Some discursions on divers contributions to this thread...
I've at least twice had a conversation along the lines of:
Someone: Do you write for a living?
Me: No.
Someone: So it's a hobby?
Me: Er, well it's a bit more than that.
If someone defines "hobby" to include everything one does in one's free
time, then of course my writing is a hobby. I just don't like the
connotations the word has.
When I gave a talk once, the organisers of the colloquium gave me a
badge which labelled me as "telecommunications engineer and poet". I
liked that.
In my line of work, I could quite easily arrange to have no bosses, and
set up on my own. But if I did that, I'd have to deal with income tax,
VAT, finding clients, etc. - all of which would bore me, and leave me no
time to write. I prefer to have bosses, who can do that sort of stuff
for me. I'm doubtless lucky, but I'm not the servant (still less the
slave) of my bosses. They just take different sorts of decision from the
ones I do. I sometimes have to do things I don't much enjoy for the good
of the Company. My bosses have to ensure they don't make me do too many
things I don't like, or I'll leave them. I work for a Company. I think
the word is important: it means we're all in it together.
You could argue that I can afford the luxury of the attitude I've just
expressed because I do intellectually stimulating, and varied work. But
I think you'd be wrong. The company I used to work for had a "customer
awareness" day, where we all looked at how we interacted with various
internal and external customers. I was asked to be a facilitator in one
of the discussion sessions, and my group consisted of storemen, whose
job it was to issue components from stock to the factory floor for
manufacture. It was clear from what they said, that they took great
pride in their work, regarding themselves as central to the company's
operations. I was both heartened and surprised. Perhaps being surprised
was being snobbish.
I agree though that to talk of the "dignity of work" is instantly to
raise suspicions in ones audience.
I simply don't understand Alison's quotation of Alice Walker's
definition: "Work is love made visible". I mean that literally. I have
no idea what it is supposed to mean.
Chris has this tendency to identify concepts as equivalent to others
when they're clearly not. Work is NOT slavery. Maybe it's a useful
metaphor, but it's certainly a dangerous one. If I believe Chris, then
when someone tells me that some population is enslaved and asks for my
support to help free them, my response is "Big deal. I work, so I'm a
slave too. What's so special?" If we're never free, then freedom is an
empty (and hence useless) concept. In Chris's model, choosing ones own
cage *is* what freedom means.
Best,
--
Peter
http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
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