Why God and the Bible were right about why you should have to work a 55 hour 6 day workweek
Why God and the Bible were right about why you should have to work a 55 hour 6 day workweek
The origins of the seven-day week, its biblical roots and the balance between work and rest are shared by author Mark Gerson, who says modern studies support the idea of a productivity ceiling.
Most units of time are based on nature. A day is one rotation of the Earth. A month is the moon’s orbit. A year is the Earth’s path around the sun.
But a week? There’s no natural explanation for it.
Well, given that a moon cycle is about 28 days long, each quarter of that is 7 days. Before we had electric lights at night, most people were very aware of the moon phase.
Now I've actually finished the article. That intro just ticked me off enough that I needed to say something before continuing. :-P
The study they cited shows that, surprise surprise, people need a break. That makes total sense. But the whole 55 hours a week thing? They seem to be advocating for people going to work for 55 hours a week, rather than the typical 40 hours for a full-time job. That's total baloney, though. There is so much work to do outside of my job. They mentioned volunteering and child rearing, but what about the basic work to live?
People have to eat, so they have to prepare food. They have to go to the grocery store. They have to do laundry. They have to clean their house. If they have a yard, there is yard work. There is time spent grooming oneself. If a person has kids, they may need to help their kids with homework. People have to shop for other necessities, like clothes. People spend time commuting to and from work. There is so much necessary stuff to do outside of a job that I would consider "work" because it's neither sleeping nor leisure.
So what is the point of this article? "God was right" that people need a break sometimes? Or "God was right" that the break should only be one day in 7? Are they seriously advocating for moving to a 55-hour work week?
The way they read into the scripture verse was really weird, too. They pulled a lot of meaning that's not textually there out of "Six days thou shalt work." The act of working has some inherent value now beyond what you're actually accomplishing? They're also conflating people not wanting to do any work with people not liking their jobs. Sure, a person could find meaning in being a janitor at a hospital, but not all jobs have some net social benefit like that. A person working at a call center to scam people doesn't have any deeper meaning to find and doesn't have to like their job.
The whole thing sounds like they're saying that everyone needs to shut up and be abused at work, working long hours, and if we're not happy about it, it's our own fault for not liking our jobs, and we need to suck it up and get with the program because Fox News said that God said so.
No thanks.
That's exactly what I was thinking reading through the article... Yeah, I'm generally at my best if I spend most of the day doing stuff, with the occasional rest day. People tend to want to work and accomplish things, but when their time is consumed by what feels like meaningless drudgery on top of the other daily necessities, that's a recipe for a mental health crisis. It feels like the author is deliberately omitting the part where your "55 hours" necessarily has to include all the stuff you work on outside of work, including hobbies.
Also because its rather optimal for a week length. France tried a 10 day week but it was too long.
Isn’t Fox News sort of the Onion, though?
It's a rotten onion
First off, this is a fucking ad. Article author is Mark Gerson who repeatedly references a book titled "God Was Right" written by... Mark Gerson... Set to release next month.
Second, just some of my "favorite" parts:
Contemporary research has shown that we can enjoy and find meaning in any job as long as we frame it correctly. This is called "job crafting."
Numerous studies have found that there is a productivity ceiling.
The rate of production slowed for the hours 50 to 55.
However, there was no increase in output from hours 56 to 70.
"That extra 14 hours was a waste of time."
And so, we now have the number of what we have termed the "productivity ceiling": It's 55 hours a week.
And here’s the amazing and maybe divine math.
A Sabbath observer can work 10 hours a day for five days a week. He can really only work half a day on the sixth, as he needs to prepare for Shabbat — leaving him with a 55-hour work week.And the "numerous studies" was 2, both using the same data, which was on manual labor from World War I.
"job-crafting"
AKA, lets do everything we can to make sure that the people reading this article never hear the term "work/life balance"
10 hours on the clock. 1-2 hours commuting both ways. 1/2 hour eating lunch away from home. 2 hours on basic needs. 8 sleeping. 2 with kids and pets.
This ensures that you will be incapable of happiness or enrichment and will spend every rest day frantically trying to do the stuff you couldn't get done and then vegetating.
Eventually you will burn out if you aren't 20.
This isn't an optimal schedule it's schedulinh a break down
This is being misinterpreted. Back in the bible days they didn’t have to commute and have clean clothes and not smell like shit. When you consider all that as work plus washing and errands on the weekend we’re all working 70 hour weeks. The bible and god himself in all his wisdom and Jesus are telling, no commanding us to work at least 20 hours less a week. Much closer to a 4 or 3 and a half days in the office and the rest is made up of modern life. This is the correct and true interpretation as Christ insisted.
Alternatively Jesus predating all of modern science and medicine had no way to estimate what kind of schedule would be optimal and was just telling people not to work literally every single day.
Eh, by 30 you should be dead anyway. A real Christian would live as they did 2025 years ago, with the same life expectancy.
^(/s)
Dayuuuum
You should work more so that the 1% can buy more mansions and bigger yachts.
Duh.
