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.

Looking for the 'silver bullet' in climate change adaptation

The “silver bullet” in climate adaptation is the Four-Hour Work Day.

Should we want to reduce our impact on the atmosphere, then it is important that we reduce, rather almost eliminate, our reliance on fossil fuels and therein is the critical aspect of working fewer hours.

The “silver bullet” in climate adaptation is
 the Four-Hour Work Day.

With society built around a four-hour work day, the interval between our journeys to and fro would be short compared to what exists, encouraging people to live within an easy walking or cycling distance of their work places.

That would, by its nature, reduce the distance travelled by people to and from work subsequently eroding the need for an extensive, and expensive, road network, easing the pressure on public transport systems, leading to a “five-minute life” – that is a neighbourhood in which everything important and day-to-day basis, including work, shopping, health and educative services, various government services, reaction and leisure – are all within five minutes walking or cycling; obesity would be eased and general health would improve as more people would be physically active; communities and neighbourhoods would be vastly stronger and be markedly healthier, more resilient and stronger as people would simply have more time to be there.

And, of course, just as soon as it became clear that neighbourhoods were enriched through the deeper and more expansive involvement of those who lived there, it would have a self-fulfilling dynamic as it began to “feed upon itself” and the improvement would become organic.

With additional time at their disposal to pursue activities that enhanced life personally, for their neighbourhood and the broader community, people would experience a sense of wellbeing and achievement that had been missing from their lives under the strain of a market-driven, profit and growth based society.

Four-Hour work day to help our climate

Our climate urgently needs help.

A seemingly endless variety of adaptation policies have been espoused, but all with some deviations, aim at the maintenance of contemporary life.

The way we have lived for the past two centuries, and in particularly the last one hundred years, has seen our excessive demands on the natural world trigger changes in the world’s climate.

 Conversations about sustainability are misleading and largely fatuous as they make no genuine allowance for the environment, considering it to be little more than an extension of our economy.

Naturally, the economy is simply a sub-set of the natural world.

Earth’s human population now exceeds seven billion and the consumptive demand is such that the planet’s finite resources and natural sinks are being taxed alarmingly.

Our present way of living is simply worsening the difficulties and we urgently need top-down changes to encourage us to consume less, use less energy and slow the depletion of the world’s resources.

Courageous legislation is needed to make us all poorer and so structurally unable to consume at our present alarming rate and to do that we all need to be working a Four-Hour Day, no overtime and no double shifts.

Such a top-down instigated chance will force upon us the “five-minute life” – that means that most everything that is important in our day-to-day lives is with a five minute walking or cycling radius.

And so to be poorer, at least in the traditionally understood financial sense, we need to be working a four-hour day.

Our communities, however, would not be poorer for as we were able to spend more time in them working to make them friendlier, more resilient and so more able to endure and adapt to the certain changes they will encounter as climate change begins to bit.

What follows are the contents of a poster about the four-hour day prepared for the 2012 Climate Adaptation Conference staged in June by the Australia's National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF).

The Four-Hour Work Day poster as
 displayed at  the annual National
Climate Change Adaptation Research
Facility.

The size of the graphic makes it rather difficult, probably impossible to read the small print, words, and so here they are:

People are social animals who need a friendly affiliation with their fellows, and beyond that, they equally need a sense of purpose to feel fulfilled.

Aligned with our fellows and having that sense of purpose, whatever that might be, we are fundamentally psychologically intact and so alive with contentment.

That purpose, however, has been derailed in the past few centuries and the broad human insistence of growth and so the subsequent consumption has seen us plunder the earth’s finite resources, leaving us with a world limping toward catastrophic difficulties.

Work, in its modern understanding, has made a minority of the seven billion people on earth rich beyond imagination, but left the majority poor, equally beyond imagination, and critically created a world with severe difficulties.

Most people in the developed world are simply too rich and consume too much, use too much energy and subsequently create waste at a tempo faster than the absorption rates of the world’s natural sinks. The natural world and its species, from microscopic to mammoth, including us, is collapsing into a distressing dystopia.

In addressing that emerging dystopia, our aim should be at least two-fold – that is make the wealthy less so and the poor among us more comfortable, but in concert with that strengthening neighbourhoods, communities, towns, societies and society broadly.

A Four-Hour Work Day would allow for the maintenance of businesses, to some degree, and then allow people time people to bond within their respective neighbourhoods to make them stronger and so more resilient, ensuring they can endure and successfully absorb the physical and social shocks of a decidedly different future.

A four-hour work day is precisely that; no overtime and no double shifts, demanding that our journey to work be within the five-minute life, meaning that most all matters important on a day-to-day basis (shopping, work, leisure, basic government service and community activities) are within an energy-conserving five minute walk or cycling radius.

Being effectively financially poorer and yet incredibly time-rich, people will be able to invest that “new” time into getting to know their neighbours, building stronger neighbourhoods, enriching them through simply being there more often and so building in a new level of resilience.

A time-rich population would allow individuals to lead a more considered life and subsequently play a vital and critical role in building democracy. More than 2000 years ago Aristotle noted that leisure was a necessary condition in the politics of a good society – the Four-Hour Work Day would allow that leisure.

A natural consequence of the four-hour day would be a significant drop in the financial wealth, equating with a marked fall in our consumptive habits which would be, by default, a natural climate adaption strategy.

Happiness or contentment is presently measured by the accumulation of ego-boosting goods, when endless psychological research illustrates, clearly, that the much sought happiness arrives once people are free of the resource/consumption/growth driven philosophy that permeates society.

The switch to a Four-Hour Work Day demands top-down legislative change, combined with a broad and sweeping educative program aimed at helping people understand that happiness and contentment is not to be found in adherence to corporate ideals; ideals that have proliferated the world’s communities and are contrary to climate adaptation needs; rather the sought status of happiness and contentment comes from creating a strong, resilient and flexible neighbourhood, community and society.

More information about the Four-Hour Work Day can be found at http://fewerhours.blogspot.com.au/, or by contacting the author, Robert Mclean, via email at: robed@sheppnews.com.au.