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Writing in the Texas Tech Daily Toreador Chris Leal asks us to ponder a puzzle:

It seems as if we truly live our lives out of a work of science fiction. Yet, despite the vast wealth of knowledge we have gained in the last century, we still continue to fuel our lifestyles and our automobiles by burning the decomposed remains of dinosaurs and organisms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Think about that….

Imagine if you had to put gasoline in your laptop, or that your iPhone was coal powered; what a funny piece of technology that would be. Yet, we live in a world where news about oil spills and coal mine accidents are still all-too-common…

Yes, think about that. We use decomposed dinosaurs to fuel our industrial civilization—a feat possible only because our engineers have learned methods of extracting a substance from miles beneath the surface of the earth, a process fraught with hazards which have been dealt with so effectively that harmful accidents have been relegated to rare exceptions. And fossil fuel extraction is not just a feat of advanced technology in its own right, but one that does fuel that laptop or iPhone—if you are one of the nearly 70% of Americans whose electricity comes from fossil fuels. Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute notes additional ways in which petroleum and its products contribute to state-of-the-art technology and our standard of living:

One underappreciated form is petroleum-based products. We live in a world where chemists are able to employ oil to suit any conceivable purpose, from making shatterproof glasses to ultra-durable synthetic rubber tires to medical implants to bacteria-resistant refrigerators to HDTVs to iPhones. Look in your home and you can find 100 things made of oil in no time.

And if you look at the "Made In" labels on everything you use — from your Asian electronics to your pineapple from Hawaii to your oranges from California to your beef from Omaha to your furniture from Sweden — you will begin to appreciate the system of global trade that could not exist without oil-powered transportation — the 800 million-plus planes, automobiles, trucks, ships and tankers that move men, machines and material quickly and cheaply.

Nearly every item in your life would either not exist or be far more expensive without oil; there is simply no comparable source of practical, portable energy.

Read the rest of Epstein’s article in Investor’s Business Daily, and a more recent blog post elaborating on the same theme.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

What’s more important – your work or your relationships? That’s the question posed by David Brooks in his op-ed in the New York Times. He references the case of Sandra Bullock, whose career success has recently been overshadowed by her husband’s infidelity. There are other common examples of the work-versus-relationship struggle –the businessman who goes on trips and misses his children’s events, a man who leaves behind his first love for a job opportunity, the tireless inventor who spends more time in the lab than with his wife.

Brooks argues that relationships are what are really important.  “[E]conomic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and...emerge[s] out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important,” he says. Brooks cites various studies, which claim that a marriage is the “psychic gain equivalent of a $100,000” and that “meeting with a group at least once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income.”

In other words, the idea is that work is a shallow, materialistic necessity surpassed in importance by the spiritual, personal value of a relationship. Indeed, it is easy to see why a relationship is a spiritual value worth its weight in money. Personal relationships bring immense benefit to one’s life in many ways. The connection between two people can serve as a source of strength in difficult times, and a means to celebrate and enjoy success. A relationship can inspire one to be a better person by observing the good in a friend or lover and wanting to emulate it, or can help one grow through the guidance of a mentor.

But is work as empty by comparison as Brooks would lead us to believe? Is what a man does from the hours of 9 to 5 so surface-level that it should take a back seat to the depths of meaning found in one’s relationships?

Not necessarily. Consider the following perspective:

“The object of living is work, experience, and happiness. There is joy in work. All that money can do is buy us someone else's work in exchange for our own. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”

That was said by Henry Ford, who was no stranger to long hours. As Ford indicates, what one accomplishes through his work does provide a spiritual value: the pride that comes from knowing that you are working towards your own happiness, and the satisfaction that this knowledge brings you. This is why a person feels elated after accomplishing a difficult task: because all values, spiritual and material, have to be created before they can be enjoyed. Inherent in the process of creation is work – the effort it takes to make values real – and just as the end result is rewarding, so is the process. And since work deals with the creation of values, it follows that there is no other place in a man’s life where he can express his creativity to its fullest potential.

Clearly, productive work can and ought to be personally fulfilling.  But where does this put one’s career in comparison to one’s personal relationships?  Consider a hypothetical relationship between two people who undertake no productive endeavors, neither work nor vigorous hobbies.  What would such a relationship consist of?  There would be no ambitions to share, no accomplishments to celebrate, no independent growth to encourage or experience in the other person.  Such a relationship would be ultimately empty, an association between two barely-existing people.

In contrast, the best relationships demonstrate the necessity of a productive foundation. One’s work creates not only the material possessions one enjoys, but also one’s character. It is central to achieving integrity, honesty, and a sense of self-worth, all of which help form the substance that rewarding relationships are made of.

