The Future of Work Foundation
Books in the library
Library categories are:
1.work
a/historical (current)
b/unemployment
c.work/family/life balance
d/future
2.time
3.money
4.evolution
5.economics
6.business concepts and trends
a.futurology
7.human consciousness, ethics and values
8.ecology
9.community development
10.personal development
11.general interest / various
Future of work foundation
LIBRARY
Table of Contents
1.a/work – historical (current)
1.a/1.Time Life Series - The Emergence of Man Time Life International, 1973
A sixteen volume series focusing on the history of man. Includes many interesting insights into the role of work in the various cultures through which man has evolved.
Life Before Man
p 22"Physically, modern men are hardly distinguishable from men who lived 30,000 years ago. But socially, human life has been transformed by the accumulation of the experience of millions upon millions of human lives over thousands upon thousands of years."
Chapter five: The Power of the Group
p123"Every man likes to think of himself as a unique and independent individual, separate from all other humans and able, if circumstances demand, to get along without them. He cannot. Humans need to be with other humans, that is, to be members of a human society. Only under very exceptional circumstances can a man live more than a few weeks without the vital benefits - food, shelter, protection, co-operation, information and simple companionship - that society alone is able to provide."
"But beyond a man's need for association with fellow individuals, there is the requirement for another kind of association, internal rather than external. Each human is made up of a society of billions of closely co-operating cells, some of which look and behave like the independent one- celled animals that their ancestors once were. And even these cells, which make up the human body, may each also be a kind of society, the product of lower levels of association among still more primitive single-celled bacteria-like units of life."
"So man, who believes himself individual, is both an obligatory participant in a higher society and the product of earlier levels of association. His dependence on social organisation costs him individual freedom but it pays him back many times over in the great power that comes with group life. Alone, a man may be physically and mentally superior to any other animal, but his individual advantages do not make him dominant; only with the development of human society did man come to rule the earth."
p123"In a sense, life depends on organized association. the first living things appeared when certain chemical substances were organized into a pattern that enabled them to reproduce themselves, generation after generation.
p131"...social organisation is not a uniquely human condition, nor was the man the first to discover the advantages of bonding together. From the earliest living things - simple, single-unit groupings- there arose some multiple-unit groupings. Some cells in these groups became independent and developed into multicelled green plants, fungi and animals called metazoans. Nearly all metazoans engage in some social behaviour, and a few lower forms like ants and termites live in rigidly organised groups. But only man has developed to a high degree schemes of co-operation that combine the flexibility of the individual acting alone with the power of the group acting together."
The First Men
p 69"Sweating is not an unmitigated blessing for humans, though. As William Montagna, professor of dermatology at the University of Oregon, has pointed out, sweating represents "a major biological blunder" in one sense, for it not only drains the body of enormous amounts of moisture requiring that it have a constant supply of water, but also depletes the system of sodium and other essential elements in its chemical makeup. Montagna suggests that the moisture-producing glands "are still an experiment of nature - demonstrably useful to man but not yet fully refined by the evolutionary process."
Lest I not understand in the future why this quote is included: the quote notes that biological evolution still has some way to go and humans should not believe that we are the ultimate biological creation. Elsewhere I argue that cultural evolution is a critical process in understanding the place of our vision for work, but it is also important to remember that biological evolution is not finished (despite mans' unprecedented ability to control his environment and genetic transmission)
p110"Whatever it (his voice) sounded like, and at whatever age he began to use it, the fact remains that Homo erectus had a language to use as a tool in its own right - a tool to drive like a wedge into the environment, hastening the split from nature that marked his development and foreshadowed ours. For the first time in human history cultural evolution began to outpace biological evolution as instinct and emotion were counterbalanced by custom and thought." (the emphasis is mine)
p125"The move from the tropics was perhaps the high adventure of those million years during which Homo erectus was establishing man as nature's dominant figure. Before the great expansion, his immediate ancestors had been evolving much as the other animals around them were, adapting imperceptibly to their environment, using some tools in a primitive way, living in loose social groups, depending on a generally benign environment for food and warmth, having very little awareness of the past or thought for the future. But when Erectus moved out into the world's previously unpeopled regions, this way of life began to alter. By meeting the challenges of changing conditions with solutions of his own making, rather than waiting until evolution did it for him, man passed a crucial milestone: for the first time, a creature, however unconsciously, took an active hand in its own evolution, It was the beginning of man's supremacy, and it was the most significant contribution Homo erectus made to human development."
