The other day I was speaking with a colleague about the election and how personal histories are involved in our political choices.
What was interesting from our conversation was that my colleague harbored a deep resentment towards those who were able to experience success easily, or were able to easily obtain things for which he himself had to work long, hard hours.
As I was trying to respond to him, I was reminded of the fundamental reason why we institute governments in the first place. We institute governments for the purpose of making a better life for ourselves—less conflict, more cooperation and collaboration—in other words, as Thomas Hobbes noted in Leviathan, life without a government resulted in:
[No] culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
There is nothing wrong with hard work. Industriousness and labor, properly directed, should always pay rewards. But industriousness is not the sole measure by which we value individuals, nor the sole yardstick for measuring our success as a nation. Do we really want to advance the idea that only hard work and significant sacrifice will yield success? Endless toiling is not the only or best way forward for a society.
Culturally, America’s focus has, for too long, been focused on the success of single individuals with no regard given to the success of the nation as a whole. The Bush administration has given us the “ownership society,” and we have come to know the expression of Liberty to entail economic success.
The problem here is not that some people don’t have to work hard (or that they don’t work hard), but that the reason behind why we institute governments is to attempt to ensure that future generations don’t have to work as hard as their predecessors. The same sentiment is heard in every parent’s wish that their children are able to have a better life than they’ve had. Intellectually and economically, this is understood as standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, in order for us to proceed “onwards and upwards.” Why should every generation reinvent the wheel themselves? Why not use the wheel invention of the previous generation and figure out how to better use the wheel? Then the next generation can figure out how to make the wheel move on its own. Or do we begrudge future generations for not figuring out the wheel on their own?
Obviously, life and technology are not as simple as that. And I certainly wouldn’t want to try and make the argument that those who are fully capable of providing for themselves, but don’t, are deserving of “success” or the fruits of others’ labor. However, I do object to the idea that our only responsibility in life is to ourselves alone.
1 response so far ↓
1 nerflom // Oct 1, 2008 at 11:34 am
Great post!
It’s such a sad commentary of our of culture that “individual liberty” has come to mean everyone is in it for themselves. Why is altruism such a foreign concept here? The mere mention of any kind of socialist program in the US and people run screaming, as if someone suggested taking socialism to the extreme with the evil dictator to go along with it!
“Endless toiling” is certainly not what the founders had in mind.
These days there is no perceived reward in working for the greater good because money and material things are what we’re all trained to want, and that’s all about the here and now. It’s ironic too – if people were willing to take the kind of risk investing in the country and the future of humanity the way they do in the stock market, I think the results would be so extraordinary that the idea of accumulating wealth for it’s own sake would be considered so disgusting by society, that words like “billionare” and “homeless person” wouldn’t exist.
I don’t see how people can be inspired to work on the success of the nation as a whole or future generations as long as greed drives our economic system.
I think Free Market Capitalism is what Atilla the Hun might look like if he were a vast economic system instead of a person. Attilla didn’t care about the future or making things better. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it and pillaged accordingly.
I don’t think people generally work harder than they need to. Some people work hard because the think they need to be rich, or because they want a certain quality of life. The unfortunate thing, is that hard work doesn’t necessarily equate with economic success for everyone. For some people, their needs are so profound, and the disparity of wages so vast compared to those of others, that “hard work” takes on a new meaning, and seems a little more like slave labor than working towards their own, or anyone else’s prosperity.
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