White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

To the ancient Greeks, in whose society mechanical labor was done by slaves, work brutalized the mind, made man unfit for the practice of virtue.* It was a necessary material evil, which the elite, in their search for changeless vision, should avoid. The Hebrews also looked upon work as ‘painful drudgery,' to which, they added, man is condemned by sin. In so far as work atoned for sin, however, it was worth while, yet Ecclesiastes, for example, asserts that ‘The labor of man does not satisfy the soul. ' Later, Rabbinism dignified work somewhat, viewing it as worthy exercise rather than scourge of the soul, but still said that the kingdom to come would be a kingdom of blessed idleness.

In primitive Christianity, work was seen as punishment for sin but also as serving the ulterior ends of charity, health of body and soul, warding off the evil thoughts of idleness. But work, being of this world, was of no worth in itself. St. Augustine, when pressed by organizational problems of the church, carried the issue further: for monks, work is obligatory, although it should alternate with prayer, and should engage them only enough to supply the real needs of the establishment. The church fathers placed pure meditation on divine matters above even the intellectual work of reading and copying in the monastery. The heretical sects that roved around Europe from the eleventh to the fourteenth century demanded work of man, but again for an ulterior reason: work, being painful and humiliating, should be pursued zealously as a ‘scourge for the pride of the flesh.'