This reminds me of a quote from Star Trek Insurrection- “We Believe that when you build a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man.”
When I first saw the film, I rejected that. Seemed like backwards thinking, ignorant Luddite ideology ignoring the reality that when the machine does the man’s work, you free up the man to do other things. When a man doesn’t have to plow the field, he can focus on art and science and philosophy and music and poetry and otherwise taking his mind to the next level. At least that sounded good in my head.
Then I look at what we have now. We have built machines to create art and science and music and poetry, so the man is left to keep taking out the garbage.
This is not an improvement. The Baku may not have been totally wrong.
I think the distinction is what we consider “the work of a man”. I don’t consider man’s work to be just physical labor. A lot of things can do that. I think the true work of humanity is to use our ingenuity and critical thinking to do more. I’m not saying physical labor is not important, but there are several jobs that require physical labor and take thought and troubleshooting. I don’t need a human being to screw in the same screw on an assembly line a hundred times a day, but a human being may be needed to determine why that screw ends up being a failure point in the final product.
There is of course lots to be said about the value of a hard days work and the toil and effort of physical labor, but I think we are all capable of so much more. It need not just be that.
I don’t consider man’s work to be just physical labor.
The key here is that the English language currently does a piss-poor job of creating a destinction between meaningfull, avocational, enriching “work”, and meaningless, necessity-driven “labour.” Anthropologists have found pre-agrarian cultures tended to do far less labour, but had plenty of activity. I blame pretestant “work ethic” for equating taking out the trash and all that with meaningful work that makes a person.
I get the reference, but that’s not really related to what I said. I don’t want to just ignore your comment if it’s a serious point, but at no point did I suggest otherwise.
I just don’t super agree with your premise that the “real” work of man is to do more, is all. I like to think it’s more to accomplish something with intention, craft, and rigor. We’ve disconnected ourselves from our “real” work.
My verbiage may differ slightly from yours, but I believe we agree. “Intention, craft” would indicate something similar to ingenuity to me. Obviously, totally OK for you to disagree, or think I did not explain appropriately, but my point was that we are not just beasts of burden, we can think and analyze and have opinions therefore allowing us to do things with “Intention” and to not just create things but to “craft” them.
The thing is that not everyone wants to do art, science or philosophy. Some people want to plow their field, they’re happy with that. Who are we to take that away from them?
Reasonable compromises must be made. I won’t lie to you, being someone that spent the better part of their career performing manual labor I would find it hard to believe you have spent any extended amount of time working a farm.
The share of people that want to perform, very specifically, back breaking labor is small compared to the number of people that would prefer to do literally anything else. We can make accommodations for that small number bit automating plowing but not science is a reasonable compromise.
This reminds me of a quote from Star Trek Insurrection- “We Believe that when you build a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man.”
When I first saw the film, I rejected that. Seemed like backwards thinking, ignorant Luddite ideology ignoring the reality that when the machine does the man’s work, you free up the man to do other things. When a man doesn’t have to plow the field, he can focus on art and science and philosophy and music and poetry and otherwise taking his mind to the next level. At least that sounded good in my head.
Then I look at what we have now. We have built machines to create art and science and music and poetry, so the man is left to keep taking out the garbage. This is not an improvement. The Baku may not have been totally wrong.
That’s Insurrection, not First Contact.
Nice catch. Fixed
I think the distinction is what we consider “the work of a man”. I don’t consider man’s work to be just physical labor. A lot of things can do that. I think the true work of humanity is to use our ingenuity and critical thinking to do more. I’m not saying physical labor is not important, but there are several jobs that require physical labor and take thought and troubleshooting. I don’t need a human being to screw in the same screw on an assembly line a hundred times a day, but a human being may be needed to determine why that screw ends up being a failure point in the final product.
There is of course lots to be said about the value of a hard days work and the toil and effort of physical labor, but I think we are all capable of so much more. It need not just be that.
The key here is that the English language currently does a piss-poor job of creating a destinction between meaningfull, avocational, enriching “work”, and meaningless, necessity-driven “labour.” Anthropologists have found pre-agrarian cultures tended to do far less labour, but had plenty of activity. I blame pretestant “work ethic” for equating taking out the trash and all that with meaningful work that makes a person.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
I get the reference, but that’s not really related to what I said. I don’t want to just ignore your comment if it’s a serious point, but at no point did I suggest otherwise.
I was being a little tongue-in-cheek.
I just don’t super agree with your premise that the “real” work of man is to do more, is all. I like to think it’s more to accomplish something with intention, craft, and rigor. We’ve disconnected ourselves from our “real” work.
My verbiage may differ slightly from yours, but I believe we agree. “Intention, craft” would indicate something similar to ingenuity to me. Obviously, totally OK for you to disagree, or think I did not explain appropriately, but my point was that we are not just beasts of burden, we can think and analyze and have opinions therefore allowing us to do things with “Intention” and to not just create things but to “craft” them.
The thing is that not everyone wants to do art, science or philosophy. Some people want to plow their field, they’re happy with that. Who are we to take that away from them?
Reasonable compromises must be made. I won’t lie to you, being someone that spent the better part of their career performing manual labor I would find it hard to believe you have spent any extended amount of time working a farm.
The share of people that want to perform, very specifically, back breaking labor is small compared to the number of people that would prefer to do literally anything else. We can make accommodations for that small number bit automating plowing but not science is a reasonable compromise.