Work: Pile work upon work upon work.
Some 2,800 hundred years ago, the Greek poet Hesiod wrote his didactic poem Works and Days. It is equal parts sibling admonition, theogony (old-school genealogy of the gods), and farming calendar (On the eighth day of the month castrate the boar and roaring bull). But it is the injunction to work that is the crux of the 800-line poem. The message is one that underlies many of the classic texts, not surprisingly, for without work, shame (if not starvation) would haunt our steps.
Even today, in our valley, people are often introduced in conversation as “a hard worker.” And those who don’t work, while not allowed to starve, are held in low esteem — indeed, disclaimed — by their neighbors, pronounced to be “as useless as teats on a boar.” Farming can be a brutally conservative enterprise, one in which animals are dispatched for failing to measure up; it is an occupation in which it is hard to conceal one’s inadequacies.
The nature of work and why we do it has been much on my mind this year. For reasons we won’t explore here, I am all too often witness to the refusal of work and a willingness by adults, mainly men, to reject advancement. As one of like gender, I find those instances in which a healthy man prefers to be idle and stay at home deeply offensive. To be offered work of worth and to instead choose the path of just getting by or, worse, relying wholly on the largess of others is frankly beyond my ken.
Misfortune can be caught in swarms, and easy. The road to it is smooth, and it lives so near.
This is not meant to be some sort of grim Puritan sermon I write, of suppression of desire, harnessed to a yoke until dropping in the traces. For I (as you will surely know by now) put a premium on conviviality with friends, family, and neighbors, on good conversation and laughter, on wine and food.
Then, O then let there be some rock-shadowed cool, some Bilbine wine, a milk-soaked cake and the goats’ last thick milk, the meat of a forest-graised heifer…. O drink the bright wine and relax in the shade with a heart’s fill of food, face tilted into the freshening westerlies.
All of these enjoyments go hand in hand with the work we do. Without the work, each gift (whether necessity or indulgence) would be gained only by throwing oneself at the mercy of community. To be clear, I am a firm believer in the need for a communal safety net; we all at times need a helping hand, for life does indeed break us down. Yet only our hard work allows us to take full satisfaction in the fruits of our labors. It is a pleasure deepened in the owning of the process, embracing it and asking for more, that allows us to claim community among our kith and kin. To expect reward without work is to break with the covenant.
For the granary won’t fill for the feckless.
I understand the tenuous relationship of modern employment to the employed, and I speak today not of that but of our older relationship to each other and our responsibilities to the same. Not all work is based on remuneration; often it is done simply for love, and that is when it is most satisfying.
I am at sea on a raft of frustration with the covenant breakers, whether they be the person who embraces the trappings of his position but spurns the intellectual rigor required to do the job well or the one who refuses an opportunity because “it sounds like too much work.” It is not seemly to enjoy the glass of wine without the earning, to expect honors without the requisite work of ambition.
And if you haven’t broken the bond, then May another year take good root beneath the soil.
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Reading this weekend: Hesiod’s Works and Days: A New Translation by Kimberly Johnson (2017).
This really hit home with me. One of the problems, I think, is as a society so many of us disparage manual work. When I was much younger and raising four children, we made the decision for me to stay home with them. Of course we had no money! But I made all our bread and other baked goods, made all our soap, spun and knit, hung the laundry, as we had no dryer, cooked all the food, sewed the kids clothes, etc., etc., etc. And I would get so annoyed when talking to other people and they would say, “Oh, you just stay home with your children? You don’t work, then. Wow, I wish I had as much free time as you must have!” GGGRRR!!!
And people would say really dumb thing like “You hang your laundry? Oh, I’m way to busy to do that! You use cloth diapers, the same four dozen for all four kids? That’s pretty disgusting!” Though now I see that as basic biophobia. So many people think manual work is hard, not creative at all, and a waste of their precious time. I once asked my sister what she did with all this time she had “saved”. She stared at me blankly.
Sorry, ranting. But I really don’t know what to do about people who need a job, but won’t take a manual labor job. Our society really needs to change its priorities. As we know, especially nowadays, we need more farmers, potters, ditch diggers, spinners and weavers, gardeners,etc., not more people using up more and more petro chemical energy.
And thank you for letting me rant today, I really enjoyed this post.
Heather,
Rant away. I’m glad you appreciated the piece. Amazing someone would have said that to your face (and lived!).
