TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
TOP UPDATES FOUR PILLARS CINEMA/TV GAMES MANGA/ANIME MUSIC WRITINGS FAQ LINKS
One museum I remember being particular impressed by was the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Many tourists skip it in favor of the British Museum and National Gallery, but it has almost as remarkable of a collection. And in it, there was one particular object that I remember most strongly: a religious relic from medieval England called a "workman's cross," which was apparently an extremely rare and novel item. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of it and have not been able to find one online no matter how much I search.
What makes a "workman's cross" different from a normal cross? Well, I haven't seen the object in almost a decade, but I will describe it to the best of my memory. It was a cross with the crucified Jesus on it. He was crying, looking very pained. This itself makes it remarkable, as a lot of these old Catholic icons and objects from England were thrown out if not outright destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. But this cross was quite a strange specimen even among those. It was like no other crucifix I've seen. This is because the Christ in it was being tormented by various farming tools! That is, his arm was being sawed by a saw. His foot was being crushed by a plow. His side was being pierced by a scythe. Several of these items looked anachronistic for the ancient time of the crucifixion, in fact. But they looked exactly like what a farmer in medieval England would use.
So what was this strange cross intending to convey? Well, the plaque explained that this "workman's cross" was a very rare example of its kind. It seemed to have been made for a peasant used to working in the fields. And the purpose of the cross seemed to have been to convey a simple message: DON'T WORK ON THE SABBATH! "When you are picking up that plow to work on Sunday, you are hurting Jesus with it!" A very simple way to convey an abstract concept for a peasant who in all likelihood couldn't even read. We can imagine the peasant who saw it was in church that day was starting to lose his patience and start thinking about what he would be doing on his land when he should have been in a more religious state of mind. And this cross was a particularly non-subtle way of reminding him.
This object was a great physical example of something that can be hard to get our heads around: The idea of taking a day off had to be ENFORCED! Doesn't that seem strange? Shouldn't we naturally want to be idle and be forced to work instead?
Well, it does make a little more sense if we think about being a medieval peasant. This was a time when a bad harvest could be the difference between life and death. It was a time when the slim margins of a crop being bountiful or not could mean the difference between one of your children starving or not. Who wouldn't want to work a bit more here and there to ensure that you could be stable later on? And hey, if you have extra to spare, that's a way you can make some extra money on the side. So it certainly makes sense why we might not want to take a sabbath day in these particular historical circumstances.
With this in mind, we might wonder what the purpose of instituting a sabbath was in the first place. What could be wrong about having a bigger "safety net?" Or serving the community in some way or other even in your leisure time? It was one of the ten commandments, up there with "thou shalt not kill." So it clearly was important.
Well, if you read the Old Testament, you get the impression that most of the Mosaic laws were set down in order to create a stable society in some way or other. But some of the details were probably hard to convince people of. For example, maybe there was a lot of disease being transmitted by pork. But trying to explain the ways disease spread was too hard, so it was decided that "Jehovah says don't eat pork!" would be the best way to set down some ground rules for society. In a way, it was a primitive form of a constitution. A constitution is precisely the basic things we agree on before anything else. In a sense, it can never BE justified. It just has to be accepted as a matter of agreement. And "Jehovah will be angry if we don't!" is a good way of getting people on board who might disagree.
Of course, many laws in the Old Testament are barbaric and/or absurd today. There are laws that endorse slavery, capital punishment for minor offenses (such as cursing one's parents in Leviticus 20:9, practicing forms of divination in Leviticus 20:27, and two males having sex in Leviticus 20:13), sexual puritanism on some levels (prohibiting prostitution, for example, in Deuteronomy 23:17) and sexual cruelty in others (requiring a man who rapes a woman to marry his victim, for example, in Deuteronomy 22:28). Of course, we must ask "in comparison to what?" You'd be hard-pressed to find any Iron Age legal code which would live up to our modern standards.
In fact, by those standards, many laws in the Old Testament appear downright modern.
Many are just clearly pragmatically useful, like not leaving pits open for animals to
fall in (Exodus 21:33) and making a parapet at the edge of a roof when building a house
so that nobody falls off and gets injured during construction (Yes, that is really a
law! Look it up. It's Deuteronomy 22:8). And some of the laws clearly reflect humane
values that influence us to this day:
Leave some food aside for travelers and the poor (Leviticus 19:10)
Treat everyone fairly and with the same legal standards, whether they are citizens
or strangers, rich or poor, etc. (Deuteronomy 1:16)
Government officials should be impartial and should not take bribes (Deuteronomy
16:18)
If someone injures another, he must pay for the injured party's medical expenses and
lost labor (Exodus 21:18)
Don't muzzle animals (Deuteronomy 25:4)
Don't gossip (Leviticus 19:16)
Of course, this doesn't even get into the hermeneutic problem of interpreting these laws based on a mindset that is locked in the present. One example that is commonly given is about homosexual relationships. In the ancient world, homosexual relationsips would have almost never been involved in the context of monogamous pair-bonding. Most men who had sex with men in the ancient world did so as a kind of indulgent, hedonistic form of sexual pastime. It would be understood much more like visiting a prostitute. I personally don't think that visiting a prostitute is a morally bad thing either, provided the industry is well-regulated enough. But that's besides the point. I only mention it as an example of how different the world was back then.
