The Purposelessness of Modern Work

I recently finished a wonderful book by Knut Hamsun called Growth of the Soil. Written in the 1920s, it follows the life of a man named Isak in the Norwegian fjelds and his herculean effort to carve out a homestead from the bosom of nature. Over the course of the novel, the reader follows Isak’s triumphs and hardships, the expansion of his family and farm, and the subsequent establishment of a small town around Isak’s land. The story is not only about the growth of the soil, but also the growth a man. In fact, the whole thrust of Hamsun’s thought could be summarized in the following: man grows best and reaches his highest potential when he is in harmony with the soil, and he does this by actively working the land and creating a home. This idea is perfectly encapsulated in an exchange between Isak and an engineer from town who offers Isak a job maintaining the new telephone lines that have been installed:

The engineer looked at him for quite a while, and then put an astonishing question, as follows: ‘Can you make more money that way?’

‘Make more money?’ said Isak.

‘Can you earn more money in a day by working on the land than you could by working for us?’

‘Why, as to that, I can’t say,’ answered Isak. ‘It’s just this way, you see -- ‘tis the land I’m here for. I’ve many souls and more beasts to keep alive -- and ‘tis the land that keeps us. ‘Tis our living.’ (emphasis mine)

I find it intriguing (and ironic) that this book, which is lauded by many as the father of the modern novel, has as its subject matter such anti-modern sentiments. In fact, the book is positively Luddite in its outlook and particularly scornful on what it perceives as the corrupting effects on the soul that modern work, ideas, and society as a whole has. But this essay isn’t an in depth review or analysis of Growth of the Soil (perhaps an article for a different day), rather it is about an answer I found to a feeling that I had been approaching obliquely, as it were, for years. A feeling that I was acutely aware of for years but never was able to firmly grasp. The feeling was why is modern work so unfulfilling? The answer had always eluded me. Hamsun’s answer came like a thunderclap. Modern work and its feelings of purposelessness and despair arise simply because in almost all modern occupations mankind has ceased to create. Purpose derives from creation.

I can see objections already to how the term to create could be variously interpreted. For the purpose of this essay (and to avoid confusion and unnecessary protest), I define the term to create as the act of an intelligent mind fashioning or making something that is of tangible use or benefit to the maker and to others. For a more practical sense of my definition, think of a farmer who clears a field to plant and grow crops, the mason who lays bricks to build a wall, the potter who throws clay into plates, the luthier who turns shapeless wood into a beautiful, resonant guitar. Nor do I limit this definition to products that are the result of physical labor - for instance: a poem or novel written by an author, a musical piece by a composer, a book on metaphysics by a philosopher, or a lesson plan created by a teacher. All of these would be forms of creation; as Shakespeare says, “[of] imagination bod[ied] forth”, and therefore purposeful work.

Hamsun’s book beautifully articulates this idea of imaginative generation (i.e. taking disparate raw elements, fashioning them through the ingenuity of man’s mind and the industry of his hands to create something worthwhile) by taking the reader through the progressive stages of Isak’s life. Isak clears his land of trees to make space for fields, he fells wood to make the posts for his house, he removes stones to serve as the foundation, he creates drain pipes to irrigate his farm. And in all of this work Isak has purpose. A purpose of creating himself a home. And from that purpose he derives pride. And from his pride he achieves a sense of respect: both for himself and from the others who come to admire his prospering holding. Each task, though a means to achieve a larger whole, is itself an act of creation and thus full of purpose and meaning; leaving Isak with a sense of fulfillment. 

