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67 Some things do never change. It has always required human work to feed, clothe, and shelter human communities, and it seems that this will always be the case. We sometimes hear predictions of a human future without work, in which robots toil instead of humans. It is difficult to imagine, even if robots can be made to do most of the work that is now done by humans, that they can also be made to design themselves, or to repair themselves. But even if that were possible, the consensus of the world’s religions is that it would be a bad thing for humans. For human work is both onerous and a necessary—and invaluable —part of the humanization process. Framing the Issues While it is true for humans in general that, as the book of Genesis puts it, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground,”1 it is also true that since humans spend much of their waking hours in the purposeful activity we call work, much of what they learn and become occurs through work. That is, work is valuable not just because we do so much of it that it is the principal arena in which we learn and become. It is rather because work is our principal purposeful activity that it is so important. Because work for humans involves goals, and steps toward those goals can be assessed and measured, it is through work, beginning with chores in our homes and schoolwork as children, that we learn who we are, our talents and capacities, our strengths and weaknesses. Further, it is through work—precisely because it requires discipline and persistence—that most of us develop our talents and learn to deal with or overcome our deficiencies, as well as learn cooperation with others. It is chiefly through our work that we participate in and contribute to our communities. And while it is still the case that through work many humans have their chief interaction with the nonhuman natural world, it is increasingly the case for humans that we no longer recognize nature in most of the materials with which we work, not even in the food we eat. Unlike virtually all children in past centuries, schoolchildren in much of the developed world today have to be taught that the Little Red Hen they read stories about is the same as the fried chicken they eat, that the cute pink Chapter 3 RELIGIONS ON MAKING WORK HUMAN comparative religious ethics 68 pigs in cartoons are the source of ham, bacon, and pork chops. Unlike humans in past ages, we take for granted the natural sources of the materials we fabricate—the water, the wood, the oil, even the animals. Social Analysis of Contemporary Work But before we move on to see what religious wisdom of the past concerning work can contribute to our current situations and understandings, we need to do some analysis of human work today. Because there have been so many radical changes in the nature of human work in only the last two centuries, the social analysis here is more complex than in many other issues. The first thing to note about human work today is its diversity. This diversity is partly the result of the fact that parts of our globe are still largely preindustrial, while others are industrial, and yet others are postindustrial. Work in preindustrial and industrial areas. In preindustrial areas, work for most of the population is still largely agricultural. In some parts of our world, the most common pattern of agriculture is even subsistence agriculture, with plots too small for mechanization to be feasible. In these areas, the population often exceeds the ability of the land to support it, and the result over time has often been environmental degradation. Farmers have attempted to cultivate marginal land on hillsides , causing erosion that loses topsoil and clogs streams. Land has been deforested both commercially and for fuel, causing further erosion by wind and water, and sometimes even modifying climate patterns and causing or aggravating droughts. Where there has not been enough industrial work to engage the excess population from agricultural areas, unemployment and poverty also result. Other areas, often within the same nations as preindustrial areas, are industrial, with some of the same labor abuses and negative health and environmental effects as were seen in the developed nations 60 to 150 years ago. Industrial areas have much greater labor specialization than...

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