I don't know what the percentage is, but I suspect that the large majority to the point of near total work we do as a species, is busywork. It doesn't need to be done for our survival. It also probably doesn't add much to our wellbeing in life, and might even detract more from it, because it isn't really that important. There are probably exceptions, but pretty much everywhere along the supply chain of all industries, nothing really needs to get done. The reason we do it though, is that we believe that making money is the way to a better society, even though the evidence doesn't really support this. Even a lot of the jobs that people would assume are beneficial like being a doctor, are largely treating symptoms of our own inability to improve ourselves, our environment, and our behaviours, with many of the many ailments caused by the for profit economy, including healthcare itself.
Money doesn't equal wellbeing.
And while I believe that most of what we do is pretty useless, I also think that it is necessary for us to work, because it is how we have evolved as humans. To be social, to solve problems, and to work together to do what we can't do alone. It doesn't really matter what we work on, which is why "busywork" has become the mechanism, but it would obviously be far, far better for us as a species if we worked on projects that advanced us for common and individual good. Working together builds community, and working together on what is valuable to us, builds a healthy society.
For instance, you might believe that climate change is man-made, or you might not. But it is likely that you believe that pollution of all types that make it harder for us to live good lives and introduces unnecessary stress on nature and therefore our food supply, is a bad thing. If we could start cleaning up the pollution we create, we could have significantly better quality of health and lives in general.
But often, the things that would make our lives better are going to cost money, and are "too expensive" to implement at scale, or with any speed. Yet, this is a nonsensical argument, because an economy isn't driven by what is being produced, it is simply supply and demand. Moving demand over to other industries that either pollute less or produce goods and services that reduce pollution or clean it up, doesn't take money out of the economy, it redistributes it within the economy. Because that is how economics works.
As I was saying in an article the other day, most people's "resilience" is actually resistance. They aren't open to an uncertain future of change that might not work, and are instead trying to hold onto the status quo conditions that are definitely not going to work. We are more comfortable failing with what we know, than failing at what we don't.
As I have hypothesized for many years, if we could stop all the nonsense of war and conflict and greed, and all the profiteering actions to maximise wealth for a decade or so, and diverted all our energy in unison to tackle the problems that really have impact on our lives and the products and services that facilitate a better outcome, we would likely have such an extreme amount of innovation in the "too expensive" categories, that we wouldn't be able to reconcile how we were able to do without it before. And the reason we can do without it now, is because we are settling for the things the way they are.
That is not our nature.
We are conditioned to settle, which means it is a nurture component. But nurture makes it sound like we are lovingly held in a mother's arms and rocked to sleep. Which is not the case. This is not out of love, it is out of greed and is abusive to our nature and our wellbeing at individual and societal levels. We are worse off as a species in a for profit environment that doesn't have checks and balances on what is being sold. Leaving it up to a manipulated and conditioned marketplace, doesn't make it okay. We like to think we make our own choices, but that really isn't the case in the current economy, because we are constantly being nudged to do what is not in our best interest, or the best interest of society
Busywork.
It keeps us busy, but we are more like cows being fed to be milked, rather than people who are part of a society that is looking to improve. The thing is though, that even if we do nothing, the result of failure is the same, because the trajectory is heading to catastrophe. Just to have a chance at survival as a species, we need to do radically different than what we are doing now, but there is no appetite for that level of change. It is too "risky" to have so much disruption, so there is resilience resistance in order to maintain the current devil we know.
It would be an interesting thought experiment for another day perhaps, to look at what might happen if we were able to fork this world into two worlds, running one chain "as is" and the other in conditions where people are putting their efforts into real improvement, rather than looking to take profits first, and then paying others to improve. My suspicions are that one earth will die a painful death, and the other would come up with a lot of cool stuff that people feel good about.
Ultimately, both might fail.
Which world would you want to live in?
Taraz
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My wife puts cardboard in the regular bin instead of the recycling bin. Sometimes I put cans in the regular bin instead of the recycling bins (but not the ones that we can get 10c for, they go in the garage).
We had a moment in the kitchen where I observed that (and she agreed) that our little impact has no being on the consequence - because one - we're not ever having children, and two - we certainly won't be around to face the butterfly- effect inspired negligence of the small amounts of matter we misplace.
Tragically, so often, the recycling ends up in the landfill.