The evidence for my assertion is not limited to Hamsun’s book, either. It is woven into the very fabric of the universe and our being. God Himself created the heavens and earth in six days and made man in His image, part of which means, I believe, man’s desire to create. This is not to suggest that God lacked purpose or meaning and so created the cosmos in order to fulfill this lack. Rather it helps explain how we as His Image bearers, in creating, fulfill our purpose by imitating our Divine Father. I owe much to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastic essay On Fairy Stories for laying the bedrock for my convictions on creation, man’s role as sub-creator, and its subsequent linkage to purpose. However, in his essay Tolkien’s main focus is on sub-creation in the realm of literature, particularly fairy tales, not generative work as a whole. If you haven’t read this essay I would highly recommend it. I pick up what Tolkien left unsaid - that if sub-creation in the realm of literature fulfills (at least in part) man’s purpose, precisely because he is creating after the manner of God, then for work itself to be fulfilling it must have a creative element to it.

But here I beg the reader allow me to briefly put aside the topic of work and examine some commonplace instances of creation, which upon reflection further solidifies my position. Examine your life and tell me, are not the things made with your own hands, or the hands of others, of more worth than things simply purchased? Do you not feel a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose, from sitting in a chair you yourself made? What parent would feel prouder of a drawing bought and given to them by their child than one drawn by their own hand? Or again, the meal that was cooked by your selection of ingredients in your home is incomparably better (in the fullest sense of the word) than a meal from the finest restaurant. Think even how a home cooked meal with ingredients bought from a grocery store would pale in comparison to a meal cooked with ingredients you grew yourself. I belabor the point, but I pray the reader understands. It is precisely because the aforementioned items took generative effort to create that they brought joy, pleasure, and fulfillment in a greater sense than if they had taken no creative effort.

I have already established that for work to be fulfilling and purposeful it must be creative in nature. It is my contention that the angst felt regarding modern work and its perceived purposelessness directly stems from the deliberately non-creative nature of most modern day work. A few examples will suffice to show this, starting with my own job. I work for a large multinational corporation that is contracted by pharmaceutical companies to manage clinical trials for new drugs coming to the market. My role specifically is to assess if doctors or their sites would be good candidates for a certain study and then get them onboarded to the study. The entirety of my job is done via computer, with various electronic forms, questionnaires, and emails sent back and forth. Everything is stored digitally. I have never handled a document physically in my role. I do not creatively generate anything in my work. I follow standard operating procedures and pre-designed workflows to accomplish a goal of garnering a set number of sites to be proposed for selection on a particular study. It then passes out of my hands and is lost in the churning Charybdis of different departments ad infinitum. The sites I proposed may or may not be selected by the pharmaceutical company sponsoring the trial. The site may or may not enroll patients on the trial. The drug being studied may or may not be effective. It may or may not be approved by the FDA to come to the market. And at the end of this process, five to ten years down the line, once the drug is released to the public, it could still be pulled if new data come to light proving it’s ineffective or harmful. At this point, how much is my hand discernable in this process? What connection do I have to the creation of the medicine and its use by the public? Take for another example, almost every job on Wall Street. These people are dealing entirely with imaginary numbers. They create nothing but an artificial stock price and trade these inflated numbers between other people. They neither make the product or work for the company. They are exclusively middlemen (other generations called them parasites). I won’t go that far, but can these jobs in any conceivable sense be said to create something of tangible benefit to others? There are countless other modern jobs that millions of people occupy of just this sort, ceaselessly shuffling digital ones and zeroes through the ether simply to make a number on the New York Stock exchange or bank account go up. They are divorced either from the product they sell or the people they provide the service to, to such an extent that they are divorced from purpose itself.

The intent of this essay is not to beat the drum of defeatism or to condemn all work to irrevocable futility. However, the general trend of modern work does distress me. It is my hope that rather than being a death knell this article would serve as clarion call to the reader. That it would awaken in you the resolve to reject what so much of modern work has become and spur you on to seek a job of purpose and fulfillment. A job whereby you create not only for yourself, but for others. Now I realize it could be highly impractical or even unfeasible to jettison your current job in pursuit of a creative fulfilling role, but I would encourage you to pursue creative endeavors outside of work and jump on opportunities in your work that allow for creation. In this way you will live a richer, fuller, and more purposeful life.

Happy Reading,

Drew