In a piece on NPR this morning, I heard that the French/Algerian novelist and philosopher Albert Camus would be 100 years old today (he died at 46 in an automobile accident). A sidebar made an interesting point about Camus' retelling of the myth of Sisyphus and the paradox of boring employment. It's worth a listen:
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/07/243650305/why-do-people-agree-to-work-boring-jobs
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3 comments:
"Meaning doesn't lie in the work, it lies in what you bring to the work." So true. Though many people take jobs because they need to earn an income, period.
Some of my favorite jobs have been ones that others would consider boring. Thankfully my current position, as a library assistant, has a nice mix of routine busy work, stimulating tasks, and engaging personalities.
I don't think there is anything at all boring about libraries!
Of course it's true that many people take jobs just to earn their keep. I've had many such jobs myself. The point is not to be insensitive to need, but to ask the larger question of how we came as a community to divorce earning your keep from doing something meaningful.
The ideal would be for everyone to be working meaningful jobs in a well-functioning community. This obviously is not the case. In our now-state, we should be aware that if we take up a job for the pure necessity of the job, it is only for the money that will (and this has the possibility of failing) get us to a more meaningful job or work. If we begin considering jobs of necessity as the only possibility ever (some people have one option), then there may be no foreseeable and achievable alternative. But going to a job of necessity every day and barely (or simply not) making enough money casts away the notion that the future isn't necessarily determined. (I'm still new to the idea of determinism so please correct/ridicule me if you think I'm wrong). If those with jobs of necessity could think practically into the future, instead of perhaps dreaming or hoping, they may at least feel they have more agency in their futures and would plan for a better future even if the future were to be determined from the start and they all die in a car crash at 46. But, c'est la vie, right?
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