My personal bug bear at the moment is "single use plastics" - as you may know, South Australia is on a warpath to "ban" and "phase out" these things - but so many things that would not be considered "single use" plastic are in fact this - the bag the chicken comes in from the butcher.
The see through window on envelope that comes in the mail. The squeezy sauce bottle that people don't bother to refill from a larger vessel of sauce. I could go on. It is single use, not because its use once and throw away, but because it does not get "reused" after the fact.
Semantics, of course, something I prattle on about too much. But I return to the notion that it doesn't matter. Apathy, perhaps, instead of resistance.
I think this is the common affect of the immediacy of our desires now. We don't care about the future, even our own, and especially not the generations to come. Those cave paintings that gave guides to future generations on how to survive for thousands of years, have become tiktok videos on how to waste the next 30 seconds of life. Is it a life worth living though?
In terms of single use plastics, yeah, it is annoying. The difference between a straw and a chicken bag though is, the straw gets thrown onto the street. Does that change the definition? Europe has been banning single use plastics for years already.
Overall though, I think there are far more important things than single use plastics we could be spending the same amount of effort on and have a greater impact. Stop dropping bombs might be a good start.
That would be delightful. If I hear one thing about "sustainable weapons", well... I might just go mad. Perhaps we could achieve it, instead of dropping the straw on the street, collect them and drop them upon your enemies.
straws and cigarette butts.
If you don't have a world driven by financial incentives aka capitalism, then what would that world be? Communism or AI governed utopia?
Depends on what the driver is I would say. That would depend on the culture, and what they value. Capitalism as a utopia is pretty awesome, as is anarchism or communism - but they do not align with human behavior. And an AI would probably reason that the best way to govern a herd of humans is to select the best ones according to the current set of predominant values and have them rule in an authoritarian way.
I would say that the AI wouldn't be able to find the best human that could do a better job than itself. The AI would be the AuthoritI.
It can still be driven by financial incentive, it is still supply and demand rules. However, what is being demanded matters, right? The work that gets paid now, isn't valuable work for humanity. Maybe we should demand differently.
As I have said before, we just need to achieve warp drive so the Vulcans can come and I produce us to a new age where accumulation of knowledge is more popular than accumulation of wealth.
I once wrote an article on this, where I posited that if we were all as smart as spock or smarter, war would just end. We would have far more interesting things to do than accumulate meaningless tokens.
I certainly wish that were the case!
It really isn't that much of an experiment, but quite the reality, in a way. Some countries went for the exploitation way, and got the best head start. The countries that did not go the route of destruction first got overtaken, and now they're trying to catch up in the same way.
Okay, that is not the way of improvement. It would be interesting to see. Until now, humanity made an art out of twisting every "improvement" into something ultimately destructive.
Yet, destruction is imminent. In a parallel universe scenario where there is not the mix, one would be destroyed, one has a chance to survive. The problem is that the incentives are aligned to encourage destruction more than growth.
I believe that when people with different skills, diverse experiences, and different values work together in the same community, ideas emerge and more value is added. It is clear that there will be conflicting ideas for some projects. But in the end, everything can be resolved well and successful projects with high value can be created.
The challenge comes when people believe that the reward is more important than the outcome.
The modern economy forces this upon us. For some to earn more, for others to forget their poverty, they must engage in forced labor. The greatest obstacle to true progress is useless occupation. Working for the common good, instead of useless pursuits, can bring prosperity to both us and the world.
Yes. But occupation is driven by demand and the incentives it creates. So "useless" for humanity, becomes useful for generating profit.
We still have so much to learn... We have forgotten everything history has taught us, and the consequences will come if we don't reflect in time.
The work of subsisting, of surviving, is so different from that which demonstrates what is truly necessary...
Our daily work is so diverse, and its consequences are as evident as it is sad when we fail to consider what is truly valuable...
Very good, thoughtful analysis. Thank you!
Value is in the eye of the beholder, and we have been convinced that money has value, even though we aren't using it to improve our lives.
We should change our focus from merely earning money to genuinely enhancing our lives and taking care of the planet. However, it has been going difficult day by day as we try harder to survive under these conditions of today's life.
Yes. It is part of the plan to maintain the status quo - make life so hard that people "feel" they can't do differently and all we focus on is surviving in what we already have - which is a terrible set of conditions that don't need to be.
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Thanks.