Work and play

[avevale_intelligencer]

Thoughts arising from comments to one of telynor’s posts, about the attitude of people whose lives revolve around their day jobs to those who pursue their creative dreams:

Everyone’s heard (or used) the phrase, of anyone who for whatever reason doesn’t have a regular job: “They think the world owes them a living.” This phrase (yes, I know it’s a sentence, and quite a severe one as well, with no time off for good behaviour) bothers the hell out of me. Partly this is because I am by nature idle and hate being made to feel guilty for not loving to work, partly because I have a knee-jerk adverse reaction to the hardline-Heinlein life-is-real-life-is-Algernon work-or-starve gung-ho worldview. Neither of these reactions is significant, both being flaws in my character that I probably won’t succeed in shifting at this late stage.

Partly, though, it bothers me because I dislike the idea of seeing life as a matter of debts and obligations. Clearly, to people who say this, it is a fact that, if the world doesn’t owe me a living, then obviously I must owe it one. I must pay back my life, in daily increments, to strangers who already get the benefit of the lives of many others. There is no element of choice. It’s what you do. Taking time out to be creative, especially unpaid, or even worse simply to play, is wasting something that doesn’t actually belong to me, that was mortgaged when I was born. And there’s no upper limit to the repayments. Even when I get too old to work for a living (however that will be defined by the time it happens) there will be this sense of indebtedness. I should be grateful for whatever microscopic amount of pension I get, because it’s really charity and I should be doing something in return.

This is a rich planet, as John Brunner said many years ago, and I live in one of the richest societies on it, and we are all bowed down by this culture of debt. But life is a gift. It’s not owed; it’s given. Talents are gifts. Strength and wit and even beauty are gifts, with no price tag. And I wonder how it would be if ours were a culture of giving, rather than owing: if we were brought up to believe that we are all immensely rich in ourselves, and that the way to make the best of our riches is to give them to the world, as the world gives to us. Give our time and our energy to help others, as we are given the means to live. Give of our talent to make the world even more beautiful, as others make it more beautiful for us. Give our lives, not because we owe them, but because we have them.

Stupidly idealistic, yes, probably. But do we begrudge our efforts and our time because we feel them being demanded of us, as of right, and that less than the equitable value is being tendered in return? Have we learned to look at the world as a marketplace, where everything has to be haggled over, bought cheap and sold dear, as if there were some scarcity? Can this view be changed, and would the world grind to a shuddering halt if it were?

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

No, I mean that...that the sense of "requirement" on both sides is the essence of the problem as stated in my above post. Job: "I am required to give you this money so that you can live. I'm not doing it because I want to or because you deserve it, it's just my job. In return, you are required to work for me for a set number of hours every day. You don't get a choice, and it doesn't have to be enjoyable or interesting, it's just your duty because I am sustaining your life." Welfare/benefit: "I am required to give you this very small amount of money so that you can eat. I really don't want to, but it's the law. In return you are required to accept third-class citizenship and the contempt of all decent hard-working folk till you get up off your backside and get a job, or else die and stop draining our resources." Those are the attitudes I have encountered. It may be different for people who have higher-level skills than I. But given those attitudes, I am not at all surprised that they breed an answering sneer on the faces of those who have to face them, or that people are tempted to try and cheat the system and get something for nothing.

You say "handout," I say "gift." It's a difference of approach. If your friend feels that the people around her don't think she should be getting what she's getting, she'll be all the more unwilling to give back.

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

I know the person redaxe is referring to, and she is a special case, I think, in that for many years she has been able to find others to live off of. She actually resents having to do anything other than write or draw, and resents that it takes work to get the products of her talent to market. She feels that it is her due to be supported by others, and has complained loudly when those others have not had spare money to give her. When redaxe and I were both unemployed and temping, she actually castigated us for not being willing to give her money that we needed to support ourselves and our families.

I would love to not have to work an eight-hour day with a four-hour commute, but my creative endeavors are craft-oriented and require money for materials. I think that it would be incredibly foolish to expect another to support me, when I am capable of earning what I need (at least, mostly doing so at the moment).

Further down these comments, bohemiancoast noted that, "What I do mind is people who could do one of those things, but instead spend their time seeking their inner creative muppet while I pay taxes to support them." Sadly, the woman redaxe and I know is doing exactly that (in fact, she has managed to get herself onto the disability rolls now, so the state is paying for her to sit home).