which he works, or even the arrangement of furniture within his department, and we may detect aspects of a double irony. (Two negatives make a positive.) He really is a slave to the wage. How long, after winning the lottery, would he continue to work there? The shocking answer is, many do not quit their jobs immediately. I have gleaned this by reading actual accounts of lottery winners. Some angel has told them it would be imprudent. They wait until the reality of unearned wealth sinks in, to let the life of irresponsible leisure begin to undermine them. Am I doing this only for the money? And for myself, alone? Or out of laziness, since it would be much harder to earn a living in a more satisfying way? Do I love my job, or am I self-indentured? My late father checked out of industrial design promptly on his 65th birthday. Or rather, he checked out of being paid for it (or for teaching it). He continued to take on design work - tasks which seemed worth doing - but refused to charge for his services. This way he could do only what he enjoyed, and tell clients who annoyed him to progress, hell-ward. That, at least, was the theory. In practice, services obtained for free are valued at nothing, and dear papa found clients who just wasted his time. That is why, incidentally, true voluntary work is almost thankless, in this world. And why it is so noble. And such thanks as may be obtained - in the hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, refugee shelters - are the very gleam of Heaven. Most of us will not win the lottery. And few are born to great wealth. Yet as a dear Czech friend put it, once, when asked if a certain unusual person was independently wealthy: "No. He is independently poor." My own view is that we should pursue what is noble, and that work is ennobling. Or rather, potentially ennobling. When I look at the urban world around me (and I am unambiguously a city boy), I find examples of it everywhere. But that may be because I don't own a car, and get from A to B mostly by walking. On a more analytical view, it seems to me, the great majority of jobs involve very little skill or craft or moral stamina. They involve the production of goods and services which the average human being would be better off without. I see even relatively poor people, struggling back from the malls with consumer goods that are tawdry, and joyless - yet which advertisers have persuaded them they cannot live without. They worked (or collected welfare) for this? Statistically, our economy is a great success; morally, it is a catastrophic failure. For an economy that was broadly successful would not only feed, clothe, and shelter every one, but make available to each real joy in labour (both paid and unpaid), and in consumption, too. Not "rewards," as a union boss would understand the term, but intrinsic rewards. "God is in the details." A true craftsman works even on the details that are invisible to his customers. He works, as it were, not only for them, but in the sight of God, who sees everything. Conscience and self-discipline inform each movement of hand and eye. He takes his pleasure in doing a job well; in exceeding every regulatory standard. Each object is made, each task performed, as if it were his last. He has a calling. And the strange thing is, behind all the garbage heap of statistics, and the pace and stress of "getting by," people long for this. We were made to be craftsmen. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top