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.