📷: early farm machinery in rural West Texas via Museum of the West Texas Frontier
What does the word “dignity” mean to you?
The dictionary definitions have slight variations, but they all center around a main premise: dignity is the characteristic of being worthy of respect and honor.
I’ve been thinking about this word a good bit lately. Not because I am a weirdo who sits around and ponders the philosophical meaning of words (okay, not SOLELY for that reason), but because of what it means within the larger context of society.
Last week, I concluded with a discussion of a famous line from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt on Labor Day 1903: “far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing…” What is that work, exactly?
In 1999, a great movie was released. It was called “Office Space.” It had a limited release and a small budget. It was something of a flop at the time but it has since become a cult classic. I had never even heard of it until I got to college. It is an eminently quotable movie full of catchphrases, the perfect kind of movie to amuse college students. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it, but I will warn you that it is not particularly family-friendly.
To quickly summarize the premise, the movie is based around ordinary people who hate their jobs. They work in a nondescript office park in a nondescript suburb doing mundane and tedious tasks that provide zero fulfillment. They feel utterly useless and replaceable and their happiness in life is reflected accordingly. They also learn that they ARE replaceable when a pair of efficiency consultants arrive and start asking them about the necessity of their individual job assignments. I won’t spoil what transpires from there, but director and writer Mike Judge hit on something very real and meaningful, in how much we Americans struggle with finding meaning in our work.
There are a lot of reasons for this struggle. I don’t have time to detail them all in this space, but Wendell Berry has written tens of thousands of words on the topic for over 50 years (among others). When Theodore Roosevelt gave that famous speech in 1903, American society was grappling with some very significant consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Machines were being introduced into factories and manufacturing was becoming less of a human-oriented affair. Henry Ford was still a decade from unveiling the assembly line, which would revolutionize that process even further.
Those days feel quaint in 2023. Machines aren’t just a novel addition to the workplace, they are the central figures of the workplace. No matter your job, it is likely oriented around machines and automation in some form or fashion and the prospects of reducing that orientation seem slim.
What to make of the people? Machines have been replacing humans in the workplace for well over a century now. Is our society happier? Are we more fulfilled in our work? Have we pawned the mundane tasks onto the machines and given ourselves more happiness and fulfillment as a result?
Actually, it is quite the opposite. Devaluing work and treating humans as expendable commodities has created a crisis of dignity in our country. Our society treats individual people as useless and replaceable in The Economy. That informs and influences all of our behavior. And that is not a good thing.
Dignity is inherent to our value as humans. Somehow and some way, we must find ways to claw back our dignity from the clutches of the machines and The Economy. Our happiness and our ability to interact with each other successfully literally depends on it.
I have a few ideas.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.
I never tire of watching Office Space. Stephen Root's Milton is pure genius. As for the Machine, are you familiar with the writings of Paul Kingsnorth? I highly recommend checking out his essays on The Machine. https://www.paulkingsnorth.net/