Who Keeps a City Standing?
By Dr. Nurfer TERCAN
What makes a city great is not the buildings that rise into its sky, but the people who are already at work each morning before the city has woken up.
In recent days, two pieces of news arrived from Kazakhstan.
In the first, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev spoke of the “Taza Qazaqstan” — Clean Kazakhstan — initiative and proposed heavier penalties for those who knowingly pollute nature and public spaces.
The first question this news brought to mind:
Who pollutes a city? A few days passed. This time another piece of news came from Astana. And it seemed to complete the missing half of that first question:
And who keeps a city standing?
In Astana, as part of the “Adal Enbek” — Honest Labour — project, a photography exhibition was held under the title “Еңбек келбеті”, that is, “The Face of Labour”. Thirty working people who contribute through their labour to the city’s development and its daily life were chosen for the exhibition.
Their photographs were taken. Their work was described. Their life stories were recorded. The experience they had gained over years in their jobs was made visible. Because sometimes a society’s greatest deficiency is not the absence of working people. It is that we no longer see them.
Every morning we step out onto a clean street. But we do not know who cleaned it.
We turn on the tap. Water comes. We press the light switch. The light comes on. The bus arrives at the stop. The rubbish container is emptied. In winter the snow is cleared. In summer the parks are watered.
When something breaks down, someone goes underground. Someone climbs a pole. Someone opens the hood of an engine. Someone keeps watch at three in the morning.
And we have a single word for all of this: “Life.”
Yet what we call life is, more often than not, the labour of people we do not know, joined together flawlessly. Perhaps one of the great illusions of the modern world began here.
We see the product; we do not see the one who produced it.
We see the service; we do not see the one who serves.
We see the cleanliness; we do not see the one who cleans.
We see the city, but we do not see the hands that rebuild it every morning.
This is exactly where the idea begins that carries the “Face of Labour” exhibition in Astana beyond an ordinary photography exhibition. Because this time the camera is not turned towards fame. The stage lights are not lit to make faces everyone already knows a little more visible.
The lens turns elsewhere:
To labour.
To the human face.
To the calloused hand.
To the years spent in a trade.
To the early hours of the morning.
To the cold.
To the heat.
To discipline.
To patience.
To repetition.
And perhaps most importantly, to the person who goes on doing the job properly even though no one applauds.
Because honest labour has a very strange quality: most of the time it is silent.
It makes no noise.
It does not market itself.
It does not ask for headlines.
It simply goes back to work every morning.
And the city goes on living on its shoulders.
Right here, the idea of “Clean Kazakhstan” that we discussed a few days ago and the “Honest Labour” project touch one another.
One was asking us: “Why do we pollute a city?”
The other now asks a different question: “And who cleans, repairs, carries and keeps that city alive?”
These two questions are not really separate. Because not polluting public space is not only a sign of respect for the environment. It is also a sign of respect for the labour of the person who cleans that space.
A bottle you throw on the ground does not only dirty the asphalt.
It also casts someone else’s labour to the ground.
The rubbish you leave in the park does not only harm nature. It also steals from the time of the person who has to come and collect it after you have gone.
A bench you break does not only damage municipal property. It consumes the labour of the craftsman who made it, the hours of the worker who will repair it, and the common resources of us all.
That is why there is an invisible moral bond between cleanliness and labour. Keeping things clean is, in part, a silent way of thanking labour.
This is why a phrase Tokayev used earlier takes on another meaning: “In conditions of chaos and disorder you cannot demand that people obey the law.”
This sentence should not be read only in terms of law.
Because who builds the order?
The law?
The municipality?
The state?
Of course.
But order has another, unseen architect:
Labour.
The person who lays the city’s pavements.
The person who collects its rubbish.
The person who carries its water.
The person who drives its bus.
The person who repairs its electricity.
The person who bakes its bread.
The person on duty in the hospital.
The person who is already at work while you are on your way to work in the morning.
Without them, within a few hours the city becomes nothing more than a large stage set made of buildings. Because what makes a city a city is not concrete. It is the continuity of human labour.
Perhaps this is why the “Broken Windows” approach needs to be taken one step further. Yes, if a broken window goes unrepaired for a long time, it can normalise disorder.
But let us ask another question:
Who repairs that broken window?
That is where the forgotten hero of civilisation stands.
The name of the one who breaks the window often makes the news.
The name of the one who repairs it remains unknown.
The one who defaces the wall is visible.
The one who paints it is invisible.
The one who drops the rubbish walks on.
The one who picks it up stays behind.
Perhaps this is one of the justice problems of our age: that the one who destroys is visible and the one who builds is invisible.
Yet a society does not stand on great success stories alone. It stands on the small and silent loyalty of millions of people who do their jobs properly every day.
On a baker getting up at four in the morning.
On a nurse’s night shift.
On a driver’s attention at the wheel.
On a teacher patiently explaining the same sentence once again.
On that last scrap of paper a cleaner bends down to pick up from the floor after everyone has left…
We call this “work”. Perhaps we are being a little unfair. Because the sum of all this is not merely work. It is the unseen morality of society.
