TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Is Work Getting You Down?
Date: 07/12/26 Length: 00:33:58
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors, and thank you for being part of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I, your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. And I welcome each and every one of you, Happy Warriors. Those of you who take care of your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendships, and your faith, and those of you understand and benefit from understanding the connection between each one of those fives, what I call the 10 cross links, and the the topic for today, work. Yeah, work. People use phrases like you know, work-life balance, and I'm not defined by my work. And even more than that, there has been a very dramatic change in the number of people working. And what's more, people even take pride in saying they've stopped working, not to say they've retired, and not to explain exactly how they managed to continue living, but there's a pride in no longer. So once upon a time, you used to get people saying things like, you know, I want to retire by the time I'm 35, or I hope to never have to work again, to have enough money to never have to work again. So these kinds of phrases all suggest that people misunderstood a very basic fact, and that is that we do live to work. Work is under the F of finance in our five Fs, and I also live for my family, and I also live for my faith, and I also live for friends, and yes, my own self, my body, my fitness, my self identity-all part of the same thing. All of those things, but yes, not defined entirely by my work, but neither is it irrelevant. And so I want to talk about work and general misunderstandings on work. And I can't think honestly. I can't think of a better place to start than comedian Chris Rock. Now I'm going to tell you what he says, but do yourself a favor and find it on YouTube and and listen to it yourself. He is so much better at this than I am, and it's a scene where Chris Rock explains how you can tell a good neighborhood from a bad neighborhood, and it's based simply on who isn't working in the middle of the day-that's what he talks about. So what Chris Rock says is, if you're in any neighborhood in America at 1215 in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and you see women with sweatpants on coming out of the gym, pushing babies, riding bikes, chances are you're in a nice neighborhood. There's probably a Whole Foods nearby, but if you see men in sweatpants smoking cigarettes, hanging with their boys, lifting weights in the yard, riding children's bicycles as their actual transportation, then you are in danger. And he goes on to say that he said, "I want to live in a neighborhood where women voluntarily choose not to work. There's a lot to unpack in those wise words of one of America's philosophers. So, yeah, there are certain things that go on in a neighborhood that run down the neighborhood, that diminish the neighborhood, that make it a less good neighborhood, a less good neighborhood. You know, alcohol stores, right? Stores that sell alcohol, drug activity, even marijuana stores in states where it's become legal. You can see it runs down the neighborhood, and neighborhoods where men are not working. You see, if women aren't working outside the house, that's different. And Chris Rock is astute enough to notice it and brave enough to say it. Because yes, we were to we were created to work, and our work provides unique meaning and purpose in our lives. But I'm speaking primarily about men, because men must work in the F of finance. Women need to work, but they work in the F of family, and that's where they find maximum fulfillment, and so really, what happens is that a man and a woman get married, and they say to each other, "Look, there's two separate areas of work that needs to be done. One is building the home, building the family, building." Family relationships, taking care of all of those things, and one of them is bringing in revenue, producing an income. Now let's figure out which one of us is more suited to each of those jobs. It's just plain stupid for us both to do both jobs. There's no virtue in that.
