just pondering… again
Not so long ago, I caught part of Neal Conan’s NPR radio show, Talk of the Nation. His guest was Alain de Botton, who recently published a book on The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. One of the things de Botton was talking about was how many of our jobs represent very narrow slices of a huge corporate effort. We may have thousands of ‘coworkers’ at a large corporation, perhaps dispersed about the globe. An individual’s job may be some very specialized work that contributes to the larger product, sometimes in rather cryptic ways.
In Michigan, this is a concept that we take for granted. The automotive industry has made us very accustomed to jobs where a person is focused on a single task that is just one of many, many tasks in the process that ultimately makes a car.
De Botton was talking about how often that system robs the employment of meaning. He interviewed a lot of people for his book – many of them were troubled by the meaninglessness of their work. De Botton commented that in ages preceding this, work was done on a much smaller scale and “meaning” was an inherent part of the job. People had a real sense of their contribution because it had direct impact on outcomes, not unlike in small businesses today.
At the same time, we identify ourselves by our work. De Botton says that it used to be that we identified ourselves by who our family was, and where we were from. Now, in order to get know someone, we want to know what they do. Often, what the person is doing has no real intrinsic meaning – even for that person. (That is not to say that putting in an honest day’s work, regardless of the task, does not in and of itself have meaning.)
As we stand, like deer in the headlights, waiting for the economy to turn and walking past all the empty storefronts on our various Main Streets, I can’t help but think that this is an opportunity. It could be an opportunity if we have the courage to reject old paradigms, and the creativity to forge new ones. The new ones are smaller and local. They demand commitment and investment from the community.
To borrow a bit from an analogy of de Botton’s, imagine how good a cookie is when your mom just baked it, compared to ripping into a bag of very-processed corporate cookies. Or think of all the wonderful aspects to locally-grown produce, compared to produce that travels thousands of miles and has who-knows-what done to it in the process. Or, perhaps it’s the work of a local machine shop we’re talking about, instead of mass-produced, cost-reduced products from Asia. Imagine the diverse opportunities and satisfaction workers could find in local employment where the community, or region, was dedicated to its success.
De Botton didn’t suggest a shift to a local economy, but it seems like a logical conclusion based on the observations. It also addresses a myriad of issues in a sensible way. Economy, environment, family, health, security – come quickly to mind.
I don’t know. Call me naïve. Couldn’t we think local? Couldn’t we be local?
