Years ago I ranted about how the so-called “protestant work ethic” is largely bullshit in this post. But now, I’d like to revisit a few key ideas.
First, let me talk about getting hassled in Thamel.
It was my last day in Nepal, but most shops in Pokhara had been closed, and now, back in Kathmandu, I needed to do some shopping, hoping to find something fun to send to my sister’s family, or some cool decorations I could bring home. It was late morning and my flight was in the afternoon. I had maybe 3 hours tops to get lunch and find any last-minute souvenirs or decorations.
I took a walk down one of the streets parallel to the hotel. A young man came over to me.
“Hello, sir! You have a nice beard!”
“Uh, hi”.
“I’m a student, practicing my English. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Uh, sure”.
He asking me where I was from and all that, then went on to tell me how some festival was going on in such and such a direction, then how down that way things were less touristy, etc. He said most tourists didn’t know about this, but he was letting me know.
Uh-huh, okay.
I don’t know how this came up, but he said something about how Americans were so nice. I laughed. Overall, Americans can be nice in the sense that no matter what is going on in the world, there are some people here who care. And that’s pretty cool. But Americans are also human, and they can be assholes, and if you think all of them are nice, you clearly don’t know anything about America, so the laugh was quite appropriate.
After several minutes, I started getting really impatient. The clock was ticking. I needed food and needed to search the stores.
I think it started with him offering to show me to the festival, or the area that was “less-touristy”. I started getting really annoyed. I tried to explain I just wanted to check some of the shops. “Oh, we can go together, I can show you around!” he said. What? No. I tried to be emphatic. My flight was in 2.5 hours, I just needed to do some shopping for decorations. “I have an art store! I can show you!” I got really, really annoyed. “I’m not trying to sell you anything! Just take a look!” I replied that I had already bought art (and I had). “How much did you pay?” I told him I didn’t think that was any of his business and after I starting to walk down the street, I finally managed to shake him off.
Then it all made sense. Personal flattery. National flattery. Giving “insider” information. Offering to show me around. He wasn’t a student trying to practice his English at all. He was a salesman.
“Son of a bitch”, I thought, when the truth hit me. Smart. Very smart. How do you lead somebody to your pitch? Play off of their friendliness by pretending to be a student.
But that’s not even the best part. The best part is just two streets down, another guy came up to me. “Hello, sir! You have a nice beard!”
Fuck.
This conversation was much shorter. He offered to walk me that way, too, so at this point I turned down another road, which apparently wasn’t part of his “route”, so he didn’t follow or hound me further.
I never did find the restaurant I was looking for, so I resolved to just buy some snacks from a place I went to when I first arrived. They were friendly and had a great selection, so I definitely wanted to go back.
I got over several streets to just barely get to the front of the store before I realize it was closed, to my great disappointment. But there, right beside the building, were two guys sitting down, who immediately launched into a pitch. I pointed to the building to say what I was there for, but the shop was closed. “I have a shop! Let me show you!”
I turned down the street to head back. He followed beside me, mentioning what he had at his shop. I shook my head, waved my hand. “I’m not interested”. He continued. “I’m not interested”. He continued. “I’m not interested”. At this point, I was just angry.
The carriage man. “Hello, sir! Looking for a ride?” No.
Then the hash man. “Hello, sir! You looking for something? Hash?” No.
No. No. No.
I did find a place that sold snacks. That was my lunch. I did find a small shop with a few things I thought my nieces might like. The owner was a young woman who was very nice.
I wanted to punch a wall when I got back to the hotel. I was just so annoyed and pissed off. All I wanted to do…was walk around…and find some stuff. And I ended up getting hassled by all sorts of random strangers. And I don’t like getting hassled by random strangers. I’m sure the English is understood well enough, but what do you have to do, learn how to say “fuck off” in Nepali? I was so pissed.
At the same time…tourism is like 20% of the Nepalese economy. And it was shut down completely for 1.5 years during the pandemic. You’ll find hucksters anywhere in the world, but this, actually, I think is different.
Some of those guys were very young and probably didn’t have families. But…would you hassle tourists if it was the difference between putting food on the table or not? Would you hassle tourists if it meant having enough to provide for your family? Would you turn up every day at the airport, struggling against several dozen others, hoping to earn even just one fare from the airport, because you need it?
It dawned on me that people don’t typically do these things when they have better options. In general, shop owners in Nepal are just more bold than shop owners in the United States. That’s partly why it was so annoying to me; it’s just cultural. But moreover, the constant hassling…it’s what you do when you need to make ends meet. And wouldn’t you do the same?
See, this is another area where the Western “protestant work ethic” gets things wrong. There’s this idea that “if a man doesn’t work, he shall not eat”, which we get from the Bible, but this doesn’t make much sense when there’s no work to go around. My understanding is that that passage is talking about laziness, but some people mean it to say that all work is virtuous, which is not true. If it was true, then hassling tourists in Thamel would be virtuous, but it’s not; it sucks. If it was true, then prostitution would be virtuous, but it’s not. It does mean that you shouldn’t think that lower-wage jobs are “below” you, if you really need the money, but the work ethic itself assumes that work is abundantly available and is inherently virtuous, but that’s not how the world works. This isn’t fucking 16th century England, where work means ‘ploughing thy field’. And having good work ethic doesn’t mean willingly subjecting yourself to slavery conditions, which is what most minimum-wage jobs happen to offer. Is it any surprise that the Protestant Work Ethic was largely formulated during the time of the industrial revolution? “Work, slaves! Jesus commands it!” (And I still need to read Max Weber)
In a sense, I can’t help but admire those people in Thamel who were annoying me. Again, wouldn’t you do it if that was your only way forward in life? Probably. But is it virtuous? No. Is it ideal? No.
My hope for the world is that everybody would have access to good jobs and good opportunities. But that’s not always what the world offers.
In the United States, our lives are highly dependent on large incomes because we build systemic complexity into them. We have subscriptions to pay, cars to fill with gas, kitchens and bathrooms to renovate, etc. People who don’t have these things are “weird”. Bums like me who take a year off are kind of awkwardly regarded, though you’d be amazed how comfortable of a life you can live on less than $30,000 if you reduce the systemic complexity in your life. Rather than pay their houses off, people get obsessed with larger and more complex houses, hoping to profit off the equity, only to lose everything when a recession cancels their job and causes the house of cards to collapse. “Work ethic”, misconstrued, makes it a virtue to slave away to pay for all of these things, rather than a virtue to not need them in the first place.
I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this (when do I ever?). As annoyed as I was with those people in Thamel, after some reflection, I learned to sympathize with them, if it’s okay to do so. In an economic setting that presents better opportunities, far fewer people choose to do that sort of thing. This would be ideal, but in the meantime, it’s good to be patient with people. What we can learn from this is that the Protestant Work Ethic doesn’t consider these things and really distorts the fact that systemic economic issues exist that go beyond the purview of laziness vs. industriousness. Also, not all jobs are equal, and maybe a little compassion can go a long way.