What’s it with the fish?

Recently, the Guardian had an article titled “Touching fish craze sees China’s youth find ways to laze amid ‘996’ work culture”. This was a bit puzzling on the first look, so I tried to read it and understand what it was talking about. Turns out, in case you don’t know (like I didn’t), that “996” means having to work from 9 in the morning to 9 in the evening, 6 days a week.

The “fish” reference is explained in the article thus:

According to the article, this leads to behaviours like: “fill up a thermos with whisky, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink litres of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone.” (The Guardian)

And an anonymous person contributed this bit of wisdom: “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right … With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” (The Guardian)

A right to laziness?

This is something to think about, particularly in the context of Aristotle, of whom we have been speaking recently on this blog. It somehow doesn’t seem right that young people, often in their first jobs, on their first steps into their own lives, would see it as a worthwhile activity to sit in the office toilet and play games instead of working. I don’t mean to endorse working twelve hours a day for six days per week, but retreating from work entirely and considering “not working hard” a “basic right” also seems odd and somehow wrong. But why exactly?

It so happens that Aristotle gives us just the right answer.

Aristotle would not at all see “touching fish” as a problem of the legal regulation of work. For him, laws are largely irrelevant to the morality of our behaviour. Yes, we are part of a society, and as such we must find a way of coexisting in a beneficent way with the people around us, but in the end, the purpose of life is not to obey laws but to reach eudaimonia, that perfect kind of happiness that comes from meaningful engagement with the world that surrounds us.

For Aristotle, behaving ethically is not something that we do because we would be punished if we did not obey the laws. It is, rather, the only way of acting rationally, of acting in a way that will, in the long run, benefit ourselves.

And it will do this because every one of us must function as well we can as human beings so that others can also reach the highest level of their “functioning,” of their own “human potential”. And then we will all together profit from that optimal level of everyone realising their …

Read the full article which is published on Daily Philosophy (external link)