[emodendroket]

> Knowledge workers hold a different relationship to their labor than manufacturing workers did. For a cognitive professional, expertise is not only an activity. It is a large part of the self. A data scientist who has spent a decade building statistical judgment does not experience that judgment as a detachable tool. It is closer to a personality trait. When automation threatens the work, it reaches past the income and touches the identity.'

I think the idea that coal miners or factory laborers or whoever else in blue-collar work did not identify with their work is just wrong, and there's evidence going back as far as the Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker of people deeply identifying with work we might otherwise be tempted to view as lowly.

[FearNotDaniel]

Absolutely true - witness the enormous upheaval in the north of England’s coal mining communities when all the pits got closed in the 1980s. It wasn’t just individuals but families across generations and entire villages who had defined themselves by the work they did. It was easy for those in Westminster to say it was a sound decision for the national economy as a whole, but apart from leaving the workers high and dry with no other visible opportunities they absolutely failed to reckon with the cultural impact of taking away the very source of people’s sense of identity.