Alain de Botton on Work

Andrew led a discussion on Saturday 27 June 2020 of the ideas raised in Alain de Botton's book 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' .

Questions:

    1. Is the expectation that we enjoy our jobs ultimately helpful or harmful?
    2. Tangential question: what about the expectation that we be passionately in love with the person we marry?
    3. Is work important to your sense of well-being?
    4. Would you work if you didn't need the income? How much?
    5. Are you often 'in the moment' as you work, losing your sense of self, absorbed in the task?
    6. Do you look forward to retirement? What would you do?
    7. How would you advise a young person trying to decide what career to pursue?
    8. Is it important not to be alienated from the product of our labour? Should jobs that alienate be banned, or discouraged (eg via tax)?
    9. What about alienation from the production of what we consume? Lack of visceral exposure to the exploitation of people and other animals that may be involved. We still buy clothes made in Asian sweatshops, and meat or dairy products produced by the inhumane treatment of animals. Would we be less likely to do so if we had visited an abbattoir or sweatshop and met its workers and victims?
    10. Bertrand Russell, in his essay 'On Idleness', recommended that people only work a few hours a week, with laws used to share out evenly the benefits of improved productivity from technology. Do you see that as practically achievable? How might it be done? What will happen if we don't do it, with AI taking away all jobs except those that can be done by a minority consisting of the cleverest people?
    11. de Botton sees hidden value beneath the surface pointlessness and artificiality of employer-organised off-site meetings, and brain-storming sessions with butchers' pads. He thinks they give people the opportunity to bond over their resistance to the process. Do you? Or do you even believe such activities are useful even for their stated reasons?
    12. Can you find beauty in human-made, industrial items? Examples?
    13. Are marketing, PR and advertising meaningless? Or do they have value because they defend the continued viability of companies and thereby the livelihoods they provide to their employees?

Salient points from the chapters of the book.

    • Cargo Ship-spotting. The beauty of mechanisms rather than just nature, people and things created as art. The notion originated with Bentham. Children still have this fascination, and a few adults.
    • Logistics. Ugly depots. Food miles. Loss of seasonality. Time-critical for fresh produce. The shackles of the oppressive degree of order that is required. Oppression of the primary producers at the beginning of the chain. The inhumanity of the associated food production.
    • Biscuit-making - meaningless and alienated, marketing-based. But forms the basis of a compassionate welfare state. Over-specialisation, eg biscuit packing to avoid friction.
    • Career counselling. More focus on self than historically. Very useful though. Try to help people to cope. But people won't pay.
    • Rocket science. They seem like gods, in a godless age.
    • Painting (artistic). Very unremunerative. Being in the moment. Requires passion.
    • Electricity transmission engineering: Like Cargo spotting: the beauty of carefully designed and constructed mechanisms.
    • Accountancy. a. For the first time (?), employers have had to concern themselves with mental well-being of employees, because brain work cannot be encouraged by whips. Is that really new? b. He also suggests the Office is the modern nunnery, because sex is so heavily forbidden, and that incites even greater desire and activity. Is he right about that? c. He says accountants have given up any desire to have a legacy, just doing the clients' bidding. Is that right? Is it bad?
    • Entrepeneurship. Enthusiastic amateurs. The vast majority will fail. Is it cruel to encourage them, or does society rely on them trying? Are they cannon fodder to keep capitalism going?
    • Aviation. a. He muses that perhaps beautiful models are hired to decorate engineering shows and calendars, not in order to attract the dominantly male clientele but to remind them how unattainable such beauty is and thereby influence them to concentrate on technical matters. Plausible? b. Work as being in the moment again, freeing us from existential angst: ‘It must destroy our sense of perspective, and we should be grateful to it for that reason, for allowing us to mingle promiscuously with events, for letting us wear thoughts of our own death and the destruction of our enterprises with beautiful lightness, while we travel to Paris to sell engine oil. … The impulse to exaggerate the significance of what we are doing, far from being an intellectual error, is really life itself coursing through us’.

We're in an apartment block that's set back from the street. There's a gate at the start of the driveway. Here's how to get in (it's a little complicated, but don't be put off!):

If you're arriving on foot:

1. Buzz us from the gate and we'll open the pedestrian gate

2. Walk along the driveway as far as the colonnade on the right

3. At the end of the colonnade is the door to the building - buzz us again (!)

4. Get in the lift and come down to Level 2, turn left when you get out and walk along to our front door :)

If you're in a car:

1. Buzz us from the gate and we'll open the car gate.

2. Drive in and park somewhere along the driveway, parking to the left side so cars can still get past.

3. See steps 2-4 above.

If you're on a bike:

1. Buzz us from the gate and we'll open the car gate

2. Ride down to the end of the driveway, where it curves a little to the right, and you'll find yourself at the garage door.

3. We'll come and let you into the garage where you can securely lock up your bike.