The Psychology/Spirituality of Work (in honor of Labor Day)
abridged version of the message of the day delivered to Marquette Unitarian Universalist Congregation
by Dr. Gary Stark
September 3, 2006
The overarching message this morning is that work can and should be good for the soul.
Let me ask a couple rhetorical questions and then a question I want you to answer…
I suppose the answer to that last question depends on when you grew up. Me, I’m stuck between generations, but today when somebody says “you’re the man!” it is said enthusiastically, a compliment, as in “you helped me out; you’re the man!” However, the more experienced among you, who perhaps grew up in the 60’s regard “the man” as the oppressor, as in “It’s the man keeping us down”. It’s the latter version I want to talk about today and I’ll come back and revisit him later. But the short answer to my first two questions is “the man”….
That is, it’s the man… unfettered capitalism, which is a concern for material goods, efficiency and economics over the importance of human dignity, that makes work less fulfilling.
The psychology of work is not that much different than the psychology of development, of family, of education, and of relationships….
We still have the same needs … needs such as affiliation or bonding, control over our lives, impact on the world, learning, acquisition, and safety. Those needs don’t disappear at work!
Pope John Paul II in his 1981 treatise “Laborem Exercens” crystallized some points that we probably knew in our hearts to be true, even if we hadn’t thought about them. He said that virtually all are workers -- being paid is not the criterion, so those who care for their children or elderly relatives are certainly workers. And the pope also emphasized that work acquires its dignity not from the type of work that is done but rather from the fact that that the work is done by human beings. The work of a assembly line worker or the worker at a slaughterhouse, or the work that a student of mine did cleaning dead fish of beaches deserves the same dignity as the doctor, lawyer, or manager.
This sermon is a call to recognize that dignity and a call to meet human needs at work.
That’s why we honor Labor Day. Unions have helped bring about changes that meet these needs. For example:
Unions remind us that workers are people too. There isn’t some “God”-given inalienable right that makes owners superior to workers. Labor Day reminds us that treating unfettered capitalism as natural law denies workers their needs and dignity.
Does work need to be routine and soul-crushing? Of course not. But how did it get this reputation? Perhaps some recent history, from the last 300 years or so, can help answer the question.
Before the Industrial Revolution work was generally regarded as a craft. The cobbler, the pin-maker, the blacksmith, and the tailor had autonomy and got feedback at almost all points in their work. Their work was significant and they had a connection with their goods all the way through the production process. It would be sort of like the way you enjoy a hobby now. For example, my wife Anne likes to knit. She finds a pattern, chooses the yarn, follows the project from beginning to end, has control over the project and, and knits for the most significant people in her life -- her family.
Now imagine she is still knitting, but the way she knits now is that 5-10 times a day a bring her a mostly complete sock and tell her to complete the heel and specify exactly how it is to be done, with what color and pattern, and what yarn. Not so much fun, is it?
But that is what happened during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution made work more efficient by dividing tasks among workers and making them more specialized. Adam Smith, the famous economist, wrote of a ten person pin factory that went from making 100 pins a day to making 10,000 pins a day. But now instead of being a pin craftsman, your job may have been to pull the pin wire from the spool 10,000 times a day, or sharpen 10,000 pins a day, or cut wire 10,000 times a day. You get the idea.
Frederick Taylor is hailed as the “Father of Scientific Management”. Scientific Management advanced the Industrial Revolution by making work tasks even more efficient through time and motion studies. Again, he made work more efficient, but at what cost? What was the attitude toward workers in all this? Not good.
I’m going to tell you about and read from a speech Frederick Taylor made in the early 1900’s. Taylor was working to make loading of pig iron more efficient at the Bethlehem Steel Yards in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He chose to talk of the loading of pig iron he said “because it is perhaps the simplest form of labor that is known to man. The worker works with no other implements than his hands…. the writer [Taylor] believes it is so simple that one can train an intelligent gorilla to be a more efficient handler than any man can be.” So, according to Taylor, gorilla or human -- it didn’t matter. Hmmmm. But, it gets worse.
