- Why, despite our technological capacities, are we not all working three- to four-hour days? asks David Graeber
Man did this one strike a chord. I work as a consultant and write in my free time. The only reason I chose to work in the field I work in (sustainability) was because I thought I'd contribute something useful to the world. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the real world will know how naive I was being when I thought I'd be useful as a yuppie consultant just because I'd have 'Sustainability' written on my business card instead of 'Risk' or 'Management'. On a side note, my department has been sucked in by the Risk function and I now have 'Risk' written on my business card anyway. I spend most Friday nights killing party buzzes with sad tales from work and oh-I-wish-I-could-quits. I hate being that guy. I really do wish I could quit my job and spend more time creating something, anything I can be proud of and dedicate my time to whatever it is. I don't know if I agree with all that's been said in the article, but damn, some of the things he says hurt because they're true. Well, at least I write seriously. Sorry for the rant. Thanks for the share.
Sure, I'll post an excerpt from what I'm writing once I get back from work.
Hah. I very nearly posted this a few minutes ago. It is culturally and economically engrained that people work 5 days a week in 8 hour shifts. Despite technological advances, this is not something that I foresee going away anytime soon. Also, it's hard to picture what an entire civilization would do if suddenly everybody had twice as much free time. I would like to think it would be good, but maybe not entirely so. That said, there are way too many, as Graeber puts it "bullshit jobs". My last job was one, and I hope my next one is not. Busy work for the sake of working, and you have to work it otherwise you can't make a living. It really is a societal problem, but one that's too complex to pin on any one reason.
True. As a teacher, there are portions of my life (summer) where I have an unusually large portion of time off. Maybe it's because I'm used to it, but I don't have too much difficulty finding things I enjoy doing. Unfortunately, I also find a larger portion of my work becoming bullshit time spent. I now am expected to prove that my students have learned in ways beyond grading assignments and providing written feedback. I now must prove, with several Excel worksheets, that the kids are now able to do more than they could before I started teaching them as well as meet arbitrary goals that are set as "adequate learning targets". As if we actually can take a large group of individuals before instruction and reliably determine how much they will learn. Oh, also, there is no research available proving that collecting data in such a way improves student outcomes. More time spent on data collection and displays takes away from actual engagement with my students and/or planning creative learning experiences.
Sure, Keynes famously predicted the 15 hour work week, but he didn't have kleinbl00 to contend with. So while it's true that most jobs are pointless -- the benefits they bring simply aren't. Some people are content with less, and those people? Lo and behold, they already work 15 hours a week or not at all.