The argument that work is a lowly activity compared to the nobler, transcendent nature of relationships is a classic philosophical view. But there is no basis for this dichotomy. To view relationships as more important than work is like viewing water as more important than food. Both are vital for a full life.

Of course, it can be difficult to integrate one’s working life with one’s interpersonal relationships in a way that makes the best of both.  What’s important is to grant both of them the emphasis they deserve, and to appreciate the way they fuel and enhance each other.  So to the question “what’s more important, work or relationships?” we can answer: both.

In a recent column for the Harvard Crimson commenting on the dubious legislation in Arizona that would make it easier for police to question people about their immigration status, Raúl Carrillo makes the following argument:

Immigration reform, even during a recession, doesn’t have to put American’s citizen workforce and undocumented immigrants at odds. There’s more than enough room for common ground. Reform policies should be guided by the principle of offering safe employment to the undocumented who already work here and unionizing those jobs to raise wages. When workers of any origin can’t live with their families, organize, and work for their children’s healthcare and education, everyone in this country suffers. A more controlled and humane immigration system can help undocumented immigrants integrate into the rest of the American workforce.

Carrillo is right that American and immigrant workers don’t have to be at odds with each other. But he’s wrong that the source of the harmony is found in a policy that increases the level of government intervention in the market. As Rebecca Knapp argued in The Undercurrent in September of 2006, it is the free market, rather than government intervention, which ensures a harmony of interests between citizens and non-citizens alike:

It's easy to see that the employer benefits from having his property rights protected when he's hiring the cheapest babysitter or fruit picker. What everyone seems happy to ignore is that the other guy-the more expensive babysitter or fruit picker, the guy whose job was "stolen" from him-also benefits. He benefits from living in a society in which jobs are given to the most competitive job-seekers. He benefits because when goods can be produced at a cheaper price, the economy grows. He benefits because the owner of the orchard where he didn't get a job uses his savings to open a produce store or cultivate a new orchard and hires twice the workers he employed before. Or it allows him to spend more money on entertainment and the entertainment industry grows, or he banks the money and the bank invests it in new, productive industries which hire more workers. Whatever the farmer does with his extra money, wealth increases, the economy improves, and the country becomes a better place to live.

Read Rebecca’s whole piece.

Image by Flickr user johnwilliamsphd

Within the confusion surrounding the immigration issue is a crucial moral question

Much has been said about the recent Arizona law that requires police to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Critics argue the law is vague, unconstitutional, and will lead to racial profiling as police try to enforce it. Defenders respond that it is simply a means to enforce the rule of law – if people are committing crimes, shouldn’t the police be empowered to bring them to justice? On its face, there seems to be a conflict between two compelling cases: the rights of citizens on the one hand, and the rule of law on the other.

The issue has become a confusing maze of seemingly unrelated aspects. A short list would include racial profiling, police-public relations, federal versus state jurisdiction, drug smuggling, employment of undocumented workers, untaxed welfare benefits, and social impacts on immigrant families. Consequently, our media pundits and politicians offer up uncertain, inconclusive attempts at solutions.

Despite this, the Arizona law has done something clarifying: The chilling image of a police officer demanding proof of citizenship from a person they “suspect” of being illegal has reminded us of the fact that all one has to do to break the law is to have been born in the wrong country. What the papers in question represent is the fact that even the most peaceful, hardworking, and good-natured person is considered a criminal simply by lacking the permission of the federal government to pursue his peaceful, hardworking life in the United States.

But there is no rational basis for such policies, and never has been. America’s founding doctrine of freedom rightly framed a society where no man is causelessly presumed a threat to his neighbor. So long as one respects the freedom of others, he was to be granted the same. Unfortunately, that idea was distorted and replaced by the contradiction that still persists today: that a nation literally born of immigrants considers outsiders criminals until and unless they are granted legal permission to breath, walk, and work inside our borders.

Fundamentally, there is only one thing to say about the issue of immigration: the very existence of the term “illegal immigrant” is a disgrace. Immigration is a legitimate human activity fully consistent with individual rights. Provided he poses no objective threat to anyone else, any man who wants to work or live in America should have his freedom respected by our government—not violated by it. Politically, this means a policy of open immigration, where immigrants are able to register with the government upon arrival in order to properly participate in the legal system and receive protection of their rights. So long as a would-be immigrant poses no clear threat by entering the country (for example, by having a criminal background or an infectious disease), the government imposes no obstacle to entrance. Immigrants would then be free to live their lives as any other resident, bearing full responsibility for earning their own livelihood. (Read more about open immigration here.)

The other issues–racial profiling, legality, alleged economic impact—only serve to distract from the crucial question that the Arizona law prompts us to confront: what has a man done wrong by standing on an American street without permission?