The Ethics of the Work

The traditions in this file are not amoral techniques, and the collections are full of practitioners saying so. Hyatt's informants, most of them working root doctors and their clients in the 1930s, talk constantly about what may and may not be done: that work done without cause comes back on the worker, that a worker who takes money for harm will pay for it, that some cases must be refused, that the dead must be paid, that a hand must not be shown. The ethic is not a code imposed from outside; it is the working knowledge of people who believed the universe keeps accounts.

The ethic shows up as refusals, warnings and procedures: asking before taking graveyard dirt, paying for what is taken, refusing a case with no cause, refusing to work against a child or a person who cannot defend themselves, treating a client's confidences as sealed, taking payment because unpaid work does not stand, and telling a client when the answer is no. It also shows up as a diagnosis of the worker's own misfortune - a run of bad luck is read as a sign that something was done wrong.

This entry's honesty matters more than most. The ethic is real and it is the tradition's own, and it does not make the harmful work safe or permissible - it regulates it, and the regulation is imperfect. Nor should the ethic be romanticised: the collections also contain boasting, feuds, frauds, and workers who took cases they should have refused. The tradition is a human practice with a genuine moral vocabulary, and both facts belong in the record.