And this idea is nothing new. It's what St. Paul essentially got at with the plea that we follow the "spirit" of the law and not the "letter" of the law (2 Corinthians 3:6). And that was only a few centuries after the original Torah was written. Imagine how different the world of today is!
But of course, sometimes it can be hard to tease apart the letter of the law from its spirit. For example, a dietary restriction might seem arbitrary and silly today, but only because we weren't in a culture where eating pork may have been spreading some disease. When we only have the law left as a kind of evidence, it can be hard to piece together what the spirit behind it might have been and what kind of hidden benefits it may have offered.
Which brings me to the idea of the sabbath: One day set aside in a week to do no work. This was no light thing in the Mosaic laws. Working on the sabbath was punishable by death! (Exodus 31:14) This was one of those laws which was quickly written off as being a piece of outdated superstition. But here, I aim to make the case that the institution of something like a sabbath actually may be essential to the well-being of a society.
As a framework to answer this question, let's look at an example of a society with nothing like a sabbath looks like. People are allowed to set their own schedules. They can work whatever hours they want. That sounds like a great thing at first! But let's think through the consequences of a society with no barriers to work opportunities. These are by no means theoretical, as we in the modern west, and especially the US, live in a society that is very much headed in that direction.
When people are free to work literally any and every time possible, there is no reason for a company to not be open 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It would hurt profits not to, as other companies will step in that never close. And they will quickly put those that do not compete with that level of "convenience" out of business. So in order to fill all those weird hours, employees and companies work together to "optimize" their schedules to a bizarre, lopsided allotment of hours, maybe split between 2 or 3 jobs. And this is how more and more people are living.
Increasingly, it becomes impossible to even keep this schedule consistent because there is more variability in the way someone can be "of use" and "productive" at work than ever before, but also more ability to respond to and predict that variability and optimize the schedules of workers around it. So increasingly, the model is that you are enslaved to some app on your phone that lets you know what work is available on a short-term basis which is infinitely variable. And that requires you to essentially always be paying attention to your phone. You never really have any time off. You are always on call, ready to fit into whatever random optimized bit of time they have you doing some arcane task to serve the god called "productivity."
This is already monstrous beyond belief. We are robbed of any regular rhythm or cycle to our lives. We don't have any common cycles to live according to. Certainly we can't hope to align ourselves to the rhythmic passing of day and night anymore, as we are constantly forced to work weird schedules for companies that are operating 24/7/365. But even things like establishing regular times to see our friends and family are increasingly difficult. Everyone works on some weird schedule of their own, and there is zero regularity in how we live according to time anymore. We have arrived at this strange contradiction: Being able to "choose" all our own working time has made us more enslaved than ever.
But this doesn't even tackle the worst part of it: The pernicious way all of this interacts with wealth inequality and all the social and political stratification that this gives rise to. In the US especially, but increasingly in other societies as well, we live in an age of extreme wealth inequality. I forget the exact figures, but I've heard that in the 1950s in the US the average CEO made some 40x as much as a blue-collar worker at his company, and now it's in the order of at least 400x as much.
But there's a problem about all of this that people have a hard time getting their heads around. Whenever we hear that, we have an image deep in our primate brain of some fat cat CEO who sits around smoking cigars all day while the employees work their asses off. And that very much WAS the pattern in the early 20th century. Being richer usually meant you had more leisure time, as that was the real point of being rich. But the truth is that this populist image isn't really very true anymore. Most of the richest people in society work INSANELY HARD. These are the people who have succeeded the most at optimizing their entire lives around "hustle." Sure, these people have their own leisure. They go to exorbitant golf courses that rob us of obscene amounts of wild nature that could otherwise be beautiful communal spaces, for example. But as a general rule, people who occupy the top 1% of wealth are the people who have most effectively figured out how to succeed. In other words, it's a "meritocracy" working precisely as intended.
This is the point that is often ignored. We have a massive wealth gap, but that is because we also have a massive MERIT gap. Not only do the top 1% have much more money, they have much more of an ability to bring "value" to any company. There is a gap in the amount of money the top 1% make from the bottom 99%, but that reflects a difference in the amount of WORTH in their work. And that is precisely because there are no restrictions in how much they can turn their whole lives into work. To "win" in this society, one has to give up any idea of "work/life balance."
