It's Labor Day and I got thinking about the satisfaction---pleasure even--of work, in physics terms:
applying force to move an object.
Not to be romantic--in the history of the world, work was mostly misery.
But I wonder if--blessed!release though it is, not to have to do it--the absence of basic work in the digital world may depress us, simple animals that we are...
A friend who suffers from depression said that during one bad bout, the only thing that helped was using her power tools.
Amazing to think the world was built with Simple Machines. ("Started from the bottom, now we're here.")
Still, the brute labor of it... No, thank you. I chopped wood exactly once, and I thought the axe would dislocate my shoulder.
Historic photo [no name or date] of woman chopping wood, Duluth, MN:
Today I'm going to paint in Laura's backyard again.
Moving paint around with a brush fits the definition of work, and it's viscerally satisfying to be able to say, Look, I did that.
applying force to move an object.
Not to be romantic--in the history of the world, work was mostly misery.
But I wonder if--blessed!release though it is, not to have to do it--the absence of basic work in the digital world may depress us, simple animals that we are...
A friend who suffers from depression said that during one bad bout, the only thing that helped was using her power tools.
Amazing to think the world was built with Simple Machines. ("Started from the bottom, now we're here.")
Still, the brute labor of it... No, thank you. I chopped wood exactly once, and I thought the axe would dislocate my shoulder.
Historic photo [no name or date] of woman chopping wood, Duluth, MN:
Moving paint around with a brush fits the definition of work, and it's viscerally satisfying to be able to say, Look, I did that.
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