My best,
Of course “sounds like too much work” can be a vital form of protection – when you’re working in the city. What is a form of letting down everybody when the work involved is one on the land becomes a form of self-defence when you’re in danger of running yourself into the ground.
And when your only defence against your work environment consists of measured auto-destruction, your sick leave becomes a friend to lean on. (Smoking/drinking and sports related injuries seem to be the most popular choices).
Michael,
Ultimately this was a short piece about the desirability and need for work in this age and the ages prior, and the pleasure of being useful. And, it was less a macro complaint and more of a micro complaint about those of my personal acquaintance who reject, for no good reasons, opportunities in life. I try, sometimes fail, not to make larger sweeping generalizations: “Here is the shoe, does it fit?”
It would take a much longer piece to address many of the underlying factors, which I know from your past comments you are fully aware, the reasons why our current lack of a work ethic is not sustainable. Give us a serious economic downturn, accelerating complications from a diminishing oil reserves and complicated global supply chains, add in fast moving climate change factors, and the largess of a wealthy central state will grow spare. Might as well, as J. M. Greer says, collapse now and avoid the rush.
My complaints about those who can but won’t work, will mean little in that future world.
Cheers,
Knowing me you’ll know that this was more of an extension than a critique; I merely added the less exotic, more widespread work-shysters 🙂
For what it’s worth: you might make it through the recession that’s imminent in better shape than Europe…
We will see. The last recession had the added benefit that lots of weekenders had to put their McMansions up for sale (which never sold).
I recently watched ‘The Biggest Little Farm’, which combines a bit of a weird MacMansion-type story of how the farm was set up with some really precise observations and details of how time after time things went horribly wrong without anyone throwing in the towel. Liked it.
Sounds intriguing, Michael. I’ll give it a watch.
Just a stray and unsubstantiated opinion – it has ever been thus. My parents grew up in the depression and were young adults during WWII. They both had stories about certain men in the desperately hard times of the depression who just would NOT work and it was up to family and friends to keep his family fed, clothed, and warm in the winter. There was nothing physically or mentally wrong with these men other than an adamant aversion to work. It was common that two or three households would give one of these families 3-4 hens and a rooster, possibly a weanling pig, 50 lbs of seed potatoes, and sometimes a milk cow (if there were several young children) but invariably it came to nothing. The chickens were eaten, the seed potatoes were eaten, and the cow was sold. LOL The refusal to work seemed to run in families just the same as the tendency to thievery ran in families. Now that I am old, I am a disgrace because I’m about convinced that the old people were right about “blood” will tell whether in willingness to work, willingness to steal, or willingness to be violent and you are wise to look at the family and check back 2-3 generations before forming any kind of alliance with an individual. I told you, I am now a disgrace. 🙂
We are becoming grouchy, Joan, as we get older. 🙂 BTW Hesiod, writing his poem 2800 years ago, was castigating his layabout brother Perses for the same.
Perses “wouldn’t work in a pie factory” or “wouldn’t strike a lick at a snake if it was trying to bite him?” If you live long enough you begin to see patterns. We have no difficulty understanding that musical or artistic ability is often familial but are horrified at thinking that being “no account” might be equally familial. I can hold my own in laziness but not to the point that I make myself uncomfortable as in hungry, without clothing, or without shelter. I don’t take strong exception to shiftless people but I am impressed by how much physical hardship they will endure and how hard they will work in order to avoid work. Is that grouchy? LOL
Nice new bookshelf pic. The name tag on the left is a nice touch. And if one can’t go to the Berry Fest… bring the Berry to the shelf. I like it. May need to do something of the sort as well… for it now looks like I’ll not be in Louisville either. 🙁
There is much to be said for enjoying the fruits of one’s labor. I’ve always thought the food one brought to the table through the sweat of the brow and the practice of preparation is superior to any else. Ownership is a powerful motivator.
Sorry you won’t make it to the conference, I was looking to hearing a first hand account. I will be in New Castle next week for an hour or two on Thursday. So I’ll get to stop at the center (bookstore). That is always a treat.
I’ll be headed to Knoxville in a couple weeks – family affair. Also always a treat.
New Castle isn’t immediately on the path, but it isn’t too far from it either. You see anything fascinating there, give me a heads up and we may swing wide to make a stop.