Cont. from https://www.cognisity.how/2020/04/WhyWork.html
I ended the first part of my explanation with these statements:
“In order to make a living one has to be able to satisfy
someone else’s needs for – well, something, anything: cooking, delivering food,
writing a code, etc.
If one
cannot do anything – one does not deserve to live.
If no one
needs anything from you - you are worthless.
If someone can be useful to one but a
very rich person, or to poor but many persons, that someone climbs up the
social ladder.
Otherwise, ...”
It is time to finish the last statement.
If you are useful to one but a very rich person, or to poor
but many persons, then you will climb the social ladder. Otherwise, you will die
in poverty.
This is just the current state of affairs.
This is the current social and economic rule.
There is one exception from this rule – a person who was
born rich, who got sufficient inheritance and was smart enough not to waist it.
But that’s that.
For everyone else, the rule says: “If you are useful to one
but a very rich person, or to poor but many persons, then you will climb the
social ladder. Otherwise, you will die in poverty.”.
In order to
have a good living you need to be needed by people whose combined wealth is
large enough to pay you good money.
Now we can ask two questions:
1.
Is this fair?
and
2.
Can we live by a different rule?
The
answer to the first question depends on a personal history of cultural growth
and developed life philosophy. But if we all would follow an idea that all
people are created equal, we would have to state that the rule is not fair. As I
described in part I, we are who we are and what we are and where we are mostly
due to a vast set of random factors. Because of that not all people are created
equal. Socially and economically disadvantaged people cannot be blamed for being
disadvantaged, it’s not their fault. And
hence there is no ideological or philosophical reason to punish those people by
keeping them in poverty. The only reason for keeping huge part of a human
population in poverty is, well, was, not enough resources to provide everyone
with good living. But with the current technological advances that time is in
the past. Nowadays, the humanity has resources to feed and give home to
everyone – if only those resource would have been used.
There
are political forces that do not want share available resource to all people
because as long as they control those resources they control those people. But
that is a different conversation.
If
one believes that the current economic and social state of affairs I not fair,
one needs to answer “Yes” to the second question.
“Yes
We Can!” live by a different rule.
But
– what rule would that be?
This
is my version of the new rule, it has three parts:
1.
All people have the same right for having a decent life.
2.
The purpose of a government, the mission of a government is to establish
political conditions that would lead to establishing fair economic conditions
that would lead to establishing decent standards of living for all citizens.
3.
The number one criterion of the quality of governmental work is how many
citizens live in decent conditions that provide healthy and emotionally
positive (a.k.a. happy) life.
Well,
technically, “healthy” includes “mentally healthy”, i.e. “happy”, but I think
that “happiness” still should be explicitly stated as the part of the measure
of the work of a government.
If
we accept this new rule, then we have to
make a conclusion, that, in general, in order to have a healthy and happy life people should not be required to work.
The
rule does NOT have such a requirement as a requirement to work.
That
means, that under the new rule, people
do NOT have to work!
Why
do people have to work NOW? => Because otherwise they will die from
starvation, or will have a very bad, unhealthy/unhappy life.
But
if the government takes care of good living conditions for everyone, then
people do NOT have to work anymore.
Pure
logic.
BTW:
this logic is not new in anyway (I don’t want to pretend I am the first who
said it).
And,
of course, it has been heavily criticized.
The
#1 counter argument is – if people do not
have to work, then they will not work,
and then since no one will work, the whole economy will collapse, and the society
will fall into chaos.
Every
argument is based on some assumptions.
The
#1 counter argument is based on the assumption that all humans are intrinsically lazy.
Ask
some big-fish CEO or an entrepreneur why dose he/she work? “I don’t work because
I want money, I work because I love creating new things, products, practices,
connections, …” – you name it. And
he/she always thinks “because I am so so special! But everyone else is lazy
ignorant people who are lucky to have a job.”
Of
course, as we know now, there is nothing special about any of those big-fish
rich and famous – he/she is just lucky, and everyone else is just not so lucky (re-read
part I).
I
do not believe that humans are intrinsically lazy.
I
have been teaching for decades and have taught thousands of people of different
age, gender, profession, culture. And I know that people are not lazy, there is
no natural tendency for laziness, and if someone does not want to act, it is
not because someone is lazy, but because he or she has no motive to act.
Most
people (parents, teachers, bosses,
politicians, administrators, friends, psychologists) confuse laziness with the
lack of motivation.
Intrinsically,
by nature, most people are prompted to act – just look at infants, look at toddlers.
However, if born and grew up in a wrong culture (bad luck) some people do not
have developed internal motives to grow – as a person, as a professional. That
is not their fault. And there are many examples that when placed in a right
culture, people start thriving (Anton Makarenko).
Hence,
the most important parameter that affects
who people act (hence work) is the culture they grew up in.
The lack of
motivation is the sign of the wrong culture one grew up in.
It’s
not about people, per se, it is about culture they grow up in.
With
the right culture, all people would definitely have internal motivation to grow
– as a person and as a professional.
With the right
culture, all people would work even if they did not have to.
The
answer to question “why do people have to work?” is “because many of them grew
up in a wrong culture”.
Change
the culture – and even if all people will have a good decent life without need
for work, they will work – to realize/fulfill their natural intrinsic potential
– because that feels really good (if you know what I mean – I do).
Now
we have to answer two more questions:
1.
What is the right culture?
and
2.
How should the right culture be developed?
The
answer to the first question begs a new publication.
The
answer to the second question though is “trivial” – the right culture should be
developed via right public education.
That,
of course, moves us to questions like “what is wrong with the current public
education?”, “why the dismal state of public education has been there for
decades without any significant improvement despite billions of dollars spent
on a so-called education reform?”, and other addressed in multiple posts on the matters.
Homework:
why humans are intrinsically naturally active, not lazy?
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V
Because
otherwise humans would die out long time ago, there would be no humanity, because
there is no survival without being active, survival and especially procreation demands activity.
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov
