The world is changing. Fast. Conservatives, liberals and their political gladiators squabble over those changes. Free healthcare (or not), “women’s right to choose” (or not), Citizens United and living wage jobs are the spoils. The future is side wants is the prize.
Each side’s political leaders persuade their supporters promising “Jobs for all”, and “rebuilding the middle class“, and “Protecting existing jobs from competition”. Or “raising minimum wage standards for low-skilled jobs”. To me, these are synonymous with jail sentences.
That’s right. I’m talking about your job. Whether you like it or not, the world would prefer its absence. Like that guy you can’t stand being around, your job is not only annoying. It’s probably killing you.
Why aren’t politicians promising to end the need to work “jobs” at all? Do they (and the rest of America) not see how much better life would be without them? I do.
I’m not alone.
A small Faction advocates ending, not jobs, but all kinds of “working”. Once and maybe still considered fringe, that may change given the future we face.
Advances in Artificial Intelligence and automation are already having their way across many job sectors. That’s increasing. When companies like Pepsi say they are aggressively pursuing automation, and trucking companies see billions of savings in self-driving trucks, you can bet, the workday’s days are numbered. Meaning, jobs are on their way out.
Instead of fighting the inevitable, we could analyze if jobs are essential or not. And if not, what could be better than people working jobs.
Faction members say jobs are neither essential nor valuable.
But mainstream America still sees benefit from them. Despite their problems and obvious downsides. Downsides most people know. Downsides I’ll share in links below.
Post Industrial Revolution Jobs Are Soul Crushing
This Faction, of which I am a part, says jobs crush souls. They’re divisive, making competitors of your fellow humans. They make people sick. They waste lives in return for a paycheck.
People on their deathbed agree with me.
Click the picture to read the whole Guardian article. It’s interesting.Sure, some love their jobs. But they are the minority. Thirteen percent of people like going to work worldwide. Many of those have adapted to their jobs. Meaning, they tolerate it. They don’t really like it. How do I know? Offer them $10 million. See if they’d keep doing what they do for “work”.
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Job lovers used to be the majority. But it wasn’t jobs people worked back then. Before the the industrial revolution and mass production, people specialized. Not the specialization we see today. Where one person does one thing contributing to a assembly-line like production process.
They specialized around things they were passionate about and thus experts at. Or they had the aptitude (the natural talent, i.e. passion) to become good at it. They took pride in their work. And their output reflected that. That’s why some of their output is still going strong hundreds of years later. In architecture, machinery, hardware and more, their work is their legacy.
Today, not so much.
I believe even if you love your job, you’d gladly give it up were a viable, engaging option available (and there are). Something more compelling that doing what you do. What compels most to work is need. They need things working gives them.
But work isn’t the only way to get those.
Nearly all people give up working in the end. We call it “retirement”.
Some give it up when a miracle happens: like winning the lottery. Or tragedy: a crippling injury or near-death experience.
So what should humans do with this thing most of us don’t want to do?
The Faction says humanity should support people following their passions. The pursuit of leisure, and Maslow’s idea of “self-actualization” should our focus. These pursuits not only vastly enrich humanity as a whole and the individual too. They also can solve all our pressing global, societal and environmental problems. But first, we as a civilization must organize said civilization away from “the daily grind”.
Besides, it’s passionate people who create humanity’s breakthrough solutions. Not the ones complaining about what they do for a living. Imagine what could happen if everyone were passionate about what they’re doing. Rather than flipping burgers, crunching numbers, and working in rendering plants. Unless those things are your passion.
Jobs keep people so busy, affording enough time and energy to complain about problems. With more free time, people could be solving more problems they see. Create fewer problems too.
Jobs As A Belief Habit
Believing jobs are what people really want is a hard habit to break. For some, breaking the habit causes an existential crisis.
But generally, satisfaction people get from working can be had (in greater levels) through passions. There’s nothing a job provides that a passion can’t in the right context.
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People prefer not going to work. It’s obvious when you listen to how people talk about work at work.
- On Monday, people are trying to get over the end of the weekend. Why do weekends go by so quick? No one ever said “Thank God, it’s Monday!”
- By Tuesday they’re hoping Wednesday (hump day) comes quicker than it feels like it’s coming.
- By Wednesday, people already are talking about being on the week’s downslope.
- Come Thursday, they breathe a sigh of relief: just 24 more hours before “TGIF”!
- When Friday does come, people are excited. No, not about what they’re doing. About what they’re going to do come evening and on the weekend.
- On Saturday, they’re happy. But then…
- On Sunday there’s the general agreement that Monday looms and everyone’s got to go back to work. Reluctantly.
I know this because I felt this way. I’m sure the stats don’t over exaggerate the crowd I belonged to when I worked a job.
Work as it is construed today is not what humans are meant to do. I mean, we are doing them, so I guess we’re meant to. For now. But jobs are catalysts. Jobs sometimes offer so much negative stress they propel people in the direction of their passions. Some do that. I’m one of them. Many others tolerate the stress instead.
Today, thanks in great measure to my wife, I’m following my passions. But I’m not unique. Every human being has a passion. That’s what you’re here for. Not work a job you don’t like, tolerate, or become acclimated to.
The Transformational Power Of Passionate People
Ever notice that people following their passions are, well, passionate? They’re not working. They’re not watching the clock. They’re not dreading Monday, or any other day of the week. They’re enriched. They’re in the flow. They’re engaged. For them, time flies. Where did the time go? They ask!
People following their passion also produce excellent output. In many, many cases, that output inspires people. A lot of people. Even the strangest passion fulfills the actor and benefits the world. Including this guy, who eventually became a millionaire and was Knighted by England. For what? Creating the strangest art I’ve ever seen, or not seen:
Many passionate people are millionaires, world changers, leaders or all of these. Some are so humble and their work so obscure, you don’t know them. Like Snowflake Bentley, whose passion changed our view of snow. No, not Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, the weather phenomena:
Someone following their passion views the week much different than a working person. Passionate people have six Saturdays and a Sunday in their week. Not the Monday-to-Friday working stiff drudgery. The rest of their lives are unlike most of us too.
What would it be like to have every American following their passion instead of working for a living? That’s the question I asked at Copiosis six years ago.
Today Copiosis still going strong, promoting a better system than what we’ve got today. One that can easily allow every American…every human…to follow their passion.
Imagine how much better the world would be. How many better products we’d have. How many millions of passionate people we’d have. And a more healthy world we’d be living in.
A utopian fantasy? Some are beginning to say such “fantasies” are sorely needed. The faction I belong to believes this. Given the shape of our world these days and where it looks like it’s going.
The Future Is Not Work. Nor Jobs.
The future is here. It emerges from the present. In this emerging future there are no jobs. Humans don’t need to prepare for it like some cataclysmic apocalypse. Instead, we could be rushing head long towards it. As though it holds all our answers. Which it does.
Universal Basic Income, aka Andrew Yang’s “Freedom Dividend” is a nice interim measure. It will help with humanity’s thumb-twiddling. We still hold on to the past as though it’s the present. Even though our entire planet is showing us our old ways are destroying us. The planet too. A Freedom Dividend can help us “bridge” here, where jobs dominate, and “there”, where they’ve become mostly extinct.
It could be a great catalyst. What could it catalyze? A great leap forward. Into what?
A future where you’ll be inspired, rich and passionate about what you’re doing. Because what you’re doing aligns with who and what you are.
That’s a future I’d say anyone would want. Unless you’re still stuck in that habitual thought that “people need jobs.”
They don’t. And the future agrees with me.