School of Religious Education, and
Cardinal Clancy Centre for Research in the Spiritual, Moral, Religious and Pastoral Dimensions of Education.
Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education is a key area for Teaching and Research in Australian Catholic University

 Challenging the myths we've been told about the meaning of work

 A recent advertisement for the energy drink ‘Red Bull' appeared on many bus stops.   It read “Wing it though the working week”.   The subtext:   Hang in there, it's just a few days till Friday night when you can party on again.   The impression:   Work is an unpleasant but necessary interruption between ongoing weekends;   that's where life really happens, where one can “live it up”!

 This is just one of many problematic meanings for work that we can diagnose in contemporary culture.   Almost diametrically opposed to this view is the one where work dominates most of an individual's non-sleeping life.   The whole identity of an individual can become bound up with work, work status and progress up the ‘business ziggurat', accompanied by ever greater salaries.

 Then there are meanings of work that see it as an essentially human endeavour –labour is transformed into meaningful work because of its contribution to human dignity and human community.   And this applies just as much to what might be thought of as repetitive, menial labour through to the most creative work of gifted composers.

 In addition there are the interpretations of work that are central to the cultural meanings of businesses and corporations, and of nation states.   From this perspective, individuals are human resources whose work can be measured mainly in economic terms as instrumental to productivity and competitiveness in the global marketplace.

 If ever there were areas of importance for religious education as critical cultural interpretation, they are work and economics.

 Educators need a basic grasp of key concepts, history, issues, myths and problems relating to the meaning of work and economics.   The perspective for their critical interpretation needs to include the best Christian understandings of what it means to be human;   in turn this means something about meaning and purpose in life and what constitutes quality of life. 

This is where the recent book by Charles Birch and David Paul (Life and Work: challenging economic man.   University of NSW Press, 2003) is a godsend for educators.   The book looks into questions about the meaning of work and quality of life in a clear and convincing style.   It draws on a wealth of research.

One of the real dangers in any book like this is it can read like one large collection of quotations and references to research.   Fortunately, the book does a wonderful job in avoiding this problem — it includes significant details from research and contemporary writings, but it does so in an informative and pertinent fashion, weaving the information into a compelling story and a convincing argument.   This makes the book an eye opener, especially in relation to the meaning of work in business and organisations.   Its thorough research base adds authority to the writing.

 Charles Birch, an ecologist of international repute, has made significant international contributions to Process philosophy and theology.   In this book, Birch, with colleague David Paul, a researcher in economics and culture, turn their attention to fundamental cultural issues about work that are affecting quality of life, particularly in western countries.

 This book is a compulsory work for educators!   They can profit by stretching their thinking on these issues and bringing their enhanced background to bear on their teaching across the curriculum, especially in Religious Education.   No doubt, this background will also be helpful for the youth mentoring role of teachers, and even in the many informal conversations they have with young people that touch on work, careers, business etc.

 This note concludes with two paragraphs from the book that show something of the wide range of issues that are considered.   The authors look at the idea of genetic determinism that sometimes figures in the mix of ideas about human nature that end up affecting myths about work.   It shows that ideas about the meaning of work can stem from different understandings about the nature and purpose of human beings:

 A note on genetic determinism

A modern version of genetic determinism is to be found in the human genome project.   Here the human being is defined in bits of DNA, some of it good, some of it bad.   The human genome consists of parts that can be replaced at will by genetic engineering.   We are promised a future in which the bad bits will be replaced by good bits.   Genomic medicine therefore sees the body as a machine that consists of parts that can be replaced.   But this dream of perfect health is specious. New forms of disease will continue to emerge as bacteria and viruses evolve.   Genes mutate and our environment changes.   Thinking of the body primarily as a machine results in excessive reliance on surgery and drugs, and already partly accounts for the imperson­al nature of some managed care.   It isolates organs from bodies, diseases from patients, doctors from communities and turns physicians into technicians.   Being human is more than having the right molecular composition.   The face of the beloved is more than nucleotide bonds.

`You can't change human nature' is the cry of the biological determinist, and some committed capitalists.   Of course you couldn't change human nature, if our nature were completely determined by the genes given us at our birth.   With this kind of thinking, biological determinism becomes a social weapon.   Because it is exculpatory, it has a wide appeal.   If men dominate women, it is because they must.   If employers exploit their workers, it is because evolution has built into us genes for entrepreneurial activity.   If we kill each other in war, it is the force of our genes for territoriality, xenophobia, tribalism and aggression.   Genetic determinism can even be used to defend the free market.   It is said to account for why we do what we want to do, and why we sometimes behave like cavemen.   The ethics of genetic determinism is the ethics of the jungle. Struggle for existence is its law of life.   The trouble with this view is that there is a flaw in its understanding of the relation between the gene, organism and environment.

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