13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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Autumn thoughts
After a summer vacation, whether it has lasted a few weeks or a few days, one is always confronted with the question: Could it be that work is an indispensable human need? Is it simply a way of making a living, so that once one is provided for, one feels no need to continue? Perhaps labour in itself really isn't all that necessary, after all. In societies well provided for by natural resources or raw materials, the will to work seems to diminish, and the value one attaches to work as an activity over and above bread-winning seems to disappear. Languishing in the lap of luxury, the citizens of such societies often lose their drive, making a habit of idleness and relaxation -- a habit that becomes very hard to break.
Since the dawn of history, however, work has been an integral part of human life. In the developed industrial and post-industrial societies that now control the rest of the world, work has become the centre of human activity, not only as a form of survival and a method of generating the kind of material comfort that goes along with the accumulation of wealth, but also as a psychological need and a end in itself. Without working, one feels lost and loses one's place in the framework of society. Even a job as simple as selling newspapers or sandwiches on street corners remains a source of self-respect and importance.
In developing and Third World societies, on the other hand, the reverse holds true. People boast of their ability to enjoy wealth and influence while not working, and shunning the rest of society to boot. They prefer a display of affluence to one of professional integrity and are proud of having no capacity for immersing themselves in any productive activity. This tendency is particularly prevalent among those classes that were overwhelmed with wealth due to social transformations, because they belonged to the ruling elite or just acquired large amounts of money in little time. This is how the phenomenon of "unemployment by inheritance" comes to assert itself so repeatedly. Such people scatter their wealth with the same carefree ease with which it lands in their laps.
Where work is a mere pastime, however, a vacation ceases to be a physical or psychological necessity. Even though summer vacations are considered as an indispensable right and an essential element of administration and management in the great economic empires of the contemporary world, even the presidents and CEOs who rule over such domains are expected to cut short their vacations at any time if circumstances necessitate it; indeed, this is part of their responsibilities. This is what drove outraged critics of President Bush to comment negatively about his (unprecedented) month-long break from the White House. The German defence minister, too, cut short his honeymoon in Majorca when German NATO soldiers arrived in Macedonia, but when he used a military aircraft to travel there and back, he was criticised for using government resources to serve a private end; many even called for his resignation. Such is the work ethic that the Third World requires.
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