Daniel Lapin 5:20
Both doing both jobs means that one of us is actually redundant, and the truth is, redundant people have to be gotten rid of. You don't keep redundant people around, and so we've got to understand that. And again, speaking primarily to men here, and and why don't we spend a moment trying to define work now in physics, and I always find the real world is a good place to start. In the real world, work is defined as a force multiplied by the distance through which the point of application of that force moves. So, what this is essentially saying is that if I lean against a heavy piece of furniture and I push against that bookcase with heavy force, but it doesn't move, I'm just not pushing it hard enough to overcome the friction that it has on the carpet. I can push until the sweat runs down my face, but I've achieved no work. I've done no work largely because I've achieved nothing. Nothing has changed in the world, so that's not a bad definition of work. It's what changes. Are you actually effecting a change? As soon as that bookcase slides along the carpet. I've now actually done work, so I can apply a force. But if it hasn't moved, it's not done any work at all. Work is improving the lives of other people. How do you know that you've done that? Well, through the wonderful miracle of money, that tells you that you are delivering something of value. But there may be other ways of knowing you're delivering something of value, and so if a if a wife makes her husband's life a joy, a cocoon of tranquility and peace. He expresses gratitude, and he makes sure that she lacks for nothing. So he's not actually giving her a paycheck, but he is providing financial security. That's part of the deal, and so the result is she is doing work, and he is doing work. No question about it. Now, the tough thing I think to understand is that yes, as I said earlier, we were created to work, and our work provides unique meaning and purpose in our lives. Today in America, I can tell you about two numbers, and I know we have many, many listeners outside the United States of America, but it's still worthwhile knowing because very often trends that you spot easily in America because of very good statistics and record keeping are trends that are either also happening in other places around the world or are about to do so. Okay, one of them sports betting from 2018 in the year 2018 $5 billion a year was being spent on sports betting in America. By 2025, what's that? Seven years later, the figure was 150 billion. So just to make sure you heard that right, in seven years the amount of money that Americans spent on betting on sports, and that's not horses, that's not all kinds, and that's not poker. That's betting on things we think of as professional sports, went from 5 billion to 100 and fifth billion, 30 times increase. Population of America did increase by 30 times. So this is a an epidemic that has spread throughout the culture. That tells us something. People wanting to get something for nothing. That's what betting is. Why would I risk my money on the off chance of getting a whole lot more without actually having to work for it? So I see that statistic as an indicator of diminished interest in work in America. More and more people thinking, I only work because I have to. But if I can figure out a way to survive without working, maybe I can tell the government I I'm disabled and I can get disability payments, or maybe I can join a group of Somalis in Minnesota and rip the government off with Medicaid and many other areas. But whatever it is, I've got to find an alternative to work. Work is bad. That seems to be the mood. And another statistic that is even more directly to the point is that the number of Americans in the prime working demographic, 20-five years old to 50 years old, the percentage of Americans who were at work a few years ago was three quarters, 70-5% It's now about 60% That means about one in three men.
Daniel Lapin 11:07
I'm talking men between the ages of 20-five and 50. About one in three not working, not looking for work, not wanting to work. Problem. It is a problem. So Chris Rock is like is right. When you see people and who figured out a way of not having to work, maybe they get welfare, maybe they get disability, maybe they still got COVID payments. Who knows? But whatever it is, maybe it's crime. But whatever it is, they're hanging out in the middle of the afternoon. They're not doing any work. They're hanging out. Bad, bad sign for a society. Very bad sign. And so, what is it that work is? Well, as I said, work is where you are benefiting other human beings. Easy way to tell that you're benefiting other human beings. They pay you. They value what you're doing for them so much that they don't want you to stop doing it. And the way to encourage you to do it is by paying you. Fantastic. Or alternatively, work within a family that women do. Right. Fantastic. Not any easier, but it's different, and that is valuable. That's what work is. How about an artist says, "I work hard every day. I am painting. Well, it's a little bit like me pushing the bookcase and going nowhere, because we have to find out if there are any people who really value what you're painting. Do they pay you for it? That's a really good indication. And if your response is, "I'm not interested in crass commercialism. I'm doing it for the art, for a higher purpose. No, there is no such thing as crass commercialism. Commercialism is holy because it provides connection between human beings, and it allows human beings to fulfill something for which our souls were created. Our souls were created to connect with other people, our souls were created to connect, to communicate, to collaborate, and to create. And although it's not necessarily work, but the highest example of the aspiration of our souls is is in marriage, where a man and a woman are drawn to connect with one another, and then they collaborate with one another, and the result is they create something together that neither could have done alone, and that serves as a useful metaphor for this deep, unquenchable, unquenchable desire on the part of human beings to connect with other human beings in a meaningful way. And going to work, some of our meaningful relationships come about through work, and we can connect and collaborate with other people at work, and the result is something is created that never could have been done alone. Modern software is, in addition to everything else, it is a tribute to organizational genius. It's the creation, and I'm talking about the companies that create software. They have built a system whereby the creative efforts of 10,000 people are joined together in one amazing river of progress. Can you imagine 1000s of human beings, usually men in the software business, creative, all of them inching the project forward, each of them dealing with a small part of a vast and complex software giant. But that's really one of the reasons we should all say thanks to our employers, because our employers enable us to collaborate with other human beings to result in the creating of a product or a service that we wouldn't be able to do if we were all isolated individuals. As isolated individuals, we all have to resort to becoming subsistence peasants. We should grow wheat. We should keep a few animals. We slaughter them for meat and for leather. We can make shoes, and we can weave wool into clothing. That's the way to live. If you cannot collaborate with other people, that is the genius, and that's part of what God said in chapter two of Genesis. It's not good for man to be alone, not good literally, because being not alone means that we have no choice but to revert to a subsistence form of economic activity, which isn't very good, but when we can communicate, connect, collaborate, create, our souls find deep fulfillment.
