Reading | 21st century to torture the soul of "Social Animals": Did your work contribute to the world?

"Meaningless work"

[Beauty] David Graber

Lu Yujun translated

CITIC Publishing Group Published

Keynes predicted in the 1930s: By the end of the 20th century, the level of science and technology will be improved enough, and people will be shortened to 15 hours per week. But now, people spend more time on work.

Does your work contribute to the world? In 2013, David Graber raised this sharp question in the article "Talking about the Phenomenon of" Fart ", and harvested more than one million read clicks in a few weeks, and was translated into a dozen languages. Until now, it is still a topic that people pay close attention to. Who is creating these meaningless jobs? How does it reduce efficiency, hinder the realization of personal value, and exacerbate unfairness? In this book, the author expands his observations, research and reflection in sharp brushstrokes, and analyzes the contemporary social lesion that plagues the world.

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The development history of "fake and fake work": the rise of the concept of "spend money to buy others"

We need to review it carefully. Because one person's time can be bought by another person, it is actually quite weird. Throughout history, most human society did not expect such a situation. As the great classicist Moses Finilian pointed out, if the ancient Greeks or the ancient Romans saw a pottery worker, the possibility they could think of is to buy pottery workers. Ceramics workers buy it home (at the time, buying slaves home was very daily operation). But if you tell this ancient Greek or the ancient Romans, they can also buy the time of pottery workers, then they will be confused. As Finish said, the concept of buying others at least requires at least two concepts to jump to understand. This is difficult to understand for the most sophisticated ancient Roman jurists at the time: First of all, the ability to make pottery workers work That is, his "labor force", the same pottery workers themselves leave; second, we must find a way to pour the labor into a unified "time container" (time container may be installed for hours, may be the number of days, or the unit may be the unit. Time for shifts), for people to buy cash. For ordinary Athens or Romans, such a concept may seem strange, have an exotic, and even mysterious. How can I buy time? Time is abstract concept! The way they can understand at most is to take the pottery workers home in a rental way to do a certain period of time, such as one day. During this time, the pottery workers, like other slaves, must do things according to the owner's request. But they could not find a pottery worker willing to accept this arrangement. Because it becomes a slave, it means losing the free will to personal and becoming a tool for others. Even if it is only a limited time, this is the most shameful thing that a person may experience.

Therefore, in the case of ancient "salary work" we can see, most of the people who happened to those who were originally slaves, for example, the pottery slave and his slave owner were agreed to go to the special pottery to make a potter to dry the factory. After getting the salary, half of the salary is divided into the owner, and half of them kept themselves. Occasionally, there will be a contract for slavery to accept freedom, such as carrying operators at the pier. Free men and women will not accept contract work. Such a model did not change until it was quite modern. Although the "salary work" model has appeared in the Middle Ages, it is limited to commercial port cities such as Venice, Malacca, and Sangu Balt, and almost all workers who work there are forced.

How did humans develop to this situation today? Why is a free citizen of a democratic country feel a very natural thing to rent out and work with salary? Why did the boss find that the employee holds the "boss's time" to do other things?

First of all, the way human understanding has changed. For a long time, human beings have observed the sky and observed the concepts of celestial events with exact predictable laws, and knowing and familiar with the absolute time or side. However, the sky is often regarded as the perfect ideal world. The priests and monks may arrange their own life based on the time of celestial body, but the life on the earth is often confusing. Under the sky, there is nothing to follow the absolute time measurement method. A clear example: If there are 12 hours from dawn to dusk, then it is meaningless to say that there is a three -hour journey in a place for 3 hours without knowing the specific season. Because the day in winter is only half of the summer and daytime. When I was in Madagascar, I found that the local villagers (they basically used the clock) still described the distance in the past, and they would say that they needed to cook two pots of rice to go to a village. In the medieval Europe, people will say that something needs to spend such a long time for "reading three times", or the time to "cook twice". This situation is extremely common. Where there is no clock, people use behavior to measure time instead of spending time to measure behavior. Regarding this theme, an anthropologist E.E. Evans-Poricheid has a classic saying that he said when he talked about the Nuer (a nomads of East Africa):

The Nuer did not say the word "time", so they couldn't think that time could pass, waste, save, and not talk about time like a certain thing. I don't think they have experienced the feeling of racing with time, and there is no need to match everything with abstract time. Because the reference of their lives is the activity itself, the rhythm of these activities is often more soothing. Things do one by one, and the arrangement is reasonable. There is no abstract time to control them. In life, they have no need to follow the independent reference department. Lucky Nur! (Source: Visual China)

Time is not to measure the coordinates of work, because work itself is coordinates.

