You Better Work Hard, or Else..!

First, I should mention that I ask myself all the following questions as well and that I do not claim to have found any answers. This is to be understood as a conglomeration of thoughts I have come accross and have come up with myself in order to explore possible answers. As always it is exploring, not dogmatizing.

Work is something you do regularly because you have to. It is something so abominable and boring that you need to get paid for doing it. Further, you have to work because you need money.

 This slightly one-sided definition of work, mainly inspired by Alan Watts, obviously is an exaggeration. Still, it appears to me that more often than not this applies at least a bit. As I am at an age at which I am supposed to soon be working or to already be working, this topic has captured my attention for a while now. Most of the people I look up to or would turn to with questions about topics like this however, tend to have a rather different opinion on the concepts of work and "working hard" than the perception society seems to represent. 

"You always work hard and then become successful." Sounds good. It seems to me however, that working hard usually means, working a lot with some sort of a fierce demeanor and more importantly, doing something you dislike. If I had a job and told everyone everyday how great my job is and how much fun I have, regardless how many hours I would work a week ,pretty much nobody would consider me a hard worker, right? Alternatively, if I hated my job and worked through the grind everyday for eight hours, most people would consider me a hard worker, right? On top of that, being a hard worker is considered something really good in society. If something is considered good in society, it provokes a positive incentive for people to live up to that ideal or good virtue, since they will receive praise for doing that. This leads me to the conclusion that society encourages young people to settle for a job that they dislike and therefore feel miserable with, because they then will be praised as hard workers, which is something I find to be rather weird. 

(I do acknowledge that even this perception of working hard may have its reasonable place, but what I am concerned with is the impression of having to settle with such a "hard" job. You may have to work through a day job in order to feed yourself while working on what you really want to do, but that does not mean that you have to stay there.) Why however, is this perception of working hard understood to be such a good feature? Luckily I recently found this great Nietzsche quote dealing with precisely this topic:

,, Bei der Verherrlichung der "Arbeit", [..] sehe ich denselben Hintergedanken, wie bei dem Lobe der gemeinnützigen unpersönlichen Handlungen: den der Furcht vor allem Individuellen. Im Grunde fühlt man jetzt, beim Anblick der Arbeit - man meint immer dabei jene harte Arbeitsamkeit von früh bis spät - daß eine solche Arbeit die beste Polizei ist, daß sie jeden im Zaume hält und die Entwickliung der Vernunft, der Begehrlichkeit, des Unabhängigkeitsgelüstes kräftig zu verhindern versteht. Denn sie verbraucht außerordentlich viel Nervenkraft und entzieht dieselbe dem Nachdenken, Grübeln, Träumen, Sorgen, Lieben, Hassen, sie stellt ein kleines Ziel immer ins Auge und gewährt leichte und regelmäßige Befriedigungen. So wird eine Gesellschaft, in welcher fortwährend hart gearbeitet wird, mehr Sicherheit haben: und die Sicherheit betet man jetzt als die oberste Gottheit an." - (Friedrich Nietzsche in Morgenröthe)

Translation/mediation:

With the glorification of "work" I see the same ulterior motives that I see with the praise of actions of charity and impersonality: fear of all individuality. Whilst looking at work one now basically feels - work always referring to that tough industriousness from dawn till dusk - that such work is the best police, that it curbs everyone and that it forcefully prevents the development of rationality, of desire and of the craving for independence, since it consumes a tremendous amount of mental power* and withdraws this power from contemplating, musing, dreaming, worrying, loving and hating. It always puts a small goal in your sight and grants easy and regular satisfaction. That's why a society, in which people consistently work hard, will have more security: and nowadays, security is what's worshipped as the greatest god.  

*Literally translated, Nietzsche uses the expression "nervous-power" which then may be linked to the expression "to jar on the nerves"(ger.: auf die Nerven gehen) in the possible sense of such work being an annoying strain on the nerves. 

According to Nietzsche, this kind of work, understood as mentioned industriousness is to the detriment of individuality. Since everybody is occupied with working hard every day, there is no time left for personal improvement and exploring. Exploring maybe, of one's personal talents and ambitions.This goes along with the belief that only with leisure and freedom something new can be created because if you constantly find yourself to be under time-constraints due to your job, you will not be able to stop and think about things and therefore not be able to come up with your own, individual ideas. Your personal talent cannot possibly flower if you constantly feel drained from your job. J. Krishnamurti describes creativity as what happens after you were in complete silence and stillness, free(!) of fear and thoughts, free of pressures and duties. Only then, without prior incentive something completely new can begin which therefore will be creative. Of course this perception of creativity goes way deeper than just being distracted by such a job, but if your job already keeps you from accessing it completely, other things don't even need to be considered. 

Why would people give in to such a job then, apart from earning the praise of being a hard worker? Maybe the better question would be, why is such a perception of hard work understood as something great?

In the second part of the quote Nietzsche mentions how security is worshipped as the greatest god nowadays. Now, if something constantly acts in the same way, it will become predictable. If it is predictable, it will not be perceived as as much of a threat. Therefore it is more easily accepted. If however, something always does new things, it cannot be trusted since it is not predictable and therefore potentially dangerous. If people work hard** every day they will stay occupied and exhausted by their jobs. In such a tired state they cannot possibly act creatively and therefore cannot come up with new ideas. Completely new ideas are mostly perceived as a threat anyways, since they disturb the regularity of monotony. Monotony of action however, actions which always lead to the same result deliver a sense of security, as something predictable is less scary. Therefore, if everybody works hard, security - in a way - can be granted. That might be why this type of hard work is still often encouraged in society and that might be what Nietzsche meant when he wrote that a society of hard working people will have more security.

**throughout the whole text, if not explicitly mentioned to be understood as Nietzsche's "industriousness from dawn till dusk"

So how do we find the right job, the right kind of work and perhaps even the right kind of hard work? Are there even such things? 

Coming back to J. Krishnamurti, he has said the following about finding the right occupation: (Unfortunately I only possess a German version of this text so this will be my translation/mediation of it.) " By freeing our thoughts and emotions, which correlate and are perceived as one unit here, from tradition, greed and the longing for power we will find our correct occupation." From what I understand, this means that if you become an engineer solely because your father and his father were engineers, you might just pick the wrong profession for yourself because you do not know what fits you as an individual. Further, if you want to become rich and rule over people and therefore decide to become a manager or something similar, you will not do it because you feel like the profession of a manager is your calling, but rather because you want to make money and command people. Only with a mind free of these traits one can discover where to go and what to do or work. As an individual. It's the idea of becoming who you are, which can also be found in Nietzsche's writings. If for example, you really inherently are a fighter and you are able to discover that through mentioned freedom and awareness you can then do what no other person can ever do which is being you. At least theoretically that sounds great. In the case of this example that might lead you to becoming a professional fighter. And maybe that's where a different kind of hard work has its place. Once you have found what you really want to do, what you really love doing, you will enjoy spending great amounts of time doing it and you will potentially get really good at it way faster than you would get at anything that you dislike. That's what I would like to call hard work. Ideally of course, you would also be able to earn a sufficent amount of money with it which might not always be possible, but I still think that earning small amounts of money doing something you love is way better than earning huge amounts of money doing something you dislike. In its base however, this is about becoming who you are. Find out what you really enjoy and then do it. 

To wrap this up, I cannot seem to come to terms with the traditional view of "working hard" and I will refuse to do so. Obviously, I know that in order to be able to earn money with writing one day, I will probably have to have some sort of a day job for a certain amount of time, but I will really look to avoid getting stuck there.