Philosophical Quest of happiness in Work My friend, before I will delve in to the physical and spiritual capacities of a person or touch the metaphysical discipline of philosophy, there is one more experience that we really need to understand – philosophy of work. This experience is not just an encounter of human but with matters or the tools that we use in order to transform something to something else, e.g. a simple log, with a use of a carving tool, can be transform into a beautiful statue, or an elegant chair, or a cosy bed, or an expensive table. To give a parallel example, using the modern jobs and tools, we always encounter camera. We have camera apps on our phones, we have camera apps on our smart watch and there is the DSLR which are really useful in catching memorable events or wonderful places that we have been. This tool or machine is very useful and important but we never really care to ask ourselves how this machine capture the precious moment of our lives and helped us create delightful memories. We don’t ask who invented the camera, what the parts are inside and how it is being made. In consequence, we are unaware of something that we always use and we always brought with us. It is quite important to ask these question because it can help us wonder the purpose of all the things that we have come across every day.
This is basic but the most vital topic since this is our common experience but almost nobody tried to understand it in a philosophical way or nobody dare to ask this childlike question. We’ve been working since childhood but until we became grown-ups we never really care to ask why we need to work. When we were in colleges or universities, we were given so much choices as to what we want to be five years or ten years after. Then they offer a special curriculum to prepare us to our chosen profession. But are we being taught to ask why we need to work? Is this part of our curse as what we can read in the bible specifically in the book of Genesis? Is this just a necessity since everyone in the society is working? Or this is a way to build our Identity?
These are very simple questions but we always forget to ask. We go to work and finish the task that we are told to complete without question, without really asking the objective of the job. Well, I am not asking you to question your superior as to why do you need to finish the job, unless you have the same capacity. Superior or a leader always have an advance vision of the project and not everyone shares the same vision. For most of us, in our modernized society, we work to get money and pay our bills. For some, more money, means more gadgets and more travels of those remarkable places. There are those who live to work “métro, boulot, dodo” in French – your life is in (train) commute, work, and sleep. Now, there is a difference between those who live to work and those who work to live. Those who live to work, look at work as an end by itself while those who work to live, look at work as a means for greater finality. These behaviour create segregation or demarcation within the working society or on a company or even in a small team. I will give you solid own experience to illustrate this further. I’m running a group of technicians – licensed and incredibly talented technicians. They appointed me to set up a mission vision, business planning, business template and even our company logo that describe our service. But everyone has its own brilliant ideas on how to run the business or how to plan. We setup meetings, so many meetings and presentations but didn’t go anywhere. Countless of brilliant ideas were wasted; they were not being carried out since we are full of ideas but we don’t share the same vision – we forget that the reason to start the group is, first of all, to give service not how we should run the business.
We don’t have the same goal or reason to work or give service to the community. Now, this is quite a challenge but I will not go further since this topic is not for managerial discussion but the objective is to understand the reason to work and the target are those marginalized individual since these are the people who really need to have a good reason to work. These are the people who are being pushed to their limit to meet targets due to the demand initiated by the ruling class. In our epoch, challenging jobs means great earning and we all love it since we have so many bills to pay and many gadgets to buy. But giving all our time and energy for money will not lead us to happiness, in fact, it will lead us to alienation according to Karl Marx in his book of “Das Kapital”. What is more interesting is that majority of the working population in our epoch are already alienated. Now, I can’t demonstrated this term fully without using Marx’s theories of alienation.
Alienation is an isolation of individual from society, work and sense of self. Marx put up four types of alienation: first, alienation from product, which people are placed in the positions where they are responsible of making small part of the product or service or engage on a very specific jobs for example, workers are being tasked to make a parts of the car, but have no involvement of other aspect of the car. Second, alienation from own labour where workers are given repetitive jobs – they are just one small piece of the puzzle and they have no idea of the totality of the production. Third, alienation from others, workers compete with other for higher wages, better schedule and best benefits for their own good and not for the best interest for the group, there is little concern for common good or sense of cooperation. Last type, is alienation from one self, Marx believed that what we can contribute to the world in terms of our work is part of our essence or what makes us human – not just to get money.
Needless to say, money is the most powerful tool of motivation for everyone to work, so this topic might not be useful. However, this subject matter is not, initially, to encourage us to give up our jobs since money can’t really give us a fulfilment. Money can be a good means, but if we start looking at money as an end, then we are not on the right track. One day or another, we will wind up alienated. Nothing is perfect and no job is perfect either until you find happiness in your job. Again, happiness is the ultimate goal of this itinerary. Finding happiness in our work place can be quite a challenge but it is possible. I’m not trying to force you to be stoic although, somehow, this is stoicism but there is nothing wrong to introduce stoicism, after all, this is a philosophical course, might as well, mention all philosophical theories.
Let’s revisit our tools, having a sense of wonder about the technologies that we have can be the source of joy. Forget about competition and our colleague can turn into our friend instead of a rival. Giving an authentic service and make our customer happy can be a source of joy. And lastly, forget about aiming a good result because this is the source of all our anxiety. Give everything to serve without expecting any reward, without expecting something in return. If we can have these behaviour towards our work, then our place of work can be a perfect place to relax. No need to spend thousands of money to stay a place for couple of hours, just to get unwind, and then end up being broke again. Then we go back to place that is a source of our stress to earn money again. We remove the source of stress and start loving our jobs. I remember my professor when I caught him so busy scanning a huge file of books in graduate library. I asked him what he was doing and he said; “I’m relaxing!” I burst into laughter since he even have no space on his table for his yellow pad, where he can write his notes. Yet, he is still called it relaxing. He need more than eight hours to read all the books that he filed on his table. But I was too young to understand what he meant. I didn’t understand that he really was loving his job so working for him is, at the same, relaxing.