Growing from a weed to a beautiful flower

The idea for a Four-Hour Work Day sprung from a bed of concerns, almost like a weed, but it now has a certain richness and urgency that demands careful and attentive husbandry.

The Four-Hour Work Day - from a weed
 to a beautiful flower.

That richness and urgency stems from human-induced changes to our climate; the prevalence of putting the economy ahead of human welfare; a blatant disinterest in the state of the earth (at least in keeping it habitable for humans); and equally seeming disinterest in the welfare of the other; an inability to see past, or care about what happens beyond the life of our grandchildren; the embrace of superstition and the inordinate rejection of reason and reality; the adoption of gigantism at the expense of what is small, simple and local; and a apathy toward, or at least a misunderstanding of, what is simply good for people.

A Four-Hour Work Day will not directly resolve any of those difficulties, but it will encourage a restructuring and rethinking of how we live.

Humans have walked the earth for about 200 000 years and we evolved to a point at which, about 200 years ago, we discovered how to unlock the secrets of ancient sunlight, that is fossil fuels, and in that blink of geological time we have understood complexity to such an extent that now have the capacity to end life, as we know it, on the planet.

Interestingly, we have shown sufficient restraint to avoid blowing ourselves up, but appear to be walking blindly into another trap about which many are aware, but with our natural inclination to multiply unabated and eagerness to exploit fossil fuels not being interrupted in any way, we are rapidly depleting the earth’s finite resources and along the way causing irreparable damage, at least on time-scale that matters to humans, to earth’s atmosphere.

A Four-Hour Work Day will simply slow that damage and, in concert, enable us time to recreate a sense of community and along with that build a five-minute life style – a life that puts all that is important on a day-to-day basis  (food, work, leisure, and various services, friends and family) all within five minutes walking or cycling.

Corporations will be replaced by community, growth by generosity, profit by a neighbourhood sense of pleasure and the urgency of the contemporary understanding of work by the more leisurely concept of the artisan who draws comfort from perfecting individual items, rather than being chained to the endlessly grind of the production line.

The sense of camaraderie, frequently cultivated with the purpose in existing workplaces with the prime purpose of ensuring growth, will naturally arise in tight-knit communities that work together to enable the building of resilience, endurance and a deep sense of caring.

We have tried living on the premise that growth will resolve human challenges: it has not and so not we must look toward a different way of doing things, a way that revolve around limiting the number of hours we devote each day to the sustenance of that hypothesis.

Considering the difference between 'unemployed' and 'under-employed'

Books have been written about the emerging group of people who are under-employed, note: “under” rather than “un”

Ms Gabrielle Whitehead, who is among the
 army of Australians who work part-time.

There is a difference and those under-employed as opposed to unemployed escape classification  and are among what author, Guy Standing, writing in his new book, “Precariat – The New Dangerous Class”, discusses how precariousness is becoming the new normality in globalised labour markets, and offers important guidelines for all concerned to build a more just society.

A story in today’s Age (April 21) tells of Gabrielle Whitehead is in her early 50s and lives near Ballarat. She is part of an army of Australians who work part-time, and want more work - but simply can't find it.

The dilemma Ms Whitehead faces is, or course, is the manifestation of values that are primarily about growth and profit, two things that are achieved when the inputs are limited and outputs continually expanded.

Labour is an input that can be reduced and held within prescribed limits.

Standing wonders, rightly, what will be social out-come of this new financially and so socially disadvantaged group.

It will not be good if we continue to adhere to the existing business as usual paradigm where our success if measure by the seemingly endless accumulation of goods, but the final analysis does little, but simply enrich as few.

It is in instance such as this that we need to break from the existing paradigm; a mindset that puts profit and growth ahead of people; and re-invent life in a way that stresses that everything we do needs to be about enhancing the welfare, physically and mentally, of people in a way that ensures the world’s eco systems remain healthy and intact.

We need to unshackle ourselves from the corporatization of life that drives endlessly at complexity and being conscious of that work in concert with nature that prefers equilibrium and simplicity a goal forever in its sights, commonly understood as atrophy, that being the return of everything to its simplest state.

Complexity and energy equate and as the complexity of life increased so did mankind’s use of energy and as of today, that has primarily been energy arrived through the burning of fossil fuels and although that has appeared free, the bill has now been slammed on the table for humankind to pay.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not the solution, rather just the first step in us moving toward a simple and less energy intensive way of living.
It would allow people more time to focus on their communities and neighbourhoods; it was allow them more time to be better citizens; it would allow them more time be engaged with political decisions (it was Aristotle who noted that a civil society and leisure are connected); it would allow more time to be better neighbours and, importantly, better people.

The dilemma faced by Ms Whitehead and others like is real and would not be resolved by the Four-Hour Work Day, but coupled with a resetting of our aspirations and the hosing-down of our egos and the creation of powerful community bonds, that survival would insist upon, the Precariat Guy Standing writes about might vanish.

Age reporter, Clay Lucas, has written about My Whitehead’s dilemma in the story headed: Part-timers up against the wall.