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For such broad claims, I think you need to define some terms. What is work? What is success? What do you hold to be best? These are slippery abstract concepts, and it's therefore dangerous to hold strong opinions about them without being very clear about what you're saying. So for example if you define work as activities you are paid for and which society values, Einstein was not paid for the work he did on general relativity at first. If you define success as becoming rich, Abraham Lincoln, Rembrandt, Mozart, Einstein in his early days, Wittgenstein etc were all abject failures. If you define it as recognition from your peers, many people we now value were ridiculed and rejected in their lifetime - Darwin, Newton, Van Gogh etc. Of course you can find fault with some of these examples, but it only takes one to undermine your first sentence, which is a remarkably broad claim without qualification. So when you make sweeping statements about hard work consider what you mean by best. Are they best simply because your implicit value system values hard work above all else? Are they best because they earn the most money? Are they best because they are esteemed by their peers today, even if in 100 years they will be forgotten? From the article: Immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous – Bertrand Russell I think what he is driving at here is that leisure, or at least the avoidance of work for pay, is required for some of the greatest advances in our civilisation, we require leisure in order to speculate, create and explore. I'm not entirely sure I agree with him completely, but it is an interesting counterpoint to the martial beat of the calvinist work ethic we now march to. |