I was inspired to write this by a football club; or, to be precise, a football programme on television that featured said football club.

The show was being given access to the senior staff and backrooms of the club when I caught a glimpse of a sign on a wall, which said: “We will work that bit harder than every other team we play”.  This is, of course, designed to instil the commonly-held belief in ‘good honest graft’ into the players, to make sure they put as much effort into their work – actually, games (kicking an inflatable around) – as possible.

However, the best football teams make other teams work twice as hard and win easily or, as the saying goes, ‘at a canter’.  Of course, footballers need to go through the hours of training and ‘put a shift in’ on the pitch; but great footballers are gracefully skilled, not headless chickens running this way and that until their energy is spent.  As such, the aforementioned motto can only be viewed as a symbol of an unthinking, ingrained work ethic belief system.

Why work “that bit harder” than other teams if they are patently inferior and you can beat them without pulling muscles?

This can be extended as a metaphor for the issue with work generally; or, the ‘work ethic’ as social paradigm.

Apart from a lucky few who enjoy their job or like to work, most of us prefer to enjoy ourselves and work is to pay our way.  Idleness or leisure is preferable.  Yet the vast majority seem to soak-in the idea of a work ethic without question, with it being an unquestioned ideology of society, despite preferences otherwise.  A mode of unthinking social thought that does not bear scrutiny.

Of course, the notion of a work ethic stems from the struggle to survive; and reached its apotheosis in puritan zealots who (mis)equated ‘good’ works with work, the struggle to survive with an arduous task to attain perfection in the sight of god.  This puritan drive towards productivity and activity was, to a large extent, a necessity in former ages, when the sweat of your brow and agriculture were the main methods of survival.  You either produced or you died.  And this necessity became an ideological system through ingrained overdose, a surrounding exigency.

But things have changed: in the modern world there is a surfeit.

We no longer need to work to survive, to put food on our plate.  In theory.  This is not universally the case and some still starve, but it is within human capacity to put an end to starvation with cooperation rather than greed and hoarding.  There is enough for all.  Yet people want more and more, more than enough.  Constant over-production and over-acquisition, and this over-work is destroying the planet and severely depleting its resources.  We are never content, when we could be (and save the environment at the same time).

In the 1970s a leisure generation was predicted, where there was no need to work because we had achieved enough for comfort; but this vision has been replaced by work-for-work’s sake.  Production for the sake of production.  Do we need, or even value, that perfume or plastic?  Do we want what is produced or do we simply grab it because it’s there?

Also, work is often inefficient.  People are too often forced to fill time doing pointless jobs, like rearranging shelves in a supermarket.  Rearranging the chairs on The Titanic.  It would be better to let them save up their energy so they could perform key tasks with proper vigour, so their minds are free to wander and be creative.  Instead they are kept busy in a mindless dance of needless activity.

Socially inscribed work ethics reflect our leaders’ mindsets.  Those who have worked hard run the world and dominate societal ideology, climbing to the top through their efforts (and coming from the right background).  But that doesn’t mean they’re right.  The last person who should lead is the person who wants to.  Success can be measured many ways, and the notion that we should adopt a method of stepping over others to achieve our goals is a little sick.

Of course, we cannot just be idle.  Human civilisation is far-from-perfect and we still need to work to advance.  However, we need to ask ourselves ‘why?’ more.

In short, it should not be about work per se, but about focused work to maximum effect.  Labour and work is about making life better, not about excess acquisition or an end in itself.