Oh, I still love the gatherings
and go to all that time allows,
but it’s hard to be a cowboy poet
if you actually own cows.
—Howard Parker, cowboy poet
and fellow Nebraskan.

Living in academic community is a major shift for many of us who worked physical jobs during the summer break. Kierkegaard and existential bewilderment replaced the tractor and hay bales that filled my summer. Observing this transition has helped me recognize the strong dichotomy between the life of the scholar and the life of the labourer. The schism is probably more drastic for some people than others, but its existence is undeniable.

The Trinity response to this exclusivity would probably include integration of learning, working, and faith in some retro-incarnational, holistic manner. This makes sense initially, but it’s hard to get someone to believe it if they’ve indulged in the banquet of a hard day’s work. The benefits are bountiful: sound sleeping, clear goals, physical exercise, certainty of the morality of hard work, and the nobility of a humble profession. The recognition that there is a simple, fulfilling life of just reward often inoculates one against hunting Sophia on her imperfect trails.

There certainly is a connection between idea and artisanship, opinion and action; it would be unreasonable to divorce one from another. For example, the ideas of “normalcy” and repetitive, cost-effective architecture have greatly influenced the construction of suburban housing. The essence of the vulgarization of unique architecture is probably not, however, foremost in the mind of the construction worker whose vocational purpose is earning wages to support his family; likewise, Shakespeare’s sonnets and Dostoevsky’s narratives don’t help dig a ditch or grow beans.

It seems especially ironic that there would be a dichotomy of the worker and the scholar in the information age. Now, both the physical labourer and the scholar have an education, and many have degrees. One of the modern philosophers who ushered in this age, Descartes, believed that “cultivating [his] reason and advancing… in the knowledge of the truth” gave him “extreme contentment.” He continues, “The satisfaction I had from [cultivating reason] so filled my mind that nothing else was of any consequence.”

If you keep Descartes’ words in mind while considering the modern trend of educated common workers, it seems that this would be is the perfect paradigm of a balanced and contented society. Yet, generally speaking, the same gap between workers and academicians exists now that has in the past, despite an increasingly educated public.

This gap is probably the reason that Socrates never dialogued extensively with workers. He talked with the richest and most educated in Athens, those who had enough money to enjoy leisure and were only involved in effortless labor. However, the majority of “wage-earners” were not concerned with the issues of “justice” and “virtue,” but only with the exercise of day-to-day tasks. For them, I think, justice and virtue were ingrained into their mode of existence, and were not concepts as much as they were “ways of life.”

This “way of life,” if it actually exists, is very attractive to me as a student. As Trinity’s tuition rises and students are compelled to seek more and more financial aid, I wonder if there is a life that produces more contentment and less debt. Maybe the workers in forests, farms, and fields have reached an enlightenment that we “scholars” have yet to attain.

Quote from Howard Parker reprinted with permission from “The Cowboy Poet,” Poetry and Prose from Horsethief Crossing. Published by Sheridan County Publishing.

Quote from Descartes is from Discourse on Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences, third ed. Published by Hackett Publishing Company.