It’s wisdom from the Bible so why don't we know it? God says we are to find enjoyment in our toil. In Ecclesiastes Chapter 2, the wisest man to ever live, King Solomon, says there is nothing better for a person than finding happiness and enjoyment and contentment, not constant strife and toil, sometimes we have to just sit back in the “joy” of knowing God does indeed have things under control:
24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Also, Jesus worked with his hands, in daily contact with the matter created by God, to which he gave form by his craftsmanship. It is striking that most of his life was dedicated to this task in a simple life which awakened no admiration at all: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mark 6:3)
Moreover, the Church (Catechism of the Catholic Church (2402, 2427, 2428, 2429, 2434) teaches that work is a human right and also a duty. It’s good for individuals and good for society—that is, it serves the common good. Three conditions are imperative for the dignity of labor: that what is produced is not more important than the person producing it; that work contributes to the unity of society and doesn’t tear it down; and that workers have a say in what they’re doing and the conditions under which they do it.
Since the time of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, Catholic social doctrine has emphasized that economies ruled strictly by supply-and-demand, exalting product-derived wealth over every other consideration, are not compatible with Christian principles. People have obligations to each other: to work hard and honestly and to make their best contribution to their employer, coworkers, and community.
In Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical On Human Work, written on the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, he examines not only the dilemmas of the modern corporate world of work but also explores the spirituality of work as it enhances shared human life.
As in so many instances Friedrich Nietzsche identifies the limitation of modern existence. In Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra is asked about his happiness. He replies, "Do I then strive after happiness? I strive after my work" (Part 4 #61). In this phrase, Nietzsche correctly identified one of the extremes in which modernity conceives the nature of man: Man is his work.
The unfortunate result of this conception of man is that work does not furnish happiness. Happiness is the result of reposing in the possession of an end or purpose, which here is always being striven for, but never achieved. Since God alone is that which gives life purpose, absent God purposefulness vanishes. Modernity has exiled God from its world. Work is performed for its own sake and carries no gratification.
Where Nietzsche posits all work and no happiness, the other extreme theory of work proposes no work and no happiness. This Statist vision generates a underclass permanently bound to indigence. It is the enlightened Twentieth First Century liberal and progressive counterpart of slavery. Certain men are deemed irredeemably inferior by never being called to exercise either the same responsibilities or achievements, which constitute the dignity of man. Consequently, with purposefulness wrenched from their lives, this underclass lives with neither work nor happiness.
Tribal enclaves are created for this new set of inferiors, as their cruel fate is perpetuated, sometimes for generation upon generation. They are tethered not to cotton mills but worse, to the heavy chains of Statist folly called the welfare system; or, alternatively in cahoots with their tribe. Their progressive overseers surround them with a drone of propaganda, particularly in academe, convincing them that their victimhood wins them perpetual entitlement as fulfillment. Their only occupation becomes idleness, and their sole diversion becomes violence. This Statist and tribal obfuscation is the slow strangulation of the common good.
Man's faculty of will propels him toward striving for the good. Possession of the good is the root of human action. It is in action that man cultivates his nature. Man is by nature designed to work for the fulfillment of his faculties.
Man's dignity, however, is not in work. It resides in his very being, his nature. Work manifests the dignity inherent in his nature, as well as elevating him to the heights of excellence that are his destiny.
Man realizes his dignity through his work, just as the student does. Substituting sentimentality in education with achievement does not create self-esteem but self-absorption. Man does not achieve self-esteem through repeating emotional mantras.
Man achieves self-esteem through his action, his work.
Adam and Eve, in their prelapsarian state, are summoned to work. Genesis reveals that they are to increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). This confirms the intrinsic value of work as the natural condition of man.
Once Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, their work was penalized by struggle (Genesis 3:17). Here, work is not described as the punishment for sin, but working by the sweat of our brow is.
1973
What is Milking the Dairy?
This is a vignette from my work about Burning America: In the Best Interest of the Company?
My first real or formal job was as a clerk in a drive-in dairy. It did have its advantages as it was located next to the local Catholic all-girls school, close to my high school, and easily accessible to buddies and high school mates who could blow their horn and wave since it was right off the main drags. The dairy was owned by a conservative Protestant back in the day when Americans went to church and the business was filled with people from his church and community, of which I was not.
The owner decided to crack down on us poor unfortunate young workers as the ne-er-do-wells that we were perceived as. He demanded that we take lie detector tests to ferret out the thievery and ordered us all to cut our 1970s fashionable long hair as a test of our compliance. Appropriately, at the time, the Five Man Electrical Band had a hit with "Signs."
https://youtu.be/c9lh7lqZojc
As the life-long rebel I would turn out to be I refused to take a lie detector test nor would I cut my hair. I played basketball which meant I had the short butch style cut for athletics and then would just enjoy growing it out so I could look more like the Beatles and rockers of the day. One of my fellow workers, the ever-cool Wayne and I, did the research to find out that the company had no legal right to order us to take tests and we simply refused to comply with a newly instituted hair length test. We were already in a shirt uniform and we feel that was enough compliance.
I had no problem with reasonable restrictions on controlling and binding unruly hair; but the issue here was coercion and not safety.
What management lessons can be learned here?
If you were the manager what would you have done?
2004-2014
To Harass is Human, To Forgive is to Thrive
What is my application of the saying:`To err is human to forgive divine'?
Companies advocate the most talented, experienced, and best qualified employees for advancement, right? Or, do they?
Yet, my accomplishments seem to simply annoy my parochial school employer. As a result, I filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claim when repeatedly I was passed over for advancement. There were no tangible or documented issues marring my work performance but lesser accomplished and employees with less experience were promoted over me. The case dragged on incessantly before I moved on but the organization thereafter harassed me at each subsequent location.
I was transferred to five locations, one twice in ten years and at each facility the administration reminded me of how inexperienced and incompetent I was. The location shuffling had me joke that I was following a Bruce Springsteen tour schedule.
Aggrieved employees had an advocate and when under pressure from local administration there was an unusual step of calling to “The Evil Tower,” or, the regional school headquarters located downtown.
How lucky was I? The advocate told me that in thirty-five years of practice I was the only individual to be hailed down to the “Tower” not once but twice.
Should the organizational sins at one location incessantly follow an employee throughout years of employment?
Should local supervisors make independent judgements about individual employee behavior and capabilities?
What do you do when informed by an administrative peer that an employee is not a good worker?
2016
How Do You Deliver Bad News to the Boss?
In a world of mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing, bad news needs to be delivered. But, how do you do it?
In one organizational setting, we were all instructed by upper management to tune into a special video announcement which would broadcast to us about an important organizational transition. As head of my staff we were all assembled at the appointed time and listened and watched the CEO instruct us on the immediate changes as a body.
Without a heads up, my position was downsized and the flabbergasted staff all turned to me with their jaws dropped. After an awkward pause, one of my colleagues asked if I had any warning and I answered in the negative.
One valued staff member, whom I had recruited from out of state, refused to work in that setting again. We remain close friends today and I have recommended them for subsequent opportunities.
Is that how critical company information should be communicated? How would you transmit similar information throughout your organization?
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