Michaelson further argues that the issue is not that Ilych or anyone else for that matter worked too much and therefore did not live as full a life as they might, or that the work they did was meaningless. Rather, the issue is that people fail “to live meaningfully” (p. 335). To avoid meaningless living, he suggests that one find a way of integrating work into his/her life such that it is part of “a life well lived” (p. 335). That means that one has to find a way of escaping the pitfalls of pathological use of work as illustrated in the apparently meaningless life of Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych. In the story, Ilych used his work as: 1) an escape from an unsatisfactory marital life, in which he uses the social and material benefits as a way of keeping his wife occupied and appeased; 2) a way to avoid facing the authentic self; 3) a way of avoiding confrontation with his bare humanity; and 4) his entire identity. Ilych thus failed to recognize the moral value of his work in terms of what it could contribute to the good of humanity, and therefore, it became essentially meaningless. However, if contextualized properly, work can be a deep source of meaning in one’s life as illustrated by Frankl (1992). In a statement to a fellow prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Frankl passionately stated that the manuscript that he had smuggled into the camp at great risk to himself was his life’s work. To him, this work contributed to his life meaning to the extent that he was ready to die for it precisely because he saw it as contributing to something larger than himself.
However, Frankl’s life work was a creation, something in which he had invested himself and which represented the expression of his thoughts, i.e. it had a cultural dimension. Many people do not consider work to represent anything expressive. Rather, they see it as a means of earning money, although it may also be a source of opportunities for social interaction and expression of some interest. Lafargue (1996), Marx’s son in law, wrote the Right to be Lazy in 1883 while living in Northern France. He was concerned about the conditions of workers in the textiles mills of the region, many of whom worked 14 hour shifts and were injured because they were so tired they were prone to accidents. The money they received was very low, and for all their long shifts and risk of injury or death, the goods they produced were often dumped on the market in order to be sold off quickly to make room for the newest textile fashions. Lafargue argued that the workers, many of them women and children, deserved better and safer conditions. Similar arguments are still raised with regard to the exploitation of children and other workers today in the manufacture of textiles, sports goods and fashion items. The factories which produce them have moved into countries where labor is cheap and guidelines for improvement of health and safety conditions are more relaxed. In the UK, the rising demand for low paid workers in the private agencies in the social care industry has resulted in many women working flexible hours but on low rates of pay. This often results in a noxious combination of low motivation and long shifts, with an increase in risks for back injuries and other forms of accidents and injuries. People who work in such conditions can hardly be seen as having an opportunity to see their work as having any meaning in their lives other than simply a source of money.
The contribution of the meaninglessness of work in the modern society to the problems that Frankl identified is clear. Illich (1980) argued that a lot of what was actually produced in a capitalist society was not assigned monetary value. The labor expended by people engaged in production of such goods, he argued, was therefore not recognized as having worth in capitalist terms, even though it was useful in helping to maintain community. For example, volunteering in a soup kitchen, caring for an elderly parent, or teaching kindergarten is not valued much in a capitalist economy. Yet, such work is critical to the well-being of the community and society as a whole, and therefore is very meaningful work in Frankl’s sense. Furthermore, Illich maintained that many of the things produced in a capitalist system have a built in obsolescence, or else are subject to the manipulation of fashion. Therefore many workers are engaged in production of things which do not have real community value, such as producing 20 varieties of cereals, or 100 types of body-wash.
Many of the things we purchase with the money we earn from producing these things without real value are themselves without real purpose. We go shopping to buy things which make us temporarily feel good, but ultimately, they are not particularly useful. Clothes look good for a year or so and then become old fashioned. The average music CD or a DVD, once purchased, is probably played three times while in our possession and then never listened to or viewed again. Each year people in the UK generate tons of rubbish by buying things that they do not really need, and then find they have to get rid of. The same can be said of the US. All this garbage is stuff that other people make in their work, and that we buy with the proceeds of our work. As Ivan Ilyich (in Tolstoy’s novel) finds out as he learns not to be so concerned about bent photograph frames or chipped new crockery, none of this matters very much. Illich (1980) suggests that a community held together by the voluntarily given work contributed by its participants might be more durable and healthier for its citizens than one characterized by accumulation of material things.
This view was reiterated by Putnam (2000) who pointed to one particular development which he thought was a source of the problem of decline in social capital (the value of other through our relationships with them) in the US as the fact that people invested so much of their energy in their work that they had no energy left to invest in their communities. He argued that work had become the community. However, because work itself was being redefined by a global economy in which job security was less guaranteed, the risk was that the work-based community was rootless and shifting. One day it was there and the next it was relocated to a place where labor and site costs were cheaper. Updike’s Rabbit (1991a; 1991b) is perhaps an exemplar of this shift in community values and subsequent meaninglessness. In four novels the life of this character spans the transition from the pre-television age to an era of the proliferation of consumer goods progressing from athletic basketball jock to an overweight and flabby car salesman with a heart condition. At the end of the tetralogy he returns briefly to his youthful pre-occupation with basketball, but after a life of modern consumerism, this is a mere fancy. In his way, despite the possibility that his life has progressed downhill ever since the beginning of the narrative, Rabbit manages a similar last minute redemption as Ivan Ilyich, suggesting that even in the modern consumer-oriented society, redemption of a sense of meaning in peoples’ lives is still possible.
Occupations, including those of leisure and work, offer powerful means through which individuals and societies can be used to mediate perceptions of meaninglessness and offer the redemption alluded to above. We can have confidence in the power of occupations in helping us achieve the above stated objective based on our observation that when people die, they are often remembered in terms of the things they did with other people, and mementoes related to such things as sports affiliations or social, usually family, roles. As we will see in chapter two, English worker-writers often defined themselves in terms of their work or other occupations, particularly occupations related to increasing a sense of personal efficacy and a feeling of connection to other people. It follows then that one way of addressing Frankl’s problem of meaninglessness in modern society would be by helping people find ways of orchestrating their occupations in such a way that what they do every day helps them experience positive emotions, create a positive identity for themselves, connect to something bigger than themselves, love someone or something other than themselves. In the process of engaging in such occupations, people may experience a sense of well-being due to a feeling that their lives are meaningful and purposeful. A member of a gardening project in Sheffield described to Nick how attending an allotment group twice a week and being given a plant to grow and care for through the winter gave him something to structure his week, and a chance to connect to other people, which made that period of time very meaningful for