Because labor is so central to human existence, throughout history various thinkers have speculated about what the Buddhist eightfold path calls "right livelihood" for those who would seek and practice wisdom. For instance, both the Stoic Musonius Rufus and the Confucian Wu Yubi advocated subsistence farming as a noble line of work. The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu tells a beautiful story about the artistry of a lowly butcher. Although officially Aristotle downplayed the value of mechanical pursuits like housebuilding and even music-making, nevertheless he frequently used craftsmen as models of practical thinking and he applied the lessons of craftsmanship to ethical reflection. In recent times, Matthew Crawford titled one of his books "shop class as soul craft" and has argued that working in the trades enables you to bring your whole self to your productive activities. And so on.
It's been said that there is something especially fulfilling or even honest about working with your hands. At one level that makes sense, because so much about a human way of life depends on our hands (we are tool-makers who manage and manipulate things, and we even speak of grasping ideas). Yet other aspects of human existence are nearly as fundamental, such as our social interactions and our conceptual-linguistic abilities; although some folks prefer working with things, others prefer working with people or with symbols.
Moreover, recent research in the social sciences (e.g., by Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues) indicates that three attitudes toward work are nearly ubiquitous: seeing work as a job, as a career, or as a calling. And within the latter, Michael Pratt et al. have identified three distinct orientations (which are not mutually exclusive):
Thus it strikes me that just about every line of work can afford opportunities for learning, reflection, self-improvement, and fulfillment. It's more a question of how you approach the work than what the work is in itself.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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