托福口语素材:是找份工作还是成为“人肉机”

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　　关于工作

　　在托福考试的口语部分，大家经常会被问到关于选择工作的问题。出现在题干中的选项常常会有：高薪但是不稳定，低薪却很稳定，年青人应该尝试不同的工作吗，选择大公司还是小公司工作等等。威斯坦(Wystan)的这篇讨论工作，劳动和游戏的文章带给你不一样的视角。本文把‘work’和‘labour’之间的区别说的清清楚楚。 所谓‘work’是指人们喜欢或感兴趣的工作，而‘labour’是指那些人们不感兴但为了生计不得已而从事的劳动。‘work’与‘labour’并不是泾渭分明的，界定两者的准则不是某件工作本身的性质， 而是劳动者本人的态度。

　　Work, labour, and play

　　So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labour. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as if no value or importance. In society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, the sign that what a man does is of social value is that he is paid money to do it, but a labourer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a labourer if the job society offer him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.

　　The antithesis to labour is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not. 输入标题 abcdefg

　　Between labour and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labour is from his own point of view voluntary play. Where a job is to be classified as labour or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a labourer. Which a man is can be seen from this attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of coronaries and forget their wives’ birthdays. To the labourer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

　　What percentage of the population in a modern technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate positon of being workers? At a guess I would say sixteen percent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.

　　Technology and the division of labour have done two things: by eliminating in many fields the need for social strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labour, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours.

　　It is already possible to imaginea society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its labourers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for aristocracies. The later, for example, ritualized there was a season to shoot grouse, a season to spend in town, etc.

　　The masses are more likely to replace an unchanging ritual by fashion which it will be in the economic interest of certain people to change as often as possible. Again, the masses cannot go in for hunting, for every soon there would be no animals left to hunt. For other aristocratic amusements like gambling, dueling, and warfare, it may be only too easy to find equivalents in dangerous driving, drug-taking, and senseless acts of violence. Workers seldom commit acts of violence, because they can put their aggression into their work be it physical like the work of a smith, or mental like the work of a scientist or an artist. The role of aggression in mental work is aptly expressed by the phrase ‘getting one’s teeth into a problem.’

　　作者简介：

　　Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

　　著名诗人，剧作家。 出生于英国约克郡。25岁入牛津大学。30年代后期，成为英国左翼青年作家领袖;1937年去西班牙参加反法西斯斗争;1939年定居美国，1973年病逝于维也纳。

　　主要作品有《诗集》，《雄辩家》，《瞧!陌生人》，《大海与明镜》和《忧患时世》。

　　文章整理与：《名人随笔录》

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