VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 5
Saving the Laborer: To Live by Your Labor Is the Most Honorable Way of All, So Why the Fear
The last section saved the slave, and let the ones pressed at the very bottom, locked by every kind of lock, out. This section goes up a layer and saves the second kind: the laborer. Who is the laborer? The largest crowd of people in this world—the ones who live by their effort, by their hands, by plain and proper work. The one hauling cement, the one driving, the one farming the land, the one behind the counter, the one in the factory, the one at the office desk, the one out chasing sales, the one carrying plates, the one delivering parcels. So long as a person, by the effort he puts in, the time he spends, the sweat he sheds, earns a keep for his family, he is a laborer. This crowd is the most numerous in this world, and the most deserving of respect. This section first sets the word labor straight in your heart, then breaks open the panic in the laborer, and tells them that the source of that panic is not AI.
I. To Live by Your Labor Is the Most Honorable Way of All
The first thing this section does is clear the name of the word labor. Because today, the word labor has been trodden a little low.
Listen to the way people talk these days. Work that takes effort is called low-end. The one sitting in an office looks down on the one down at the building site. The one earning big money looks down on the one earning it the hard way. As if for a person to live by his effort is a thing that shows no ability, no promise, a thing beneath others. How many parents teach their children—and the meaning behind every word is just one thing: study hard, so that one day you will not have to do hard labor like your father.
Think how upside down this talk is. The one down at the site, the one hauling cement, the one farming, the one driving—these are the people in this world who are truly doing the work, truly turning out the things, truly keeping everyone alive. Without them, who builds the building you live in? Who grows the grain you eat? Who makes the things you use? This world is held up by their two hands, brick by brick, grain by grain. And yet it is exactly these people—the ones who hold up the whole world—who are trodden at the very bottom, called low-end, called no-promise. It is like a great tree that ought to honor its own root, and instead despises its root and envies the things that float on top, rooted in no soil at all. A world that treading the person who works with his effort underfoot is a world that has forgotten its root.
Today let me turn this talk right side up. To live by your labor, to exchange your effort for your food, is the most honorable, the cleanest, the most dignified way of living in this world.
Few people today dare say this anymore. But here it will be said, and said all the way through. Because this talk that treads effort underfoot harms more than the face of the people who work with their effort. It harms the very root of the whole world. A world where everyone thinks working with effort is a shame, where everyone is set on getting something for nothing, on earning easy money by some sly trick—who will make its things? Who will do its work? Sooner or later it must collapse. For a world to stand, the first thing is to let the people who work with their effort live with face, with dignity, with their heads held high. So to clear the name of labor is not only to say a fair word for the people who work with their effort. It is to set straight, for the whole world, the very thing it ought most to honor.
Let me break it down for you, where the honor lies. For a person who lives by his labor, every cent in his pocket is clean. It was earned by real effort truly put in, by sweat truly shed, by time truly spent. This money he takes with an easy heart and a straight back, and no one can say half a word against it. He stole from no one, robbed no one, cheated no one, took advantage of no one, tormented no one. He simply, by this body of his, these two hands, this bit of skill, exchanges a clean mouthful to eat.
Think how many kinds of money in this world are earned unclean. There is money got by cheating and swindling. There is money got by leaning on people and grinding them down. There is money got by working a loophole, taking an advantage, pushing others out of the way. There is money got by graft, by taking the public's due. The people who earn these kinds of money do not sleep sound at night, cannot bear the light, are afraid of being investigated, of being questioned, of the day it all comes out. But the person who lives by his labor is not like this. His money was earned under the sun, earned dripping with sweat, and it is clean and it is clear. Let the sky fall, and he fears no one's investigating, because he has done not the smallest guilty thing. Tell me, is there any money in this world more honorable than that? For a person to be able, by his own strength, to earn a keep that he need not duck and hide for, that he can take with a straight back—that is the highest honor there is.
Look back at the second chapter, at that plainest virtue set up there: not tormenting. A person who lives by his labor—his very way of living is a way that torments no one. He does not live by tormenting others, he lives by putting in his own effort. If everyone in this world lived by his labor and not by tormenting, then that sickness the second chapter spoke of—torment—would be more than half cured. So the word labor is not low at all. It is very high. A person who lives by his labor is, in this world, the person who lives the cleanest, torments the least, and most deserves respect.
Where does that talk that looks down on the effort-worker, that treads labor underfoot, go wrong? It goes wrong in taking how much a person earns as the measure of whether he is high or low. Earn more, and you are high. Earn it the hard way, and you are low. But cast your mind back to that yardstick set up in the first section. To measure a person, to measure a thing, is not by how much it earns, not by what name it flies, but by whether it has settled people, whether it is clean, whether it torments. Measure by that yardstick, and a worker who hauled cement his whole life, who plainly and properly raised a family, who cheated no one, is by far more honorable, far cleaner, far higher than a person who earned big money by tormenting, by cheating people, by pushing others down.
For this kind, first set the word labor straight in your heart. To live by your labor, to exchange your effort for your food, is the most honorable, the cleanest, the most tormenting-of-no-one, the most deserving-of-respect way of living in this world. It is not low at all. It is very high. If you are a person who lives by his labor, you should hold yourself straight, and be proud of this way of living of yours.
