The Wells We Did Not Dig

In our world, success is the standard by which our accomplishments are judged. The “success” in question is almost always associated with material advancement. If a college graduate returns to his hometown or accepts a job performing manual labor, he is a failure, clearly unable to succeed in the elite industries of our society that really matter. Despite this debasing of what it means to be a success, we are told not to worry, for the young and rising generations are still committed to creativity, hard work, and whatever else it takes to drive that great illusion we call the “21st-century economy.”

But is being committed to creativity and hard work enough to maintain a society? It is true that the millennial generation has created social media, made advances in technology, and driven the growth of companies like Amazon and Uber. Surely they must be working hard at something. But cleverness alone does not make a generation worthy heirs of our civilization. We may have made more leaps and bounds in technology than Hephaestus ever could have dreamed of, but we have no stable sexual mores, nor do we have any coherent telos to direct our work or even to justify our society’s very existence

The advancements of our age depend on the progress achieved by previous generations or the less educated of our own generation. Uber would be nothing without the roads that carry it—roads that require maintenance—and for a young tech executive to accept a job doing such manual labor would inevitably mark him a failure. Indeed, our entire economy is dependent on advances in technology and agriculture that we could not explain if our lives depended on it. Surely such an arrangement is not sustainable. And even if it is, it is certainly not honorable.

Like the Children of Israel wandering in the wilderness, we have entered the Promised Land and drunk from the wells we did not dig. In doing so we have forgotten the cause of our existence and slipped into decadence and laziness that leads only to destruction. It may seem quaint or even repulsive to suggest that the farmer in overalls and scarred hands does work that is far nobler than the work we do in our cities. Try telling that to the average person on the morning metro ride and the reaction will likely be revulsion. Who am I to judge? We are all equal after all, no? No. We are not. And even though I prepare for work every morning by donning my Banana Republic suits and silk pocket squares, I at least have the good sense to daily pray that I will not die in the city.