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(Dr. Veltman). Well, there I should say that
although on my account, meaningful work is
an objective good, it nevertheless can be diverse
and individualized in different ways and different lives.
So you might find a particular occupation fulfilling
for several years and then outgrow it.
In order to further challenge and develop as a person,
you might need to move to another kind of occupation.
Or you might find that because you're burnt out in your job,
you're simply not communicating, you're not contributing
to your community in such a valuable way as you were
when you were first in the job and very excited about it.
So no doubt, there is a kind of personalized factor
in determining what meaningful work is for the individual.
You'll have to look at your own set of talents
and circumstances, gifts, proclivities, and so forth
in order to determine what choice of work
will be meaningful for you.
Yes.
(female speaker). I was worried about how
you define work itself.
I heard you just say occupation the whole hour
and I was just wanting to know having just spent
a while changing diapers and rocking babies.
Is that considered work, is the band that I play in
on Saturday night work especially if I don't have
a job that I spend my whole life in my garage painting?
(Dr. Veltman). That's an excellent
philosophical question, what is work?
Certainly, it is difficult to define work.
I would argue that it's difficult to define work
because work does not have any kind of a singular essence.
But rather the concept of work is like a [unclear audio]
family resemblance concept where you have a kind of loose
association of activities that you could rightly call work
but no singular defining essence that underlies all of them
and clearly separates them from non-work.
Now, I tend to use the word work in the talk
because I'm influenced by the German philosopher
Hannah Arendt who operates with an important distinction
between labor and work.
Labor is the kind of cyclical repetitious activity necessary
to sustain life that you were referring to like changing
diapers and so forth where work in the German sense has more
of a connotation of the work of an artisan.
Work in the sense often produces something durable
and simultaneously self-expressive.
So in one sense there is an important distinction
between labor and work.
But thinking about it very broadly certainly
changing diapers is work in a loose sense.
Fundamental to work if there is anything fundamental
is a certain kind of effort and a certain goal directedness.
Beyond that it is difficult to identify
defining essence of work.
For instance, you might immediately be inclined to think
of work as other directed.
You're performing something for the needs and desires
of other people yet as our students know, when they are
running their term papers, they are working and yet primarily
the object of the work is their own
intellectual and moral development.
So in that respect, work can be self-directed.
That is to say, you as the worker can be the primary
beneficiary of the work.
Work is often paid but not all work is paid as with the labor
in the home.
Work tends to be identified as a contribution to the needs
of others and thus you're paid for it.
But in working on your own garden, you're working
and yet you're not contributing something necessarily
for other people.
So in that regard, defining work is a messy business.
Ultimately, I do not think there is a singular defining essence
of work that you can find, but it is clearly,
it's closely associated with a kind of goal directiveness
and it tends to be for that reason opposed to both
play and leisure and to rest and relaxation.
That's basically the best I can do in defining work.
Yes.
(female speaker). Going along those lines,
in your point of view, do you think that kind of extra
professional work like that is objectively valuable
to the human flourishing you were talking about?
(Dr. Veltman). Professional work you said?
(female speaker). Work outside of your job.
(Dr. Veltman). Yes, often one will go outside
of paid occupation in order to do some work
in order to either contribute to a community to feel valued
by that community, to have something to do,
to lend structure to one's life, to develop one's capacities,
to express one's humanity and so forth.
This is why people volunteer in their communities for instance
or continue to work past their retirement when they
no longer need to work.
Yes, in the red.
(male speaker). [unclear audio].
(Dr. Veltman). Right, I'm working with
the distinction between a utopia in the one hand
where you can imagine that meaningful work
would be available to everyone, perhaps through some kind
of a Marxist scheme or because robots will come along
and do all of the meaningless work for us
or because time saving devices will keep us from
having to change the diapers and so forth.
In a utopia, meaningful work is available for everyone
because there are non-people to do the dirty work.
Outside of the utopia, not everyone will have
meaningful work and that clearly includes the present day
with our present technologies and so far into the future
as one can really think about social human structures.
Yes.
(male speaker). I wanted to say that
on the one hand, I really do agree that there is
management in social classes up there that makes certain jobs
oppressive and abusive.
I guess I'm really curious as to what objective occupations
you're actually claiming are intrinsically meaningless.
It does seem to me the social oddity to say that CEOs
and scholarly researchers have more meaningful jobs than
trash pickeruppers and wall painters and people
that take care of our homes and streets.
Yet at the same time, you look down on them, sort of you are
our fast food workers [unclear audio].
Sort of medial non-equal stuff and we look up to the heads
of society [unclear audio].
At the same time there can be a social artificial form
of respect.
If we could just learn to respect each other
and give each other respect in their occupations.
(Dr. Veltman). In many occupations,
one might not find respect from the work itself,
but have to claim a certain kind of respect or dignity
of the person that exists in spite of the work.
But no doubt you can imagine that many forms of work
would lie somewhere in the middle of a continuum
of labor meaningfulness.
And on the one hand you can imagine someone who is a slave,
who has little opportunity to exercise autonomy and freedom
in the choice of work.
And then within the work have little choice or decision making
about how the work is done.
That work might also not express the worker's capacities
or human abilities.
It would be drudgery, it might be dishonorable,
even if it contributes to a community.
So you might imagine the kind of work that a slave does
as something that is quintessentially meaningless.
And on the other hand, something like an architect might embody
meaningful work in the respect not only of producing something
fantastically enduring, but also doing something self-expressive
that will be appreciated by other people and in turn promote
the development and self-respect of the worker.
So there are sort of paradigmatic examples,
but most work will lie somewhere in between
because it will embody some but not all
characteristics of meaningful work.
Yes, a follow-up question.
(male speaker). I just want to find out about
the slaves is a social construct not an intrinsic occupation.
I mean what actual occupations have been made.
(Dr. Veltman). Well, there are some people
who are forced into work, and that's what I mean by a slave.
(male speaker). Yes, but in the social construct
you talk about manhood oppressing people.
But what we're talking about right now is the jobs
that people can do.
Why can't we find that respect and a sort of meaningfulness
in whatever occupations that society needs.
If we can't find that, we just shouldn't do those occupations.
(Dr. Veltman). Right, so, for instance,
once in a while you can find someone who performs the work
of a bathroom attendant where the attendant has no other
function in the job other than to provide towels for people
who come into the restroom and to offer lotions and stuff.
And that's really a ***, meaningless job in the respect
that it's not necessary.
People can go into bathrooms and figure out on their own
that they can use the hand towels and the lotions
and so forth, and that occupation is meaningless
in the respect that it's not necessary, it doesn't truly
contribute to a community, it really just serves the function
of allowing other people to feel better about themselves.