II. AI Has Arrived—So What Are the Laborers Panicking About?
With labor set straight, let me tell this crowd of the most honorable people what it is they are panicking about right now. What they are panicking about is the rice bowl.
The fire of this great AI turning, burning down onto the patch where labor lives, burns no light burn. The first volume already showed you this fire. For this kind, let me break open the panic in the laborer's heart, layer by layer, and talk it over with them.
The first layer of the panic is this: the work my two hands do, the machine has learned it. The driver panics—self-driving has come, will there still be a need for drivers? The factory worker panics—the work on the line, the robot arm does it faster and more exactly than a person, will there still be a need for workers? The one at the office desk panics—the filling of forms, the reckoning of accounts, the sorting of files, the answering of customers, AI does it in the blink of an eye, will there still be a need for clerks? Even the ones who draw, who write, who design, panic—AI turns out a version in seconds, will there still be a need for people?
This panic is real. AI truly has taken over a great many of the jobs that labor did. Here I will not coax you, will not say those comforting words that AI cannot take your rice bowl. Some jobs it truly has taken. But let me have you see this panic through, one layer down.
What you are panicking about, in the end, is it that the work has been taken over, or that the work has been taken over and now I have no food? Settle your mind and think. What you truly fear is not that the machine did your work for you. For the machine to do the tiring, wearisome work in your place ought, by rights, to be a good thing. What you truly fear is the deadly chain tied behind it: the work is taken by the machine, I am let go, I have lost that wage, and my whole family, old and young, has no food, the mortgage is cut off, the child's tuition has nowhere to come from. What you fear is not, at bottom, that the work is gone. What you fear is that the work is gone, and so I cannot live.
Look at these two things apart. For the machine to do the tiring, wearisome work in your place—this thing in itself, think hard about it, is it good or bad? A driver who drove long-haul for thirty years, his back gone bad from sitting, and the machine drives in his place, ought by rights to breathe a sigh of relief. A worker who repeated one motion on the line for decades, his hands gone numb, and the machine does it in his place, ought by rights to rest. A clerk who worked overtime into the deep night filling forms and reckoning accounts, and AI does it in seconds in his place, ought by rights to have time now to keep his family company. For the machine to take over the tiring work is, every bit of it, a good thing by rights. So why, come to today, does this good thing turn into a disaster that keeps a person from sleeping? Only because of that deadly chain tied behind it: the work is gone, so the rice bowl is gone, so the whole family has no way to live. What you fear was never that good thing. It is the deadly chain tied on behind the good thing.
See this layer through, and you have put your finger on the true source of that panic. The source is not that AI took over the work. The source is that this world has tied the matter of staying alive, dead fast, to your having a job. The rule this world set up is this: you want to live, so you must have a job; no job, no income; no income, no food. So the moment a person's work is taken over by the machine and the job is gone, those four words—no way to live—rise straight up to press on his forehead. How can he not panic?
But turn it over and think, is this rule as it should be? By what right, when a person's work is taken over by the machine, which was by rights a good thing, he no longer having to do that tiring, wearisome work, should it come instead to the point of no way to live? Where, in the middle of this, did the thing go wrong? The thing went wrong right there, in that dead chain, welding staying alive and having a job into one.
Think, if this chain were not welded, what would the scene be? The machine takes over the tiring work, and people no longer have it so hard, and yet people still have food, still have a way to live, and then the machine taking over the work is a pure good, a freeing of people out of hard labor. People would welcome the machine with joy, the way you welcome a helper come to share your load. But now the chain is welded, staying alive must be tied to having a job, and so the moment the machine takes over the work, it is the same as one kick sending a person into the pit of having no food. The same machine, taking over the same work, with the chain welded, is a life-taking disaster; and with the chain loosened, is a benefactor come to lift the load off you. The difference is not in the machine at all. It is in that welded chain, whether it is loosened or not.
This welded chain, in the old days there was no help for it, because things were not enough, and if you did not work there truly was no food, and staying alive could only be tied to working. But now, the case has changed. The sections below are going to tell you an enormous thing, that there is, for the first time, enough. Once there is enough, staying alive no longer has to be tied dead fast to having a job. That welded chain can be loosened.
So the laborer's panic, let me have you see it this way. What you panic about is having no way to live, not that the work is taken over. And this having no way to live—underneath it is that old chain welding staying alive to work, it is not AI. AI is a tool, and its taking over your work is by rights a good thing. What is bad is that old chain, not yet undone. Undo the chain, and AI taking over your tiring, wearisome work returns to what it was always meant to be: a good thing.
Think this layer through, and that panic of yours ought to unload most of its weight. Because you see clearly, the one to blame is not AI, not the machine, not that good tool come to lift your load. The one to blame is that old chain, still welded on. And a chain can be undone. Whether the machine is undone or welded on you cannot decide, but that chain, which people made, people can undo. From here on this chapter is going to tell you, section by section, how that chain is undone. Once the chain is undone, you, this one laborer, can walk out of the panic. The next section tells whom the share a laborer earns by his effort ought to belong to. Make that clear, and that old chain begins to loosen.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.