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

[Servonaut]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5352717

arcadian  (1000+ posts)      Sun Mar-29-09 03:02 PM
Original message
What do the terms "work ethic" and "contributing member to society" mean to you?
 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  (1000+ posts)      Sun Mar-29-09 03:05 PM
Response to Original message
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  (1000+ posts)      Sun Mar-29-09 03:08 PM
Response to Reply #1
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  (1000+ posts)      Sun Mar-29-09 03:06 PM
Response to Original message
2. A sucker that accepts any BS their employer/government feeds them

stillcool  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:09 PM
Response to Original message
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  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:10 PM
Response to Original message
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  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:11 PM
Response to Original message
6. Conform and follow orders or suffer the consequences...suckers. 

Warpy  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:15 PM
Response to Original message
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.

 

Wapsie B  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:25 PM
Response to Original message
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.

This my friends, is what is wrong with DUmmies and Democrats in general. 

[mamacags]

Work ethic: working and making a living to support yourself and your family even if you hate your job, don't feel like working today, or you are fat (like the idiots at DU who can't work because they are fat and then sit on their ever increasing fat asses playing Xbox and online gaming)


contributing member to/of society: being productive in almost anyway.  This does NOT include welfare bums who sit on their ever increasing fat asses playing video games and leeching off of society.  When you contribute you put in something.  If you are only taking from society you are a parasite and should be treated as such.  This does not include people in comas, severely retarded people, or the very infirm in nursing homes.  Even most Down's Syndrome people contribute much more to society than your average DUmmy who believes that typing rants on a computer while wanking their wang is somehow making the world a better place.

[franksolich]

The primitives discussing "work ethic" and "contributing members of society" is like when the primitives discuss religion or economics or politics or sociology.

They're way over their heads.  

[Carl]

No surprise that not a single person,not one,on that thread has expressed anything to indicate they feel they should contribute to any society...even the socialist one of their dreams.

[Tucker]

No surprise that not a single person,not one,on that thread has expressed anything to indicate they feel they should contribute to any society...even the socialist one of their dreams.

The world owes them a living. I thought that was common knowledge.

[MrsSmith]

The primitives discussing "work ethic" and "contributing members of society" is like when the primitives discuss religion or economics or politics or sociology.

They're way over their heads.  

[LC EFA]

It doesn't come as any surprise that the primitives have no idea whatsoever of the meaning of these concepts.

That's why they are DUmmies.

[DumbAss Tanker]

I think we can safely say that whatever knowledge they may ever have of these terms, it would be purely vicarious, and not experiential.

[Tantal]

I was raised to believe that a work ethic means giving your employer an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

"Contributing member of society" means putting in more than you take out. For instance, I pay income taxes and get the secondary benefits of having a military, the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, etc.......but I have never directly received a dime from Uncle Sam; therefore, I am a tax payer, not a tax consumer. The DUmmies are just pissed because we productive people can't "contribute" to the degree that they'd like to consume.

[ScubaGuy]

I was raised to believe that a work ethic means giving your employer an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

The DUmmies lack of understanding what work ethic means is probably the reason so many of them are life long minimum wage lackeys and are often unemployed.

[dutch508]

Work ethic is a set of values based on hard work and diligence. It is also a belief in the moral benefit of work and its ability to enhance character. An example would be the Protestant work ethic. A work ethic may include being reliable, having initiative or maintaining social skills.

Workers exhibiting a good work ethic in theory (and ideally in practice) should be selected for better positions, more responsibility and ultimately promotion. Workers who fail to exhibit a good work ethic may be regarded as failing to provide fair value for the wage the employer is paying them and should not be promoted or placed in positions of greater responsibility.

One central concept that forms part of the basis of the free market economic theory of western capitalism is that workers who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded and will move ahead, and that those who do not should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their own poor performance.

Explains why the DUmpmonkiez don't like it.

Marxists, and most non-Marxist sociologists, make short shrift of "work ethic" as a useful sociological concept. They argue having a "work ethic" in excess of management's control doesn't appear rational in any mature industry where the employee can't rationally hope to become more than a manager whose fate still depends on the owner's decisions. Sociology prefers to renarrate excess work ethic as a form of alienation from truer needs for family and community connections, and twentieth century "critical theory" sees the "work ethic" as a unilateral demand which evolved from a mass confusion between Max Weber's "Protestant work ethic" of company founders, and a sociologically uninteresting phenomenon (rare enough to not register on a mass radar screen) which in fact produces deviance (of interest to the sociologist) in the form of addiction and family neglect

Explains the new talking points from DU.

The French Leftist philosopher André Gorz wrote: "The work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life. The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact. Neither is it true any longer that the more each individual works, the better off everyone will be. The present crisis has stimulated technological change of an unprecedented scale and speed: `the micro-chip revolution'. The object and indeed the effect of this revolution has been to make rapidly increasing savings in labour, in the industrial, administrative and service sectors. Increasing production is secured in these sectors by decreasing amounts of labour. As a result, the social process of production no longer needs everyone to work in it on a full-time basis. The work ethic ceases to be viable in such a situation and workbased society is thrown into crisis." André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason,Gallilé,1989

That's right. The French, with their 35 hour work week, don't believe in any work ethic.

[Chris]

Vidar (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 03:35 PM
Response to Original message
14. Membership badges of the proletariat.

Maru Kitteh  (1000+ posts)        Sun Mar-29-09 04:41 PM
Response to Original message
20. It means you're probably not my nephew.

 

[JohnnyReb]

If the american farmer lost his "work ethic" for just one year, the DUmmie tune would change.

[Tantal]

If the american farmer lost his "work ethic" for just one year, the DUmmie tune would change.

Or the Mexican weed growers.....

[USA4ME]

Never let it be said the primitives can't take simple words that good and honest people understand and live by and turn them into evil phrases that somehow make them victims.  Honestly, anything they can come up with to keep from lifting a finger.......

.

[delilahmused]

If the american farmer lost his "work ethic" for just one year, the DUmmie tune would change.

That's exactly what I was thinking as I read this thread. I'm not white. I'm not male. I'm not privileged. But I'm not operating someone else's  thumb, either. Well, maybe PETA and other animal rights groups, f I stopped feeding and caring for my livestock. Garden fairies...Gaia. But those are all female harpies so I don't think they count.

Cindie

[The Village Idiot]

was this person tombstoned immediately??

How offensive can a question at DU be??