I don’t miss many things from my last blue collar job, but it was so much more relaxed. My coworkers all felt much more “real”. Too bad the pay wasn’t there, or I’d still be doing it.
There is camaraderie to it; the sense that you're all facing the same struggle together. Nobody is manipulating others by inventing strawman problems to solve because the work is real enough and you all get punished together when it isn't done.
Once toil became intellectual (theocratic) is where life becomes insufferable and simply unfun. It amounts to human domestication.
