This Labor Day, the new buzz is about balancing work with life.
It comes at a time when fewer people are employed than before the pandemic, and many of those who are employed are gaming the system by “working” from home in their PJs while surfing the internet and doing house work (oops, no, they pay others to clean their house). Productivity figures still lag pre-pandemic times.
Weirdly, they think even their part-time, disengaged, goal-less so-called work, in the absence of any accountability or supervision, is too much. It interferes with what they call life.
I think they protest too much. They’re not really trying to reduce their work – they’ve already done that. What they’re really doing is trying to justify what they’ve done, or, rather, failed to do.
They do this by glorifying laziness. They deem lazy people like themselves morally superior to hard-working people. The hard-working people just have work, but they – they! – have a . . . drum roll . . . LIFE!
(Because they think they’re morally superior to the hard-working people, they think they should be rewarded with more of society’s wealth than the hard-working people, but that’s another column.)
As in many destructive leftist memes, it’s important for them to control the semantics. (See, e.g., the progression from “bums,” “vagrants,” “homeless,” “people experiencing homelessness,” “unhoused people.”)
And so, “work” is defined to mean something apart from “life.” Work is not part of life, but in opposition to life. Once you buy into that, they’ve got you.
“Life” in the new vernacular is what we used to call “play.” It’s stuff like skiing (not very well or very hard, mind you), restaurant meals with mind-numbing quantities of alcohol, aimless travel, television watching, and texting look-at-me selfies to so-called friends they haven’t seen in-person for months.
“Work” is the necessary evil that pays for that “life.” If it were possible, they would not work at all.
These child-like people in their world of play are missing the boat, metaphorically speaking (and probably literally too). In the real world of grownups, work is not in opposition to life, but an integral and important part of it. Work is right up there with God and family as a path to happiness – the kind of happiness that Thomas Jefferson wrote about pursuing.
Balancing work with life was of no concern to Edison, Einstein, or Euripides. Nor to Michaelangelo, Madison, or Magellan. Nor to Joan, Jobs, Job, or Jesus.
Imagine if Lewis and Clark had sought to balance work with life. Oregon would be part of Mexico (and, with a bit more American laziness – is that possible? – it may become part still).
Play is not the path to happiness, and is not the reason we’re here. For your own good and the good of humanity, get back to work.
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Work/Life balance is meaningless. Satisfaction comes from a job well done, be it stoop labor, grading papers, or just reading a good book. If what you are doing does not bring satisfaction, then you just need to, ahem, work at it.
there is more to life than a job and more to life than money. there is also your basic liberty and freedom from that damn telephone. people like to harp that work ethic business and market you and give you lines of credit and USE you, and that’s their corporate marketing strategy game. when you can’t pay anymore, you are worthless to them and you can and will be replaced. study current events in re: immigration. life is not fair, there are winners and losers in this game, and little mercy and no sympathy. so, keep track of your money and don’t get suckered. if you lose your job tomorrow, and could not get another, or got sick and chronically unemployed with a stack of medical bills and no health insurance, how high is your backside, right now, off that curb stone, flyin’ a cardboard sign… blessed be.
I think it’s a Peter Pan thing. I don’t wanna grow up. Contrast today’s teens with Boomers, my generation. We worked from Tweenhood. Boys mowed lawns and girls babysat. As teens we wanted money so we worked. We wanted a car so we worked. We wanted new clothes so we worked. It was ingrained in us that if we want something we worked for it.
Today’s teens don’t seem to be in a hurry to get a job or a car or get their own place. They just don’t think of work as providing any value in their lives. Parents, schools and government provides for their every need. Work? Pffft
I work from home part time at age 67 28 hours a week. I work for free for the VFD 8 hours a week raising money. I have to charge my time to the 1/10 of an hour. My keystrokes are monitored. If you cannot manage at home employees, you are a pussy of a boss / CEO. I go into work once a year. I want a separate overhead rate for no parking, no office, no AC. It is the people at work bleeding the system dry. I went from a 72 mile each way drive to none. I am the one saving they world. Not the greenies. Sold my corvette. I spend no money on clothes and buy my own toilet paper. I printed in over e years; bought my own 35 inch monitor. I can f-ng count with a degree in accounting from 1979. Please write about the other cost saving of working at home in the real world. Office taxes are dead in 5 years when the leases all expire. I like your writing. Tom
Who is Glenn describing. I’m sure there are such people, but how many? How long do they stay that way. Me, I don’t know a single one. It’s pretty easy to set up a straw man and then take potshots at him. As you folks know, I’m no populist. This is partly because, although I understand the economic (but not the social issues) that make populists angry, I often can’t figure out who they are mad at. Such is the case here. I worked from home for a while, after the turn of the century. There were things I liked about it and things I didn’t like. On the whole, I probably worked harder because I was never away from the office and there was always something more to be done. Not saying everybody working from home has my work ethic, but hardly fair to say nobody does. As I said, this article is mostly taking potshots at a straw man.
