War on work: Mike Rowe on dirty jobs and lamb's testicles

From a TED talk:

I'm one of the snobbiest people I know (as 'snob' is commonly understood), and I definitely am on the other side of 'dirty jobs.' I'm far removed from 'dirty' as the term is used in the video. For example, I would refuse to eat anything that looks like an actual animal - it's part of my skirting the moral pain of having eaten something that once was alive. I would never go hunting or kill anything for food, if I could avoid it. Somebody else does the dirty work, please. I don't want to have to think about it? What I make sure I do instead is to not waste food (i.e. leftovers in the garbage can), in particular meat. I don't throw away meat - I make sure I finish a less-than-perfectly done fish or find someone or some other animal who would. I want to respect what was taken (I wouldn't say the animals give it willingly) and use it as intended.

But I digress. As someone who often finds things to get excited about and be occupied with in almost any work or learning environment, I can be engaged with 'dirty jobs' in the same way Mike Rowe can in the various dirty jobs he did for the show. It's that sense of discovering something new that tickles me, and it keeps me from being completely removed from what people would think as 'dirty jobs.' However, I am quickly bored by things that I don't find engaging or challenging to some degree, and that's a problem I find with this argument he's making: the assumed universal stimulation/fulfillment value of these 'dirty jobs.'

The pig farmers and the scrappers who whistled on the job may not be as happy simply BECAUSE of their jobs as he made them out to be. Happiness has little to do with the content of one's profession - we know, or instance, that happiness doesn't come with intellectual pursuits (which I think is a main component of the anti-dirty job as used here). People are happy doing things that affirm who they are and/or make them feel a sense of competence. The guy who castrated the lambs, I bet, was pretty proud of how efficient he was at his work. The people who make my motherboard may feel very proud that they could do 10 in 20 minutes, or something. There's no need for passion in such a job, but there doesn't have to be presumed intense interest for there to be a sense of worth.

You don't have to be passionate about your job; not everybody is on the passion wagon. But there's no fulfillment inherent in a job that one doesn't find stimulating, or affirming to the self's sense of where it is, dirty or not. A job may not even be a very big part of a sense of self for many people - I'd argue that this is the case with the majority of the working population. Many people work because they have to, and many more work because it gives them something to engage in on a daily basis and rewards with some social and monetary worth that could put more wind in their sails elsewhere.

I understand Mike's advocating for an appreciation of non-poetic or romanticized jobs, but I don't think there is any more happiness inherent in ripping off lamb's testicles with one's mouth either.

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