Daniel Lapin 16:34
Unfortunately, our bodies would much prefer to laze around and lounge around and linger around and not do anything, but if we can discipline our bodies to work with us, and we can fulfill ourselves creatively by connecting and communicating and collaborating with other human beings, that's called work, and that is profoundly fulfilling. It's important to realize that today we we live in in a crisis of of apathy and ignorance regarding the existential importance of work, and I can't stress this enough. We were created for work. It is an important part of us. It's one of the five key areas of our lives. Is work? Think about it. What is the real meaning? If you look at the Hebrew text of Genesis, God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to work it. What that really means is that how you create your Garden of Eden is with work. You know when you really realize how wonderful work is when you're out of work. When you don't have work, that's when you realize. And you know, maybe you have to create your own work. Maybe you have to start generating entrepreneurial activity, finding a way to serve other people. But we don't work in order to live, because that would encourage retirement, which is a bad, bad, bad, immoral idea. Yeah, that's right. If you're only working to get money when you got enough, stop working. Not an accident that people who stop working generally deteriorate mentally, physically. It's not a good thing to stop working because there's nothing more thrilling than serving other human beings. There's nothing more thrilling with connecting and communicating and collaborating with another human being. And so we got to realize that ignore the cultural messages that talk about you must work less. Oh, here's another bad one. Have you heard of work life balance? I've spoken against this for years. Stop looking for work life balance. Right? Does anybody say I want to find a balance between my work and my hygiene? No, they're both part of life, and work is under the effort of finance. It is an important part of life, so don't listen to people who think you must stop thinking about your career, and you must start thinking about things that they bring me happiness. Don't even read books that that encourage you to work less, and there are a lot of very popular, very well written books about diminishing the amount of work you do. Not valuable. People will tell you must separate your identity from what you do. That is false. What I do is 1/5 of who I am. It's not an accident that Jonah, in the book of Jonah, this this is marvelous part in the first chapter of Jonah, verse seven. They can't figure out who's responsible for bringing on the bad weather, and so they throw lots and it comes out on Jonah. So they come to in verse eight and they say, "Tell us now, because of whom has this evil befallen us? What is your work? Where do you come from? What is your land, and from what people are you? Their very first question is, "What is your work? That is an essential part of a man's identity, not a woman's, but it is an essential part of a man's identity. And so, we've got to realize and understand that the cultural message about work is doing you no service at all. For many, I've got to tell you, the you know you hear you read about anxiety and alienation and all these things people are suffering from, and all the 1000s of therapists popping into the therapy industry because of all the huge number of people who are sitting and telling therapists about their misery and their unhappiness and their anxieties, got to tell you, you want to know how to cure 90-9% of that? Get a job. It's not an accident that the majority of people who go to therapists are people who don't have jobs. Now they won't tell you, "Oh, I sit around doing nothing, because people find a way to fill their time. But not working is a huge difference. Not working produces alienation, and a lot of this is due to the diminishing perspective that people have on work.