British historian E.P. Thompson wrote an article entitled "Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism" on the origin of the concept of modern time in 1967. Thompson said morality and technology have changed at the same time, and the two promote each other. In the 14th century, most European towns already owned the bell tower (usually proposed and built by the local businessman association), and then began to put their heads on the desk to remind themselves that "mortals have a dead". Essence They remind themselves to cherish time in this way, because every time the clock rings, it means that they go further from death. The clock and even the later pocket watches took a long time, and to a large extent, the industrial revolution that started at the end of the 18th century occurred at the same time. But once it is popularized, the concept brought by the clock has spread in the middle -class family. In the stars, this absolute time determined by celestial bodies has entered the world, and began to control the management of human daily affairs, even the most private thing. However, time is both a certain coordinate and an asset. The clock encourages everyone to look at the time in the way of medieval businessmen: Time has become a limited asset, and it is necessary to plan the budget as carefully as the money and be careful. In addition, new technologies allow everyone's time to cut according to the unified unit. You can buy money or sell money.

After you can change money at the time, we started to use the word "spend" to match it, not just "passing". At the same time, we also have the sayings such as "waste time", "passing time", "saving time", "delay time", "running with time". The evangelists of the Qing religion, the Guide of the Health Law, and the Evangelion soon began to teach believers to "carefully calculate the use time." The evangelist proposes that the reasonable planning and use of time are the essence of morality. The factory began to use the clock; workers started to check in at get off work; children who taught poor families followed the concept of time and developed a charity public welfare school, and began to make the public school system. In the public school system, students from all levels of society gathered together, listening to the bells, and listening to the bells. Every hour, the bell sounds, and then the students start to move from this classroom to that classroom. This arrangement in the school consciously prepares for children to adapt to the rhythm of factory work in the future.

Modern work discipline and capitalist supervision methods also have their own strange development history. These control methods that were initially generated in merchant ships and colonies were extended to poor workers in European countries. Whether it is a work discipline or a means of capitalist supervision, it is this new concept that makes everything possible. Here, what I want to emphasize is that the new view of time is not only technological change, but also moral change. In this regard, people often attribute them to the customs and teachings of Puritans. Of course, the customs and doctrines of Puritans must not be related to these changes, but we have reasonable reason to believe that the more aggressive branch in Calvin's abstinence is the ultimate manifestation of this new outlook. This new view of time swept the middle -class group of the entire Christian world in this or or so, and reshaped their perception of time. Therefore, from the 18th to 19th centuries, from the Britain, the old -fashioned, casual and idle ways of work have been regarded as a social problem. The middle class began to feel that the reason why the poor were poor was largely because they were not self -disciplined and had no concept of time. They treated time very casual. Regardless of the consequences, they lost money like they treated money.

At the same time, workers have also adopted the same statement to fight against the bad situation they are facing. Many of the early factories did not allow workers to bring their own clocks, because bosses often made hands and feet on the watch's clocks. But soon, the workers began to argue with the boss with the time salary, requiring the contract to write clearly in the contract, requiring overtime pay, and requiring the cost of 1.5 times during overtime. They were required to work only for 12 hours a day until they were required to work in 8 hours. Although in the case of at that time, it was understandable that "freedom time" was completely understandable, but it was this behavior that enhanced a concept in a subtle way, that is, when the workers "started to enter work hours", his time was really true. It belongs to the boss, and the boss "bought" his work time. If the great -grandparents of these workers will know that such concepts will appear in the future, they will definitely jump like a thunder. In the eyes of ancestors, or most of the people who have lived in human history, this statement is completely unacceptable and ridiculous.

>> About the author

David Graeber, an American anthropologist and sociologist, successively served as associate professor of Yale University, professor of London School of Political Economics, and inherited from Marshall Salle.Published "debt: 5000 years of debt history".

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Author: David Graber

Edit: Kim Jiuchao

Editor in charge: Zhu Zilong

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