We All Deserve to Lose Our Jobs
Not a hardcore history fan here, but I'd bet $0.54 and the remainder of my spicy pineapple Kill Cliff that the first humans who tried on the concept of "jobs" wanted to go back to hunting-gathering by the end of the weekend. Not that I'm saying everyone hates their job, but nowadays you can't make a fan out of a 9-to-5 even if you swapped the water cooler with a cocktail stand (hell even Hitler had a bigger following). So, should we retire from jobs for good? Is that even possible?
1. Honor thy Job
If the gig economy and the Jonestown massacre could somehow breed, the resulting abomination would no doubt be "workism," the cursed, sect-like belief system about work being the single most important thing in life. You know these people; they are the chronic workaholics who would power through a hernia and skip their mother's funeral to go crunch some late-night overtime. Look, you can have a passion and all that, but even if your boss gave his life for your sins I don't think you should be answering phone calls on a Sunday.
Jump to this conclusion: back in the day, a job was simply a way to make money without having a police sketch of your face doing the rounds on the local news. But now they have crept all the way up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from a simple means to afford food and shelter to becoming the source of our identity, sense of belonging, and self-worth. And judging by the amount of cringe LinkedIn content out there, I'd say it's been for the worse.
2. Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
In recent years people have been quitting their jobs in the millions, and not in an "I bought bitcoin when it was cheaper than Walmart jewellery" kind of way. And by "recent years" I mean, at least, a century. Oh yeah, this is not news. "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore" headlines are as old as cocaine in Coca-Cola. It's not just the kids nowadays, grandpa. Anyone with a two fingers-thick forehead can figure out that no severance package is worth growing old at a minimum wage position.
In the know: I mean, look at Amazon. They have so much trouble keeping their employees from going feral they have to come up with "self-care" measures straight out of a George Orwell novel. My favourite is "AmaZen," an office panic room that offers "easy-to-follow guided meditations and positive affirmations." Imagine not being allowed to take a piss but then encouraged to get inside a booth the shape and size of a portaloo to "relax" over the sounds of waves and rain. You can't make this up.
3. World Class Fun-Haver
Hobbies aren't what they used to be. There was a time you could simply fill up a spare room with model trains, pamper your obsession for Star Wars memorabilia, and prolong your virginity past your 30s for the sake of having a spare-time pursuit you truly enjoy. Now it seems every casual jogger has to train for an Ironman Triathlon and every amateur MS Paint user has to whip up an NFT collection. You can't even take a shit without being encouraged to make a side hustle out of it. Seriously, we must demonetize our hobbies before voyeurs and poachers start setting up Patreon accounts.
Here's my point: you can see this in the way tech is designed around leisure. Apps are constantly tracking the pages you read, the steps you make, the number of green cabbage calories you ingest, and exactly how worse you're doing compared to last week. Everything is optimized for efficient, clockwise fun. I wouldn't be surprised if dildos start coming with subscription-based weekly reports over email anytime soon.
4. Clocking out
Now, judging by my Alexa echo dot's emotional intelligence score and overall dexterity in handling my breakfast, I'd say it's gonna be a while before robots can take over the job market and fill up the roles of plumbers, doctors and Beyoncé's backup dancers. This is however no excuse to keep simping on hustle culture like "Busy" is the name of the latest e-girl celebrity to set up an OnlyFans. We need to start thinking about what a "post-work" world might look like, cause the fact that we still have people growing tumours at an oil field to earn a living tells me we haven't reached civilization's endgame yet.
Hard to argue with this: this obsession with work culture is relatively recent anyway. Before the industrial revolution, people measured their wealth by the number of hours they could spend having tea parties and scratching their balls whilst others worked the fields. No 16th-century aristocrat would've taken pride in having a workday that starts at 3:00 AM. Don’t even try to adjust for inflation the fortune they would have to spend on candles if they did.
So, technically...
We all deserve to lose our jobs. I'm gonna miss happy hour, but we worked really hard to deserve a future where our self-worth, leisure time, and living conditions are not dictated by a job title. Work is natural, but not inherent to life. And it so happens that now we have the technology and knowledge to start envisioning a jobless future. Sounds implausible, but so do the pyramids. Let’s just build it and then blame it on the aliens.