What do the terms "work ethic" and "contributing member to society" mean to you?

[arcadian]

I would really like to know when these phrases entered the lexicon. I can almost imagine that they were thought up by Carnegie or Rockefeller types during the Robber Baron era to increase work production or per haps during WWII when those on the home front were being inundated with propaganda, again to increase work production. It is my contention that when you have corrupt immoral thieves running the show that there really is no such thing as a "work ethic". Sure, you can have your own personal work ethic, that which enables you to provide for your family, but if you work at some place that manufactures bombs that are dropped on wedding parties in the Middle East, doesn't your "work ethic" become null and void? If you are a contributing member to a society that is nothing more than a war machine, is that a good thing? Is that ethical?

[CTyankee]

1. I think those are code words for "not black or hispanic" and "not on welfare."

And usually belonging to one's own ethnic group...

Because I am so much older, I get frustrated. I've heard those code words practically all my life and it gets to me...

[arcadian]

3. I can see that.

What ever their usage, it seems it's always used by those of priveldge(white male owners) against those who are not.

[DJ13]

2. A sucker that accepts any BS their employer/government feeds them

[stillcool]

4. I was complimented on my 'work ethic'...

I think it entails being a door mat. As far as being a contributing member to society..that means you are born to a family of standing. Otherwise you have to pay for every breath you take..one way or another.

[Lyric]

5. People who slave away without complaint

and are content to die rather than expect help.

At least, that's what it means when the right-wing says it.

When *I* say "work ethic," I mean someone who doesn't avoid work just because they don't *want* to work (which is rare,) and when *I* say "contributing member of society," I'm thinking someone who questions the status quo, votes, participates in their government, and generally doesn't give their fellow common people a hard time.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Conform and follow orders or suffer the consequences...suckers.

[Warpy]

7. Some of us will always have more highly developed ethics

than others will. I could never do a military industry job and expect to keep my sanity. I have, however, worked in a system to repair the damage to human beings from things from the military industry. To do that I had to understand the mindset and tolerate it for 8 hours a day.

Some people have an ethic that makes them warriors, seeing themselves as protectors instead of predators. That's as true in street gangs as it is in armies or bomb factories.

The work ethic is something else. It's what drives us to do our best at a job we hate and which exploits us, not for the glorification of the parasite class but for our own satisfaction. It's what drives us to develop hobbies and learning when the work world no longer finds us useful. Those of us who fail to do that often die very quickly once being declared superfluous.

Ethics vary widely among people. The ones that find the widest agreement, like an abhorrence of murder and theft, get made into laws.

The rest are opinions and end at the surface of our skin and you know what they say about opinions.

[Boojatta]

16. "I could never do a military industry job and expect to keep my sanity."

What if you lived in Switzerland? Does your highly developed sense of ethics prevent you from being a barrier to the territorial expansion of the occasional fascist government in Italy or Germany?

[Urban Prairie]

8. Working with a "sense of urgency" was my last employers favorite phrase

Uttered by management, most w/o an urgent bone in their bodies, unless walking fast with an office memo in their hand could be counted as urgency.

[CTyankee]

12. "Sense of urgency" is strange. I can see it with medical staff in an Emergency Room

where lots goes on at full tilt all the time. But in an office it doesn't make sense. I think "sense of purpose" is much better. "Urgency" sounds almost hysterical in a non emergent situation...

[Urban Prairie]

13. Which led to the next phrase entering the national lexicon in the early 90s...

"Going Postal"

[TahitiNut]

9. When I first heard it, it was "Anglo-Saxon work ethic" and "protestant work ethic."

There's always a noun modifier, explicit or implied.

:puke:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070507005430AA8JvCk

[Wapsie B]

10. I know work ethic has come to be a code word

for an employer working you like a dog for little pay and demanding unquestioning loyalty in the process.

[guruoo]

11. Also see: 'Lucky just to have a job' eom

I call it 'loser talk'.

[Vidar]

14. Membership badges of the proletariat.

[Boojatta]

15. It means that you might need an occasional multi-billion dollar bailout.

[terisan]

17. A few decades ago it was still call the protestant work ethic to diss Catholics. Now

it is often used to encourage people to overwork to serve corporate interests.

[KittyWampus]

18. Laborare est Orare. Why is it the only reference you have for work is as an employee?

[rrneck]

19. Almost nothing

We have given over so much of our sense of self to others that we no longer know what our objectives are. If the objectives of our efforts are defined by others, our ethics are not our own and our contributions to society are an illusion.

Downright Orewllian.

[Maru Kitteh]

20. It means you're probably not my nephew.

[Igel]

21. I always thought of "work ethic" as neutral.

It was a word for how hard (or not hard) you worked. A strong or good work ethic meant you worked hard; a weak or poor one meant you worked not so hard. Everybody had a work ethic, so the statement, "John has a work ethic" merely means "John has an attitude of some kind towards how he works." Hardly a profound utterance.

Apparently the phrase started out as "Protestant work ethic" (in which "Protestant" didn't refer to the religious status of the work ethic itself so much as to the origin of the idea in sociology: That service to God and man required a dedication to hard work, not that only Protestants could posses the "Protestant work ethic").

We appear to owe the term to some essays (which grew into a book) Max Weber wrote in 1904 and 1905. It became common in English after the German original was translated. If he got it from somewhere, I'd like to know. BTW, his "Protestant ethic" encompassed more than just work, and wasn't so much Episcopal or Presbyterian as it was Calvinist.

"Contribute to society" was around in 1820. I don't know where it originated or how long before 1820 it started being a set phrase.

[ColbertWatcher]

22. I can't believe that I'm the first to rec this thread. n/t

[guruoo]

23. Thanks - I was in a hurry eariler and forgot. (running late for work, again)

Stop laughing! I am series! :rofl:

[hunter]

24. People work hard making and selling things that destroy the environment.

How is anyone a "contributing member of society" when the oceans rise, the climate changes, and people starve. Oops.

A lot of people are destroyed by their own "work ethic," no doubt a lot of cultures too.

Sometimes the right thing to do is nothing much, and enjoy the moment.

[Skittles]

25. I see it as someone who is a giver and not a taker

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. Work is highly overrated.

Yes, it is.

[Djinn]

27. I think it's a little less fraught in Oz

often it's said without any kind of nasty over/undertones and I've even used it (somewhat disparagingly) to describe my inability to take a holiday without logging into my work email.

That said, I'm a union organiser and do hear it used as code by some managers who seem to think they own their employees 24/7.

As for "contributing member of society" thank Cluthu that doesn't seem to have crossed the ocean, I don't think there's many people who don't contribute to society in any way and seems a pretty obvious denigration of the unemployed, as if working is the only contribution one can make.