American Work Ethic in the Age of A.I.
'Scuse me Mr. Steam Drill perhaps you didn't hear me, I said how are you?
This section I added after post. I wrote it in a note realized it belonged in this piece. When you get to the end you'll understand why it fits:
I really hate the argument, “they do jobs Americans don't want to do”, it's offensive and doesn't exist. There might be jobs you don't want to do but, there's no such thing as jobs Americans “won't” do. We'll do anything, no matter how hard or dirty for the right price, which is actually the issue.
If there wasn't people willing to do hard jobs for cheap, employers would be forced to pay employees based on how hard the job is.
But, I don't even think that is it. When I have no job there is NOTHING that I wouldn't do to provide for my family. I've done the dirtiest jobs in the hardest conditions and come out of it tougher every time. We've got to stop giving people that out.
There's no such thing as too tough of a job. If you think it is, you should probably do it. It'll make it that much better when you do.
Someone said, “the mountains caving in!”
John Henry told the captain, “Tell the kind folks not to worry. That ain’t nothing but my hammer suckin’ wind, it keeps me breathing. This is steel drivers’ muscle, I ain’t tin.”
Where Does the American Work Ethic Come From?
I don’t know if what follows this is true, but it's something I’ve been observing for some time now.
However, since around the pandemic it changed, and I do not believe it is for the better.
First off, lemme start with the song. I found it maybe ten years ago, maybe fifteen, but when I did it opened my mind to something about American work ethic.
My work ethic started out at zero. I gained a strong work ethic after working for a guy who was very hard to impress, and I got so tired of being insulted and threatened that I decided whatever he asks me to do I am going to go ten steps further and do it flawless. It’s worth it to prove this asshole wrong.
Unfortunately, he didn’t notice, even after I went ten steps further than the day before, and the day after that, and the day after that. I realized this guy was either blind or unwilling to give anyone a “Good Job” lol. But something happened with that, I stopped caring about his attaboy and started stepping back and looking at my finished work and thinking, damn, I did that.
Then, I realized he was doing the same thing, and he actually was telling me “Good job”, but in his own way.
He was stepping back and looking at what we had done and taking pride in it.
It was a horse-riding stable, my job at first was cleaning the stalls and turning the horses out to the pasture every day, then it became, bush-hogging the fields, then it became building new stalls in the barn, adding onto the barn, then running the community service program on Saturdays and taking a whole crew of young people working their community service off, eventually I was managing the entire business.
I came there when I was eighteen because I had no family not in prison, had just gotten out of jail myself, and had nowhere to go. It was great because in any other situation I would’ve walked out of that job and never learned that lesson and I might be as lost as the rest of my generation.
When I figured this out it was like the key to getting through work happily.
Years later I still take this with me everywhere I go, everything I do. There is such an amazing feeling to step back and look at something and find the pride in being able to do it.
When I first heard this song “John Henry’s Hammer” I realized that this is not new. It goes back to another time, way before I was born, and might be part of American culture.
There is something so very American about taking pride in your work.
I used to lay floors for a living and would take before and after pictures, and it was so fucking cool to get to the end of the job and sit with your co-worker and talk about the job we’d just finished. Show the pictures off to other people, it’s not even bragging, it’s pride.
I noticed at other jobs since then that other people share in this too. I worked for 15 years at a company that had a quota on each line and if you finished your quota your whole line would get to go home with a full day’s pay. That became where the pride came from, everyone would get together at the liquor store across the street and gather to talk about the day, and there was a comradery that came with that pride.
The Story of John Henry’s Hammer is Really the Story of John Henry’s Determination in the Face of Automation
So, the song, “John Henry’s Hammer” if you didn’t listen to it, it’s about a guy named John Henry. His dad — or Pappy — has been in prison more than out his whole life. John Henry's Pappy woke him up one midnight, and said, “before the sheriff comes I wanna tell you, listen boy: Learn to turn a jack, learn to lay a track, learn to pick, and shovel too, and get my hammer. It’ll do anything you want it to.”
So, John’s mom had a dozen babies. They all got sick and “when the doctor wanted money,” he told him “I’ll pay you a quarter at a time, starting tomorrow,” which is “Pay for a steel driver on this line.” So, he goes to get a job doing what his “Pappy” told him to do.
He is interviewed by the Section Foreman. The Foreman says to him, “Hey! Hammer swinger! I see you brought your own hammer boy but what else can all these muscles do?”
He says, “I can turn a jack, I can lay a track, I can pick and shovel too—”
“—Can ya swing the hammer?”
“I’ll do anything you hire me too.”
“Now ain't you something. So high and mighty with your muscles, just go ahead pick up that hammer, pick up the hammer. Get a rusty spike and swing it down three times, I'll pay you a nickel a day for every inch you sink it to, go on and do what you say you can do”
So, he gives him three swings, and he’ll pay him a nickel a day for every inch that spike goes. If you needed commentary:
“With a steep nose hammer on a four-foot switch panel, John Henry raised it back till it touched his heels,” swung and on his first swing sunk it seven inches. That’s “35 cents a day for driving steel.”
The Foreman says, “Sweat boy! You owe me two more swings.”
John Henry exclaims, “I was born for driving steel.”
John Henry became known for how well he swung his hammer. People would come from all around to see him, “Watch him make the cold steel ring!”
Eventually, that boss comes down to rub it into John Henry’s face that soon automation was coming, and a steam engine would be replacing his “share of the driving.”
