The Jungle

"He had learned to hate poverty, and the limitations it put on his desire for learning, as well as its crushing effect on the dignity of men and women... Now here it was in its ugliest aspects, the worst of which was the ignorance of its victims themselves. With the exception of a very small minority, they had no idea that they had the right to a better way of life. It was moral, spiritual, and physical degradation, a 'jungle' in which humans lived barely above the level of animals."

So fundamental is the idea that a person must labor - that is, exchange something of themselves (be it time, intellect, or physical exertion) for the necessities of life - that few people question it, or the conditions under which, or the reasons why, a person can reasonably be expected to surrender something of themselves. While the idea that one person can own another outright is no longer acceptable in the civilized world, we are only slowly catching on to the potential for oppression of identity and spirit represented by currently acceptable forms of labor. We have coined the terms 'wage slavery' and 'intellectual slavery' to indicate that we recognize an extreme imbalance of power inherent in certain labor situations, and we routinely despair of and satirize the conditions under which many of us labor. So, while physical labor conditions have certainly improved in the last centuries, we seem to agree that there is still room for improvement in other aspects of what it means to 'work'. We would all like to feel as though we did not labor under conditions of "moral, spiritual, and physical degradation", yet few of us would consider our jobs to represent ideal conditions under which to spend our time. And so the question becomes - What is this "better way of life" to which we are told by Sinclair that we have the right to? Would he be content with the labor reforms set in place since The Jungle, or would he agree that we have fallen short of some ideal condition of labor?

I first came across The Jungle many years ago in the R&D library of a company that will remain unnamed. Having already battled a former boss about the laws regarding overtime pay, I was sympathetic to the labor plights that Sinclair had intended to be the focus of his book. Unfair treatment of workers remains something of a hot button with me. But now I'm also interested in broader questions with respect to labor...

Transhumanist thought on labor seems to deem it sufficiently ideal for machines to simply take over 'manual' labor. AI proponents would like to think that a sufficiently advanced intelligence could remove the needs for many forms of intellectual labor as well. Are we destined for (and do we desire) a future where all that remains for us to do is to create art, and to have as many experiences of ourselves as we desire and no more? Thinking about a future with no 'labor' as we now understand it can give us a great deal of insight into what labor currently represents... For example, does mitigating the need for any form of labor contribute to a more equal perception of individuals? How much are our ideas about 'personhood' and equality (historically and currently) based upon judgments what that person can potentially contribute in the form of labor?

I find, however, that I'm ultimately more interested in discussions aimed at improving current conditions. What practical corrective measures can be employed today to give us more-ideal conditions under which to labor until the need for us to labor is gone?

It's interesting to me that the Buddha, who supposedly had reached a state of detached enlightenment, felt compelled to state the importance of 'right work' when he laid out the Eightfold Path to the cessation of suffering. On the surface, this is simply an instruction to ensure that one's livelihood does not harm other living beings. Note that harm to oneself is not addressed in the standard interpretations of this instruction. Yet is the current state of 'working' in which most of us find ourselves more degrading to the psyche of the worker, or ennobling? And when one's options for employment are forcibly limited, how easy is it really to find meaningful, useful work that does not directly or indirectly produce harm to oneself or others?

I hope to devote more time and energy to the topic of labor in the year to come. The question I'm going to leave you today with is this... If the ideal conditions under which to labor are ones that permit self-actualization without harming others, then how do we create or embrace an economic system that rewards such an intangible outcome?