One of the Eastern religions has as part of its path a commitment to "right livelihood" -- that is, to work of a kind which will not increase the suffering of other people.

To most of us in the West, this idea of right livelihood is a little quaint. Unlike those Easterners, most of the jobs we have are at one remove from whatever it is that our companies actually do. For example, we might work for a defense contractor; but the majority of jobs in a defense company have nothing to do directly with the construction of weapons, and no single person in the company will actually put a weapon together, sell it to someone, and show that person how to use it. We are, as one economist put it many years ago, "alienated from the means of production." In all likelihood, we don't produce our own food, our own clothes, our own homes, or anything else -- we're simply part of a business-industrial machine which does these things.

But the issue of "right livelihood" can raise its head in another way altogether when we start to practice Steps 10, 11 and 12 routinely. Our daily practice can cause us to start to ask ourselves questions about what we do for a living, not necessarily in terms of whether it hurts other people, but simply in terms of its basic meaningfulness. Perhaps being a management consultant or a pipeline welder doesn't actually harm anyone; but of what fundamental use is it?

When we first start asking ourselves questions about our jobs, it can be a little scary. Are we really heading in the direction of dropping out and moving to a commune? Probably not. It's more likely that, rather than being a preliminary to turning our back on Western values, these questions are yet another example of the "reassuring uncertainty" that comes with this daily practice -- the calling into question of all that we are and do, not necessarily because it's useless, but because not knowing is the beginning of real wisdom.