What is work?
Scientifically, one of the more simpler formula to calculate work is –
W = F.d
where, ‘F’ is the force applied, and ‘d’ is the distance moved.
In the middle of ‘F’ and ‘d’ you see a small, almost insignificant, dot.
That dot operator is the soul of the concept of work. It means that work is only done in the direction of application of force. So, for example, if I am pushing (hence applying a force to) a rock towards the north, then I will only have done work if the rock also moves in the northern direction, even if by the smallest amount. If the movement of the rock is exactly tangential to my force, towards the east or west, then I have not done any work. Additionally, if the rock moves, even slightly, towards the south, then it would mean the rock has done work on me. Realise that the rock cannot be moving both towards the north and the south, implying that, at any given instant of time, it is impossible for two objects to mutually do non-zero work on each other.
But what about thinking of work from a deeper perspective? What does it mean to really do work?
Work is any action that changes the existing tendencies of how the world is playing out.
Let’s think about this.
Imagine a flowing river. I then put an object, for example a log of wood, into the river. What will happen?
The river will carry away the log in its current, and the log will have joined the tendency of the river to flow. Some change happened – now there is one more thing flowing in the river than there was earlier, but the tendency of the river to flow hasn’t diminished. On the contrary, it has increased. Now, the momentum of the log, in addition to the momentum of the drops of the river, will also play a role in coaxing any new object that may fall in the river to move along with the river’s flow.
So, the log did not do any work. It simply placed itself in the existing tendencies of the world, in this case the river, and then the flow of the river did all the work and carried it away (yes, the river did some work, as the log which was earlier stationary is now going as fast as the river).
Understand what happened here. On account of laziness, lack of will or motivation, or maybe the absence of any aim of his own, the log let himself be used by the river and is now doing what the river asks it to do, namely, drag other similar elements into the current and make them go in the direction the river is doing. The river has strengthened itself, and the log has lost his existence. He has now become a sheep.
Let’s take another example.
We have all experienced the force of wind during a storm. Even on a small scale, when you blow air at a feather lying on the table, it gently flies away. The force exerted by the air on that feather did work on it, and moved it. It did some work.
I remember one special case that we studied back in high school in our lectures on work and its relation to energy. Our teacher explained to us that free expansion of gas into vacuum did no work.
Think about this.
When we open a bottle of soft drink, it produces fizz, which is nothing but the gas carbon di-oxide. As this gas, present at a higher pressure inside the bottle, comes outside, it meets the atmospheric mixture of gases which are at a lower pressure. It essentially pushes against that gas, doing work in the process.
In vacuum, when pressurised gas is given free rein to expand, it meets no resistive force – the entire space is empty and the gas can expand however it feels like.
Work implies some effort, some action against something that is opposing your tendency to do that work. We do work when we push a stone on the ground as we are opposing the friction that the ground offers, as well as the initial tendency of the stone to stay in a state of rest.
It may be useful to re-interpret the work that we humans do in this light.
If you are joining the existing structures, whether social, political, economic, cultural or any other, without asking yourself why, or without weighing the implications of both that action and the thought leading to that action, then you are not doing anything on your own. You are taking your place in the existing scheme of things. You have made no difference.
If you want to make a difference, bring about some change, then you will need to ask certain questions, reflect on the foundations of those systems, engage with it and find out why it is not amenable to your conception of that system, if that is the case.
Realise that work in the human sphere, unlike the world of physics, can be said to be done even if you go with the flow, in the direction of where the system is going, as long as you have valid reasons for doing so, and this choice is the result of critical, honest and rational thinking on your part.
If you try to change something that has existed for some time, there will be resistance both from tangible entities like people, and also intangible entities like the system created by those people, on account of inertia to change as also the amount of time it takes for such systems to reflect the changes done within them, and for the effects of those changes to rise and come out macroscopically.
There cannot be change without resistance. And there cannot be work, useful work in any case, without it calling into question the existing frameworks, even if at a conceptual level.
If you blindly accept how the world is, and then let your actions be moulded by it, then you are a spiritually dead person, like a rock. You have no free will but live in the illusion that you do.
An attitude to question is a necessity for being alive.