Note I don’t say an end to work, but an end to employment. Hard work towards something meaningful is often its own reward- Hard work towards someone else’s wealth, well…
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It is probably just an issue with the language being used, but I don’t think working is a necessary part of being a “normal healthy person”. Whitman and Thoreau occur to me as first-class examples of happy mutants that lived for leisure and celebrated their laziness.
Yeah, you’re right about the issue of language; I honestly don’t consider either one to be a “normal healthy person” - happy mutant is probably a better description!
But anyway as I recall Thoreau celebrated the small works he did, like piling up a brick or two, and commented on how satisfying it was to make simple efforts (he hadn’t any real physical skills as far as I can remember) and of course he claimed that he constantly studied, which as any student knows can be hard work.
Those slight labours which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. – Thoreau
Whitman and Russell, yeah, they did scorn work in their prose, but then again they sure worked hard when they clearly did not have to.
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I’ve also seen it suggested that he was a damned good stand-up comedian.
“Hard work” never feels that hard when it’s something you actually want to do – and in that case it’s often energizing rather than tiring or draining. I can’t help but feel the English language is failing us when it comes to discussing human effort and motivation!
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