The “Bad Boss” as he is referred to, laughing and said to John Henry, “You full of vinegar now, but you ‘bout through. We’re gonna get a steam drill to do your share of driving, then what's all them muscles gonna do? Huh, John Henry? (Were) gonna take a little bit of vinegar out of you.”
John said to him, “I feed four little brothers, and my baby sister's walking on her
knees! If the lord say that machines ought to take the place of living, then what's a substitute for bread and beans? I ain't seen it. Do engines get rewarded for their steam?”
Well, some time passed, and it became time for the steam drill to replace him. The mine boss finds John Henry resting through his lunch hour, and says to him, “get up! Whoever you are and get a pickax, give me enough coal to start another Hell, and keep it burning, mine me enough to start another Hell.”
John Henry sees the time has come for the steam drill to take his job and decides to challenge that steam drill and prove nobody, not even no machine, can replace John Henry.
John Henry said to his captain, “a man ain't nothin’ but a man, but if you bring that steam drill round, I'll beat it fair and honest. I'll die with my hammer in my hand, but I'll be laughing! ‘Cause you can't replace a steel drivin’ man.”
A big crowd had gathered at the mountain to see the great “Man Vs Machine” showdown.
John Henry says, “How is you?” To the steam drill. When he gets no reply he takes issue with this condescending hunk of metal, and says, “pardon me mister steam drill, I s’ppose you didn't hear me. I said how’re you? Well, can you turn a jack, can you lay a track, can you pick and shovel too? Listen, this hammer swingers talkin' to you.”
The race begins and John Henry is going so fast the onlookers think the “mountain is caving in!”
John Henry told the captain, “Tell the kind folks not to worry. That ain't nothin’
but my hammer suckin' wind! It keeps me breathing. This is steel driver’s muscle. I ain’t tin.”
When John gets to the finish line, he realizes he’s won but also realizes the steam engine doesn’t know it.
John Henry says, “Captain, tell the people move back further. I'm at the finish line and there ain't no drill. She's so far behind, but ain't got the brains to quit it, when she blows up, she'll scatter cross the hills, lord lordy, when she blows up, she'll scatter cross the hills.”
This story is the story of automation that is approaching again with artificial intelligence. And it is a story of the pride we take in our work and the ability to provide for our families.
The steam engine didn’t have the brains to stop when she’d been beaten, but AI is going to have the ability to beat the John Henry’s and the brains to stop.
I worked as a temp at the RC Cola plant for a week here in Louisville. They had the most unbelievable machine that did everything from making the bottles, filling them with soda, bundling them, palletizing the bundles and putting the pallets on the truck to be shipped out. Talking to a couple guys there they said, “when that machine came arrived their employees went from a hundred down to five.” My immediate thought was, damn, that’s ninety-five people who thought they had secure employment being thrown out on the streets.
Now, that is coming to us in the form of AI. Sure, it’ll be more efficient in a lot of things, but what about the things that need a human touch.
I’ve attempted a couple articles here using ChatGPT and it felt sterile. I immediately was like, “Oh, well I can do a better job than this.” That was a positive outlook on this, but I count help but worry. At what point does it advance to where there’s ten thousand John Henry’s competing to continue doing the thing that gives us meaning? I can’t imagine that doesn’t happen and if these things continue to advance exponentially it could be sooner rather than later.
The ‘Purpose in Life’ Trap
Something my ex-significant other and I noticed during and after COVID is people stopped taking pride in their work, and they never started back. I don’t know if it’s the phones. I don't know what it is, but I know I take pride in doing my best in any job I do, and she had worked in customer service at restaurants and she talked a lot about the pride she took in getting peoples orders right, and making sure the customer got everything they were supposed to and left satisfied, but in the last few years both of us noticed that these young people coming up take zero pride in their work ethic. We’d go into restaurants and these young people would get obviously annoyed that we were bothering them with asking them to do the job they were being paid to do.
We would consistently see five people on their phones, refusing you service, ignoring your existence, the boss shows up, and instead of trying to get them to take your order they’d just do it themselves. Because of this more and more restaurants are doing orders by kiosk, and self-checkouts and actual fucking robots.
If these people aren’t learning a work ethic there, I think it’s starting a domino effect leading to every job being replaced by the “steam engines of today” and the John Henry’s are becoming an endangered species.
Work and Meaning in Life
We’ve probably all heard stories of someone who was married for 40 years and when their spouse passed away, they had no reason to keep pushing and pass away themselves shockingly soon after.
Or, just the same, you heard of someone who worked their whole lives and once it’s taken away, they lose their purpose in life, their health goes downhill and very soon you see their name in the obituary.
I do, however, also see people who get used up by their jobs, then dropped like hot potatoes for someone younger once they get too old to carry out their job anymore, which is the same effect, just someone different invoking the cause.
Something happens to people who live their lives with a purpose. It keeps them healthy, and as soon as that purpose is taken away, they are as good as doomed. If the young people coming up never have that purpose than, what will that do to the future of the human race?
Does Artificial Intelligence have the potential to create a slow-moving doom of mankind or fast moving like Terminator. I don’t know, but something is happening, and I believe they are all connected.
Technology has empowered me in my life unlike anything I ever imagined.
It’s opened the door to be able to literally do anything I want to. For a poor kid, from a small town, I can’t find the words to describe how amazingly consequential that has been for me, but just as positive as it is, there’s another side which can be equally as negative, and I wonder if other people see this too.
There must be a way to pull back from the brink, that doesn’t set society back a half a millennium.
Thank you for reading!
Editor-in-Chief