Work

Friends,

This Labor Day weekend few of us will take time to thoughtfully consider the bravery and risks of the often violent movement to secure the U.S labor rights that we are honoring. The long struggle, led by Francis Perkins and others during the era of the New Deal, liberated working class people from long hours, exploitation, and constant dangers -especially with the laws that protected child labor. The labor movement in the U.S. is a history lesson in itself, and at the least we need to be grateful for all those who have sacrificed - and continue to sacrifice - to maintain and protect just, humane treatment in the workplace 

I want, however, to introduce a specific aspect to the meaning of work, and to also honor the international worker’s movement, specifically in reference to Brazil in the 1960’s and 70’s.

In the 1971-72 I had the privilege of working with Brazilian educator Paulo Freire* under the auspices of Harvard and the Center for the Study of Development and Social Change in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Freire was in the United States to explore the application of his educational pedagogy called "conscientization" that was part a program of personal empowerment, a literacy program,  and a political strategy, because becoming literate meant a person could vote, which fomented a major political revolution in northern Brazil.

Freire's methodology used a select number of words that covered the phonetic alphabet of Portuguese and thus allowed a person to learn to read in a very short time. One selection of words I remember was trabajo (work) and caballero (horse). Freire asked his mainly poor campesino students the difference between the physical work they did and the work of their horse. At what point is a person able to determine one’s own destiny in contrast (if any) to that off the horse’s limited ability to only work on command. The idea was to introduce into the consciousness of a person the idea that they could control their historical destiny and be out from under the conformity of poverty and powerlessness. The Freire pedagogy successfully created a political revolution when masses of people began to be able to pass the literacy test and to conscientiously vote for political leadership that challenged the status quo and worked on behalf of the people, not the government in control. Freire was eventually arrested and exiled from Brazil when the movement threatened the existing political power structure.

Reflecting on Freire’s encouragement to conscientiously consider our life’s labor begs an important question about the extent to which work defines our personal worth. We might re-frame the question by asking how meaningful and moral our labor is, and many of us -  today especially - are indeed asking that question. Or what part of our work offers self fulfillment and contributes to our self esteem and the common good - or not? In the burgeoning “work” created by Artificial Intelligence (AI), will our creativity and the profound importance of love and relationship be relegated to a new form of convenient, inevitable, but increasingly less human consciousness?  In other words, how are we to retain and maintain an ongoing process of "conscientization" as a means of assuring our work will still create our own history and destiny in the face of the increasingly technologically oriented world being thrust upon us? And I think central to these questions is what in our future will define the meaning of a life’s work.

Freire’s revolutionary educational program is, at heart, an extension of  Jesus’  Gospel of good news and liberation that offered liberation from the constraints of religious, political, and our own spiritual  and emotional limitations. The Jesus narrative offers a social and psychological alternative to the status quo by creating instead a faith and practice that emphasizes “love of neighbor, no exceptions”  that also frees us emotionally from the temptations of greed and fear. How might we retain a commitment to serve the common good and a faith and practice that emphasizes compassion and mercy? How will this affect our understanding of work?

So one way to approach a “labor of love” during our lifetimes is to continue to examine what provides us with empathetic hearts and minds in our work, our personal relationships and in our relationship with God. 

Peace,
Tom
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*Freire is best known for his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he explains his populist educational philosophy.