BUT WHAT KIND OF WORK?

As a sequel to "Work We Must, But the Lunch Is Free" (N-Wok), Hugh Nibley recently spoke in Salt Lake City about the things humans are best equipped to do, and he offered personal insights on education, environment, finances, nuclear arms, television, videos, and other subjects. Copies of this talk are now available.

Assume you had been guaranteed a thousand years of uninterrupted life here on earth, with all your wants and needs adequately provided for, how would you spend the rest of your life? In his 24-page address entitled "But What Kind of Work?," Hugh Nibley reminds us this is "the very situation the Gospel puts us in." Drawing upon advice from the Egyptian Shabako Stone (believed to be the oldest connected text in the world) as well as from the Egyptian initiatory rite of the Opening of the Mouth, funeral ceremonies, Adam literature, and Jewish and Early Christian sources, Nibley proposes 12 "gifts and talents that prescribe our proper activities on this earth."

Juxtaposed to his views on the activities man should be engaged in, Nibley offers his candid personal views on the activities he feels man is currently preoccupied with: seeking affluence, destroying the environment, and trusting in deadly weapons. The "staggering" price we pay for this kind of system, says Nibley, is the loss of truth and virtue, the beauty of the earth, and ultimately life itself. "What is the end product of modern civilization?" Nibley asks. "Quite literally . . . the garbage dump." If you are interested in the candid views of this celebrated scholar, you'll want to read this address.