You should work more so that the 1% can buy more mansions and bigger yachts.
Someone didn't read the article before taking the rage-bait!
This work doesn’t need to be paid. Volunteering and child-rearing certainly count as long as the activity is demanding, consistent and productive.
Volunteering and child-rearing doesn't really build a mansion or yacht now does it?
Volunteering and child-rearing doesn’t really build a mansion or yacht now does it?
How much volunteer work is necessary only because the agencies that should have and would have done those things have been shut down to fund tax cuts for the rich?
Or even more directly because the problems being addressed are a direct consequence of government policies instituted solely to benefit a handful of wealthy donors?
Your apologetics is unbecoming. The article is intentionally written to promote the notion that a 40-hour work week is unbiblical, and the line you've cited is included to give plausible deniability to anyone who says otherwise.
If you take into account any "activity [that] is demanding, consistent and productive" most people are already "working" way more than 55 hours a week, especially if they're a parent. To suggest otherwise is profoundly ignorant or disingenuous. This suggests an ulterior motive: begin manufacturing consent to get rid of weekly work hour limits.
I hate this time line. All the advancements just to make life worse. I saw an article yesterday of a European country looking to raise the retirement age since people live longer. Even at work I have a program that monitors me to the second, and can tell if I'm clicking, typing, or "just moving the mouse." WFH can mean being on call 24/7. Any advice is always how to make do, or downsize. Which isn't bad in itself, but it's to "cope" with oligarchs wringing us dry for every second of time, and any money we happen to have. As things get "better", they just manage to make it worse. It's like the mere idea of a employee being treated like a human being and not their ID never is blasphemy. We have kids in factories and fast food jobs. This is ridiculous, and cruel. We should all be working less.
Have you tried giving up and just rotting into the ground?
Rotting in the ground? Sounds like some woke carbon sequestration scheme. To the biodiesel rendering plant with you, peasant!
i can't afford the bacteria to rot properly
Daily.
The definition of "work" here is the question. I don't think spending 55 hours in front of a computer, under fluorescent lights and breathing recycled air, is what the ancients had in mind.
A study from a hundred years ago proves that
Godmoney was right all along.Thanks, Fox.
Wow this really is blatant and out in the open. You have to be really dumb to not see how obvious this is (very uneducated, indoctrinated, deeply religious).
This is one of the main purposes of religion. To get slaves to work. The slaves of the time were obviously uneducated, and easily manipulatable with superstitious thinking. Convince them when they die, they'll go to heaven and live in paradise. As long as you obey, keep working, and don't fight back.
Its so blatantly obvious, and its right there on FOX news, in the year of our lord 2025. Yowza, the Christians who fall for this are absolutely idiotic, it's hard not to feel pity, as its really not their fault.
Nah, anyone believing in a loving sky daddy as described by the vast majority of religions in the year 2025 yet can believe this kind of anti-human tripe is absolutely contributing to the problem, willfully and consciously.
Nah, as in, no pity, I assume?
The problem is, many believers (arguable how many, but it could be pretty substantial) could be regarded as legally mentally handicapped. This is generally regarded as an IQ of 70 or below. What about those that have IQs from 70-85? Not legally disabled, but very easy to manipulate by intelligent people and would have a difficult time navigating propaganda.
Are the extremely stupid at fault? I'd say no, the entire blame should be placed on those in power who are manipulating these people for personal gain. It's truly psychopathic and sadistic.
But no pity whatsoever to someone who is smart enough to understand, but chooses to go along due to cowardice or other reasons.
Fucking Fox News.
That does sound like an onion article
This work doesn’t need to be paid. Volunteering and child-rearing certainly count as long as the activity is demanding, consistent and productive.
Very nearly said something meaningful, like advocating for UBI, but fucked it up.
How 'bout you stop telling me how to live my life and fuck right off.
Where in the bible does it actually say that?
2 Opinions 3:12
The closest argument that "the Bible argues for a work week" is the first two chapters of Genesis. God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.
.... That's it. That's the whole reason our work week is the way it is. Jewish tradition really ran with that, and Christianity started as a Jewish sect. And of course for-profit business tried to jam as much work as possible into that framework. You can thank unions for the second day in your weekend.
Everything else here, the "10 hours a day" and whatever else, is all just embellishment, possibly citing other parts of the Bible to make it sound more plausible.
So I get to work from home and also raise my kids on corporate time like in the old farm times
God isn't real lol
and I should care about what the Bible says because ...?
What you don't think you should live your life according to what a lot of Bronze Age goat fuckers said?
Apparently God didn't know that capital investment increases productivity beyond the human's natural abilities, sometimes in magnitudes.
Me:
sees the title
"Yeah? Who's your source? Fox news?"
sees source
"I was joking, but that checks out."
If God wanted his people to work hard he wouldn't have supported them buying slaves in the Bible
I mean, desert nomad mauraders scarcely out of the caves who took any they left alive as spoils for slaves and other unsavory use as personal property, maybe...
Because before that it was 7 days a week work...
That's a great way to reduce the number of extant ceos
