Bouncing back

The knowledge that people bounce back from the doldrums -- and with a vengeance too -- gives me so much hope.

When a budding actress committed suicide after battling depression, three local celebrities came out to share their depression story. Sharon Cuneta, Jaya, and Janno Gibbs bravely admitted how dark it all was. Although they did not reveal details, it is good to know that I am not alone. And that even the stars from on high could fall so low as I do.

As time went by, I am reminded of the other names who came forward the same way, i.e. publicly via mainstream media. TJ Manotoc once admitted how bad it was for him to grow without a father. Look at him now: a very successful sportscaster on no less than ABS-CBN.

Arnold Arre, popular comic strip artist, confessed in a TED Talk that he went through depression because he was unhappy with his life: no girlfriend, no joy in his work, and so on. Thankfully, he found redemption in creating comic art.

The popular frontman of Sugarfree band, Ebe Dancel, made the same confession. All throughout, he seemed to feel pained doing it, but all the more that his humbling gesture inspired.

The personal witness of these brave people -- who all happen to be differently gifted -- gives me the idea that I too can recover from personal distress. I'd like to let them know how thankful I am for taking the risk in shedding some of their precious few of what's left of their privacy, which must be a sacred space for famous people like them.

The case of wealthy saints

Some saints are known to be wealthy. Who are these saints in particular? I'd like to know more about them. Specifically, I'd like to know why they became saints in spite of their wealth.

One famous saint, Francis of Assisi, became a saint not because he was wealthy but because he disowned his inheritance. Francis' story somewhat sent a Buddhist message: that material wealth is evil and thus to be spurned. But apparently, that's not how authentic Christianity views wealth. The Church's magnificently beautiful cathedrals, like the ancient ones in Europe, in fact affirm materiality, art, wealth, instead of looking down on them, as though to say everything that God made is good.

Why did materially, financially rich saints got canonized anyway? One easy answer being bandied about is that because they were not attached to, or were detached from, their worldly possessions. Another easy answer is that they used their worldly goods for the glory of God, or in concrete terms, in support of God's work here on earth, as in ministry to the poor, etc.

Perhaps we can make the same analogy for power or lofty positions. Some saints were kings, queens, princes, princesses, bishops, perhaps even governors or politicians of some sort. This drives home the message that earthly power is not evil per se, just as earthly wealth is not evil per se.

This urban mashup has a lot of reading up to do.

