If you had a year to live...would anyone choose to work any job? Such a dumb interview question that can only elicit one or two responses. Yes...because they desperately need the job and kiss arse or no...they're being truthful.
I truly don't understand how people with kids do it in our society.
I have by all objective measures a pretty good setup with my job. I work from home. It's 40 hours a week and I don't work nights and weekends. I take plenty of time off and it's encouraged by my company to do so. And I feel like I'm barely treading water. I cannot imagine having to be responsible for a tiny human or two.
I was aware of several studies last century that determined that many hunter gatherer tribes had at most a 20h week. Of course, one suspects they ignored the entire having/raising babies as being work.
I am writing a few stories that are tied together via an Empire. They acquire new star systems over the lives of their leaders, but the surprising fact to outsiders is taking care of the population is nearly their highest priority. I am currently working on a piece that shows how the Empire's assimilation processes operate.
Everything is provided. Living, zero rent because everything is owned by the Empire and they would never charge citizens. Same goes for utilities, food, education, and quite a few other items. One big issue is the vanquished were more like us, 50-60h weeks. Families were tied to the same job as their grandparents, parents, generational jobs as it were.
How to change that society to 20h per week, which includes time in universities? It is an interesting but complex solution. How fast do you tell them they will not have any transport operators in a few years? I was a taxi driver in my younger days. Twice. Once after a business I worked at was sold, while looking for something else to do. Then again going to school once more I needed a flexible job as I was mostly single parenting. How would my younger self react to someone coming and telling me that this entire taxi business was going away. Mechanics, dispatchers, owners, and the union rep - gone. It is oddly enough, a tougher problem than I had originally thought.
Which is to say, we will need to pry that workaholic mindset out of minds that are just as stubborn as my younger self was fifty years ago.
I do need a nap rn. How much of this do you think is just cultural/mimetic? Versus structural, i.e we need health insurance so we need a full time job.
Really well written essay. thank you for sharing it.
I saw your TikTok on this earlier, was looking forward to reading it and you said it so well!
There were talks about 4-day work week, no idea what happened with that. Most employers are now calling back their staff to the office full-time when there's no reason to. I also don't thin anyone with only 1 year to live will be working at all - the audacity of some people! Who'll say yes and be honest? What's he actually trying to achieve with that?
Lockdown (not great but) slowed things down a bit and I feel like overall there was better environmental changes in nature. Soft-life might definitely be the way forward, people are on survival mode and now they're tired of it. I knew many people who are wasting their youth/lives working 60hrs a week.
I watched Tales from the Green Valley, an historical recreation of an early 17th century farm in Wales. Whenever it rained heavily, the men came inside, because once their thick woollen clothes got wet, they would take ages to dry and people understood that wearing wet clothing wasn’t good for you. That blew my mind, because it rains a lot in Wales. They would do other tasks, they didn’t do nothing, but the rhythms of life were so different & couldn’t be rushed, so except during harvest or lambing season, they usually didn’t rush.
Amen to that! John Maynard Keynes predicted that the average workweek would drop to 15 hours by 2000, an idea echoed by many futurists in the 1960s. Certainly productivity has increased more than enough since then to make it a reality by now. So what happened? Well, the oligarchs took essentially all of the fruits of the productivity gains since the early 1970s. If that doesn't make you feel RIPPED OFF, dear reader, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!
If you had a year to live...would anyone choose to work any job? Such a dumb interview question that can only elicit one or two responses. Yes...because they desperately need the job and kiss arse or no...they're being truthful.
Thank you for another well researched and well written article! There is an attempt to make it illegal to contact employees after work hours. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/03/california-bill-right-disconnect/
I also would like to recommend my personal hero Tricia Hersey founder of the Nap Ministry. https://thenapministry.com/
I truly don't understand how people with kids do it in our society.
I have by all objective measures a pretty good setup with my job. I work from home. It's 40 hours a week and I don't work nights and weekends. I take plenty of time off and it's encouraged by my company to do so. And I feel like I'm barely treading water. I cannot imagine having to be responsible for a tiny human or two.
From my current napping position (with my dog mirroring me) I can vouch for the power of resting!
I was aware of several studies last century that determined that many hunter gatherer tribes had at most a 20h week. Of course, one suspects they ignored the entire having/raising babies as being work.
I am writing a few stories that are tied together via an Empire. They acquire new star systems over the lives of their leaders, but the surprising fact to outsiders is taking care of the population is nearly their highest priority. I am currently working on a piece that shows how the Empire's assimilation processes operate.
Everything is provided. Living, zero rent because everything is owned by the Empire and they would never charge citizens. Same goes for utilities, food, education, and quite a few other items. One big issue is the vanquished were more like us, 50-60h weeks. Families were tied to the same job as their grandparents, parents, generational jobs as it were.
How to change that society to 20h per week, which includes time in universities? It is an interesting but complex solution. How fast do you tell them they will not have any transport operators in a few years? I was a taxi driver in my younger days. Twice. Once after a business I worked at was sold, while looking for something else to do. Then again going to school once more I needed a flexible job as I was mostly single parenting. How would my younger self react to someone coming and telling me that this entire taxi business was going away. Mechanics, dispatchers, owners, and the union rep - gone. It is oddly enough, a tougher problem than I had originally thought.
Which is to say, we will need to pry that workaholic mindset out of minds that are just as stubborn as my younger self was fifty years ago.
I'll finish reading the article as soon as I wake up from my nap.
I do need a nap rn. How much of this do you think is just cultural/mimetic? Versus structural, i.e we need health insurance so we need a full time job.
Really well written essay. thank you for sharing it.
I saw your TikTok on this earlier, was looking forward to reading it and you said it so well!
There were talks about 4-day work week, no idea what happened with that. Most employers are now calling back their staff to the office full-time when there's no reason to. I also don't thin anyone with only 1 year to live will be working at all - the audacity of some people! Who'll say yes and be honest? What's he actually trying to achieve with that?
Lockdown (not great but) slowed things down a bit and I feel like overall there was better environmental changes in nature. Soft-life might definitely be the way forward, people are on survival mode and now they're tired of it. I knew many people who are wasting their youth/lives working 60hrs a week.
Taking a nap
Change completely how we feel
I watched Tales from the Green Valley, an historical recreation of an early 17th century farm in Wales. Whenever it rained heavily, the men came inside, because once their thick woollen clothes got wet, they would take ages to dry and people understood that wearing wet clothing wasn’t good for you. That blew my mind, because it rains a lot in Wales. They would do other tasks, they didn’t do nothing, but the rhythms of life were so different & couldn’t be rushed, so except during harvest or lambing season, they usually didn’t rush.
Amen to that! John Maynard Keynes predicted that the average workweek would drop to 15 hours by 2000, an idea echoed by many futurists in the 1960s. Certainly productivity has increased more than enough since then to make it a reality by now. So what happened? Well, the oligarchs took essentially all of the fruits of the productivity gains since the early 1970s. If that doesn't make you feel RIPPED OFF, dear reader, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!