Webster's Dictionary informs us that the word 'torque' derives from the French word to twist and has two meanings: First, "a metal collar or neck chain worn by the ancient Gauls, Germans, and Britons." The "torture" is derived from the same French word, thus "something that causes agony or pain" or "affords sadistic pleasure."
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Clocks are everywhere because our modern economy needs to know the time.
Our
“regular measurement of time and the new mechanical conception of time arose in
part out of the routine of the monastery,” writes Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) in Technics and Civilization (University of
Chicago Press, 1934). It was long ago that Pope Sabinianus (d. 606) ordered bells
to be rung seven times per day to alert the faithful to the liturgy of the
hours.
Yet the
monasteries came first, according to Mumford. They “helped to give human
enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine; for the clock
is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the
actions of men.” As the years went by, however, some began to think that a
“completely timed and scheduled and regulated” machine civilization “does not necessarily
guarantee maximum efficiency,” Mumford concludes. Sticking to the clock is not best for human development.
Meghan O’Gieblyn, drawing upon Mumford,
provides a reflection on routine for Harper’s
Magazine (1/22). Have people become machines, she asks? Is the routine
imposed by our economy dehumanizing? Or “is it possible in our age of advanced
technology to recall the spiritual dimension of repetition”? Does a spiritual
motivation lurk “in the gears of modern routine”?
High
tech and advanced automation enhance work and life, say its cheerleaders. Computers
and robots free us to set aside drudgery and bring forth our agility,
flexibility, creativity and spontaneity. However, “the rhetoric of
flexibility…despite its existential promise to make us more human frequently
undergirds policies that make the lives of workers more precarious,” O’Gieblyn
writes. For example, online retail and
the apps on our mobile device decrease variety by conditioning our choice of products
and services.
The goal
cannot be the elimination of clocks. Covid-19 previews an unstructured
existence within a total computer economy, a total gig economy and a total
do-it-yourself, round-the-clock life. What is the result of decreased regimentation?
Maybe too many naps. Excessive internet surfing. Heightened anxiety about
childcare and schooling. Unpredictable and/or lower wages. Spiritual
exhaustion.
Humane
work and a fuller life is not liberation from repetition. The old analysis
still applies: Despite talk about teamwork
and participation, workers are estranged
from one another, from the process and outcome of their labor and eventually
from themselves. That’s because too few workers—from warehouse workers to floor
managers to computer programmers to middle executives—are insufficiently taught
the process and the product of their labor. There just isn’t enough time to do
so, we’ve assumed.
As for O’Gieblyn,
she believes “there is [still] something transcendent in the pleasures of repetition.”
Tranquility is not simply the absence of structure. She cites St. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274) in saying that a full life requires habits aimed toward the
common good. A good habit is not slavery; it is a form of grace. And freedom, O’Gieblyn
concludes, is not “eliminating necessity from our daily lives.” Freedom is “the
ability to consistently choose the good.”
For more
from O’Gieblyn, get God, Human, Animal,
Machine (Knopf Doubleday, 2021).
Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102,
Chicago, IL 60629), a printed newsletter on faith and work.
Remembering those killed in Milwaukee and Chicago, demonstrating for the 8-hour day.
The Eight-Hour Song:
We mean to make things over;
We're tired of toil for naught
But bare enough to live on: never
an hour for thought.
We want to feel the sunshine; we
want to smell the flowers;
We're sure that God has will it,
and we mean to have eight hours.
We're summoning our forces from
shipyard, shop, and mill:
Eight hours for work, eight hours
for rest, eight hours for what we will.
Four workers were hanged by the state of Illinois for their participation in the demonstration: Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer.
Spies is quoted as saying, "Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you and in front ofyou, and everywhere flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out."
Remember the 5th of May,
Governor Rusk and his nefarious day;
“Shoot at will,” he said.
Soon nine workers and a boy were
dead.
Mark the calendar spot
It’s a tragedy not to be forgot.
MAY 1st MARCH
In Milwaukee on May 1, 2022, at 11:00 a.m.
immigrant workers will march for immigrant rights from the offices
of Voces de la Frontera, 737 W. Historic Mitchell St, to Senator Ron
Johnson’s office.
STATEWIDE RALLY & LOBBY DAY
Monday, May 2 at 11a.m., Lobby Day in Madison at the State
Capitol to restore both state driver licenses and in-state tuition for
immigrants.
Advent is Lent; Christmas
contains Easter and Easter contains Christmas. The Incarnation is Redemption
and Resurrection.
Tom
Stella (www.tomstella.org) of Soul Link in Colorado has a story: Once upon a time
three monks were praying. The first imagined angels carrying him to heaven. The
second imagined chanting in the company of angels and saints. The third, quite
distracted, imagined the variety of food awaiting him in the refectory. Later the devil wrote a report: I tried to
tempt three monks but succeeded with only the first two.
The
setting for the Christmas story (a crowed hotel, a manger and the sheep)
conveys the truth of the Incarnation. God enters the human condition in a
humble way. God lurks in ordinary circumstances. God keeps company with
imperfect people. God awaits us in the refectory or the restaurant.
The
Easter setting (dinner in an upper room, a traitor, a denier, a dusty courtyard,
a heavy rock) should convey the same truth. But for some, the glory of the
resurrection means God is back in God’s proper, serene, otherworldly place. The
temptation about Easter is to thoroughly split the heavenly from the earthly,
the spiritual from the material, the soul from the body. The messiness of
Christmas and God’s Incarnation can be lost in the exhalation of Easter.
To keep the
Incarnation in Easter, the evangelists insist on the bodily resurrection of
Jesus. He ate, he conversed and he visited normal places. He invited Thomas to
touch his physical body; saying in effect, I am not a ghost. Nonetheless a
major heresy, Gnosticism, made significant inroads into early Christianity. This
heresy teaches that Jesus was/is pure spirit and that briefly he was play-acting
as a human. Gnosticism finds a companion in Platonic philosophy which asserts
that the abstract and spiritual is superior to the material. Today this dualism
with its superior spiritual themes is called New Age.
Some
Christians make a similar mistake in equating the Resurrection with some kind
of resuscitation. These Christians sometimes suppose that their heavenly
existence is an identical continuation of earthly life with picnics, sports
events, the same body but no illness. To counter this impression, the
evangelists make it clear that the disciples do not at first recognize the
resurrected Jesus. His body is different. Their resurrection faith emerges in
conversation and tactile experience.
Let’s
admit it is difficult to maintain awareness of the Incarnation. It is tempting
to treat Christian faith as otherworldly. It is tempting to relegate God to a
spiritual realm where angels sing and to not appreciate a hint of God in the
dining hall. It is tempting to separate the Resurrection from the sheep and
jostling crowd in Bethlehem. It is tempting to feel closest to God in some
state of pure adoration.
It is,
let’s admit, difficult to experience the resurrected Christ over on Kedzie Ave.
near 61st St. where the homeless make their way, never humming a
hallelujah chorus. It might be difficult to experience the joy of resurrection
at the family’s Easter brunch where a loudmouth uncle repeatedly makes stupid
comments. It might be difficult on Easter Monday to believe that the
resurrection has anything to do with the petty resentments that pervade the
office.
But
Christ was born, Christ rose and Christ lives in ordinary comings-and-goings.
Christ hints at glory in broken people, ambivalent settings and at odd moments.
To stay attuned to the eternal joy of Easter requires the simplicity and
patience of the first witnesses in Bethlehem. The heavy stone across the tomb is
like the wood of the manger—materials essential to God’s plan of salvation.
Droel edits a newsletter on faith and
work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).