Timeline: History of work

• Hunting and gathering society: Cavemen hunted for food.
• Neanderthals invented crude tools, making work a bit easier.
• Fire was discovered. Cooking was discovered.
• The wheel was invented. Transport became easier.
• 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, people learned to plant and became subsistence farmers or peasants. In this settlement, agriculture was born. The concept of work (the “conscious striving now…to accrue a future benefit”), worker, or a working day began.
• The exchange of goods through barter and money gave birth to capitalism and the hiring of workers.
• Slavery, or the buying, selling, and total ownership of human beings as objects or personal property, began.
• The rise of the city-state and the conception of a citizen with rights gave workers an awareness of their human rights.
• Machines were invented, making work a lot easier and faster.
• Slavery was abolished in the United States.
• The idea of division of labor was born, making the production flow more efficient.
• In a more sophisticated society, specialized skills (or specialization) became necessary, particularly for people who opt out of the food production business. Soon, trade-based guilds were formed.
• Most workers were men, and they were the family breadwinner.
• Machines helped increase productivity and the country’s income, or more accurately, the major shareholder’s profit/earnings.
• Mass manufacture resulted in the First Industrial Revolution – in short, the advent of the industrial age.
• However, machines displaced many workers.
• Machines (robots) to make machines (automobiles, etc.) were invented.
• At the beginning of the 19th century, however, farming, often manual, remained the major occupation.
• By the 1850s, agriculture was modernized, thanks to the tractor, steel plow, reaper, etc., reducing the number of farm workers.
• Formation of companies by capitalists often meant regularization of work contracts and lifetime careers, with compensation package, including fringe benefits.
• Women joined the workforce out of the necessity to have two-income households, leaving children alone at home.
• Communism snatched the tools of production from the hands of the capitalist to the proletariat or the working class.
• In 1850, the idea of a two-day no-work weekend was born. In England, because of religious motivation, the British Factory Act eventually led to the five-and-a-half-day work week.
• Technology created new forms of work, so farm workers migrated en masse to other industries.
• By the 1900s, workers swelled the factories/manufacturing plants (automobile, appliance, power, etc.).
• Between 1960 and 1990, however, manufacturing output rose, but technology halved the number of workers.
• The idea of a trade union or a workers' union (to advance and protect tradesmen's and workers’ rights) caught on.
• The first strike occurred.
• Corporate bargaining agreement was conceptualized.
• Between 19th and 20th centuries, a new (third) sector arose to take up the slack: the service sector. Thanks to the typewriter and the telephone, this sector was able to employ teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, maids, baby-sitters, sales people, government workers, and other service providers.
• “More complex society meant more efficient food production, which equated to increase in professionals (professional specialists). Circumscribed livelihoods such as professional football, commercial airline pilot, real estate agent, television presenter, and management consultant can be accommodated because of plentiful supply of food.”
• In 1981, Pope John Paul II penned the encyclical “Laborem Exercens” (“On Human Work”), which talks about labor taking precedence over capital and the dignity of man taking precedence over things. He built on earlier encyclicals on the Catholic Church’s social doctrine, starting from “Rerum Novarum.”
• The computer was invented, further simplifying a lot of work and streamlining, then ushering in the demise of many forms of work in the agrarian, manufacturing, and service economies.
• The communist mode of production waned in most of the socialist world. 
• Contractual labor was conceived "to keep companies competitive," while dropping the security of tenure of hordes of contractuals and workers with temp jobs.
• Together with unemployment emerged the sob stories of underemployment and overseas contractual work, the latter fragmenting families in unprecedented scale but keeping them financially afloat.
• Globalization and trade liberalization came, erasing national boundaries in business. Massive business integration brought about the selling of products abroad, particularly in places where the company has no full-time employees, resulting in “jobless growth” (high gross domestic product + high unemployment rate) in those places. 
• Business process outsourcing or BPO became rampant.
• Telecommuting and online home-based work became possible.

What holds in store for work in the future? As many jobs vanish in some places, or farmed out to other places, will new jobs be created under the new order (globalization and trade liberalization) and after?


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The above is mostly excerpted (with permission from the author) and paraphrased from: Cecilia, Ernie O. 2013. “The future world of work,” Philippine Daily Inquirer. Job Market Section. P. J6. Sept. 15-21, 2013.

Other references:

Heilbroner, Robert. 1963. The making of economic society, Prentice Hall. As cited in Cecilia, 2013.
“History of work.” Reader’s Digest. http://www.readersdigest.com.au/history-of-work?page=2#sthash.KshaUbyj.dpuf
AFL-CIO. “Labor history timeline.” http://www.aflcio.org/About/Our-History/Labor-History-Timeline
Pope John Paul II. 1981. “Laborem Exercens.” Encyclical. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens_en.html
"Work labor history timeline." http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/work-labor-history-timeline

Wikipedia. "Timeline of labor issues and events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_labor_issues_and_events

See: The evolution of work: Daniel Kraft at TEDxRheinMainChange

Hello!

I am putting up this blog to re-publish old posts that I thought would remain relevant and helpful to a lot of people.

This new weblog is called The Urban Hermit Online because that is currently my state of life.

Here, I will be like monks of the medieval ages who took up the task of archiving and thus preserving and promoting useful knowledge. In my case, the work will come in bits and pieces, that is to say, bite-size knowledge, in between daily prayer and reflection.

Stay tuned.