The sounds from the men working on the chain gang
2020 08 22 | journal
I used to have a couple of friends who were very fond of devaluing the work of others. One because it wasn’t as “hard” as the work he did. He was one of those that put no value in jobs that were more cerebral than physical. The other was similar, but his take was that book-learning wasn’t as important as what you learned from actual life experience. In a way he wasn’t wrong, but his direction wasn’t coming from the pragmatic.
I realised later on that it was likely due to jealousy on both their parts. One because he was knocking people out at the knees because he was envious of where they were that he couldn’t be, and rather than simply learning to be content with what he could do and have he lashed out. The other because he never got the opportunity to do higher learning so he spent more time crapping on people who did than simply just going to school. Being an adult doesn’t mean you can’t get a degree.
Both were trying to drag people down, whether they realised it or not. It’s too bad, too, because both of them had potentials they never bothered to exercise.
It’s not an uncommon phenomenon. Why did the idea creep into our culture that if your job isn’t back-breaking then you’re not doing “real” work, that it has no value, or less value? The amount of time we spend devaluing people is grotesque. All work contributes. All labour has value. Espousing otherwise declares arrogance or meanness and smacks of a lack of respect for your own work as well as the devaluation of the efforts of others and of what they do.
Some work may have a greater global impact, but that does not devalue the contributions of work that does not.