“A long time ago, when humans had to cook for themselves, that was a form of work too,” I said. “There were professional chefs who worked at restaurants as their primary occupations, and oftentimes family members would share the task of cooking at home, too.”
Does cooking at home also qualify as work, then? asked Coeus. A professional chef would be compensated for labor, but what of a family member?
“Hm, good question. Probably not in the form of financial remuneration, typically, no. But if we start thinking in more abstract forms of compensation, maybe…”
As I walked myself through the logic, I was reminded of my late grandmother for the first time in quite a while. She grew up in an era before Titan had taken over all cooking duties, and even after the network became ubiquitous she still insisted on cooking breakfast herself. I still remembered how she’d stand by the stove, stirring a pot full of miso soup. I’d asked her once why she did such a thing, only to be told something along the lines of “I’m your grandma; it’s my job!” So in her mind, cooking breakfast for me each morning was a form of work—but this was a sense of the word I clearly still didn’t fully comprehend.
Does eating qualify as work as well? Coeus asked.
“I mean, if you want to go there,” I said, “then we’ve also got to ask ourselves if living qualifies as work, in and of itself. What would you say to that?”
He had no immediate response, but it was a big question, big enough that perhaps no amount of ruminating would produce an answer. But something told me that this question would prove fundamental to finding the answers we sought regarding the nature of work itself, so I stuck a pin in it for now.
We finished our meal and cleared the table, then made a concerted effort to clean up. Of all the types of work that had ever been done exclusively by human hands, I genuinely could not believe that dishwashing was one of them.
It sucked.
6
A framed print of the photo I took of Coeus at the Petropavlovsk collection mall. I was pleased with how well the developed image came out; though his posture and facial expression were quite stiff, Coeus otherwise looked like an ordinary human being this time around. No longer was he merely an indistinct gathering of light, as in the photo we took back at the base, the new clarity thanks to the use of pixie technology Coeus had developed for himself. His form was more tangible now—more real—thanks to his potentially world-changing innovation, yet whose creator thought nothing of it whenever he idly glanced over at the photo of himself and smiled.
Day eleven. Coeus and I were continuing our way north up the eastern bank of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and conducting plenty of counseling sessions along the way. He could pilot his titanic body onward through treacherous terrain while also conversing with me about highly abstract concepts in personified form. This was no surprise. As a Titan, he’d been designed to carry out tasks for hundreds of millions of people all at once. Parallel processing was his forte.
Food production is one of my most important jobs, said Coeus. We had cooked dinner together again tonight, and that got us talking about the act of eating once more, which was how this current topic came about. Agriculture, fishing... Basically anything related to the creation and harvesting of raw food—we call it the primary sector—is of utmost importance to the network.
“Makes sense. Humans have to eat to survive,” I said, then took a sip of my black tea. “Though you know, before the invention of things like agriculture, we were actually a hunter-gatherer species ourselves, just like any other animals. We only consumed whatever bounty nature saw fit to bestow upon us.”
Coeus nodded along as he listened, an earnest glint in his eyes.
“But after we realized we could farm as much food as we wanted,” I went on, “and slowly became good enough at it that we produced more food than we could consume, hunting and gathering became virtually unnecessary. Worth noting that this is also when humanity’s population began to skyrocket. But anyway, just looking at it from a top-down angle…”
I used my finger as a pen to draw a simple diagram on the holofield suspended in the air before us—a sort of whiteboard that the two of us could share. I wrote down three line items for our consideration:
Animals → Hunt animals
Early Humans → Hunt animals
Later Humans → Agriculture
“So we can both agree that agriculture qualifies as work.”
Yes, said Coeus. I just got done explaining how we consider it part of the primary sector of the economy.
“Well, you also said fishing is part of the primary sector, correct? So by that logic, we also have to consider what our hunter-gatherer ancestors did to be work as well. But then that begs the question,” I said, pointing to the top line on the diagram, “does animals hunting other animals also qualify as work?”
The discussion ground to a halt; this one would require a bit more thought.
I feel somewhat opposed to that notion, Coeus eventually said. When I think of the word “work,” my mind’s natural inclination is to connotate it as human activity. If I were to look at a predator killing its prey, I would never conclude “Oh, yes. That animal is doing work.” But as you said, this does present a logical inconsistency.
“Not sure I’d go quite that far,” I said. “But I’m glad we’re on the same page overall. It’s definitely a conundrum. So now, we’ve hit a fork in the road. Either we assert that work is something that, by definition, only people can do, or we accept the notion that what animals do can also qualify as work. Not that we can’t circle back and explore the other path later, of course. We’re just trying to build a hypothesis for now.”
Which one feels right to you, Miss Seika?
“Well, you know me… I prefer to keep as many options on the table as possible,” I said, trying to see a way through the woods. “If we decide that only people are capable of work, then I think this will probably devolve into a much more philosophical debate, whereas assuming a broader definition would likely entail a more scientific analysis—though I’m sure we’ll get a bit of both regardless. Personally, I’m inclined to build our hypothesis from the outside in, under the assumption that work is a universal concept not intrinsically tied to humanity or personhood. Though I’ll be the first to admit that this is mostly my own intuition talking.”
But…
I lifted my head with a start, then turned to look at him. Was he about to present an opposing viewpoint? This was a significant development.
But work… he started again, still a bit uncertain.
“You’re fine. Go ahead,” I said.
But something has to be your job to be work, doesn’t it? Animals can’t have jobs.
I was genuinely taken aback. He was diverting the conversation back to one of our previous discussions, but given that we hadn’t yet established that simply being alive counted as work, his point wasn’t entirely without merit. And, early human hunters were compensated for their spoils in some way, if not monetarily; could animals be compensated too, or was survival its own compensation? It was an interesting question, to be sure.
I did some audible hemming and hawing as I tilted my head from side to side, trying to jostle my brain into coming up with a way to rebut Coeus. I had to stay on my toes.
“Well, okay. I’ll grant you that technicality, but jobs are also a societal construct, and some animal societies do have individuals with roles and obligations to fulfill for the sake of the collective. So if a job is just a function one serves, there’s no contradiction there. And in a more abstract sense,” I said, placing one hand on my stomach, “don’t our internal organs have jobs to fulfill? And when one stops doing its job, wouldn’t we say just that? That it’s not ‘working’ properly?”
Coeus’s eyes went wide. I was glad to see I’d effectively gotten my point across. Organs were a part of a person, to be sure, but they were not people themselves. (And animals had organs too, obviously.) They were organized into distinct systems, the individual elements of which all worked together to achieve the common goal of keeping us alive and well. While perhaps this analogy ascribed more human characteristics to an unthinking tissue or blood cell than was reasonable, it still made an interesting case for a broader conception of the word “work.” Why, not even every “working” part of the system had to be alive—vitamins and minerals did work to keep our bodies running too.