Dear Baya,

       I’ve always (for obvious reasons) loved the line in the Bible which runs ‘Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do they spin, but lo, I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these’ (or words to that effect).

       Most of us would like such a life of leisure, but usually people have to work really hard just to stay alive.  So could you tell me something about work?

      There are lots of things that puzzle me. One is why so many people throughout history have had to work so hard with their bodies? Why didn’t they use machines and animals more? And indeed, as you’ve told me, did they often tend to have to work harder and harder as the centuries went by?

      How and why, if hard slavery is the normal condition, did some of us escape through an industrial revolution, where each of us has many invisible ‘slaves’ (petrol, electricity, chemistry) working to make our physical lives (at least in the west) so easy. Why and how did the great split between what you’ve told me is called the ‘industrious’ and the ‘industrial’ ways occur?

     There seem to be lots of ways of organizing workers – slavery, serfdom, factory work, wage labour. Lots of abstract terms which I’ve never really understood. What is the difference between a serf and a slave for example? Why do people talk of wage labourers being ‘free’ when they seem to be trapped by necessity?

      You tell me that your school motto was ‘per ardua ad astra’ (by hard work to the stars). When most people have dreams of doing nothing and being waited on, why do we seem to have a history of valuing hard work? Why does the head of Microsoft, Bill Gates, go on working away when he could have retired long ago?

      Must get back to my homework!

Lots of love,