Numberless academics and intellectuals, devoting their lives entirely to letters and ideas, have lived. Their works, however, have fallen short of their aspirations - for universal words attractive and true to all. Why? They did not physically labor.
Tolstoy writes in My Religion, of high class people whose connection with nature and physical labor is severed: "These people, surrounded by artificial light instead of sunshine, look only upon fabrics of tapes and stone and wood fashioned by the hand of man; the roar of machinery, the roll of vehicles, the thunder of cannon, the sound of musical instruments, are always in their ears; they breathe an atmosphere heavy with distilled perfumes and tobacco smoke; because of the weakness of their stomachs and their depraved tastes they eat rich and highly spiced food. When they move about from place to place, they travel in closed carriages. When they go into the country, they have the same fabrics beneath their feet; the same draperies shut out the sunshine; and the same array of servants cut off all communication with the men, the earth, the vegetation, and the animals about them. Wherever they go, they are like so many captives shut out from the conditions of happiness. As prisoners sometimes console themselves with a blade of grass that forces its way through the pavement of their prison yard, or make pets of a spider or a mouse, so these people sometimes amuse themselves with sickly plants, a parrot, a poodle, or a monkey, to whose needs however they do not themselves administer."
Tolstoy goes on to expose the lie that a life of ease and idleness is what we desire, arguing rather that labor is a fundamental condition of human happiness, including physical labor. And what is interesting is the number of timeless voices whose way of life, up to and through their years of productive literary output, included regular manual labor.
Paul still made tents. Gandhi still wove. Moses was forty years a shepherd, and was travelling by foot through wilderness when the Torah was authored. One of the great Jewish sages, whose name I forget, was a vine dresser. Another was a physician. Spinoza's lenses.
I am suspicious that perhaps physical labor is a necessary fillip to take one's thoughts from the sphere of the wise to the sphere of the timeless. It must be meaningful labor, productive but simple, of the earth, full of calm sweat, uncluttered silence, of solidarity, ying and yang. Distance from thought fortifies thought.
Tolstoy writes in My Religion, of high class people whose connection with nature and physical labor is severed: "These people, surrounded by artificial light instead of sunshine, look only upon fabrics of tapes and stone and wood fashioned by the hand of man; the roar of machinery, the roll of vehicles, the thunder of cannon, the sound of musical instruments, are always in their ears; they breathe an atmosphere heavy with distilled perfumes and tobacco smoke; because of the weakness of their stomachs and their depraved tastes they eat rich and highly spiced food. When they move about from place to place, they travel in closed carriages. When they go into the country, they have the same fabrics beneath their feet; the same draperies shut out the sunshine; and the same array of servants cut off all communication with the men, the earth, the vegetation, and the animals about them. Wherever they go, they are like so many captives shut out from the conditions of happiness. As prisoners sometimes console themselves with a blade of grass that forces its way through the pavement of their prison yard, or make pets of a spider or a mouse, so these people sometimes amuse themselves with sickly plants, a parrot, a poodle, or a monkey, to whose needs however they do not themselves administer."
Tolstoy goes on to expose the lie that a life of ease and idleness is what we desire, arguing rather that labor is a fundamental condition of human happiness, including physical labor. And what is interesting is the number of timeless voices whose way of life, up to and through their years of productive literary output, included regular manual labor.
Paul still made tents. Gandhi still wove. Moses was forty years a shepherd, and was travelling by foot through wilderness when the Torah was authored. One of the great Jewish sages, whose name I forget, was a vine dresser. Another was a physician. Spinoza's lenses.
I am suspicious that perhaps physical labor is a necessary fillip to take one's thoughts from the sphere of the wise to the sphere of the timeless. It must be meaningful labor, productive but simple, of the earth, full of calm sweat, uncluttered silence, of solidarity, ying and yang. Distance from thought fortifies thought.
Hey Ryan... Katelyn shared your blog address with me, and I love this post. Do you remember in Heart of Darkness, how Marlow is constantly performing mundane tasks on the ship? One might argue that his physical labor is what keeps him from being swallowed up by the apparent darkness of the Congo, or being consumed by the horror that Kurtz becomes prey to (or exploits, however you look at it). Perhaps hard, plain work with our hands also prevents us from being swept into the unreal. I'm sure that sounds abstract, but I just wanted to share. :) Please keep writing!
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