Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Why Do We Work?
I should preface this entry by saying two things. First, if you believe that human beings are a type of life separate and apart from plants and animals, this piece may not be for you. I believe there is no fundamental difference among all life forms on this planet. I'm not trying to argue another out of her or his beliefs. I'm simply exploring my own beliefs as they pertain to the question I pose. I tend to believe, as Desmond Morris wrote in the book of the same name that human beings are the naked ape. Taken a step farther by recent genetics research, it appears that there is no fundamental DNA difference between plants and animals or between various species of animals. The only reason I'm not an ant or a starling or a rat is what DNA was turned on when during my gestation.
Nobody else has to believe what I write here. I'm not looking to pick a fight, and if you, gentle reader, are, please go someplace else. I won't fight you.
The second thing of interest here is that this is (or will be when I've finished) a long piece. So you might want to bookmark it and come back when you have more time, or you might want to read it in chunks. It's your call. I'm just telling you what is here up front so that you may have your expectation set appropriately.
It seems like a question with an obvious answer. We work to live. I need a place to live. I need transportation. I need food. I need companionship. I need, in short, the money that comes from trading my time and talents for money from someone who wants what I have to offer.
That said, I can do--in fact I have done--many different things in order to get the money I need for these things I deem important. I don't have to do what I'm doing; I don't have to be in this job. I'm in this job because I deemed it to be the closest I could get to doing what I wanted to do while bringing in the money. Yet it seems that doing what I want to do is really immaterial to what I need to do in order to survive.
When I look at life as a whole, from the smallest single-cell life forms to the largest, from those that seem to lack anything resembling a brain to those who have the most highly developed brains, what I see is that our purpose is to reproduce our type of life. We live for sex, especially sex that leads to new life. Everything else that we do is subordinate to that one purpose: the continuation of the species, whatever that species is.
Procreation doesn't, frankly, take much of the time of any life form on the planet. Far more time is devoted to the second most important thing we do, which is keep ourselves alive. To keep ourselves alive, so that we can fulfill our primary purpose, we need food and a safe environment. Not every lifeform, fortunately, needs to reside in the same environment. Life on this planet seems to have adapted to every possible environment on the globe from the frozen wastes of north and south to the equatorial heat of the planet's midsection and everywhere in between. We live where we can find--or in the case of human beings--grow the food we need, and we live in habitats where we feel secure.
Of course, not everyone lives in a safe place. These are the endangered. Perhaps their habitat is under attack from other life forms. Perhaps the food that used to be abundant (or abundantly grown) in one area no longer flourishes. So we life forms move out, if we can, for greener pastures, safer habitat. Life spends far more time finding its food and securing itself a safe habitat than it does procreating, yet without food and a place to live we can't fulfill that prime purpose of life.
I find it interesting that all three of this very important things that all life forms seem to do still doesn't take up all of our time. We eat, we sleep, we mate, and still we seem to have some free time left over, at least a lot of us do. I don't have as much free time as, say, my dogs. We provide them room and board. So they're in a safe environment and get fed and exercised daily. (They don't get sex because we had them neutered at the appropriate time, but that was our decision not theirs.) We have turned their primary purpose into being companions, security, and entertainment for us.
Now I want to get to the crux of the matter. Why do I work? Given that I can take care or my basic needs (and then some, often), what is my motivation for working. I've procreated. I'm eating well (perhaps too well). I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I have two nice vehicles. I have a wife, and two of our three children (one hers and two mine) visit us whenever they can. Life is good.
Work, on the other hand sucks. Obviously the money is good (see house, cars, food, wife above), and the kind of work I do I can enjoy (when I'm busy, which obviously I'm not at the moment). Yet I do not feel fulfilled. I do not feel that I am contributing to anything important to anyone else. I lack purpose in my work. It only serves to satisfy my environmental wants. (I really do have more than I need, so by that definition I am rich.)
Purpose may be the one thing that distinguishes human beings from other animals. We seem to need a purpose to what we're doing, even if we have to make it up. Most of the coworkers I've ever had--and younger self--have as a purpose to support themselves and their families. Some of my coworkers--and my younger self--want to get ahead: promotions, better jobs, better houses, better cars (,better spouses?). Those ways are no longer sufficient for me. Either I have all I want or I have reconciled myself to live with what I have. All I want now is for my work to be worth the time I put into it.
Though I do not know, anymore than anyone else, when I will die, I can say confidently that I don't have as many years left as are behind me. I do not want to waste the remaining time I have simply in the pursuit of enough money to keep body and soul together. I would like to think that what I do matters to someone, and I haven't had that feeling in some time now.
So I search for purpose to my remaining days, and when I find something I want to commit that time to, I am out of here.
