Pain is provided to repel the individual from death; pleasure is provided to call him toward optimum life. The search for and the attainment of pleasure is not less valid in survival than the avoidance of pain. In fact, on some observed evidence, pleasure seems to have a much greater value in the cosmic scheme than pain (2).

But can we talk about pleasure at work? Yes, insofar as man finds pleasure when he creates, when he feels that his work brings about something useful. However, our society is moving towards ever-increasing productivity: man is nothing more than a cog in the wheel who must always be at the top, at the top, at the top, and the slightest fragility, the slightest flaw can lead to his crushing. Hence today’s epidemic of burn-out. Or we hide ourselves away in a job done to earn a living that we don’t really enjoy, but which we let hum along without putting any purpose or game into. This is what Karl Marx was already arguing against in the 19th century, a period of industrialization that saw the emergence of the working class, made up of low-skilled employees whose labor doesn’t ensure to get a finished product, but who merely perform tasks in a huge machine: the workers in a car factory, compared to the first craftsmen who built the first automobiles from scratch. Indeed, in 1844, he wrote: “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever-cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. (3)”

It’s forgetting the value of people. Man at work is indispensable. And he can create games for himself, or at least become aware of his real value. “Men who cannot work are not happy men. Work is the stable datum of this society. Without something to do, there is nothing for which to live, (4)” writes L. Ron Hubbard in his seminal book The Problems of Work. He goes on to say: “Another thing we know is that men are not dispensable. It is a mechanism of old philosophies to tell men that ‘If they think they are indispensable, they should go down to the graveyard and take a look – those men were indispensable too.’ This is the sheerest foolishness. If you really looked carefully in the graveyard, you would find the machinist who set the models going in yesteryear and without whom there would be no industry today. It’s doubtful if such a feat is being performed just now.