Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Authentic Work



I've been using the same hypothetical scenario with various people to see how they would respond. Imagine you are a novelist, and a publisher agrees to pay you one million per year to write novels. Being broke and unknown, you agree to write one novel per year for one million dollars per novel. It seems like an unbeatable deal. You write the novel, and the publisher cuts you a check for one million dollars. But you notice your books are not in the bookstores. You ask the publisher why there are no books. He tells you that he burns your manuscripts as soon as he has paid you for them. The man is literally insane. What would you do in this situation?

I have received various responses from copying books to refusing the deal or keeping copies or whatnot. But not one person has told me they would just keep writing those novels for the one million dollars for each book. Maybe I should sweeten the scenario with a ten million dollar offer. I don't know. What is obvious is that no one wants to engage in useless labor no matter how much it pays.

My hypothetical scenario does exist in reality, but it doesn't involve a novelist and a publisher and millions of dollars. Instead, it involves office drones, middle managers, and five and six digit salaries. I am reminded of a woman I dated who was paid $45K annually to be a corporate trainer. She read magazines all day and pressed the play button on a DVD machine. She hated her job and called out often. It got so bad that she was written up and threatened with termination.

People want authenticity in their work. They want their lives to mean something. I don't think it has to mean something in a transcdendant sense. It doesn't have to change the world. In fact, it may only make a marginal improvement in the life of one other person. But the work has to make sense. That is the bottom line. You can pay people just about anything, but if they don't believe in what they are doing, they won't keep doing it. Conversely, people will take pay cuts or work extra hard for the things they believe in.

It seems that we live in a world today that is dedicated to getting over on people. Work is for suckers. It is all about the game and being on the top of the heap instead of the bottom. We praise the white collar thieves while denigrating the blue collar man who puts in an honest day of work. The white collar people think they are smart and slick because they have lied, schemed, and connived to get where they are. You have managers with MBAs and their corporatespeak who snow their companies and the world into believing they are valuable and contribute to society. But they contribute nothing but fodder for Dilbert. They are high paid slackers and con artists.

You have rich financiers, traders, stock brokers, quants, and all the rest who believe they are doing "God's work," and they are "blue collar." But who believes any of this shit? And if they are so damn valuable, why do they need to suck up the tax dollars of working folks to bail them out of their jams?

You have lying politicians who spend all day talking about "hope" and "change," but this is just the sales pitch of bullshitters who destroy the incomes, livelihoods, and the hope of the people they supposedly are trying to help. The earnest hope of working people today is that these lying parasites will just stop what they are doing. But these fools are incapable of leaving people alone. You will get their hope and change whether you want it or not.

These people don't have real jobs. Real jobs make the world a better place to live in. When a short order cook whips up a meal, someone leaves full instead of hungry. When an auto mechanic fires up that engine he fixed, there is one less person having to walk or catch a bus. When a carpenter frames a house, he is providing more hope and change than a thousand politicians ever could.

This is authentic work. It is not enough to get paid. It isn't about getting paid. It is about earning what that pay signifies. It means that the work we do is valuable to someone else. We have made our living by improving the world in some way. The honest working man or woman can go home with a feeling of pride and satisfaction in what they do.

The parasite class does not have this same enjoyment. They go home wondering what the fuck it is that they do. It seems they spend as much time trying to convince themselves as much as the rest of us that what they do is worthwhile. I call bullshit on this.

People need to realign their priorities and their values. Instead of asking how they can get paid, they should ask how they can provide value and be useful. How can I make the world a better place in some way? No one asks this question. People have all these various schemes for getting rich, but no one ever counsels hard work, thrift, and giving value for the dollar. We get bullshit instead. Yet, where does wealth come from in the first place? It comes from the work and creativity of people making the world a better place.

These things have been on my mind a lot lately as this recession has taken hold. I see people taking unemployment checks while seeing help wanted signs in storefront windows. There are jobs out there, but it is easier to get a government check than to earn a living. Businesses hire people who are good for about a week and immediately turn to shit until they don't even bother showing up anymore. The bosses aren't any better lying to prospective employees and jerking them around with promises they will never fulfill. Then to add insult to injury, the boss's work ethic is often worse than that of the slackers they hire. We've made a joke of work, and we wonder why no one gives a shit. Then, we have the thieves in Washington to steal the fruits of additional labor while extending unemployment benefits over and over again to a whole bunch of slackers. How can anyone work in this cynical environment?

I can ignore all this bullshit because I know work is integral to happiness. As much as I love a fat paycheck, I never think about the money when I am working. I just lose myself in the rush of doing. There is a lot of satisfaction in getting things done. In a world of slackers, it is easy to shine out. People wonder why I do it. Am I looking to get paid? Am I looking for a promotion? Nope. I just love making a difference in the world. This is not altruism. It is pure selfish pride in what I am able to do.

You may think I am crazy for being like this, but I go back to my original scenario. Would you let a man pay you to burn your work? For all the cynicism in the world, I can't find anyone who thinks getting paid a million dollars to let a man burn his work to be a good deal. I think people would rather have their work be read and possibly rejected and earn not a penny than to have it destroyed for a sum that most people will take a lifetime to earn. People care less about getting paid than they do about being appreciated and feeling that what they do makes a difference. Separate money from appreciation, and you only have misery. The absurdity of our times is that we have made this scenario possible.

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