Daniel Lapin 22:11
Every kind of work, service, effort, striving-it's in all that that we discover our meaning and our purpose. A significant and successful life is rooted in full-time productivity and cultivation of God's world, doing things to improve the world. And in ancient Jewish wisdom, as this is discussed, it's literally discussed in those terms that work is improving God's world. Now there are things that can bring you money that are not improving the world, and that's not considered productive work. Holding people up at the point of a gun and taking their money. Obviously, that is not work. Selling drugs, not work. I'm not going to include in that, by the way, selling tobacco, because although there is hysterical anti-tobacco moods and feelings, there are people who make a choice to smoke tobacco for benefits, whether it's using the nicotine to help with concentration or it's to suppress appetite because for them reducing weight is more important than not smoking. So I don't want to put smoking in the same category as drugs. I won't do that. But sale of pornography, encouraging substance dependency-they're all kinds of things like that that are not really work at all, and they won't provide the same satisfaction that real work does. But actually helping people become more doing something for people that is hugely valuable, and so do women who are running families, who are wives and mothers, find deep fulfillment in that? Certainly, seems they do. If you listen to them and if you talk to them, I remember a very left-wing Democratic member of Congress once came to speak to my congregation in California many years ago, and she got hold of a bunch of the women and started trying to tell them that they are being exploited by being wives and mothers. They're being exploited, and they need to get back to real work. And some of the women led her into intellectual traps in which she floundered, and I was so proud of those women. And they were saying things. So explain to me, Miss Abso, why is it that a woman who serves a boss at work, no matter. How menial the work is doing something valuable and important, but that same woman who's serving her husband and her children is being a slave and is being exploited. Somebody else said to her, "So the only value of a woman is in order to pay tax to increase government revenue. Is that what you're saying, and so yeah, these the culture is very very down on work for men, and very up on work for women. That should in itself give you a clue, because for the most part, if you invert the cultural message 180 degrees, you're probably doing right. That's probably how things ought to work. And so, yeah, I know this is very much against the cultural message. But if you are a man working, try and absorb into your being. Wrap yourself around this idea that work is hugely valuable to you as a man. It's contributing to your life, and a significant part of your daily time. Maybe even the majority of the. Maybe this is the one thing we do more of than anything else, which is work. And if so, that's good. And if you if you do look after all your five Fs, and you're not just working for yourself, but you're working to support a wife and children, now it becomes super meaningful. Work is real. Work is important. It is something that brings meaning to our lives. It improves the world God created, and it improves the lives of everyone else in the world. That is what work is, and it is a positive thing. So, although it's only 1/5 of your 5f life, it's one that I've discovered is being increasingly neglected in the United States of America, and this started. I got to tell you, I've tracked it back to 1965, was when I started seeing the derogatory writings on work, right? Like everything else, round about that period, the early 60s, and it's increased and increased since then. And the number of people not interested in working has been going down. Makes perfect sense, right? Because if people could not be influenced by cultural messages, all the money spent on advertising would be utterly wasted. Because obviously nobody listens. No people listen.
Daniel Lapin 27:42
Advertising works, and when the cultural message is beamed out again and again and again, there's a very good reason that it has an impact on society. So yes, work really does matter. Work is an important in and of itself, and it is very much a part of my identity. So when somebody says, "Who are you? How do I usually answer? Well, I give my name, and if they're still looking at me quizzically, I say I'm a Jew, just like Jonah said. I'm an American, and I am a plumber, or a roofer, or a rabbi, whatever it is. Those are all part of my identity, and those are all the things I specify. And it's interesting that the cultural message of the left has been to try and convert your identity from these externally defined things into internal ones, and so people will tell you about their gender preferences and their sexuality, and they even tell you about their disability. Isn't it funny? I mean, I've seen this again and again and again. You ask. secular liberals, you know. So who are you? And well, I'm part of this aggrieved minority. I'm a this. I'm a that. That's what they do. But and it's all internally defined. It's based on your feelings. You know, I feel this and I feel that, and that's who I am. I don't think that much of my identity is shaped by my feelings, shaped by external facts. I'm a man. Notice that again. Secular liberals would rather tell you I trans or bi, or because I feel all these different things. No, I am a man with everything that you and I and the culture and the whole world understands to mean to be the meaning of the phrase. I am a man. I am an American. That's also not up to me to define. Being an American means something, and I. I'm a plumber. Well, that doesn't mean that some days I can fix pipes and some days I can do people's gardens. I'm a plumber means something that it's defined very, very clearly. I'm a Jew. That also means that it should mean, and it does mean something, even though within the culture today it's become because of the trend to self-define everything and to reject external restraints on my life. But don't forget, external restraints on life are what make us productive. They're good, and the whole way, the whole reason we're able to live happy, fulfilled, productive lives is because in aspects of our lives we do accept restraints. That is hugely important. Obviously, work is a restraint. I can't go for a hike during working hours. I can't sit around and watch a screen during working hours. I've got to actually be moving a force through a distance. I've got to be changing the world somehow. I've got to be improving the lives of other people. Think about it. Hope this is useful to you. If you're a Happy Warrior, please on Happy Warrior website, which is wehappywarriors.com. Please let me know your thoughts on this. If you're not yet a happy warrior, why not? I ask. So until next week, please move effortfully, forcefully onwards and upwards with your finances. Yes, your work, your finances, your family, your faith, your fitness, and your friendships. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Thank you for being part of the show, and God bless.
Daniel Lapin 31:55
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Daniel Lapin 33:04
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