In the Sweat of Thy Face
by Jeff Culbreath
Russell Kirk summarized the problem of modern life in one word: boredom, both spiritual and social. Boredom, he reminds us, is a child of Sloth, which you may recall is the seventh Deadly Sin. That we moderns are bored is evidenced, among other things, by our low rate of births and our obsession with luxury and entertainment. It has been said that all of modern society has taken up the vices of the old aristocracy: not having to worry about survival, the masses now direct all their energies toward sensual pleasures and trivial amusements. We are "living for the weekend". And while boredom may be a disease of individual souls, nevertheless we must admit that our social institutions have created a situation in which boredom is our constant companion.
There are probably lots of reasons for this epidemic of boredom, but one of them is no doubt a decline in meaningful work. The majority of men in our land work at "fluff" jobs: that is, jobs involved with producing and marketing things that, at best, are wasteful and frivolous, and at worst, are a positive social plague. We work at these jobs because we need the money, not because they are jobs worth doing for their own sake. Some industries, especially in the world of finance, were invented for the sole purpose of making money, depending entirely upon the practices of usury and what amounts to patently false advertising.
So we are faced with the fact that there is more intrinsic value in doing the nightly dishes than there is in selling life insurance or installing television cable -- and the latter may well be a crime against humanity. In his masterful work titled The Restoration of Christian Culture, Dr. John Senior writes:
But one of the bitterest questions the majority of us must ask is whether, even if we do a good job, the work is good to begin with, that is, if it is really necessary to the common good. A large amount of work in the bureaucratic state consists in what is called management but is really manipulation of labor, supplies, and markets; some is gambling on the ups and downs of markets, and some, taking interest on loans The whole of our semisocialist society is a vast, lopsided diseconomy in which few do necessary work and many are parasitic. It would be rash to fix any definite degree of sin on the part of those involved in parasitic work, but from the point of view of economic health, we are suffering from a plague. Economic life has become an occasion of sin in which virtue becomes morally impossible for the majority.
We find a similar theme developed by Miss Dorothy Sayers in Creed or Chaos:
We should ask of an enterprise, not 'will it pay?' but 'is it good?'; of a man, not 'what does he make?' but 'what is his work worth?'; of goods, not 'can we induce people to buy them?' but 'are they useful things well made?'; of employment, not 'how much a week?' but 'will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?' And shareholders in -- let us say -- brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders' meetings and demanding to know, not merely, where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly, and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: 'What goes into the beer?'
We may infer from Miss Sayers' brewing company that she is not talking about a narrow utilitarian notion of "usefulness" or "necessity" when it comes to work. Beer may not be a strict necessity in life, yet we may bravely state that beer is an objective social good, when used responsibly, and that other forms of consumption, such as stereo headphones or greeting cards, are much less so. We need not fear that a Catholic economy has no room for breweries and pipe makers, for chocolate factories and opera houses, or even for laptop computers and digital watches. However, insofar as the greater part of the laptop computer industry, or any industry, relies upon creating demand where none exists, we have a problem and a crisis in meaningful work.
Therefore, the great mass of men in our modern economy cannot help but be bored. They work at their jobs for the mere purpose of earning a paycheck; what they do, and how well they do it, is of secondary or even tertiary importance. For most of us, our work will consume at least one half of our waking hours, and intuitively we know that one half of our conscious life is spent doing something of very little consequence. We are, perhaps, like the Hebrews under the Pharoah's yoke, with admittedly better working conditions, making bricks from straw to build palaces for our economic masters. The end of our work is either frivolous or wicked, and even if it is not, we do not see it through, and we have no loyalty to its ultimate purpose.
As protection against boredom and exploitation, and to ensure the full development of human personality, the Church has consistently taught that the highest and best way for a man to make his living is with his own property. This is the doctrine embodied in magesterial documents such as Rerum Novarum, and is behind the distributist economic philosophy of Chesterton and Belloc - that every household have at least some modest means of economic production at its own free disposal. According to the Distributists, this is not a utopian dream, but came closest to fruition during the climax of Christian civilization in the thirteenth century. We may therefore ask, with Chesterton, why it is that when a man chooses a profession in our day, nine times out of ten he will choose looking after someone else's property rather than looking after his own.
Although it can be difficult to draw the line where the rubber meets the road, sometimes the choice is crystal clear. I once decided to quit a job trading commodity futures, cold-calling fifty unsuspecting investors per day, after my first client, a very young man with a young family, lost $2,500 that he probably could not afford. Though I had asked all the right questions, here was a real person harmed by slick marketing techniques designed to appeal to his own greed. To be sure, there does need to be a futures market for certain commodities, but there does not need to be a profiteering "industry" as such surrounding the markets. And there are a thousand more superfluous industries just like this.
Oh, to be a farmer! To be a teacher! A soldier! A priest! These, and many other worthy professions, are still with us, and they are capable of infusing one's work with meaning and purpose. If it is not too late, capable Christian men should flock to such positions, even at the price of significant financial sacrifice. And women should flock to the all-important vocations of motherhood and consecrated virginity. To eat one's bread "in the sweat of thy face" was never meant to be a life of wasted talent or fruitless labor. Yet for many of us a full recovery may take generations. White collar "admin" types - those with college degrees who have never learned a real trade or profession - will have to humbly accept our gentle penance, settling for honest work which does as little harm as possible, while raising our sons to do something better
by Jeff Culbreath
Russell Kirk summarized the problem of modern life in one word: boredom, both spiritual and social. Boredom, he reminds us, is a child of Sloth, which you may recall is the seventh Deadly Sin. That we moderns are bored is evidenced, among other things, by our low rate of births and our obsession with luxury and entertainment. It has been said that all of modern society has taken up the vices of the old aristocracy: not having to worry about survival, the masses now direct all their energies toward sensual pleasures and trivial amusements. We are "living for the weekend". And while boredom may be a disease of individual souls, nevertheless we must admit that our social institutions have created a situation in which boredom is our constant companion.
