The continuation of earthly conditions that allows human flourishing rests with us

The preservation of earthly conditions that have allowed humanity to flourish rest with the present stewards the earth (that is you and I) living a more restrained life.

The earthly conditions that allowed
 humans to flourish will only continue
if all of us have a hand in helping
 reach the appropriate solution.

Our addiction to the hedonistic good life comes with costs that are beyond the fiscal; ever since we understood how to derive energy from “ancient sunlight” (fossil fuels) we began to pay with our atmosphere, the foundation of life on earth.

The technological advances of humanity in the last two or three centuries have been wonderful and should be celebrated, but with care and consideration.

The accumulation of human learning has been wonderful, but now the trick, the real trick, the life and death trick, is to learn and understand how to apply that learning.

Human learning has been exponential and that has allowed food security for many leading to an equally exponential growth in population and the demands upon the earth’s resources, particularly from those in the developed world, have exceeded earth’s capabilities.

Many world leaders operate on the “crash through or crash” philosophy seemingly convinced that the latter will only eventuate is the neoliberals are not given free rein.

Those same neoliberals, and the growth at all costs supporters, are oblivious to, or are psychologically unable to cope with the fact that we live in a finite world.

Probably decades ago, our “learnings” should have enabled us to understand earth’s finitude and though that accepted and worked toward creating a more restrained way of living; a way that was not dominated and controlled by the accumulation of a human construct, that being money.

A vastly more important value in life, a value that is not a human construct, is that of relationships; relationships that can be honed and developed from the creation of strong local neighbourhoods within communities, largely ignoring that accumulation and growth at any cost paradigm presently promoted with vigour by the neoliberals.

 The Four-Hour Work Day might seem an impossible dream, but in the early 1990s the Internet and its associated benefits, seemed little more than a dream, but without it today’s business world would grind to a halt.

Landing a man on the moon once seemed like a dream and now it is simply history.

Maybe you could argue about the impossibility of the Four-Hour Work Day but as convincing as that might be it is an argument to which the world will pay no heed.

Unless we can understand the importance of us living a more restrained life, the world is going to produce an argument to which we will have no retort.

 

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth is, as ever, on the front foot and subsequently democracy is in retreat.

Consider an evening’s television programming and the retreat become of democracy becomes obvious as does the erosion of enfranchisement.

The entertainment of most commercial television programming is exactly that – “entertainment” and never does it disturb a person’s thinking and cause them to wonder about how and why their country is being governed.

It is a malign influence and is counter to exactly the intent of Socrates who said “That the unexamined life is not worth living”.

Watching television, or being involved in much of contemporary media offers, forestalls the idea that we should critically examine anything, rather simply give ourselves over to the hedonistic life; a life in which consumption is king.

The idea of the Four-Hour Work Day will evolve from the endless examination of what it is we do; a return to true democracy in which people involve themselves in a civil society; work to ensure democracy is truly about one vote, one person and not one dollar, one vote; and realise that what is presently foisted upon us under the guise of democracy is really totalitarianism by the wealthy.

The barbarians are at the gate and rather than being prepared to subdue us with weapons of mass destruction they will use finance of mass destruction.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not about money; rather it is about putting people ahead of profit and as it works its subtle magic to rescue us from a life of slavery to the cause of the corporations, it will also play a key role in helping counteract the damage humans have caused to earth’s atmosphere.

The Four-Hour Work Day will dramatically reduce our use of energy, our use of fossil fuels, but what will in fact be a quieter life by today’s standards, will really socially richer; richer to a level we don’t yet understand.

 

Conventional thinking versus revolutionary thinking

Albert Einstein - the thinking that brought
us here, will not take us into the future.

Continuing with business as usual is similar to maintaining the status quo, needing only conventional thinking.

Switching to and understanding how we could be fulfilled and content by working fewer hours, demands revolutionary thinking.

Such innovative thinking begins with the abandonment of cherished, but seriously dated concepts and then their replacement with something new; something that sits comfortably with our evolving world.

Agile, athletic and energetic thinking will help us understand the advantages of that new paradigm; a paradigm that without option we have to theoretically, politically and practically understand, and adopt, because of the damage we have inflicted on the equilibrium of our climate.

Fulfilment in life for all thrives more on co-operation than competition and as Thomas H. Greco writes in “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”  ….”to recognize that we all have fundamental interests in common; and to organize and co-ordinate our actions to achieve common goals”.

Working a four-hour day is about common goals and co-operation, but it is a concept that is unquestionably beyond the comprehension of most and being wholly disruptive it will end, without question, life as we know it.

Disturbing as that might sound it is in fact a good thing for life as it is abounds with inequity; an inequity resulting from a globalized economy being forced upon on a world-society still fundamentally driven by localism.

We have a globalized economy – money travels uninhibited by national borders, but even in the relatively economically tiny Australia we, in Tony Abbott’s words, “must turn back the boats”, illustrating resistance to a globalized civilization.

The growth mandate of the globalized economy clearly puts profit ahead of people and even a cursory look at world circumstances illustrates that many have been brutalized and plunged into poverty through pursuit of that tumour-like ideal.

Greco's book explains
the difference between
co-operation and
competition.

That unrelenting quest for growth is exactly what has brought us to this position and that causes me to think of Albert Einstein’s observation that the thinking that has led to this will not be adequate to take us beyond it.

Considering Greco’s observation about the importance of co-operation ahead of competition and Einstein’s suggestion that we need to refresh and invigorate our thinking, it appears obvious, at least to me, that we must willingly surrender many of modern life’s trappings.

