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So you can imagine some occupations that just don't fit
the bill, but many occupations will allow for meaningfulness
in some respect, and I'd like to reiterate here that
the middle criterion here, meaningful work promotes
honor, dignity, and pride and so forth, precisely because
many occupations are necessary for society to exist
and to flourish.
Many occupations do allow workers to take pride
and satisfaction or honor from their work.
For instance, in the movie "Goodwill Hunting,"
the primary character in the movie is a janitor
and at one point in his therapy he says, well he likes his work
though he could be doing something more intellectual
because he finds honor in that work.
There's an important insight there, that many forms of work
do allow for these crucial moral goods like honor, self-respect,
and dignity or pride.
And that really opens up many occupations to the possibility
of encompassing some important elements of meaningfulness.
Yes.
(female speaker). I think I'm maybe going back
to who decides the work is meaningful,
the subjectiveness of it, but my train of thought was
you said so a factory worker that has a meaningful job
so it's good for the community.
But there's someone in that factory that does nothing
all day but makes sure that the word Dove is in the middle
instead of on the side, and he throws it back
and they start over.
That feels fairly meaningful, but if you're saying that
is a meaningful job then it must be subjective.
And I was kind of following that through like,
what about criminal lawyers.
Some people really flourish on that, while the rest of us
are going to go, how can you possibly
represent these scumbags.
And then I was thinking about Fred Phelps.
The guy from Westborough Baptist Church, the ones that
picket the soldiers' funerals.
I'm fairly sure he could say he was developing his morals.
You know, he's got honor, he's got pride,
he's got all of that stuff up there, and I don't think anyone
in here's going to say he's got meaningful work.
I hope not, honestly.
(Dr. Veltman). You know, he might have worked
that as meaningful for him and yet failed to lead
a flourishing human life owing to other factors.
For instance, part of human flourishing might be having some
amount of the truth rather than walking around with false
beliefs, or having genuine moral development as a person.
That would be an important component of flourishing.
And someone who is fundamentally on the wrong moral path will not
flourish in the respect that they'll lack those crucial human
goods of truthfulness and moral rightness, though they might
find self-expression or perhaps the exercise of their
personal values and commitments in their work.
But also, on the topic you were mentioning about the soaps
and the person in the factory, I would like to say that you
know clearly the issue is complicated here.
And in the respect that the person making soap
is contributing to a community with a product
that the community needs, they can legitimately take
a certain amount of pride and satisfaction in their work.
Yet at the same time, that occupation can often involve
a lot of meaningless drudgery and in that respect
not be meaningful work.
Let me give another quote from the book "Good Work"
by E. F. Schumacher.
He writes, a recent article in the London Times began with
these words, "Dante, when composing his visions of Hell,
"might well have included the mindless, repetitive boredom
"of working on a factory assembly line.
"It destroys initiative and rots brains, yet millions of workers
"are committed to it for most of their lives.
"The remarkable thing is that this statement
"aroused no interest.
"There were no hot denials, or anguished agreements,
no reactions at all."
So it is relatively unremarkable to say that the kind of factory
line work that millions of people are committed to for
the duration of their lives destroys initiative and rots
brains, offers no opportunities for self-development.
To think that many many people out there are not going to find
meaningful work, that's just the way society is.
People didn't really think that was remarkable or contestable.
That's sort of an example to go along with this idea about
stultifying or tedious work undermining the development
of the person, people would probably not disagree,
but the point there was just that someone who is making soap
in a soap factory might in some respect have an element
of meaningful work in the important social contribution.
And yet in the stultifyingness, tediousness, repetitiveness,
the mechanical gestures, the little opportunity
for the exercise of autonomous decision making in many, many
other important respects they would not have meaningful work.
Okay, other questions or comments?
Yes, Brian Beakley?
(Brian Beakley). It seems to me this
useful strategy is that [unclear audio] could just ask
the person, would you do this if you didn't have to do this?
And as they said later there could be aspects where
I would say, yes, I would continue with your research,
and I would continue to write a paper,
but I wouldn't grade it like that.
But that's a person who sounds to me
like a judging [unclear audio].
So I guess, I [unclear audio] sounds
[unclear audio] suggestions.
Well, it depends on your perspective [unclear audio].
Can everybody, is it just your attitude if you feel
dissatisfied in your job.
Is that just an attitude problem, or is there really
something that is missing?
[unclear audio].
It's kind of an old discussion.
[unclear audio].
(Dr. Veltman). Yeah, a couple ideas there.
Number one, often a single occupation will have
meaningfulness in some respects but not in other respects,
and that's of course something I've said already,
but you find that in the activity of being a professor.
Where professing allows a certain amount
of self-expression and perhaps you're the admired professor
and you do get to conduct research in there
and use your particular capacities and talents
and contribute to the future and do something enduring.
And yet, even within the research, you often find
tedious elements of the work like footnoting or doing
the bibliography, and within the work of being a professor,
there's always the work of grading.
So, in the very same occupation, often one will have to take
the meaningfulness of the meaningful aspects
with the meaningless aspects, or the less meaningful aspects,
in order to have the job as a whole.
But you were saying that you would continue to be a professor
even if you did not have to do so out of economic necessity.
That's probably not something that the dean wants to hear.
(Brian). [unclear audio].
(Dr. Veltman). Yeah, but also about the idea
that people would disagree about whether
they would continue to perform their work if they
didn't have to.
Often you might find some individuals who are more
in tune with the fundamental human goods than others.
So someone might realize that because their job is valuable
for the community, they would continue to do it,
where other people are perhaps not thinking about that aspect
of human reality when they decide they would rather have
a life of leisure without any work.
Certainly, a well-developed account of meaningful work
has to allow for some leeway for personal differences in tastes.
People do bring different proclivities, desires, talents,
needs to the working world, and I think it's important to take
that into account indeed.
[audience applause].
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