Philosopher Mark Vernon wonders what it means to lead a meaningful life without work 

Why do people work? And I don’t just mean to secure money, which is clearly a primary reason. After all, remuneration can’t be the whole story. People spend a great proportion of their lives working and if money were the sole reason – or perhaps I should say, when money is the sole reason – work depresses, alienates, destroys.

Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian essayist, realised as much. He argued that work should not be merely a matter of earning a living; the “cash nexus” as he called it. Carlyle thought work should not be so humiliating but should provide individuals with a sense of identity and purpose too. Ideally, it offers a social and moral framework.

Perhaps you feel your work does provide you with a social framework. It shapes the day and week. It offers friendship and camaraderie. It gives you a sense of place in society; a role.

Whether or not you feel your work provides you with a moral framework is another question. Many must feel that their work requires them to hang up their moral convictions in the office lobby, along with their coat. The result, though, is not just a gap between business and ethics. For the individual, it makes work literally demoralising. Working without a moral framework is quite as depressing, alienating and destructive as working for money alone.

Sigmund Freud had another idea. “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness,” he wrote. It’s relatively easy to see why love is such a cornerstone. But work?

By work, Freud meant our productive lives. That may or may not include paid employment. Being productive, Freud felt, is quite as valuable as having children: it satisfies the generative urge that surges through human lives. Our own existence is too small for us, so we long to be connected to more. That more may come via love in partners, families, friends. Or it can come via what we make in life, be that material goods, creative ideas, beautiful places, the person we become ourselves. If there is no such “work” in a person’s life, they are again likely to feel the depression and alienation.

Another way of putting it is that work is not just about getting things done. It determines and shapes the kind of people we become in the process. That’s why we have a sense of the kind of character who might be a lawyer or car salesman, a nurse or teacher. They may be stereotypes, but there’s an important lesson to be learnt that our working lives are a major form of practice for our lives too. You become what you are. So what are you being asked to be at work?

Mark Vernon presents a new Thought for the Week on “A Drink with the Idler”.

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