Many draw their optimism from technology and human ingenuity pointing to our magical modern life as justification of their faith, but embedded in that conviction is a disturbing indifference to the science on which that celebrated technology and equally acclaimed ingenuity depend.

Most everything we enjoy in our modern world depends on science and yet we ignore that science at our peril; a science that unequivocally declares that we, because of our behaviour, have wounded earth’s atmosphere.

Work is integral to human wellbeing . . . . but!

Work, in all its broad and complex manifestations, is integral to human wellbeing.

Influential economist,
 Jeffrey Sachs

The idea of work is, however, in dispute.

Work never really arose, it was simply a necessity that was important to human survival; it was beyond anything else an obligation each faced if they were to flourish.

It is somewhat risky to consider the idea of work as being in dispute for it is, certainly in the developed world, universal and an unreservedly linked to the modern idea of the good life.

That “dispute” is really only in my mind, but my views are aligned with an implacable ally, one I would prefer it didn’t have, but the harder we work for the wrong goals, the more we disrupt the world’s ecological balance.

Nature, our benevolent dictator, always seeks equilibrium, but mankind working diligently, particularly for the past two centuries, has created an amazingly complex society and so disrupted earth’s balance.

Embroiled in the complexity we have created, the simple life is remote; so remote that any bid to achieve it will be thwarted by the complications we have created.

However, that does not mean we should not aspire to the simple life; a life in which work is not about acquisition and consumption, rather ensuring that we can access life’s needs and within that allow us more free time for purposeful leisure.

Wellbeing, countless surveys has shown, is not linked to the modern way of acquisition or consumption, but it is to be found in a mindfulness of living and a considered life.

Writing in his latest book, Jeffrey Sachs, who has been described by the New York Times, as "probably the most important economist in the world," said: “The relentless drumbeat of consumerism into our lives has led to extreme short-sightedness, consumer addictions and the shrivelling of compassion”.



Sachs' latest book.

Sachs continues: “The logic of profit maximization, combined with unprecedented breakthroughs in information and communications technology, has led to an economy of distraction the likes of which the world have never before seen. The end result is a society of consumer addictions, personal anxieties, growing loneliness in the midst of electronic social networks, and financial networks, and financial distress. This is true for super-rich as well as the rest of society”.

Considering that, each of us should contemplate what Aristotle had to had to say today’s hyper-consumerism ever existed – “I count him braver who overcomes his desires that him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

Much of modern work does little but help us fulfil those desires Aristotle discusses, so it takes a brave and thoughtful soul to escape the all-encompassing shopping mandate the corporatocracy has convinced us is the portal to the good life.

An idea to help us escape 'the busy trap'

“I’m so busy” is the plea of most workers.

That “plea”, writer Tim Kreider says in the New York Time arises when people find they have fallen into what he calls “the busy trap”.

Tim Kreider's book,
 'We Learn Nothing'.

Kreider says that those in that “trap” is “almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence”.

Writing in the “Opinionator” in a story headed: “The ‘busy’ trap”, Kreider said that almost everyone he knows is busy.

The idea of busy is just that, an idea, and if people imagine they are busy then they are busy – it illustrates the power of ideas.

Working eight hours a day, and frequently longer, is simply an idea an idea that has perverted the human psyche and the four-hour day is just that, an idea; an idea with the power to erode the idea of ‘busy’.

Tim Kreider is the author of “We Learn Nothing.”

Weeping as I write

I weep as I write.

Surfers surfing, walkers walking and
 people enjoying the good life.

It is a beautiful day; surfers are surfing, swimmers are swimming, people are walking everywhere, the local coffee shops and cafes are packed with those simply celebrating the good weather and the equally good life.

This is the good life, at least that which the modern marketers tell us is the good life, and it is the rich life, something that is the epitome of our growth and consumerist-based economy.

It has been achieved because of our rapacious approach to all that allows humans to prosper. Sadly, and confusingly, it is a lifestyle I love, but it is one that is entirely unsustainably.

It is urgent, well beyond urgent, that we re-think what it is we do; re-imagine our way of life; seek a new way to access joy; re-structure and re-shape our communities to allow them to become emboldened with happiness the resilience and within that understand that contentment is to be found through working with, helping and encouraging your fellows, family and friends, rather than pursuing a life foundered on the exploitation of finite resources and making “presentism” the root of all activities.

Saving the planet is irrelevant as it is fine for no matter what we do, it will go on, the real issue is about saving ourselves, or at least preserving the conditions that are conducive to human survival.

Nature always looks to achieve equilibrium, but in dumping inordinate amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we have disrupted its bid for equilibrium and it will achieve that no matter what – storms, droughts, and major weather events we cannot yet understand.

The lifestyle we lead and the one I weep for is open to us because of our wealth; a richness that has allowed us to service our wants rather than simply our needs.

Working fewer hours each day (work in the modern and traditional understanding of work) is an anathema to any economist trained in the growth/consumerist/profit paradigm, but it is the most obvious first step in any move to abate the impacts of climate change.

Should we have fewer grounds for exchange (money) we will have no option but to turn to our fellows for support and within that build stronger and more resilient communities.

By Robert McLean

George Monbiot supports Four-Hour Work Day concept



George Monbiot.

Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, is a supporter of the Four-Hour Work Day, well, not in practice, but his philosophies seem to align with the concept.

In his latest piece - How “Sustainability” Became “Sustained Growth” – published in the Guardian newspaper discusses the mangled results of the Rio Earth Summit.

“The Rio Declaration rips up the basic principles of environmental action,” he says in a column published on June 22.

Monbiot’s observations about growth are aligned with the fundamentals of the Four-Hour Work Day.