Do What You Love? Do What Needs to Get Done.

I read a couple of essays that discuss the cliché concept of “Do what you love.” These were likely written for the season of commencement speeches when new graduates are showered with platitudes about how to live their lives. Both of the essays ( here and here) are critical of the notion. The idea that you should throw yourself into what you love seems to be so self-indulgent. Throw away all of the other work that exists and immerse yourself in what makes you happy. There is something compelling about the notion that finding what you love and doing it will lead to happiness all around. We will all labor happily, for it will not feel like labor at all. We will have chosen our daily activities; we will love them, and will experience work as if it were play.

Being the father of two young children, I know that play is a wonderful thing, except for when it is time to clean up and clean up we must. Toys strewn about are dangerous, unsightly, dirty, and are prone to being broken, drying up (think clay, paint, and markers) and becoming unusable. Any one of these could lead to limitation on the future experience of joy that comes with play (the work of children, no?). This cleaning up [of crap] reminds me of a quote I read recently that noted that man, while created in God’s image, and in many ways divine, still shits. I searched the internet for the quote and happened upon a related quote from one of my favorite authors, Milan Kundera. In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” he wrote, 

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.
The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate."
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man.

I think he meant it as a playful indictment of the idea of God and religion, a precursor to the liberal atheism that is very much in vogue right now. I think that it also speaks to the idea that the world is far from perfect, a reality that is hard to understand and accept as we suffer through life.

Ruminating on the existence of shit and its seeming incompatibility with Godly perfection, seems to me to miss the point of what is to be done with the shit. It exists, like it or not, and leaving it out, like a pile of toys, has real downsides.

This is all to say that there are real shit parts of jobs. And some jobs are pure shit. They are thankless except for the paycheck, and even that may not make the work worthwhile. What would Steve Jobs say to that? How to love a job that is full of shit? Many of us might identify with such a question as few of us get to be CEOs, screen actors, professional athletes or novelists. Few of us get to do what we really love.

And to take the argument of Miya Tokumitsu, by convincing ourselves that we must do what we love, regardless of compensation, even those who end up doing what they love, get the financial shaft.  First, there is a great deal of low wage, but essential work that is done, not out of love, but because it is essential, like picking fruit in the hot California sun, removing garbage from alleys in the early hours of the morning, or caring for the terminally sick, chronically mentally ill, and elderly. We tell ourselves that this work, while important, does not require a high level of skill, intelligence, or training, so it is deserving of low wages. But we tell teachers and adjunct professors and social workers, and now lawyers and doctors, that because you are doing what you love, we should pay you a low wage, too, and if you ask for more, you shouldn’t be doing that work because you obviously don’t really love it. This tautology becomes the perfect crime for the capitalists, CEOs, and college presidents who make salaries many times more than the average worker at their respective institutions.

I think a much more realistic perspective is to do whatever needs to get done. Doing the laundry, making your bed, picking up the toys, cooking dinner on a Wednesday night, cleaning the bathroom, filling out paperwork, and going to meetings, should all be done because they need to be done. Even astronauts have to fill out reimbursement forms for their out of state travel-they are public employees after all.

We have already shown our capacity to make much of this drudgery go by with ease (see for instance, our high levels of efficiency and productivity). We could probably do more to reduce the bureaucracy and management culture of our labor (managers managing managers who conduct evaluations of evaluators who evaluate the people who actually produce the product and serve the customer). In fact, we could probably greatly reduce our work week, as the British are proposing, thus creating more jobs. This would probably have to go along with making sure our basic needs are met through high quality accessible schools, healthcare, and affordable healthy food. That is something that is not really out of reach, given the embarrassment in riches we have in those areas.  While also making more time to do the things we truly love.

What does this have to do with being Mexican? Well, Mexicans frequently bust their asses in shit work without complaint. Somewhere between that extreme and doing what you love lies happiness.

God Made a Mexican Migrant Farmer

Here is a little glimpse of what likely happened in many rural areas of Mexico throughout the financial boom years of the 2000s. Mexican immigrants, legal ones at least, of which there were are about 5.4 million, probably found themselves in construction and labor jobs, with steadier work and higher levels of pay than they had ever experienced previously in their lifetimes.  While many Americans were building expensive new homes and expanding their wealth, Mexican immigrant labor was a beneficiary of this prosperity.

One of the biggest points of pride for rural Mexicans working in the United States is to be able to triumphantly return to their hometowns with evidence that they have succeeded financially abroad. They come bearing thousands of dollars of gifts: flat screen televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, and the newest American styles. These are handed out with great fanfare. The expense of this grandiose gift giving is worth it, because it is an affirmation of one’s choices, and it offsets some of the brutally hard labor that had to be done in order to achieve this material gain.

These gifts were typically transported over land in a marathon driving session. The mode of transportation itself was the ultimate symbol of success and was one that was not given away. Being from areas that frequently lack paved roads, where farming and caring for livestock are still the way of life, hefty, work vehicles are highly valued. None is more valued than a pick up, and there are few automakers other than American ones that have mastered the engineering of a powerful utility vehicle. Even though he would be more likely to use the vehicle on the streets of Chicago or Los Angeles for transportation, rather than work, the symbolic power of the truck transcends borders. A large truck is not seen as a liability in any way, even for a Mexican-descent city dweller, rather it is a great figurative investment. A Dodge Ram such as this one would certainly satisfy the prestige, power, work, and transportation needs of a Mexican migrant.

I wrote a post at the end of last week asking readers to notice the presence, or lack thereof, of marketing to Latinos during the Super Bowl commercials. Except for a silly Taco Bell ad, there was little explicit focus on Latinos.

One commercial that was touted as one of the best overall was a sentimental piece produced by Dodge that hailed the American farmer. The ad touted repeatedly in its tagline that “God made a farmer.” Pictures of farmers served as the backdrop of the ominous and authoritative narration , played with a crackling, old tube radio style overlay. The words and voice were provided by the recording of a 1978 speech given by conservative radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, now deceased. It was no surprise that Dodge would be associated with the hard work of farming, given the affinity that rural Mexicans have for the vehicles, which I mentioned above.

What was surprising was that the portrait that the Dodge commercial displayed was an almost exclusively White one. Judging only from the faces, at best a couple of the 15  farmers whose pictures were shown were Latino. This is in spite of the fact that by varying estimates, between 50 and 70 percent of the farm work labor force is Latino. This is certainly an issue of the inaccurate representation of who farmers actually are. Others, notably Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic, have already noted that it also downplays the day-to-day issues and injustices that Latino farmworkers face in terms of pay and working conditions. This video shows a farmworker recounting the appalling conditions a typical tomato picker must endure.

Dodge cannot be held entirely responsible for the conditions of farmworkers. They are an auto manufacturer that is trying to sell cars and make money and I fault them in no way for that.  What they missed is an amazing opportunity to do well and do good. Ironically, the great American Dodge Ram is manufactured in Mexico. Latinos have an affinity for pick up trucks. Latinos also have strong ties to farm working today and historically, whether it is parents and family members or they themselves. Dodge has made a previous bad attempt to reach out to Latinos by simply translating their ad and having Latino-looking actors. All of these deeper cultural connections, however, were missed opportunities for Dodge to reach out to a Latino market that it has already begun to tap into; unfortunately for them, they may have just undone some of that groundwork with their insensitive ad.