Posts by giovanni tiso
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Not a photoshop:
Okay. First off: that could have come with a warning of some kind, no? Secondly: is it me, or are we only being asked to abstain from getting it on with the opposite sex? Because that would open interesting possibilities.
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Field Theory: How's that working out for…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I don't get the relentless negativity, I really don't.
You don't say! :-)
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(Put it another way: from cotton picking we got the blues. That is not to say that there was dignity in being abducted, transported across the ocean and made to pick cotton for no pay.)
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Sacha,
Most work involves some manner of organisation and people in addition to tasks.
Yes, but if at the end of getting there what you do is interchangeable, then it's not about toilet-cleaning - it's about the kinds of activities and relationships that can surround any job.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to John Armstrong,
I just think that’s its equally dangerous to ‘extend to others’ the idea that there is no value in shitty work.
Well, let's examine that: you have talked about toilet cleaning, but it seems to me that the value you find in it is largely ancillary to the work itself - getting on with your workmates, establishing a discipline, having a reason, however shitty, for getting up in the morning. None of these things are materially connected to the toilet cleaning itself. What that is going to teach you are some very basic manual skills at best, and you'd master them pretty quickly. Beyond that, there is the pride in not depending on others, and I respect that and possibly even share it even though from a political point of view I think it is fundamentally misguided.
To make a less gruesome example, I used to work nights at the BNZ doing data entering, and I didn't mind it. Mostly I enjoyed my workmates very much - the bulk of them were Pacific Islanders, and as a recent immigrant I found them much easier to relate with socially than Pakeha - but I perversely derived some enjoyment from the work itself. However it was mindless, and I have absolutely no qualms saying it. It was so mindless in fact that eventually they closed our office down and outsourced it to a bunch of computers.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Che Tibby,
i genuinely think you might be looking for an idyll that has not ever existed. there have always been these awful jobs – it’s why we compete to not do them.
I have never suggested that it's a new state of affairs. However, what is relatively new (or rather has taken on new forms) is the ideological insistence that there is something inherently dignified and redemptive in the work itself. The idea that there is no work that is beneath people, and that if you suggest that there is you are disrespecting the least fortunate, is quite commonly held. What it does is in fact give political palatibility to punitive approaches to welfare, the imposition of awful, semi-slave labour (marginal rates in the order of $1 an hour) for its own sake, or more precisely to expiate the sin of not possessing a more marketable profile.
(Which is doubly nonsensical: firstly, because any hierarchy - even if it is impersonally determined by the market - is going to place some people at the bottom by definition, and would even if we all had doctorates in engineering; secondly, because neoliberal economies keep a reserve of unemployment in order to control inflation, so there are always going to be people who are jobless through no fault of their own whatsoever.)
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Sacha,
Saying you are welcome to find a *lack* of meaning in work, but not to extend that to others seems an equally deficient argument.
I don't think so. It's important to recognise the dehumanising aspects of work, which - on this I agree with you - long predate capitalism. One of my mother's childhood memories that has made the most impression on me is her description of her best friend returning from rice picking, her face deformed and her stare made vacant by exhaustion. There may have been some social, communal aspects to rice picking that are easy enough to romanticise but are nonetheless true - which speaks to the point John makes above about what happens when you're not actually cleaning the toilets - but these were rescued, stolen from the work itself, not a consequence of work or in any meaningful way connected to the work. And then there is all the time, all the socialisation, all the life that my mum's friend was robbed of by that labour. You could say much the same of the teenage sharemilkers in Mum's village, many of whom contracted bovine TB. What work taught them was how to die young.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Sacha,
That seems a somewhat sad belief to me.
I find the alternative belief actually dangerous. You are welcome to find whatever meaning in the work that you do, but not to extend the idea to others ("there is no mindless work, and to imply that there is would be an insult to those who do it").
Which is another way of saying that work is not going to set you free. A humane society is one that values people, not their labour as an abstraction.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Che Tibby,
mine is that reaching 65 does not mean a person must leave the workforce
Oh, then fine. I took "should work" to mean, you know, "should work". If you mean they can keep working if it's their thing, why not. So long as it doesn't get stupid. I've had more than one post-retirement age teacher who should have known when to quit.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Rich Lock,
It could probably be argued that you learnt something or brought something to all of those jobs you listed.
So what? Plus, that works only for the people who are lucky enough to have a character arc. A lot of people clean toilets all their lives. What is the job teaching them that they can take... where?