p127"One measure of a society's development is the extent to which its different parts must rely on one another for the whole to function. As Homo erectus evolved, the links of dependence among individuals strengthened and became more numerous - babies depended upon mothers, youngsters upon adults, hunter upon hunter, men and women upon each other, eventually group upon group. These relationships were almost certainly forged by the first men; further steps towards civilization - development of clans, tribes, races - did not come until many thousands of years after Erectus became Sapiens."
p130"By the time of Homo erectus, when hunters were tackling larger and more dangerous prey, bigger game required more hunters working together, and the specialization of work had become more definitive. The division of labour between men and women, which is accepted-or challenged-in today';s culture as a traditional social arrangement, had by then become essential to survival."
p130"While hunting was forging a new male-female relationship and large brain size was altering the infant-mother relationship, still another relationship - male to female to young - was developing. This three-way interdependence was perhaps most important of all, for it was to become the basic unit of human society, the family. Family living is one of the few characteristics that can be singled out as unique to man. It does not exist in the same form among animals, even among such intelligent primates as chimpanzees. Among humans it exists today in one version or another everywhere on earth and clearly has existed since long before recorded history."
p134"Erectus' tendency to look afield for mates grew, and eventually he reached beyond his own band to select a partner from a neighbouring group. this practice, which anthropologists call exogamy, certainly would have had advantages...... Exogamy by bringing in mates strange to the band, presumably made family ties ever more important. With that importance cam another cultural innovation, one that seems elemental but was a milestone in society's growth: the idea of a home base. ... With a home base, man had a new social blueprint. For one thing, the existence of a home meant that sick or inform individuals no longer faced abandonment along the way; now there was a place where they could rest and mend in comparative safety. "For a wild primate", the anthropologists Sherwood Washburn and Irven DeVore have written, " a fatal sickness is one that separates it from the troop, but for man it is one from which he cannot recover even while protected and fed at the home base....It is the home base that changes sprained ankles and fevers from fatal diseases to minor ailments."
p135"In terms of man's society the real importance of the home base was that it provided a medium for man's cultural growth. Within the safe circle of its carefully tended fire grew a fellowship, a sense of community that was new on earth. The hearth nurtured self-awareness and trust among individuals in a world that was otherwise largely ruled by nature's fang and claw. there man could begin to learn more than simply how to survive; he could grapple with concepts, fashion a language, improve his tools and weapons, conceive new ways to change the world."
1.a/2."Work and the Nature of Man"; by Frederick Herzberg - World Publishing, 1971
1.a/3."Working Australia"; by Charlie Fox - Allen and Unwin, 1991
1.a/4."Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work - 101 Stories of Courage, Compassion and Creativity in the Workplace", by Jack Canfield et al - Health Communications Inc 1996
p69"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own."
(quoting Benjamin Disraeli)
p125"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."
(quoting Albert Schweitzer)
p127"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
(quoting T.S. Eliot)
p143"Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it."
(quoting Buddha)
p144"To Have Succeeded
To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a little better,
Whether by a healthy child,
A garden patch,
Or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm
And sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier
Because you have lived...
This is to have succeeded."
(quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson)
p197"If you're not using your smile, you're like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook."
(quoting Les Giblin)
p246"No one ever finds life worth living - he has to make it worth living."
(quoting an unknown author)
p248"You have to do it by yourself, and you can't do it alone."
(quoting Martin Rutte)
p251"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
(quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson)
1.a/5."Changes at Work - The 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey", by Alison Morehead et al - Longman Cheshire 1997
p26"As in AWIRS 90, workplace employment size in AWIRS 95 was defined as the total number of full-time and part-time employees, whether permanent or casual, working at or from the workplace. Excluded from this definition were contractors and their employees, agency workers and outworkers. Although these other categories of workers may have been working at or from the workplace at the time the survey was conducted, they were not strictly employees of the workplace and were not included in our discussion of employment size."
p29"The average number of employees at workplaces declined from 109 to 98 between the two survey periods."
p289"For 14 per cent of all employees, satisfaction with the balance between work and family life went up in the year prior to the survey; for 27 per cent it declined."
