Random Thoughts #2
I’ve been pondering- I’ve been actually thinking about this since the last time I came to Ghana- is manual versus intellectual work (and in intellectual work, I’m including anything that is more cerebral or even performance oriented than physically strenuous. As such, I’m including most service jobs.) And I’m going to say right now that this is an oversimplification and I admit it.
But why is it that we don’t value manual labor as much as intellectual labor? It’s not just Western European culture, either- I see the same thing in Ghana. But it makes no sense to me. Without manual labor, there would be no intellectual labor, for who can right books or invent things without food in their bellies or a roof over their heads? Furthermore, intellectual labor is rendered meaningless without physical labor. Without an electrician, a computer programmer’s PC is useless. What good is a newly invented car when no one has built any roads to drive it on?
I know the obvious answer to why intellectual work is valued more is about human progress; if no one did intellectual work, the human race wouldn’t progress. If you earned more respect as a farmer than as an inventor, why would anyone invent?
But see, in that answer lies the assumption that intellectual work is more difficult than manual work. While it seems true in America today- that people who don’t continue with their schooling “take the easy way out-” I’ve spent enough time with old women bent with machetes and hoes, clearing a field, to necessarily believe that manual labor’s easy.
I think, in many ways, intellectual work is easier than physical work. Perhaps I’m just better suited for intellectual work and that’s why I think it’s easy. But regardless, no one can deny the fact that while we can live without the fruits of intellectual work- newspapers and schooling and paintings- no one can live without food, without shelter.
So if I would die without the farmer, but would just be a little less informed without the news anchors. I wouldn’t have clean water without the plumber, but I would just be a little more bored without the travel agent. Yet why do these second jobs carry more prestige, and often, a higher pay check?
posted by Jess @ 10:39 PM
4 Comments:
Wow Jess, great posts! (Random Thoughts #1 & #2) I think that you nearly arrived at a fundamental explanation for the cultural value imbalance between manual and intellectual labor. (This too is obviously an oversimplification, but might give some insight...) While intellectual labor may not be more "difficult" in terms of effort or energy exertion, it is more “difficult” in terms of individual ability. Some of society’s members are simply not [currently] capable of doing the intellectual labor, while [essentially] all members are able, at need, to do manual labor. Hence the higher value. And I say “are not [currently] capable” because we could start a wholly separate debate about whether they are incapable primarily because of inherent (genetic or natural) insufficiencies, or whether this happens mostly due to cultural and economic limitations (modern day equivalent of the castes of old). But either way we cannot deny that *some* inherent differences exit and therefore we would expect that (all other things even) intellectual workers would be valued higher simply by virtue of their minority. Thoughts?
*exist
"... inherent differences exist and therefore we would expect..."
So, I see what you're saying. The individuals themselves are more rare and therefore more valuable (as would be expected of something rare and useful). Still, I was talking of the value of the actions themselves- I think that manual labor is inherently more necessary to the survivial of the human race, and as such it it more valuable. Therefore it would follow that people who do the most valuable work would get more prestige. Though obviously this is not really the case. Where would Americans be without garbage men, or people to empty their septic tanks? Yet they carry no prestige. Or in Japan, for a long time butchers and leather tanners were the "untouchable" caste, yet a huge part of the Japanese society ate the meat and used the leather products they made. Which I really think is a sign of hypocrisy. It's an attitude of: "I want to eat the food, but I will also scorn the hands that prepared it or grew it."
And yes, inherent differences exist. No doubt. But there are predispositions to both kind of work. SOme people are born with inherent mechanical skills, others with more intellectual skills. And socialization makes it even more so. Without schooling, a person has little hope of being successful at intellectual labor, but at the same time, I tried to help clear a field with a machete alongside a 60-year-old woman, and I was hopeless! I don't have the skills or stamina. If I was raised by her and came to the farm everyday as a child, I might be great, but if she'd been my classmate in the U.S., who knows what kind of work she would have been capable of?
Jess,
It all goes back to a battle of good and evil. Cain and Abel with jealousy, or even before that, the fallen angel wanting to be God.
As I was reading what you wrote this kept coming to me. How to fix it? Only God knows, or do you or someone else have the answer. Manual labor is truely the basis for living. As you said who would eat without it?
I love reading your postings. Keep it up.
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