/lit/ - Literature

>In our time it is fashionable to exalt work of whatever sort and no matter how it is accomplished, as if it had some superlative value in itself independently of any consideration of another order. This has been the subject of innumerable pronouncements as empty as they are pompous, not only in the profane world but, what is more serious, even in the initiatic organizations remaining in the West. It is easy to understand that this way of envisaging things is directly linked to the exaggerated need for action that characterizes modern Westerners; work, at least when so considered, is obviously nothing but a form of action, and a form to which the 'moralist' prejudice is bound to attribute more importance than to any other because it more easily lends itself to being presented as a 'duty' for man and as ensuring his 'dignity'. Added to this there is usually a clearly anti-traditional motive, namely the depreciation of contemplation, which is assimilated to idleness, whereas on the contrary it is really the highest activity conceivable, and whereas further, action separated from contemplation can only be blind and disordered. All of this only too easily accounts for those who declare, no doubt sincerely, that 'their happiness lies in action' itself; we would rather say in 'agitation', for once action is thus taken for an end in itself, whatever the 'moralist' pretexts invoked to justify it, it is truly nothing more than that.
>Contrary to what the moderns think, any work that is done indiscriminately by anyone solely for the pleasure of acting or because of the need to 'earn one's living' hardly merits being exalted, and indeed it can only be regarded as something abnormal, opposed to the order that ought to regulate human institutions, to such a point that, in the conditions of our age, it only too often acquires a character that without any exaggeration qualifies as 'infra-human'.

René Guénon on the 'glorification of work'