A good job requires a field of action where you can put your best capacities to work and see an effect in the world. Academic credentials do not guarantee this. Nor can big business or big government — those idols of the right and the left — reliably secure such work for us. Everyone is rightly concerned about economic growth on the one hand or unemployment and wages on the other, but the character of work doesn’t figure much in political debate. Labor unions address important concerns like workplace safety and family leave, and management looks for greater efficiency, but on the nature of the job itself, the dominant political and economic paradigms are mute. Yet work forms us, and deforms us, with broad public consequences.
If actions have the power to form habits, if repeated actions form our selves, then what type of people is our modern workforce making? Fight Club, The Office, Dilbert, Wanted--all have commented on the soul crushing nature of the cubicle. Yet not everyone can become motorcycle repairmen and not everyone is willing to start a small family farm. How then is integrity and dignity returned to work?
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