1.a/6."Women and Work"; by Ross Davies - Arrow Books, 1975
p15"Today, for the first time since the nation turned from agriculture to industry, we are beginning to see work as a function of people, rather than people as a function of work."
p95(at the height of the second world war) "The government pioneered the use of nurseries, and schemes whereby two married women could 'share' the same job, each putting in a half a shift."
p99"Today, however, for better or worse, many domestic activities - apart from straightforward housework - have been relegated to the status of pastime by the availability of highly competitive ready-made products on a more and more efficiently organized market."
p111"Work is compatible with marriage or motherhood. The issue is simply that these functions and the world of work have been allowed to drift apart, until they seem alternatives when they are in fact complementary."
p144"We now have a situation in which, for the first time since women's work was taken out of the home by the Industrial Revolution, married women are able and willing in large numbers to rejoin the labour force, without being conscripted by government or driven by economic misfortune."
1.a/7."The Social Psychology of Work", by Michael Argyle - Penguin 1972
p1"...different civilizations in the past, and different nations in the contemporary world, have evolved very different attitudes to work, and very different types of working organization."
p251"In simpler societies work is done in a way that gives satisfaction to those who do it, and there is no clear division between work and leisure."
p259"... it is not known quite how leisure differs from work. Firstly, of the six kinds of leisure activity the first four are similar to work in that they involve the expenditure of considerable effort and are directed towards specific goals; the fifth - social activity - sometimes has this quality."
p262"It appears that work should have many of the properties of leisure to be most satisfying, and that this is consistent at nearly every point with the pursuit of high productivity. It also appears that for leisure to be satisfying, it must have some of the main properties of work."
1.a/8."Work in Australian Society"; by Caven, Gullen and Mc Lennan - Macmillan, 1989
1.a/9."Jobsmarts for twenty somethings"; audio tape read by the author; Bradley Richardson - 1995
1.a/10."Pathways in Sociology - Work, Occupations and Industrial Organisations"; by Terence Mc Carthy - DeakinUniversity, 1989
1.a/11."Workabout Australia - jobs galore, what a way to see Australia"; by Barry Brebner - self published, undated
1.a/12“Weevils at work – What’s happening to work in “Australia – an oral record”; by Wendy Lowenstein – Southwood Press, 1997
p4“Work is not just what we do for a living, it is what we do with our lives. Before we worked for wages we worked to survive, to feed and shelter ourselves and our young, to relate to other human beings, to the wider world.”
p6“The only contented unemployed people I’ve met are a handful who’d always hoped to retire early to become writers, artists, organic gardeners, join a co-operative, pursue a dream.”
p33“We need to get to the stage where more people can say to themselves, ‘I’ve done something on my own initiative too. I feel wonderful’.”
p57“If owners paid proper wages, they’d make more money, because people would work harder, be more responsible. Searching for a job is a long, miserable process, dehumanising enough without the stigma.”
p106“Their expectations are very high because of television – their main education – because of ‘Melrose Place’. They’ve had no-one to talk to, no-one they respect. It’s what Jung calls’ magical thinking’. They want to be rock stars, but not to go through the boring process of finding a band and playing in pubs. They want to be motor mechanics without doing an apprenticeship. They behave as though they had immense options.”
1.a/13“Shadow Work”, by Ivan Illich – Marion Boyars, 1981
p1“The essays gathered here deal with the rise of the shadow economy. I have coined this term to speak about transactions which are not in the monetized sector and yet do not exist in pre-industrial societies.”
p1“With the rise of this shadow economy I observe the appearance of a kind of toil which I not rewarded by wages, and yet contributes nothing to the household’s independence from the market.’
p4“Up to now economic development has always meant that people instead of doing something, are instead enabled to buy something….Economic development has also meant that after a time people must buy the commodity, because the conditions under which they could get along without it had disappeared from their physical, social or cultural environment.”