MEANDERINGS

Southland Times, Issue 19757, 3 February 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

MEANDERINGS

THE FRUIT OF INDUSTRY. (By “Criticus.”)

People bow down and lift their voices in praise of the industrious man so long as he is following the line they select for him. Whenever a man pulls off his coat and rolls his sleeves past his elbows, releasing drips of perspiration for the inspiration of the multitude, there will be fellows who will pause and industriously praise his industry if they approve of the things he lis doing. If a man is staining his shirt with sweat while engaged in the task of transplanting weeds into the green velvet of a lawn who is there who will declare that he is industrious? If a man is burning up the energy stored in his body while sowing pansies on concrete who is there who will roll out hosannas to him ? x4nd if a man is using the hours with feverish intensity doing the things which we consider to be foolish who amongst us will t-ell our neighbours that he is industrious? We are rarely ready to await for the fruits of his industry; we judge him at once and condemn him downrightly on the instant. There are so many judges wandering about ready to anticipate the conclusions and displace praise of industry with a punishment of waste.

But is it wise to balance industry on the pin-point of concurrence in design? The first essential surely must be to discriminate between the industrious and the lazy, whether they be working with our approval or without it. There is something more impressive in the accomplishments of a downright sinner who goes about wickedness with enthusiastic thoroughness, who works industriously to pile up a black score than there is in the spectacle of the thriftless idler who drifts into mischief because he is too lazy to do anything else. There is a chance that the first may be shown the absurdity of his exploitation of the wrong and induced to throw his energy into righteousness; but the latter will never be able to make the change, and if he does he will never by objectively good. Buddha expounded the doctrine of inaction as the best means of attaining true happiness, but to become accomplished in the practice of inertness the disciple must throw himself industriously into the conquest of desire, a contest with negation so strenuous? that the desire to overcome desire must be developed if victory is to be gained. One wonders if it ever dawned on Buddha that the turning of the last corner, the attaining of the last few inches to reach the grand quiescence, the complete annulment of desire, must be done with an ever-dwindling of the means of propulsion ? With the approach of victory the will to win is failing, and the intervention of obstacles must make failure certain. Buddha' preached that there must be an industrious effort to destroy industry and the fruits of the Buddhist’s industry are nothing. Now, if there is nothing to show as the fruit of this industry j can it be industry? It is a self-destructive doctrine, but in its earlier stages it is a glorious excuse for the lazy man ?

There is something Buddhist in the modern idea of Progress. From a philosophy of activity, we have been passing to the philosophy of less work. Reforms all aim at depriving people of the need for work and giving in its place* longer hours for idleness and posturing beneath the industrial Banyan tree. Says one critic of this movement :

The foundation of the new philosophy is for the State to look out for everything while we are all having a good time. But the State can’t do it: those who get along must work long hours, and watch all corners carefully. He might have stated the position with a greater approach to adequacy if he had said that directly the work done is reduced and the hours are shortened, directly the responsibility is passed on to the State there must be provided people who will shoulder this discarded burden and do the work, so that the sum total of the needed work is accomplished. Dear old A and B who have been digging trenches for generations have performed a multitude of tasks in a multitude of ways, but if B loafed on A the result has always been that A has had to work faster or longer in order to make up for his colleague’s failure. If A follows B’s example and both abandon industry, the sum cannot be carried through to its answer, and there are many scholars who have discovered that fact without claiming the title of Philosopher. The true effect of these reforms is that someone else shall do the work, that people may live on the fruits of <other folks’ industry. But as the calling in of foreign mercenaries has always ended in the paid fighters overthrowing or ruining their masters, so the transfer of industry to mercenaries ultimately works ruin to the idle employer. But the paradox of an industrious pursuit of idleness gives birth to another paradox in that the fruit of idleness is industry somewhere and the result of industry is the idleness. A strike, the dectroyer of industry, is carried on industriously if it is to be effective.

Some of us confuse inefficiency with a lack of industry. Inefficiency and industry can work side by side and very often do. Sisyphus was given a job in Tartarus which demanded industry, but was hopelessly inefficient because the stone he had to push up the hill never got anywhere. He was one of the impressive examples of the importance of the game over the player, the proof that there are fruits of industry where there are no results. The supreme importance of the endless task given -to Sisyphus was that it was good for his, soul, and the transcending fruit of industry is not the material things which it produces but the satisfaction that it gives. If that is not true then there can be no industry where there is failure and that obviously is nonsense. If there be a chase the hunter glories in it though the quarry escape, and the quarry under the circumstances is satisfied that their joint industry has not produced the material thing it was designed to bring about —a capture and a corpse. The fruit of industry must be the pleasure of effort, and in that there is no question of efficiency, of right and wrong, law or anarchy, no weighing of gains and losses. Sportsmen have stated this fact in their own language, and if the industrialist can translate it into his he will have carried to success a reform which will kill the reformers. But he won’t, and the reformers will continue industriously working for the extinction of industry and the unattainable Nirvana.