Brawn in an Age of Brains-Does physical labor have a future?

Frontpagemagazine ^ | July 21, 2017 | Victor Davis Hanson

[goodnesswins]

Hats? I’ve been scanning slides from my husband’s grandparent’s 1957 trip through Europe...they wore suits and ties all the time, and the ladies were in dresses and stockings.

[ClearCase_guy]

The Northeastern U.S. and British elite boarding schools were Spartan in nature, with rigorous academics and vigorous athletics.

I once saw a quote that expressed the view that the British Empire started dying when boarding schools introduced hot water. A bracing cold shower in the morning was the way to start the day! A nice hot shower? Men began to go soft.

[Olog-hai]

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As if that cultural engineering wasn’t enough, we have federal and state labor laws that make it illegal for kids to work summer jobs as they did a few generations ago. …

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That, believe it or not, is leftist dogma per the tenth plank of communism.

Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. etc.

Going further than that, the work ethic is also part of the state of being of the family—one of the primary things that the left is out to abolish, again per Marxist dogma. Every facet of what the Founding Fathers set up is torn down to create the Marxian dystopia.

[headstamp 2]

Yes, the demise of the work Fedora.

[GOPJ]

...the Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, nearly lost both its concrete and earthen emergency spillways after near-record rain and snow runoff filled Lake Oroville, sending water lapping over the dam’s crest. The near-tragedy reminded postmodern Californians that a past generation—now nameless, forgotten, and mostly dead—at great expense, and with some danger, had built the vast dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts ... Yet the present generation not only failed to complete the water projects—so essential to irrigate farmland, foster urban development, provide flood control, offer recreation, and facilitate hydroelectric production in a state that had doubled its population; it also neglected simple periodic maintenance on the infrastructure...

Today's liberal elite clowns 'stand on the shoulders of giants'...

[SandRat]

The robots will do it all bleep-bleep

[GOPJ]

With AI the next group to be ‘freed from labor’ will be the world’s intellectuals - writers, artists, and thinkers.

Sadly the opposite of being ‘useful’ is to be ‘useless’... Not the best of goals.

[moovova]

Guys still wear hats...

Mostly inside a building...with the brim turned backwards.

But, I’ll save “bad manners” for another thread.

[BeauBo]

Hard work builds character.

Robots are coming, which will eliminate the bulk of hard work, in a matter of decades - but really in earnest starting in the 2020’s. It is been a gradually accelerating process throughout the industrial era, but human-like (and superhuman) senses, decision-making, dexterity, mobility and precision are beginning to come together.

How can we still raise citizens with character?

It is realistic to anticipate vast hordes of weak and whiny pampered pansies, growing up without ever manning up for anything, still being able to vote. Democracy itself is at risk when the virtue of the citizenry is lost.

Perhaps making physical education an inherent part of education, physical challenge/adventure part of coming of age culturally, or mandatory military service; might help.

Then again, a culture of rugged individualism/resourcefulness might arise naturally among those challenged by the rigors of colonizing outer space.

[afsnco]

Such knowledge might even help community organizers understand that small business owners DID build their businesses...

[P.O.E.]

Then & Now:

[goodnesswins]

Yes, I know. And the decorum seems to match the dress, unfortunately. Seems we are devolving.

[Parmy]

Ping

[NorthstarMom]

Interesting article. Reading this after my husband left for the job site and while I’m getting ready for my waitressing shift.

Both of us have college degrees and upon graduating, worked in our professional field. I quit to be home with our children a few years later.

Two years ago my husband’s professional career was over and he started his own construction business (he’s honed his skills over the past 20 years) and I went back to waitressing to help out.

We sometimes laugh at how in our 40’s, we are in better shape because of our physical jobs. On busy nights I move as quickly as I can for hours , carrying heavy plates of pasta, then end the night with cleaning up and putting heavy chairs up on the tables.

As hard as that can be it doesn’t hold a candle to what he does day after day. He’s commented on how much more rewarding it is to see tangible results of his labor.

[Pietro]

This is an interesting essay.

I learned a trade and then went to school. That works out nice if you go into management because you understand what physical work entails. Plus you can speak the language.

Also, its a lot of fun doing physical work when you're young; after 40, not so much.

[Svartalfiar]

What is it about physical work, in its supposed eleventh hour within a rapidly changing Western culture, that still intrigues us?

All-in-all a decent article, but I would say this: Physically work gives a sense of accomplishment that others can't. You know that you, with your own two hands, built/destroyed/whatevered something, while a professor doesn't get much beyond an occasionally student having a well-written paper. An office paper-pusher can finish a big deal, but it's just paper in a stack, and there's a lot more where that came from. But the physical exhaustion coupled with the visual of what you made, is so much more gratifying.

[Albion Wilde]

I just paid a few thou for house renovations and car repairs. So I’d say yes.

[Albion Wilde]

If incoming Yale students’ orientation or first-year community service required them to cut the quad’s grass, chainsaw tree limbs, fix clogged sewers, and work side by side with those who did, there might be less obsession over Halloween costumes and a greater reluctance to curse at faculty with the secure knowledge that they would only politely nod and smile back.

There is an well-regarded prep school in Maryland called McDonogh School that, besides vast sports fields and as many academic facilities as a small college, also has riding stables and yearly-planted fields of feed for the horses. One of the punishments there is for kids to muck out the stables or help with the crops. Keeps things real.

[Svartalfiar]

I learned a trade and then went to school. That works out nice if you go into management because you understand what physical work entails. Plus you can speak the language.

I work in the AV industry, doing projectors/speakers/lighting/etc for primarily corporate events. It amazes me how little knowledge management (especially sales!) knows about the products they are delivering. When I was with the in-house guys at the Gaylord, there were several events where I'd have to wait to set gear up because I needed to talk to the client myself to figure out what they actually wanted, since the map/diagram made no sense. Project managers mostly don't understand projector lens throw ratios, so I'd almost always be sitting for an hour or two waiting for the shop to send out another set of lens because the first ones didn't fit the screen.

It would be nice if a lot more companies required basic experience within the company before allowing people to move up into management.

[Albion Wilde]

There is a marked difference in the way older elites trained younger generations, and what occurs presently. The Northeastern U.S. and British elite boarding schools were Spartan in nature, with rigorous academics and vigorous athletics... Our current elite more resemble the decadent aristocracy of 18th Century France, more suited to the cocktail lounge than the shop floor, much less the field of combat.

We can thank the rise of the lawsuit cult. I am a life-long house renovator. I've seen many working-class restoration contractors cut themselves, shock themselves with electricity, use noxious chemicals and get filthy dirty hauling radiators or shoveling rubble. I am still renovating in my 70s and have scraped lead paint and fallen off a ladder a few times even recently, and I'm a woman. It would be hard to imagine the snob class learning to handle tools without resorting to punitive damages if one of their snowflakes got a bad bruise, much less cut off the tip of a finger with a chainsaw, or suffered a broken toe from mishandling an axe. The same people wouldn't sue the school if an injury was from lacrosse, tennis or racquetball. It's the work that is beneath them that must be punished.