The people I’m describing, Ron, are those who believe “work” is something distinct from “life” and that “work” gets in the way of “life.” That’s the basis for this “balance of work and life” sentiment which is very popular right now. The phrase itself suggests that work is not part of life.
I’m surprised you don’t know any such people. But if you Google “work/life balance” you’ll find innumerable pieces on the subject by people who clearly buy into it.
Contrast, fools, contrast. There is a reason they make black and white for ink and paper. Who is the fool that thinks light Grey print on white background is “artistic”?
This website is unreadable.
“ … Two weeks in Italy is obviously more interesting, and the food and scenery are great. There is no hard work to do, and there are usually no serious problems or conflicts to solve. It’s life at the amusement park, one ride after another. Forget that rides are forgettable. They’re fun, and that’s what matters.
The Left tells us that this play is not only good in itself but also their life of goodness. They expressly set their play – their “life” – in opposition to their work. This seems in constant loud refrain about balancing work with life – as if work is something that is separate from and interferes with life.
Conservatives, in contrast, are usually unburdened by much play. Conservatives usually enjoy their work, especially if it is useful to others. Conservatives do not try to “balance” family against life; they see work and family as equal parts of life, allies to life, and essentials to life. That’s why conservatives are typically good at all three: work, family, and life.”
– pp. 140-141; from a terrific new book “High Attitude” reference at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142204886-high-attitude
Also, Abraham Lincoln once rather directly stated: “I always thought the man that made the corn should eat the corn.” Lincoln was opposed to slavery first and foremost because he valued and cherished the importance of work, and the ability of a working man to keep the fruits of his labor. Slavery, in Lincoln’s mind, was primarily the sin of theft. It was the sin of slaveowners stealing the fruits of the laboring slaves.
Isn’t it ironic that the progressives, liberals, Leftists, Democrats, or whatever new fad of a label that they are going by, are always seemingly the ones who are ducking out of work, filing questionable complaints, suits, harassment charges, etc., or just expecting someone else to pick-up the tab for their fun time?
Ducking out of work … isn’t this precisely what the Democrat slaveowners did throughout much of the 19th century? Expecting somebody else, the slaves, to pick up the tab for their fun and leisure?
The image might seem cliche, but there is that notion of slaveowners, wearing their Colonel Sander’s suits, lounging about on the patios of their southern mansions sipping tea or lemonade and complaining about the weather, while their slaves are toiling out in the nearby fields.
This is today’s Left and Democrats … they really haven’t changed that much from 160 years ago. That’s why they want the open borders. If they can’t get their labor for free, then they will get it as cheap as possible, immigration laws be damned. How lazy do you have to be if you’re not even capable of doing your own laundry, washing your own dishes, or even raising your own kids?!?
I suppose that I am fortunate in that I am now retired. But it is through work that so many of us forge our identities and sense of self-worth. Even though I served in the US Navy way back in the 80s under then Commander-In-Chief Ronald Reagan, I still feel a sense of American pride and sense of worth in being called a Navy Veteran.
Same holds true for my 25-year career in law enforcement. Most days when going to work I was mostly sensing an important duty while actually looking forward to what surprising or unexpected event might happen that day. There was a sense of adventure and being a part of something big that most people know very little about.
I think Ayn Rand had a good description of the economic phenomena that we are now stuck in, in which she broadly categorized people as either producers (good) … looters (bad) … and moochers (ugly).
The producers are the workers, the entrepreneurs, the creators and the inventors who build and engineer our society to make it prosperous. The looters are the political class who confiscate (as much as possible) the wealth of the producers via legalized theft, i.e., taxes, government fees, red tape regulations, etc. The moochers are the activist pressure groups and their members who form the political base of the looters by mooching up as much of the confiscated wealth with the expectation that they will vote the looters back into office.
Wash … Rinse … Repeat.
Lastly … another good write-up about the importance of honest and well produced work and the need to promote more of it, instead of disincentivizing work by overly generous welfare programs, and high income taxes.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/this-labor-day-remember-abraham-lincoln-and-the-importance-of-work
Yes … Happy Labor Day, and as we said in the Navy … Turn To!
https://www.waywordradio.org/navy-expression-turn-to/#:~:text=»%20Navy%20veterans%20will%20recognize%20the%20two-fingered%20gesture,the%20order%20turn%20to%2C%20meaning%20“get%20to%20work.”
Amen, Glenn. Reminds me of all of the avowed socialists I knew in school, absolutely none of them envisioned their futures as one of “the workers”.
Instead, they sounded like this guy: https://youtu.be/Ymc7uJunpY8
I think this was the inevitable outcome of generations of America’s success at becoming unprecedently affluent. Even our poor are affluent by global standards, which is why the rest of the world’s middle class want to come here to be our “poor”.
The result is a generation of lazy idiots like this guy (https://twitter.com/i/status/1624102826291888139) who think they’re entitled to a nominal middle class existence just because they exist.
How long can we survive this?