Hardwork: The Contradiction Of Meaning
Someone asked me to define "hard work" and my answer was that it just any "thing", ** "legal"** that is considered or envisaged to be rather challenging. I put "legal" in there because nowadays in the society where I come from, there's a discord in the definition of "hard work" and "hardwork". Let's face it.
Most people are depressed by how country as Nigeria can be wealthy and yet the citizens themselves are living in abject poverty, the country itself is a haven for foreign investor to come in, invest and thrive. The difficult situation is why a lot of people have chosen to be indulged in so many illegal ventures and still refer to them as "hard work".
People use poverty and unemployment as an excuse to be involved in scammy ventures. There was a time twitter was agog with news of some certain people who paraded themselves as venture capitalists who would provide huge profits or mad ROI to people who would only invest a little token to them.
People never saw the red flags in this. As a result of this, so many Nigerians lost millions of their money to these people. Now the people at the end of these scams would call themselves hard workers because these scams were carefully crafted before people could buy into them, the efforts put into some of these scams are legendary.
They go as far as paying people to write positive things about them on the internet, they pay people for referrals, they design amazing websites with stunning UI's, they get modern offices, pay people to act rich and use social media to spread the news of this good life.
They pay Instagram influencers good money to talk about them, and sometimes they associate themselves with greedy celebrities in other to actually attain a smirk or a portion of legibility. People run limited background checks and once a person on-line tells them that they've been made wealthy by these ventures, they go ahead to put in their life-saving.
The Mastery Of Con
Internet scammers are on the rise and most times you see these people rake in so much money, it makes people who do legitimate work to question their abilities to reach a certain level in life. In other to sell a scam many people actually "live the lie", they get pictures, videos, buy establish social media accounts, impersonate a celebrity or an Important person.
They go as far back as getting people with accents to match the people they want to scam and sometimes these efforts takes weeks, months or even years for them to sell the perfect scam. The irony here is that this is actually "hard work", the efforts put in to stay financially convincing can be astonishing, the level of craft and the level of mastery and sometimes this makes me ask, do we now have a standard of legal hard work and illegal hard work?
Is it becoming difficult to place a meaning to what hardwork should stand for as a result of situations as unemployment and terrible governance?
Take a lot at another contrasting phenomenon, a disagreement or a sort of discord; You have the people who are actually doing the legal "hard work" they are the ones exploited by the system. They're owed salaries and their gratuities aren't paid, they're not given allowances, and they're spending time each and everyday following the rules without cheating or cutting corners.
They bring "million-dollar" business ideas or innovation to private organizations in exchange for peanuts, when these ideas can equally make them dominant entrepreneurs in their economic environment. These people are the ones not appreciated, they're caught up in debts, unpaid loan with massive interest rates.
The system is terribly harsh on them, but these are hard workers who are actually internally equipped to do well in a better environment, but if these people decide to go illegal, sell scams, become big thieves and use those same skills to defraud people, can we say they have actually remained hardworking, Howbeit, in the wrong way?
The Discord To This Agreement
In the Nigerian financial setting, government don't probe people whose wealth seems questionable, in fact it's become obligatory and customary to confer position of authority on them irrespective of their means of income.
They're considered to be hardworking and hence should an emblem in the society. This is how successful fraudsters are also celebrated, they align themselves with the law in other to appear legitimate and this makes me ask if there should be something as "legally hardworking" and "illegally hardworking", it's a saddening reality. I mean, the setting is not financially thorough, people do questionable things for money and pass off for rather being hardworking.
They call it "hustling" and hence it makes it difficult for us to place a proper valuation of what we can really call "hard work" sincerely, the advent of the internet has brought huge innovations, people no longer need to be conventional to make money, but in a socio-economic setting where it's even difficult to get a decent well paying job, should we cut people a slack when they term illegal ventures as "hard work?"
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My name is @Josediccus, a young Nigerian entrepreneur who is a Vlogger, A Psychologist, Poet, Sports Writer/Analyst & Personal Finance Coach. I'm using my contents as a process to create shared meaning as well as create expressions through which people on/off hive can relate. I believe content is a process to be enjoyed and relished and I'm up for any collaborations in my field stated above. Cheers
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