Me: I think we're all looking forward to the winter simply for the chance to slow down a bit.
Him: Heh -- *your* winter isn't going to slow down at all, lad ;-)
Me: Yeah, I'm certainly aware of that. Although I think I'll enjoy being able to lay down at night and not have my body hurt. ;-P
Him: The dignity of manual labor wearing a little thin? ;-)
The dignity of labor. It's an album by the Human League, but knowing this fellow, it's a phrase that has some historical import. Can anyone point me to something which describes it?
There's a lot going on in that last line of his, isn't there? The phrase "the dignity of manual labour" suggests to me the idea that manual labour isn't inherently dignified, or often seen as dignified, but that also in some ways it actually is... you know, the whole shtick about "a life of quiet contemplation, a job in the fresh air, hard labor" (see other comments on that blog post for more examples). It's as if manual labour is both seen as something undignified -- maybe because you get dirty or sweaty whilst doing it? -- and simultaneously honest and wholesome.
The thought that the dignity of manual labour could be wearing thin suggests that seeing manual labour as dignified is illusory; that whilst one might believe the labour is honest and wholesome, in reality it isn't (maybe even suggesting that it isn't either, it just is).
Personally I find it irrelevant to think about the dignity of work in such generalities. I'm sure -- wait, I know -- a lot of manual labour is soul sucking and awful (sweat shops, in the extreme). But so is a lot of white collar work (see the song "In Tall Buildings", sung by Gillian Welch, or the movie Office Space). The work I'm doing at the farm is manual labour and happens to be wonderful and something I'm proud of, and certainly something I could see anyone doing with honest dignity. But so was the work I was doing in Toronto as a computer programmer working to revamp a reporting system for a not-for-profit health-care insurance company.
I suppose I could turn slippery and suggest that the dignity of the work really depends on how you view it -- that any job could be dignified if you take pride in it, and such. I could do that, but I think when we talk about "the dignity of manual labour" we're talking about the general societal impression of manual labour, not one's own feelings about one's work. I suppose what I'm saying above is simply that dignity can probably be found in many types of work, manual or otherwise, and so can undignified work. In part I think it does depend on how you think of yourself in the job. If you think your job is soul-sucking and awful then I doubt that job is going to be seen as generally a dignified job. But I think the dignity of a job also comes from how you are treated as a human being, how you treat yourself, and how you treat others while doing the job. If your job requires you to do damage to yourself or others, or you are damaged because of it, then it's hard to see it as dignified.
But that's all for now. I'm off to take a nap.
3 comments:
After a bit of a look for the phrase and Marx and Tolstoy... i came across this biography of Gandhi... keep reading you'll get to the dignity of manual labour bit
This step was taken under the influence of the Bhagvad Gita which he had been reading regularly every morning for some time and committing to memory. Another doctrine of the Gita which influenced him profoundly was "non-possession". As soon as he realized its implications he allowed his insurance policy of Rs.10,000 to lapse. Henceforth he would put his faith in God alone.
Next to the Gita , the book which influenced him most deeply was Ruskin's Unto This Last which his friend Polak had given him to read one day in 1904. What Ruskin preached, or rather what Gandhi understood him to preach, was the moral dignity of manual labour and the beauty of community living on the basis of equality. Since, unlike Ruskin, Gandhi could not appreciate an ideal without wanting to practice it, he immediately set about to buy a farm where such a life could be lived. Thus was founded the famous Phoenix colony, on a hundred acres of land, some fourteen miles from Durban.
But Gandhi could not stay long at Phoenix. Duty called him to Johannesburg where also, later, he found another colony on similar ideals, at a distance of twenty-one miles from the city. He called it the Tolstoy Farm. In both these ashrams, as settlements organized on spiritual ideals are known in India, the inmates did all the work themselves, from cooking to scavenging. Extreme simplicity of the life was observed, reinforced by a strict code of moral and physical hygiene. No medicines were kept, for Gandhi who had earlier read Adolf Just's Return to Nature believed profoundly in nature cure. Every inmate had to practise some handicraft. Gandhi himself learnt to make sandals.
He foresaw that a shadow with the South African Government was sooner or later inevitable and knew from his own individual experience that no brute force could quell the spirit of man ready to defy and willing to suffer. What he could do himself he could train others to do. Individual resistance could be expanded and organized into a mass struggle in the prosecution of a moral equivalent of war. He had read Tolstoy and Thoreau's use of the term "civil disobedience" did not seem to express Gandhi's own concept of ahimsa as a positive force of love, nor did he like the use of the phrase "passive resistance". The concept was now clearly formulated in his mind but the word to describe it was wanting. His cousin Maganlal Gandhi suggested sadagraha, meaning holding fast to truth or firmness in a righteous cause. Gandhi liked the term and changed to satyagraha. Thus was evolved and formulated Gandhi's most original idea in political action.
something about socialist academics
a tad more on "dignity and manual labour" and perhaps the fellow who coined it:
JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900)
Opposite the Fishes Inn in North Hinksey is a picturesque thatched cottage, on the wall of which is a plaque:
Ruskin Cottage John Ruskin, Blade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, mentioned this cottage and the beauty of its surroundings where in 1874 he encouraged undergraduates to improve the road through the village and thus to "feel the pleasure of useful muscular work". The Friends of North Hinksey 1978.
John Ruskin, writer, artist, art critic and social reformer, had close connections with Oxford from 1836, when he came up to Christ Church as an undergraduate, until 1884, when he retired as first Slade Professor of Fine Art. He gives his name to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (next to the Examination Schools in High Street), which he founded as The Drawing School, and to Ruskin College (next to Worcester College in Walton Street) and its residential annexe, Ruskin Hall, in Old Headington; and his influence on the architecture of Oxford may be seen in the decoration of the University Museum and of the Victorian gothic houses of North Oxford with their turrets, castellations, balconies and stained glass.
Ruskin's initial interest in art and architecture developed, via an appreciation of the value of craftsmanship, into an interest in conditions of work and into a belief in the dignity of manual labour. He succeeded in persuading students who attended his lectures on art to turn their hand to mending the road in North Hinksey, but the real working man had no truck with such idealism. Nevertheless, the disinterest of the working classes did not prevent an American, Mr. W. Vrooman, from founding Ruskin College in 1899 'in order to promote for working men facilities for residence and study of historical, social and economic subjects'.
There is a marble bust of Ruskin by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm in the Ruskin School of Drawing, and the Ashmolean Museum has a portrait (not on display) by D. G. Rossetti as well as a terracotta copy of the bust. The Ashmolean also has a Ruskin Lecture Theatre named after him. Corpus Christi College, where he was made an honorary Fellow in 1871, also has memorabilia
During the last years of his life, Ruskin retired to the Lake District where his beautifully situated house, Brantwood, at the head of Coniston Water, has been preserved as a memorial to him and is open to the public. Another Ruskin memorial in the Lake District is to be found at Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. Collections of Ruskiniana can also be seen at The Ruskin Gallery, 101 Norfolk Street, Sheffield, and at The Ruskin Gallery in Bembridge, Isle of Wight.
James SADLER (1753-1828)
ok back to being a non-casual-computer-user
xx
here a big raised arm and revloutionary well wishingness
from me to you mr jp
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