The very expression to me is fighting words. It’s one of those loaded expressions. “You don’t have a strong work ethic.”
The word ethic makes it immediately sound like if you don’t have it, you’ve broken some moral code, you’re a bad person or something.
I think the protestant work ethic might have had something to do with the afterlife.
But I get it a lot from secular people, Jews, everyone talks about work ethic.
I don’t like it. Not one bit. It scares me.
Lately I’ve been keyed into this idea that we’re all part of and contributing to a confining consumerist system that results in vast numbers of wage slaves
forced into disutility to make the 1% richer. So when I hear the word “work ethic” my skin crawls.
I believe in honesty, fairness, and taking responsibility for yourself, which is an offshoot of honesty and fairness.
But nowhere does this necessarily intrinsically include work, or if it does, it certainly doesn’t comment on how much work,
or what kind of work, one is obliged to do in order to have intrinsic value as a person. It doesn’t mean long, tedious work for low pay.
And yet when people use the phrase, it usually describes something that isn’t, on it’s face, all that fun or exciting. It’s hard work
they’re espousing.
I guess what bothers me is it sounds like there’s something honorable or good about a person who feels morally compelled to do a lot of work,
who is willing to do things the hard way, and to do more work than he needs to.
I know it also comes from a campaign to get workers to feel morally obligated to do enough work to justify their pay. This makes sense.
If you enter into a contract to do work, you should do the work. But I don’t call that work ethic. I call that contract ethic. Or honesty. Fairness.
Again, why does it have to be articulated as “work ethic?” Those words. WORK. ETHIC. Paired together. I’ll tell you why.
1.So that the poor can make the rich richer. It’s a word that keeps people working even when work is not fun.
2.So that the freethinking poor won’t challenge the status quo of the working poor with blinders on; it’s a way to make the freethinkers ashamed
of advancing the virtue of leisure and calling out the hideousness of wage slavery.
Folks, I’ll say it again, there is nothing morally or intrinsically GOOD about work. There is no work ethic.
There are martyrs. There are wage slaves. There are people who love what they do. There are obsessive compulsives.
There are simpletons. There are religious zealots. There are driven artists who couldn’t stop their work any sooner than stopping their breathing, and they are lucky. Driven warriors. They each have a different story and a different motivation.
They are the ones who perpetuate the expression, along with the rich and the government. And there’s plenty of overlap.
For instance, you might have a relative who is a rich, obsessive-compulsive, religious zealot who used to be and is still at heart a poor wage slave simpleton,
who is also part of the government, and/or is fortunate enough to LOVE WHAT HE DOES. “I love what I do,” said Bill, the insurance salesman.
Work is a physics concept. You have to work to walk to the pot to piss in it, to grab the grapes from the vine,
Breathing is a form of work. Work is actually fine. It’s the stuff of life.
Then there’s jobs. Disutility, becoming the means of production to an ownership class.
Who in their right mind would ever be a piece of human factory equipment?
Someone who is desperate. but often desperation isn’t enough. They have to believe it is morally good.
Talk about evil.
If you have a run-in with someone who wants you to be doing something you don’t want to do, they will bring up work ethic as a form of manipulation.
An attack on your self-esteem, to make you feel like a loser, instead of a visionary. When that day comes, remember, Gamer himself gave you permission to not be fazed by their manipulation.
Can you defend work ethic as a phrase? I’d like to hear from you.