O trabalho ante a desafiadora sociedade pós-industrial (os Fogos de Santelmo)

Abstract

The human labour wasn t always considered as worthy task. In Greece and Rome, in the Antiquity, the manual tasks were done by slaves, fitting to the supplied class the dedication on philosophy or activities related to wars. In the feudal period, the slavery was replaced by the servitude, but it did not represent an improvement of life for the new overwhelmd. With the dismantle of the feudalism and the absolutism, it began, in the English field society, the capitalism that, later, would be used by the Industrial Revolution. The labour passed, this way, through a conceptual revaluing, meaning the center of the human being identity in the society. The employment and unemployment was born. Life started to be sycronized with the worktime by an automation system called taylorism and fordism, which created an increment on the industrial production and an expressive increase in the profits. The capitalist system started to give wear out signals, and the unemployment started to be structural and technological. The toyotism appears, bringing the flexibilization and the deregulation of the work relations. The unemployment started to have epidemic contours, what got worse with the technological evolution and the sprouting of the globalization. The crisis of the capitalism was disclosed through the social contradictions, such as the wealth of few was supported by the poverty of many, moreover, damages to the environment put the life on earth at risk The postindustrial society, also called Age of the Knowledge , lives a period of transition and bets in alternatives: the third sector, research in new forms of energy production, concurrence of work and free time, the reappearance of the socialism, the changes of ethical standards. As task of reconstruction of the future it must be led in consideration that the search of the technological-scientific knowledge must act in favour of humanity, and stop being instrument of increase of capitalist wealth. Therefore, in search of beepers that indicate the route to be taken, and using the metaphor of St. Elmo s Fire), it s understandable that the solution is in the modification of the ethical principles: Edgar Morin calls it antropo-ethics; Sócrates and Platão affirm this through the true knowledge, the happiness and the idealism; Aristóteles indicates justice as the biggest virtue; Cícero shows us the stoic ethics through the self-respect, to the universe and its cosmic laws; the Christian doctrine fold these principles through love, charity and justice; Kant teaches the categorical imperative; Gandhi teaches the not-violence.