Our readings in this series are from the book, Understanding the Times Here is a brief excerpt from page 37:
“In a secular world, where no eternal horizon orients our work, the real value of work is measured by its material contribution, both for the worker and for those he serves. What does our work contribute to the economy? And what reward comes to us from our work? American education is aimed at this objective, to prepare students to take their places as contributing members of a materialist economy.
“But work is hard and often tedious; the rewards can be fleeting and even uncertain; and under the sun, people find it difficult to attach enduring meaning and significance to their labors. You work all your life to get the stuff you think will make you happy, then you die. How meaningful, really, can that be?
“Work thus understood can have dehumanizing effects. We sense that we are merely cogs in some machine. We don’t matter as persons – with longings, fears, and hopes – but only as contributors to various bottom lines, ours and the entity for which we work. Increasingly we have seen that, once it is determined that machines can do the work of humans, or that human work can be done more inexpensively in other locales, workers are discarded, jobs are eliminated, and government steps in, if only temporarily, to ease the economic crisis such transitions can create.”
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T. M. Moore
