On Work
While doing an exercise from Designing Your Life (workview reflection from chapter 2), I wrote some notes on what I think about working in modern society.
I thought it may be worth sharing. Here they are!
In the exercise, one tries to answer in particular the following questions:
- What work is and what it means to me
- What's work for?
- What does that mean?
- How does it relate to the individal, others, society?
- What defines good or worthwhile work?
- What does money have to do with it?
- What do experience, growth, and fulfillment have to do with it?
And finally, here is a slightly edited version of what I came up with:
We supposedly all have to work. Even though technology has made it less and less necessary for people to work, here we are, 21st century and all, and most people having to work 40ish hours/week doing whatever, to get a (occasionally) decent salary. In reality a big part of the manufacturing work that sustains our lifestyle is based on modern-slavery labor. And there are a few people that make tons of money thru it, while an immense fraction of the population live in terrible conditions.
For white people in 1st world countries, like our case, it turns out that most of the work is quite meaningless. “The smartest minds of our generation have been sucked into increasing the likelihood of you clicking”, or something like that I read and quite agree.
Certain kind of work is necessary to just live, like the work involved in producing food and distributing it, or build and keep basic infrastructures like water supply and energy, and waste disposal. A lot of work actually goes to the equivalent of breaking glasses to repair them – selling unnecessary electronic gadgets, having a lot of servants for doing simple tasks. The opportunity cost there is high.
Close to the essential kinds of works would be education and medicine. They allow for the well-being of people alive.
I suppose looking at the Maslow's pyramid of needs and seeing which kind of jobs allow them to be covered for all people, would be a good way to asses what work should be, what the working culture should strive to achieve.
The military and the banks gather a lot of resources, for doing things that are not productive and often are counterproductive. The ridiculously inflated resources that go into those make it seem like “normal work” in society is a farce.
As Kurt Vonnegut said, we are here to fart around. Maybe. In any case it certainly seems like no one is doing something anything that essential, or that one should worry for not doing so.
Bertrand Russell also had an interesting view on the matter, as he explained in “In Praise of Idleness”. Funnily enough, he did quite a lot of things, or “worked hard” as many would say.
What keeps it all going? Basically this exploitation system that is thinly hidden from our view. It seems difficult, if important, to change that.
Why work? To have a better live. Not just myself, but everyone. To change how the world is now into one that I think would be better: more fair, less hypocrite, one that makes more sense. One where people are actually free to pursue their interests in a respectful way with the others (and not one where a minority more-or-less is, and even in a disrespectful way with the rest).
I can't think of work as separate from the current unfair capitalistic system that we have. I think work can be reframed into something way more sensible if things like a universal basic income were a reality. I guess that while something like that doesn't exist, it's probably good to both try to get it and play within the system in a way that maximizes both its chances of changing into a better one and the usefulness of what you can do and the fun you can have meanwhile.
One way of making it easier for a different system to happen is to work in the dissemination of ideas that help have a better view of the future in mind to the people. Like writing a good book about how society could work differently and how to get there, at the same time as making it fun to read. Let the good memes spread.
Basic life-supporting work is not needed at this point – if it was, then the discussion would be different.
Doing research helps indirectly on the well being of everyone, especially if doing it in an open way. Science helps the truth have more weight, and having access to the truth is a basic need for a change to a better society. It's hard to change something that you don't even know exists. It's also pointless to have freedom of thought if you are not exposed to ideas so there is nothing for you to think about.
So, what's work for? There are different answers.
From a society point of view, work should aim to maximize the well-being of everyone, to have the needs of all covered and to enable people to pursue their interests. It is not how it is nowadays. Instead, work serves mainly to ensure that the status-quo is kept.
From a personal point of view, one answer is “to earn money”, to be able to survive and possibly buy a better car than your neighbor. Actually, it is more and more to be able to simply pay the debts that come form getting something as basic as an education (college debt) and a place to live (loan). And more and more, for medical insurance too. In any case, as much as I can speak ideally for myself, work is for enabling the well-being of all, producing social change and both earning enough to have a reasonable amount of freedom and having fun in the process.
Finally, what do experience, growth, and fulfillment have to do with it?
Experience is something that makes you better at whatever you are doing, and that brings both efficiency and joy. In as much as the work you are doing relates to the kind of changes you want to see, the more experience the better.
As for growth, I am not particularly interested in it. It's something I'd expect to come, but I can't quite see the point of things like me climbing the steps of positions at a company or at the university. I expect changes to arrive, in the way I think, in the way I do things, in how efficient I am, etc. But I'm not planing on any path because of the expected growth it could bring. At least, I can't think how that would be.
And fulfillment would come from seeing that the actions at work align with the things I value work for: mainly the enabling of the well-being of all. As long as I can see that it makes sense, work would be justified. There has to be an equilibrium at how much the different aspects are satisfied: I'd want both a positive impact in the world and a way to enable a good life for myself. Depending on how many of those things I can get from my job, there would be less need to get others from extra work.
Work should ultimately be an enabler for fun. Fun for me, fun for everyone.