Chapter 15 Chapter Fourteen Work

Whether work should be regarded as a source of happiness or of unhappiness is an open question.It is true that many jobs are very tedious, and it is always painful to have too much work.It seems to me, however, that even monotonous work, provided it is not excessive in number, is better for most people than idleness.According to the nature of the labor and the ability of the laborer, work can indeed be divided into various grades, from mere dull relaxation to the deepest pleasure.The many kinds of work that many people have to do are not much fun in themselves, but even this kind of work contains some great benefits.In the first place, work fills up a great deal of the day without a man having to decide.There are many people who, when they can arrange their time as they please, can't think of anything pleasant enough to do.Whatever they decide to do, they feel that there must be some other happier thing to do, and this distresses them greatly.The ability to fill free time consciously and wisely is the last product of civilization, but few people have achieved this degree at present.Plus, making the selection itself is annoying.All but the most creative people like to be told what to do at each hour of the day, as long as the order is not too unpleasant.Many rich men at leisure feel an indescribable boredom, as if it were the price of being spared the drudgery which they sometimes find relief in hunting wild animals in Africa, or flying round the world in airplanes.But the number of such feelings is limited, especially after youth is gone.It is for this reason that many wise rich men work almost as day and night as the poor, and rich women, mostly, are occupied with innumerable petty things, as if they were after something of the utmost importance.

Work, therefore, is celebrated above all as a means of relieving boredom.A man may be bored while doing necessary but not very interesting work, but this boredom is nothing compared with the boredom he feels when he is doing nothing all day long.Besides that, work has the added benefit of making the holidays extra fulfilling and enjoyable.If a man does not have to work so hard that his strength is broken, he is likely to find more enthusiasm in his spare time than a man who has nothing to do. A second benefit of most paid work and some unpaid work is that it gives people the opportunity to succeed and to display their ambitions.In many jobs, the measure of success is income, and as long as capitalist society continues to exist, this is inevitable.It is only for the best kind of work that the scale loses its natural applicability.People's desire to increase their income is actually the desire to achieve success, the desire to gain comfort and peace of mind with more income.However unattractive work may be in itself, it becomes bearable if it becomes a means of acquiring a reputation, whether worldwide or within one's own circle.Continuity of purpose is one of the most fundamental ingredients of long-term happiness, and for most people, this is primarily achieved in the course of work.In this respect women who spend their whole lives at home are much less fortunate than men or women who work outside the home.The woman in the family has no wages, no means of improving her own life, and she is favored and valued by her husband not because of her housework (which he is almost oblivious to) but because of other aspects. .This, of course, does not apply to housewives who are so capable that they can make their houses and gardens so beautiful that they arouse the envy of their neighbors.But there are relatively few such women, and most of them, the pleasure they get from domestic labor is far less than the pleasure that other jobs give men and professional women.

There are plenty of jobs that give people the joy of killing time and exercising even the tiniest of ambitions, a joy that makes the monotonous work far happier than the idler.But work, when it is full of enjoyment, can give far greater satisfaction than simply escaping boredom.More or less interesting jobs can be arranged in a top-to-bottom order.I will begin with the jobs of mediocrity, and end with those worthy of a great man's life. There are two main factors that make work interesting: one is the application of skills, and the other is constructiveness. Every man who acquires some special skill tends to be happy to use it until it is no longer special or he can no longer improve it.The motivation for this behavior begins in childhood: a boy who can stand on his head is unwilling to put his feet on the ground.Many jobs give different pleasures than games of skill.The work of a lawyer or a politician, like playing bridge, must contain wonderful fun, of course, this includes not only the use of skills, but also the open and secret fights of brilliant opponents.Even without this competitive element, though, the mere execution of these stunts is enough to entertain.A man who can perform stunts on an airplane, even at the risk of his own life, derives great pleasure from performing them.I suspect that an able surgeon who works in an unpleasant environment still derives satisfaction from performing a highly successful operation.This kind of pleasure can also come from many inconspicuous labors, but the intensity is slightly less.I've even heard that plumbers love their jobs, although I know them wirelessly.All technical work can be enjoyable as long as the acquired technique is constantly changing or constantly being perfected.If these conditions are not met, then once the technology has become perfect, it will no longer be fun for people. What fun.Fortunately, in quite a few jobs, new situations call for new skills and techniques, and one can continually perfect them to varying degrees.In a technical job like politics, the best age for a worker is probably between 60 and 70 years old, because a very important factor in this kind of occupation is extensive knowledge and experience.As a result, successful politicians are generally happier at age 70 than their peers.In this regard, the only ones who can compete with them are the entrepreneurs.

