What Can Work Do For You

I have never had a particularly strong work ethic, but throughout my life I’ve always known that I always want to be working.  Even if I amass an exorbitant amount of wealth, I still want to work on something.  Because in some sense, work is not simply a means to an end, it is an end itself. Humans feel a certain compulsion to work.  We perceive of work as an Aristotelian telos, a Cartesian essence of sorts.  I am not here to defend teleology, but I do believe that we experience an innate drive to work and a unique satisfaction from it.

Popular culture cuts against his compulsion.  Entertainment like Workaholics and Dilbert allegedly depict what work is “really like” (I should use The Office as an example here, but that would be heresy).   Of course, not everyone will enjoy every job, and when I describe “work,” I do not simply mean salaried employment.  But the alternative dream—one held by many—is a life of complete idleness.  Many studies have demonstrated the fallacy of this aspiration, yet millions view their own station in life and yearn for easy money.  Indeed, while millions buy lottery tickets, studies show that one year later, lottery winners enjoy life only marginally more than those who became paralyzed one year earlier.  These findings seem to suggest that working for what you have enhanced your enjoyment of it.  Arthur Brooks (you knew the AEI shout-out was coming at some point…) describes this human disposition as “earned success.”

Work not only provides success, it also fosters community and a sense of self-sufficiency.  These two seem self-explanatory, so I won’t elaborate.  But in more general terms, work helps to define who we are.  One of most popular small talk questions is “So what do you do?”  But work shapes our identities on a deeper level.  We might not enjoy every second of it, but we need work.

So as I scribble away on Labor Day, here’s to work.