\u201cHard work pays\noff.\u201d my band director would say time and time again to us. \u201cHard\nwork is its own reward,\u201d my parents and grandparents would repeat\nover and over to me and my sisters. Even in our deeply Catholic\ncommunity the remnants of the faith system of the Puritans who\nfounded our city could be found in the mindset of nearly every adult\nI knew. Work hard, go to church, and enjoy your family were the\nshared values of our community and in spite of many of our best\nefforts it became part of our mentality as well. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Max Weber\u2019s The\nProtestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em>\nattempts to dig into why\nCapitalism had taken off more with Protestants than Catholics or\nother religious groups in the\nnineteenth century. His\nconclusion that it is the belief systems of Protestant that made them\nideal counterparts to the growth of capitalism. The desire for\nprogress, the love of hard work for its own sake, orderliness, and\nseveral other characteristics helped the Protestants of northwestern\nEurope and the Americas become\nsuccessful. Along with these\nthings came the reality that\nfor many of them the money was not the purpose for work, it was\nrather the natural outcome of people dedicated (or called) to their\nwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While\nI have no doubt that the Protestant work ethic played into the\nbuilding of these economies, Polanyi\u2019s points about markets and\ncapitalism need to be weighed against Weber\u2019s thesis. Polanyi saw\nthe success of markets (and capitalism in general) as a false\nnarrative propped up by those whose interests it served and\ndid not think that religion played into it at all.\nAs I am weighing the two views together it is almost as if the\nprotestants were duped into working hard for those who were actually\nmaking all the money, which is pretty much what Marx saw when he\nlooked at the same history as Weber. I am not about to argue that\nMarx was\nright that \u201creligion is the opiate of the masses,\u201d but it does\nseem that he was on to something there. To\nWeber\u2019s point though,\nthe protestants did not care if\nthey were being duped, they were working to honor God and family and\nthat work was a reward unto itself. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nseems that in my little community\u2019s\nattitudes are shifting among those in the generation following mine.\nThere is less of a sense that hard work is its own reward and more of\na desire to find work that is\nrewarding and meaningful.\nThis shift was starting to happen as I grew up, but it had not found\na full footing in our working class town yet.\nNow that the mills have shutdown and the shipyard is hiring fewer\npeople the work a person does seems less predestined and\nalmost limitless. I\nwonder if the rise of decentralized work is going to see the demise\nof the part of protestant work ethic that caused us to value the work\nfor itself and not its reward. The shift toward finding work that is\nfulfilling rather than just time consuming feels like an appropriate\nevolution of the protestant work ethic and probably where we should\nhave headed a long time ago. Perhaps this is the direction the\nPietists, Methodists, Puritans, and Calvinists were heading in the\nfirst place and\nit was simply not possible given the limited types of work available\nin a particular area. I do\nwonder what this means for how \u201cgrunt\u201d work gets done, it is not\nreally meaningful or rewarding, but it does need to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weber\u2019s\nbook more than anything fills me with questions about the past and\nthe future and culture and how this works into our attitudes about\neach other. I have no answers, but life is found more in the\nquestions than the answers and perhaps that is the real value of\nWeber\u2019s work, at least for me right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHard work pays off.\u201d my band director would say time and time again to us. \u201cHard work is its own reward,\u201d my parents and grandparents would repeat over and over to me and my sisters. Even in our deeply Catholic community the remnants of the faith system of the Puritans who founded our city could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1455,810],"class_list":["post-21507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp9-weber","tag-weber-capitalism","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21508,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21507\/revisions\/21508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}