A complex discussion that will lead to happiness and contentmentt

by Robert McLean

Most people are unable to understand or comprehend an entirely different way of living: a way of living rooted in a comprehensively different infrastructure, one applied both publically and personally.

Amory Lovins of the Rocky
Mountain Institure.

We are so addicted to present endeavours, physically, psychologically and practically, that we are unable to escape the present paradigm that is targeted at igniting our wants and making the fulfilling of our needs a seemingly incidental by-product of answering those wants.

Of course they are not, and if we continue to fulfill those wants in a blasé market driven fashion, our ability to answer even the most basic human needs will be severely eroded.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not about a Luddite-like attack on the existing capitalistic system, although it is interpreted by many as such, rather it is about injecting time back into our lives and conservatively halving the amount of time we devote to industrial growth: growth that is robbing humans of the conditions in which they enjoy life the most.

It is really about understanding what is important to us; what personally enriches our lives; and, within that, understanding and truly appreciating what it is that makes us better people.

None of those things are unconditionally answered by working long hours each day in the employ of another to ensure that person’s access to wealth goes on unabated.

It’s a complex argument as work has many worthy personal and social values and although many of the world’s market-driven companies invest to enhance them, the unacknowledged implication is that they pilfer both the energy and time of workers that could more advantageously be applied to the wellbeing and so resilience of their neighbourhoods.

The growth-mandate of the market system hinges on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual budget disciplines that in themselves are honourable, but in being directed toward ever increasing profit pay little, or not attention, to the fact that success of those budgets implicates every aspect of nature – considered a common good by most – and considers irrelevant the fact that those budgets can only be achieved through the exploitation of even more of earth’s finite resources.

The Four-Hour Work Day if employed correctly would halve that consumption, make the community fundamentally financially poorer, but socially incredible rich – our neighborhoods would be more vibrant, alive, interesting and so rewarding place to be.

It was Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, in discussing a plan he has for energy said: “The future is not fate, but choice”.

Working endlessly to ensure the profit of another is not our fate, it is our choice.