Taylor speaks of a man he experiments with by the name of Schmidt. I won’t read it all, but he repeatedly makes fun of Schmidt’s Dutch heritage and accent. Nice. But here is the kicker -- “Schmidt started to work and at various times was told by the man…” You remember who the man is, right? He’s being ordered around by the man! Now, “Schmidt started to work and at various times was told by the man who stood over him with a watch…”. So, I want you to visualize that. Not only do you work for the man, but the man is standing over you with a watch!
“He worked when he was told to work, he rested when he was told to rest and at half past five he had his 47.5 long tons loaded”. Bend this way… bend that way…, now work, … now rest, now go to the bathroom. Not the way most of us want to work. But it gets even worse.
At the end of the speech we see the fatal flaw in this type of oversimplified, overly-controlled, soul-crushing work. I’m going to read from Taylor again. Keep in mind this is Taylor saying this stuff, not me. I couldn’t make this stuff up!
Taylor says “Now one of the very first requirements of work of this type is that the worker shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles the ox than any other type. It is for this reason that the intelligent man is not suited to what would be, for him, the grinding monotony of work of this nature”
Wow. Think about that. Taylor says you have to be about the intelligence of what animal? An ox ….. to do work of this type.
So, let me ask you to think of the dumbest person you know….
Now, think of the smartest ox you know. If you don’t know of any ox, think of the smartest cow you know. I’m not an animal expert, but I’d guess it is an appropriate comparison.
Now, I know you can be cynical, but honestly no matter how hard you can think about it, you know that the dumbest person you know is much smarter than the smartest ox.
Therefore, for whom is this type of work ideally suited? No one!
This grinding, monotonous, soul-crushing, efficiency focused work is not appropriate for anyone. Taylor said so himself! And he’s the man!
The result of Scientific Management and its sole focus on efficiency, to the detriment of higher level human needs and dignity, was a down-ward spiral or a self-fulfilling prophecy. What happens when you have a job like this? It crushes your soul, but you still have needs. So, you meet your needs some other way -- you goof around, avoid work, skip out, and if things get really bad you see the drinking and drugging at work.
When I teach this material in my Organizational Behavior class I read from a book called “Rivethead” by Ben Hamper. Ben worked with Michael Moore in his early years writing a column about work life at the GM Bus & Truck assembly plant in Flint. Ben gives a harrowing but often funny account of work life on the assembly line. He pulls no punches. I won’t read from it here. The language is probably inappropriate for a Sunday service. For that matter, it is probably inappropriate for class, but, oh well….
But behavior such as the work avoidance and the drugs becomes part of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Your dignity is stripped away and you look for satisfaction some other (“inappropriate”) way. And the managers, who regarded you as a buffoon anyway, “confirm” their suspicions by observing your inappropriate behavior. They “confirm” you are lazy so they coerce you. They think you need reigning in so they structure the job even more. They think you are stupid so they simplify the job even more. And all those things make the job worse and so you rebel against it more or “escape” from it more and the cycle begins anew.
And it goes on long enough that economists think that people hate work. They think the goal of workers is to work less to get paid more. They believe that peoples’ ultimate goal is something for nothing.
Not surprisingly, those economists are wrong.
Created properly, people like work. People don’t want something for nothing. When people are treated with dignity and work fulfills their needs for control, learning, acquisition, impact, and affiliation, they do very well!
Two quick examples. We know that often people die not long after they retire. Now certainly much of this can be attributed to the fact that people tend to retire when they are old and that older people die at a higher rate than young. But that does not account for all of it. Too many people quit working when they retire. But the soul needs good work. It is the people who continue to sharpen their minds, who volunteer, or find a hobby who live longer. The other example is from an experiment that shows that that the brain registers more arousal when paid for working than being given money for nothing. The same study cites work that indicates that lottery winners are no happier than the rest of us a year after striking it rich.
Now is the time to make work good! Work is important. It always has been for the time we spend at it, the investment of training and education we make in it and as part of our identities. Some researchers say work can fulfill some of the same needs as religion including, wisdom, growth, security, hope, and immortality. And work is becoming more important as traditional anchors of community (for better or worse) such as bowling leagues, fraternal organizations, service clubs, and organized religions decline or lose their hold. People may turn to work to fill their places.
However important it is, work should feed your soul. If so, then you can work with vigor, excitement, grandeur, fun, motivation, and commitment. That’s what work can be if work is good for the soul.
Let me end this with a poem by Kahil Gibran.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit…
Work is love made visible.