Up until 2012 I considered work the noblest virtue of all. I thought work can bring healthy self-esteem, important resources for sustaining life and a solution to the most pressing medical and ethical problems of the world.
I got the job of my dreams in a high-stress clinic doing research in my favorite niche. I stayed there for less than a year until I finally quit, disgusted by what happens behind the doors of academic research and clinical medicine. Suddenly, neither science nor medicine seemed like the solutions to the world’s problems.
I am still in the medical field in a non-surgical specialty, but what a change. I never thought leisure time could increase my creativity so much. My expenses got even lower than before. I didn’t need more money anyway, only more time. Ain’t this normal for someone interested in life extension since childhood?
My expenses fluctuate over the course of the year although I still work the same number of hours per week. Utilities cost a lot more during winter. Food costs a lot less during summer. Since I have a full-time job, I can neither work more when I need to, nor work less when I don’t need that much money.
Yet a wave of change is sweeping past the human civilization. More and more people choose to work on a per-project basis. Some of them started freelancing when out of work, many more enjoyed moonlighting on the side.
As manufacturing became more automated, many of those workers found themselves unemployed. Some of them reentered the work market in the service sector, but what about the others?
The existence of full-time jobs is damaging everyone – people who work more often than they want to and people who are left out of work.
Now is work a finite good? Can’t we just create new jobs for everyone involved? If we encourage growth for the sake of growth, then we will always create enough full-time jobs. Yet when I see images from the Great Pacific garbage patch and many others like it, I’m afraid we created junk and lost leisure time on the way.
The millennial generation wants work that matters. We care about democracy, ethics and quality time, so we may see this kind of jobs drop in large numbers. Why toil in toxic environments producing disposable stuff? Why publish tabloid crap to get views for the advertisers?
Jobs don’t exist in a vacuum – they take place on a piece of land by a certain amount of people, each one living a finite number of days. The creation of jobs takes place at a considerable opportunity cost.
What if fewer people would need to go to work today because they wouldn’t thoughtlessly consume crap?
What if some of us find walking more enjoyable than sweating for buying a car that demands even more money for maintenance and gas?
What’s the purpose of selling plastic junk for a living while hiring a stranger for meager pay to take care of your children or aging parents?
What if one day you wake up and you realize you want leisure more than money?
Time is finite. Money is largely not.
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“Ain’t this normal for someone interested in life extension since childhood?”
Did you know about the possibility of indefinite life extension in childhood? What age? How?
I found a collection of science fiction short stories in my parents’ library and I found out about the possibility of aging being solved from there. I don’t remember the author names or the book title at all, only that it was translated into Romanian. I think I was in secondary school by that time – can’t remember the exact age.
Cool! Wish I had read such books on time!
I “only” realized that religion is pretty much a human invention in grade 5, and that based on science, I should be able to push it to 115 years old. But it did not occur to me it’s possible more, even in principle, up untill 2011-2012, after I read , fanatically, tons of news research rticles on science and technology.
Better late than never! And there are a ton of books me or you or both didn’t read yet! Too little time, too many books…