The day a society looks down on labour, it does not merely devalue certain professions. It devalues its own foundation. Because the teacher who trains the doctor is a labourer too.
So is the attendant who cleans the university.
So is the technician who sets up the laboratory.
So is the craftsman who puts up the building.
So is the farmer who ploughs the field.
So is the worker who puts the bread in the oven.
Civilisation is not ranking people from top to bottom according to the prestige of the work they do. It is being able to see the place where every honest labour meets human dignity. For this reason, perhaps the most meaningful aspect of the exhibition in Astana is not that the photographs of 30 people are on display. It is that the direction of society’s lens has been changed.
“Look,” it seems to say. “Look not only at those who govern the city, but also at those who keep it alive.” Moreover, the project does not stop there. It also brings in journalists, bloggers, digital content creators and mobilographers. They are asked to tell the story of labour.
This matters!
Because in our age, what is valuable is not determined by the economy alone. Visibility determines it too.
We know whomever the algorithms show us.
We talk about whomever the cameras turn to.
We recognise a face that has been viewed millions of times even though we have never met it in our lives; but we do not know the name of the person who cleans the street we walk down every morning.
That is partly what this is about: where a society points its camera shows what it actually values. If the camera turns only to fame, our children will take fame for success.
If it turns only to wealth, they will take riches for worth.
If it turns only to consumption, they will take owning things for the purpose of life.
But if the camera turns to labour from time to time as well, a young person learns something else: you do not have to be famous to be worthy.
Doing your job well is also a form of standing.
So is keeping your word.
So is producing.
So is being useful to a city.
So is doing your duty properly when no one is watching.
Perhaps the real depth of the expression “Adal Enbek” — Honest Labour — lies here. Because honesty is not only not telling lies. Honesty is not mixing deceit into your labour.
It is not neglecting your work.
It is not sacrificing someone else’s rights to your own convenience.
It is doing justice to the work you are paid for. And most importantly, it is being able to remain the same person even when no one is watching you.
Here “Clean Kazakhstan” and “Honest Labour” come together again.
In one, the question was:
Do you drop litter on the ground when no one is looking?
And in the other:
Do you still do your job properly when no one is looking?
The answers to both questions lead to the same place:
Character. Because where the law cannot reach, character begins.
Where the camera does not see, conscience.
And where there is no applause, real labour.
Perhaps this is why, to understand a country’s level of civilisation, it is not enough to look only at its skyscrapers, its high-speed trains, its technology investments or its national income.
We must ask other questions too.
How does that country look upon its working people?
Is a craftsman’s trade respected?
Is a cleaning worker thanked?
Is a child told only “become a great man”, or is the child also told “whatever job you do, do it justice”? Because we cannot make all our children managers.
We cannot make them all famous.
Nor can we make them all rich.
But we can teach all of them something far more precious:
That labour is not something to be ashamed of but something to take pride in. Perhaps this will also be one of the greatest social questions of the future.
Artificial intelligence will grow.
Robots will multiply.
Automation will take over some jobs.
Algorithms will speed up production.
But in the midst of this whole new world, a very old question of humanity will remain: what is the value of human labour?
We will not find the answer entirely on the payslip. Because labour has an economic return.
But it also has a human return.
Respect.
Standing.
Thanks.
Being remembered.
Being seen.
Perhaps this is the simplest yet most precious thing that photography exhibition in Astana does: making the unseen visible.
And now let us return to the first question of the first article: who pollutes a city?
The one who drops litter on the ground.
The one who thinks that what is shared belongs to no one.
The one who says “whatever happens after me, happens”.
And who keeps a city standing?
The one who wakes before us in the morning.
The one who works while we sleep.
The one who repairs what is broken.
The one who cleans what is dirtied.
The one who produces.
The one who carries.
The one who sows.
The one who reaps.
The one who ploughs.
The one who cooks.
The one who teaches.
The one who heals.
And the person who does all of this, most of the time, without their name being known. Perhaps what we call civilisation is built precisely in the distance between two people: one stands. The other bends down and works.
But real civilisation is not someone constantly bending down to pick up what we have left behind.
Real civilisation is being able to build, all together, a conscience in which that person will never have to bend down again. Because not dropping litter is not only respect for nature. It is also respect for the person who would have to pick it up.
Not breaking something is not only protecting public property. It is respect for the labour of the craftsman who would have to make it again.
And honest labour is not only the morality of the one who works. Showing respect for labour is the morality of society too.
The world was not left to us as an inheritance. It was entrusted to us for a while. We will never learn the names of most of those who look after that trust. But perhaps civilisation is, before knowing their names, knowing the worth of their labour. Because the true face of cities is hidden not in the glass of skyscrapers but in the face of the person who wipes that glass every morning. And if you want to understand how high a society has risen, do not look only at the height of its buildings.
Look at how far it is able to bow before labour.
Notes from the Blue of the Windy City
https://www.5gvirusnews.com/yazarlar/duzeni-kuranlar-kim-h1977.html
Translated from the Turkish original.