Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home

by Glenn S. Sunshine

In keeping with Genesis, the medieval mind thought of work as production, either in agriculture or in manufacturing. As we have seen, monks in the monasteries were required (in principle) to engage in productive labor. But because they were also to live austere lives (again, at least in principle), they could not spend the income from their labors on conspicuous consumption. They could and did give to the poor, but what were they to do with the rest? If productive work was good, then investing the profits to increase production would also be good. And so, ironically, the stricter the monastic order, the more austere the lifestyle, the harder their work — the richer they became. The key was reinvesting profits to increase production, one of the central principles of capitalism. But without the initial concept, drawn from the Bible, of the inherent goodness of the physical world and of labor, this idea would not have emerged in the West any more than it did in any other region of the world.