Social attitudes, under the influence of which we build our lives, often turn out to be very contradictory. For example, “decent people should work” and “a respected person is someone who can afford not to work.” What to choose? We asked this question to psychologist Ekaterina Zhornyak.
Ten years ago, I traveled around America and spent a week visiting a very wealthy military man. The father of the family was at home in the evenings, and his wife Jill, a wonderful middle-aged lady, the mother of four adult daughters, mainly took care of me. In addition to entertaining me, she had her own things to do: golf, fitness, social events, church, meetings with one of her daughters, charity. It is unlikely that her life was exhausted by this, but this is all that I managed to notice during the week spent together.
One day we went to see the Statue of Liberty. In New York, as in Moscow, the streets were filled with people hurrying somewhere. Looking at them, I asked Jill, “Have you ever wanted to do something? Make a career, realize yourself professionally?
With a note of bewilderment in her voice, Jill replied, “I’m glad I never had to work.” What struck me the most was how surprised I was.
The capitalist system is built on the idea of hard individual work.
It was as if the door to the unknown world of perception of reality had opened before me: neither at the Faculty of Psychology, where I studied at that time, nor in the Soviet Union, nor in Russia that was being reconstructed, was this taught. And really, how did I know that I should work? How is the idea “people should work” supported in our society?
Adults often ask a small child: “What will you be when you grow up?” At school, children are taught that they must study well in order to work well later. The question “Who is he (she)?” actually means “What does he (she) do?”.
In the USSR, people who did not work were called parasites, they were subjected to public censure, they were tried, they were expelled from the country – like, for example, Joseph Brodsky.
From proverbs we know that “without labor you cannot catch a fish from a pond”, “labor created a person”, “who does not work, he does not eat”. The fact that hard work is the key to success follows from fairy tales and fables: “The Jumping Dragonfly”, “Cinderella”, “The Three Little Pigs”, “Frost”. And even in the film about “women’s happiness” “Moscow does not believe in tears” it is said that if you sleep four hours a day for 20 years in a row, you will definitely meet your prince, even if you are a little over forty.
The capitalist system that has made many countries prosper is also built on the idea of hard individual work. “If you are so smart, then why are you so poor” – everyone who has developed his abilities and worked hard has achieved happiness, measured in money.
Many psychologists and philosophers argue that a person will be healthy and happy if he realizes his abilities, and the inability to work at full strength can cause illness and misfortune.
Working means simultaneously earning money and not having time to spend it.
Further more. Work is not an obligation, but a right and even a privilege: feminists defend the right of women to work with men on an equal footing, arguing that only in this case a woman will live as a person, gain independence and fulfill herself.
The ability to independently earn and support oneself is one of the criteria for the necessary transition of a child to the status of an adult. The state supports workers: while working, you can get paid vacation, pension and health insurance.
But are there other, alternative knowledge that support the opposite idea – “people should not work”? As Oscar Wilde said, “Work is the last resort of those who can’t do anything else.”
Working means simultaneously earning money and not having time to spend it. In addition, money requires special attention: it is becoming cheaper, it must be preserved and increased – the more a person earns, the more he is forced to work, and it is no longer clear whether the money works for him or him for them.
And who said that the notorious self-realization is connected only with work? If a person dances, takes pictures, admires nature, plays with a child, or helps an old woman cross the street, does he not realize his abilities or contribute to society?
In large corporations, it is customary to install scoreboards that display information about the achievements of the enterprise. For example: “Our factory produced the millionth car.” So that employees understand what they are doing: often they only know how their work area functions, but they do not see the full picture of what is happening.
We live in a consumer society, advertising campaigns create new needs, making us want things that a minute ago we did not know. To get what we want, we work: “Happy is not the one who has everything, but the one who needs nothing.”
Emelya, Ivan the Fool, and the bogatyr, who had lain on the stove for 33 years, managed without persistent lifelong work. Age-old folk wisdom is concentrated in fairy tales – many famous heroes have gained everything thanks to simple luck and the work of numerous assistants: pike, wolf, humpbacked horse.
The master from the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov earned peace, not going to work every day, but creating at home next to his beloved woman. Perhaps a person who works hard and makes a career just feels insecure, anxious and needs external status to feel secure?
In Ecclesiastes it is said: “vanity of vanities”, and you can be convinced of this by reviewing the film “Prochindiada, or Running on the Spot” (V. Tregubovich). The West came up with the idea of progress, they explain to people that they need to strive forward (to a brighter future) and work hard, while in the Eastern world time goes in circles, there is nowhere to rush, there is nothing new and better neither in the future nor in the past. For an Eastern person, it is considered an achievement not to run faster than anyone, but to stop. Buddhists make a special effort to learn how to do nothing.
What is the result? Humanity has a lot of accumulated knowledge. If you look from one side – you need to work, if you look from the other side – you don’t need to. There is no single solution that is right for everyone, but everyone has a choice of what knowledge to use in order to live in the best way for themselves.