There are probably lots of reasons for this epidemic of boredom, but one of them is no doubt a decline in meaningful work. The majority of men in our land work at "fluff" jobs: that is, jobs involved with producing and marketing things that, at best, are wasteful and frivolous, and at worst, are a positive social plague. We work at these jobs because we need the money, not because they are jobs worth doing for their own sake. Some industries, especially in the world of finance, were invented for the sole purpose of making money, depending entirely upon the practices of usury and what amounts to patently false advertising.
So we are faced with the fact that there is more intrinsic value in doing the nightly dishes than there is in selling life insurance or installing television cable -- and the latter may well be a crime against humanity. In his masterful work titled The Restoration of Christian Culture, Dr. John Senior writes:
But one of the bitterest questions the majority of us must ask is whether, even if we do a good job, the work is good to begin with, that is, if it is really necessary to the common good. A large amount of work in the bureaucratic state consists in what is called management but is really manipulation of labor, supplies, and markets; some is gambling on the ups and downs of markets, and some, taking interest on loans The whole of our semisocialist society is a vast, lopsided diseconomy in which few do necessary work and many are parasitic. It would be rash to fix any definite degree of sin on the part of those involved in parasitic work, but from the point of view of economic health, we are suffering from a plague. Economic life has become an occasion of sin in which virtue becomes morally impossible for the majority.
We find a similar theme developed by Miss Dorothy Sayers in Creed or Chaos:
We should ask of an enterprise, not 'will it pay?' but 'is it good?'; of a man, not 'what does he make?' but 'what is his work worth?'; of goods, not 'can we induce people to buy them?' but 'are they useful things well made?'; of employment, not 'how much a week?' but 'will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?' And shareholders in -- let us say -- brewing companies, would astonish the directorate by arising at shareholders' meetings and demanding to know, not merely, where the profits go or what dividends are to be paid, not even merely whether the workers wages are sufficient and the conditions of labor satisfactory, but loudly, and with a proper sense of personal responsibility: 'What goes into the beer?'
We may infer from Miss Sayers' brewing company that she is not talking about a narrow utilitarian notion of "usefulness" or "necessity" when it comes to work. Beer may not be a strict necessity in life, yet we may bravely state that beer is an objective social good, when used responsibly, and that other forms of consumption, such as stereo headphones or greeting cards, are much less so. We need not fear that a Catholic economy has no room for breweries and pipe makers, for chocolate factories and opera houses, or even for laptop computers and digital watches. However, insofar as the greater part of the laptop computer industry, or any industry, relies upon creating demand where none exists, we have a problem and a crisis in meaningful work.
Therefore, the great mass of men in our modern economy cannot help but be bored. They work at their jobs for the mere purpose of earning a paycheck; what they do, and how well they do it, is of secondary or even tertiary importance. For most of us, our work will consume at least one half of our waking hours, and intuitively we know that one half of our conscious life is spent doing something of very little consequence. We are, perhaps, like the Hebrews under the Pharoah's yoke, with admittedly better working conditions, making bricks from straw to build palaces for our economic masters. The end of our work is either frivolous or wicked, and even if it is not, we do not see it through, and we have no loyalty to its ultimate purpose.
As protection against boredom and exploitation, and to ensure the full development of human personality, the Church has consistently taught that the highest and best way for a man to make his living is with his own property. This is the doctrine embodied in magesterial documents such as Rerum Novarum, and is behind the distributist economic philosophy of Chesterton and Belloc - that every household have at least some modest means of economic production at its own free disposal. According to the Distributists, this is not a utopian dream, but came closest to fruition during the climax of Christian civilization in the thirteenth century. We may therefore ask, with Chesterton, why it is that when a man chooses a profession in our day, nine times out of ten he will choose looking after someone else's property rather than looking after his own.
Although it can be difficult to draw the line where the rubber meets the road, sometimes the choice is crystal clear. I once decided to quit a job trading commodity futures, cold-calling fifty unsuspecting investors per day, after my first client, a very young man with a young family, lost $2,500 that he probably could not afford. Though I had asked all the right questions, here was a real person harmed by slick marketing techniques designed to appeal to his own greed. To be sure, there does need to be a futures market for certain commodities, but there does not need to be a profiteering "industry" as such surrounding the markets. And there are a thousand more superfluous industries just like this.
Oh, to be a farmer! To be a teacher! A soldier! A priest! These, and many other worthy professions, are still with us, and they are capable of infusing one's work with meaning and purpose. If it is not too late, capable Christian men should flock to such positions, even at the price of significant financial sacrifice. And women should flock to the all-important vocations of motherhood and consecrated virginity. To eat one's bread "in the sweat of thy face" was never meant to be a life of wasted talent or fruitless labor. Yet for many of us a full recovery may take generations. White collar "admin" types - those with college degrees who have never learned a real trade or profession - will have to humbly accept our gentle penance, settling for honest work which does as little harm as possible, while raising our sons to do something better