However, there is another element to the best jobs, and it is more than the use of skills. , is a more important factor in the source of happiness, and that is constructiveness.In some work, though not in the vast majority, some kind of monument is left behind when the thing is done, and we can use the following criteria to distinguish construction from destruction.under construction.The original state of things is relatively disorganized, while the final state embodies an intention and purpose; in destruction, the opposite is true: the original state of things embodies an intention and purpose, while the final state appears disorganized , that is, the whole intention of the destroyer is to create a state of things that does not embody a purpose.This criterion applies to the simplest and most obvious example, the construction and destruction of houses.In the process of building a house, no one can be sure what the building materials will look like after they are demolished.As destruction is certainly one of the necessary steps before construction, here it is part of the whole construction.But all too often, a person engages in activities aimed at destruction without even thinking about the construction that will follow.This kind of people often deliberately conceals their true thoughts, and flaunts that the reason why they are old is to create new ones.But if it's really an excuse, it's not hard for people to debunk it, you just have to ask him what to build next.Faced with this question, he must be vague.Feeling weak, but regarding the previous destruction, he spoke clearly and with high spirits.Many revolutionaries.This is true of militants and other advocates of violence.Often unconsciously, they are driven by hatred; the destruction they abhor is actually their own ends; and they care little about what comes after.Now I dare not deny that there is a certain joy in destructive work as in constructive work.It is a wilder and at the same time more fleeting pleasure, but it is not deeply satisfying, because in that ending there is little to cheer about.You kill your adversary, and once he is dead you have nothing to do; and the gratification of victory quickly wears off.On the contrary, when the building work is done, people gaze at it long and delighted; and the work is not perfect, so that it does not leave people with nothing to do.The most satisfying plan is the one that takes a man from one victory to another without ending.From this point of view, construction is undoubtedly more a source of happiness than destruction.Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the pleasures found in building are stronger and more enduring than those found in destroying, because once you are filled with hatred, you cannot build as easily as others get happy.

And there is hardly anything else that cures the vice of hatred more easily than a constructive labor. The satisfaction deriving from the success of a great constructive enterprise is the greatest joy that life can afford, though unfortunately, in its highest form, it is reserved for the exceptionally gifted.In a work of great importance no one can take away the sense of fulfillment which a man acquires, unless the work turns out to be inferior.Such happiness takes many different forms.One of the most definite kinds of pleasure comes to a man who, by means of an irrigation plan, brings green grass to a wasteland.Creating an organization can be an extremely important job, and the job of bringing order out of chaos is no exception.A few politicians have dedicated their lives to this.In contemporary times, Lenin is a typical example.Common examples are scientists and artists.Shakespeare once commented on his poem: "As long as men live and see, the poem will not die." This thought certainly made him feel relieved and satisfied in his misfortune.In his sonnets, Shakespeare stresses that the thought of his friend brought him back to life; but I have to suspect that these sonnets, addressed to a friend, are more important in It may be more important to facilitate his reconciliation with life.The work of great artists and great scientists is pleasant in itself, and when they perform it, they command the respect of the respectable, which gives them the most basic power.They have a good reason to flaunt their excellence.One would think that a combination of these factors must be enough to make anyone happy, but this is not the case. For example, Michelangelo was not a happy person at heart. He claimed (I am sure this is not sincere) that if Without having to pay off the debts of his poor relatives, he would never bother to create art.The power to produce great works of art is often—though not always—connected with a temperamental depression so strong that if the artist cannot derive pleasure from his work, he must be driven to it. The road to suicide.We cannot therefore say that the greatest work makes man happy; we can only say that it alleviates his unhappiness.Scientists, however, are much less depressed in temperament than artists, and, on the whole, those who have made great discoveries in science tend to be happy whose first principle of happiness is work.

One of the causes of misfortune in today's intelligentsia is that many people, especially those engaged in cultural work, do not have the opportunity to use their talents independently, but have to be employed by wealthy institutions dominated by philistines and laymen. Corporations, forced to make ridiculous and boring stuff.If you were to ask journalists in the UK or the US if they believed in the policies of the newspapers they were running for, I am sure you would find that only a few would, the rest were forced to make ends meet by selling their skills to I think it is harmful to the cause of no benefit.Such work does not give man any satisfaction, and when it begrudgingly does it, he makes himself so cynical that he can no longer derive complete satisfaction from anything, I cannot Blame those who do it, because otherwise they would starve, and it is not good to be hungry.I still think, however, that whenever it is possible to engage in a work which satisfies a man's constructive instincts without risk of starvation, he had better do it for his own happiness.True happiness is impossible without self-respect, and no one who is ashamed of his work has any.

In real life, the joy of constructive labor is the exclusive enjoyment of a few, and there are not many of them.Anyone who is master of his work feels this, and everyone else who finds his work useful and requires considerable skill.Raising satisfying children is one thing that gives great joy.But it is hard, constructive labor.All women who have achieved this achievement feel that it is the result of her hard work.The world contained certain things of value that it would not have had it not been for her work. There are profound differences between people in how they view their lives in general.For some people, seeing life as a whole comes naturally, and being able to do so is key to happiness.For others, life is a succession of unconnected events with no unity or direction in their motion.I think the former is more likely to be happy than the latter, because the former can gradually create an environment for themselves, from which they can gain satisfaction and self-esteem, while the latter will be blown east and west by the wind of fate, and will never find it. A foothold.The habit of writing life as a whole is not only wise, but an essential part of true morality, and is one of the things that should be vigorously encouraged by education.Consistent purpose is not sufficient to make a happy life, but it is an almost indispensable condition of a happy life.The consistent goal is mainly reflected in the work.