And all of this sucks! It has resulted in an extremely small group of society having a disproportionate ability to lobby and influence government policy, increased disconnection, distrust, and disinterest in the professional atmosphere of most of our lives, and broader societal resentment and cynicism. And of course, all of this is ignoring the fact that "working hard" is by no means a virtue in and of itself when so many of the wealthiest industries in society are actively committed to making the world a worse place. You can make a lot of money working in industries like coal, petroleum, logging, tobacco, junk food, factory farming, GMOs, arms dealing, gambling, social media influencing, incendiary political punditry, etc.
But putting aside the question of the morality of work and just looking at the inherently harmful effects of wealth inequality, all of this has happened precisely for the reason that we no longer have any language in the secular western world to describe a "vice" of working too much. The more time someone spends working, the more wealth they will earn as a reward. This is a matter of mathematical necessity and we can never change that. What we can change is rewarding them in more ways than material wealth. For today, we also reward them with status. We reward employees who devote more and more of their time to serving the company and raise them up as exemplars. Much of this happens unconsciously. Most of us would say that we have limits to how much work we think is healthy or acceptable. But when it comes down to saving face in our daily life, we are loathe to admit it.
I'll try to illustrate this with an example: At our workplaces, we have a break for lunch and maybe a few other breaks in the course of a given day. These are structured. All employees take their lunch break at the same time, or at least all employees in a section. In any case, there's some degree to which we don't choose when our breaks are. But now imagine what would happen if you could take your 90 minutes of a break at any time of the day you wanted. Or split it up as needed. If you came to work and decided to take it 10 minutes after you started, you'd probably feel a bit embarrassed. People might not consciously say it, but they'd give you a look like "Really? You just got here!" It seems like it would create an atmosphere where no one would want to be the first person to take their break, just because it would be embarrassing to look like the weakest member of the team. It would also contribute to much less of a feeling of comeraderie and kinship at work, as you would be much less likely to have an opportunity to strike up conversations and get to know your coworkers since everyone would be taking breaks on their own schedule, or even just choosing to work through lunch for the extra cash. That's why it's actually a relief that a break at work is mandated and set up "against our will," so to say. It saves us from having to look "lazy" in comparison to others who are still working.
Now, what could something like this look like at a societal level? Probably something like a sabbath. And I think that it is no surprise that most European countries have a lot more places closed on Sundays, even if they are by and large less religious than the US on the whole. Because labor culture is comparatively less endlessly driven by "hustle" and capitalist propaganda of constant improvement and accumulation. And they realized that the sabbath offered a perfect opportunity of that, religious origin or not.
As someone like me who thinks that monotheism and supremacy narratives in religion are inherently harmful and undesirable, it is encumbent on us to find ways to replicate everything good we get from them in a non-Abrahamic framework. And one of those very good things is the idea of a sabbath. I suggest that, intentionally or not, a day where it was not just a "norm" not to work but where you were actually FORCED not to work put a limit on how much wealth inequality there could be in a society. No company could fuck others over by "allowing" people to work when everyone else was resting.
And as a result of that, society had rituals of common worship, ceremony, leisure, etc. You wouldn't have to double check everyone's schedule in advance to see if they were working that day or not. You could just casually visit a friend because of course they wouldn't be working! It was the sabbath! I imagine that this did a lot to make ancient Israelite society feel more like one big family and did wonders for societal trust.
Sure, we can advocate for policies like wealth caps and progressive taxation to curb the excesses of wealth inequality. But inequality will have a way of emerging even with these. If everyone has UBI and doesn't have to work anymore, there will still be those overly-ambitious ones who just "want" to work more. But if we don't have any norm in our society that sees a vice in working too much, the same inequality of wealth and hence of influence, status, and opportunity will re-emerge. So I argue that we need something like a sabbath to once again make it encumbent on us to see not working too much as a virtue in and of itself.
Japan is a country which has a lot of problems with this sort of work culture, but one thing which is a norm in their schools and many workplaces that I think is quite good is a carved out time for cleaning. It's a common sight at Japanese schools from elementary through high school, where students are responsible for cleaning their own classrooms. Usually, it runs like this: 20 minutes are set on a timer. During that 20 minutes, the class does as much cleaning as they can together. And then when the 20 minutes are over, they have to stop! No matter how much they did or is still left over. And you'd be surprised how much gets done when you are truly focused and dedicated for a short burst, without the attachment to getting everything "totally clean." In fact, there is usually time left over before the 20 minutes are over because somehow they maintain a remarkable cleanliness without ever being attached to "the goal." This practice has some remarkable parallels to the life of a Zen monastery, where everything is done according to pre-ordained chunks of time. When the bell rings, you are forced to find a stopping place and accept the imperfect nature of whatever your work has been. This is something that the modern world needs a lot more of.