Why do most people think that mental workers are better than manual workers?

Mental workers often engage in decision-making or creative work, and manual labor can be done by everyone, which is the basic survival ability of human beings, and mental labor has higher requirements for human beings.

Mental labor is also manual labor, and there is no difference between them. People despise repetitive work and can use machines instead of manual labor. However, in recent years, there are many examples that show that labor can be replaced by machines, which is often contrary to people's expectations. For example, driving a car ("manual labor") is much more difficult than expected, and Google's driverless car is still in its infancy.

On the other hand, many office workers write programs that can automate their daily work on the computer ("mental work"), but they are unwilling to use their brains to write programs. The root of psychological contempt for manual workers lies in the fact that high-end education has not been popularized in China since ancient times, and it has always been the welfare of the elite. The distribution right of social resources, high-end postal service, culture and knowledge level are the main references.

So, if you want to kill that official, you can do so. But it is not easy to put on a formal uniform and let the weightlifters stand up. In fact, in our daily common sense, our concept of labor is not very clear. For the average person, as long as he has a certain physical strength and mental power, he is a worker. However, in fact, paying mental and physical strength is not equal to labor. Can only be summarized as an activity. However, many people confuse the special activities of labor with other activities in life, which actually shows a lack of understanding of the concept of labor.