Why I Have Never Been Unemployed.
Unemployment.
[1888 un- L implicare, to stop being involved]
Having no work to do; a concept which does not exist in green thinking, since in the very process of living their lives people are doing and making, and all have a right to the necessities of life. A grim reality, however, of the present economic situation in all industrialised societies. Here, unlike in traditional societies, unemployment means not having a real job to provide your livelihood, and thus having to depend on WELFARE (if it is available), your savings or inheritance, or your wits.
Unemployment stems from several major misconceptions, fuelled, by conventional economies:
- that continuous GROWTH is desirable and possible.
- that work is only real work if it is given a cash value (thus housework, childcare and all other voluntary work is not employment).
- that you can have rapidly increasing automation and not affect the amount of work done by human beings.
- that real work is the most important asset in a real person's life.
It is abundantly clear to green-thinkers that this parlous state of affairs is largely a result of questionable economic theory which has only held sway for a century or so (see the date of the first use of 'unemployment') and which is now in a state of terminal decline, along with the oppressive attitudes which demean women's work and discriminate against anybody not considered to be fit for real work.
The only way out of the dilemma is a rapid and radical change of emphasis, involving redefinitions of most of the underpinnings of conventional economic theory, including WORK, VALUE, WEALTH and BASIC NEEDS. The official definitions of 'work' are the most insidious, turning people who don't have access to it into second-class human beings with little hope of a reasonable quality of life. Many sorts of employment are literally denied to them: Law and custom have dissuaded old, young and unemployed alike from doing useful work of an informal kind. Unemployed people have even been forbidden to commit themselves to voluntary work or to self-chosen courses of education and training on pain of losing their unemployment pay (James Robertson, 1985).
Frightened politicians, knowing they are fighting a losing battle with the unemployment statistics, keep changing the criteria for the preparation of statistics in the vain hope that people won't notice that things are getting rapidly worse, but the reality is that there is no solution unless 'unemployed' people take issues of work, wealth and money into their own hands.
The signs are that this is happening, and that ignoring official controls and regulations is becoming increasingly common. In addition to the some 11 million people who are officially unemployed in the United States, as well as the 1.7 million discouraged workers and 5.5 million part-time workers, there are others who long ago chose not to be employed in conventional ways. As they drop between the cracks of conventional government accounting, they are not even missed. And as they find alternate economic pathways that satisfy their need for income, support, and meaningful work, they expand the societal network and framework for this kind of economic behaviour (Paul Hawken, l983). Eventually, perhaps, some enterprising government will recognise the need to change their whole emphasis to one of providing a decent livelihood for everyone, beyond the narrow confines of 'employment 'unemployment' (see SOCIAL WAGE).
Work.
[before 12c. Old English weorc, physical or mental effort]
There is nothing wrong with the original meaning: physical or mental effort.
To most people, however, work means something very different. To people with real jobs, and to politicians and economists, work means paid employment in a trade,occupation or profession. To most women it means unpaid drudgery and constant pettiness. To the unemployed it means the grass on the other side of hill.
To most green-thinkers 'work' is an almost meaningless concept - to be alive is .to work, and people are not lazy by nature. Given stimulation, the fulfilment of their basic needs and recogition of their basic rights, human beings do 'make an effort'. People need work not mainly for income, but for self-expression, for self-discipline and for a sense of participation in the human experience (Susan Campbell, 1983).
The problem is that most 'Work' is boring, repetitive, geared to capitalist profit rather than individual purpose, and uninspiring. A great deal is also dangerous and destructive: It is extraordinary that we have people in this country fighting to preserve - the right to crawl on their bellies underground hacking coal out of seems, particularly when their fathers were desperate to keep them out of the pits. But the reason why they are doing this is because we haven't yet offered any alternative to the employee society: they don't know any other way in which a decent, able-bodied person can earn respectability [and money] and contribute to society (Charles Handy, in Mary Inglis and Sandra Kramer (ed), 1985).
The concept of meaningful work, GOOD WORK, is only part of the way to the answer - the green future depends on the breaking down of the basic concepts of. work, employment and UNEMPLOYMENT. There is an old Haitian proverb which I think should be our watchword through this period, and it goes as follows: "If work were a good thing, the rich would have found a way of keeping it all to themselves. (Barrie Sherman, in Mary Inglis and Sandra Kramer (ed), 1985).
Leisure.
[14c, L licere, to be permitted]
The freedom we experience when we are allowed (or allow ourselves) to stop working. This raises the question of what WORK is, since without being clear about what constitutes work it is hard to know whcn we have finished it. It also suggests that 'leisure' is not-work, a concept which the mother with three children at the playground or the allottment gardener breaking up new ground might find difficult. We also need to ask who it is that is allowing us to stop working, and what. rights 'they' have over our time. A change of direction towards ownwork and the SHE(SANE/HUMANE/ECOLOGICAL) future will involve a shift of emphasis away from leisure industries and services to leisure organised for people by themselves.
The dividing line between ownwork and this kind of leisure will often be difficult to draw. People will make use of their leisure - the increasing amount of time at their own disposal - to do useful work on their own account, on their own interests and on their own projects. Leisure activities will then shade into a much wider range of work and activity options than most people have today, when for most [sic] people leisure is what they have when not at work, and the two main options are either to work or to be unemployed (James Robertson, 1985).
Source "A Dictionary of Green Ideas", John Button.
--------------------------------------------
Work Stuff - miscellaneous thoughts on "work".
All work is voluntary work. Ultimately you wouldn't do it if you didn't want to.
(apart from slave labour of course).
It's a bit like almost all food is organic food. The term "organic tomatoes" is a bit silly.
All tomatoes are strictly speaking organic because they are tomatoes.
Work:
Many jobs involve doing things that are simply unnecessary, destructive or (in my view) morally wrong.
"Jobism" is prejudice towards people on account of the nature of their job/paid employment or lack of it.
Production should be for use, not for profit, and certainly not just to provide jobs.
Work should be done to satisfy needs, not just to keep people working.
Think how much pleasanter life would be if the wages system was abolished.
There is always an infinite amount of actual non-paid work to be done but there is never enough paid work.
------
And for any Christians left out there, "consider the lillies" etc. etc. *yawn*
By which Jesus's probably meant that work is not everything in life, and money isn't everything in life etc. etc.....
And that our needs should be little and simple, and we are all capable of gaining our basic needs and we all deserve them.....
=========================
Unemployment.
[1888 un- L implicare, to stop being involved]
Having no work to do; a concept which does not exist in green thinking, since in the very process of living their lives people are doing and making, and all have a right to the necessities of life. A grim reality, however, of the present economic situation in all industrialised societies. Here, unlike in traditional societies, unemployment means not having a real job to provide your livelihood, and thus having to depend on WELFARE (if it is available), your savings or inheritance, or your wits.
Unemployment stems from several major misconceptions, fuelled, by conventional economies:
- that continuous GROWTH is desirable and possible.
- that work is only real work if it is given a cash value (thus housework, childcare and all other voluntary work is not employment).
- that you can have rapidly increasing automation and not affect the amount of work done by human beings.
- that real work is the most important asset in a real person's life.
It is abundantly clear to green-thinkers that this parlous state of affairs is largely a result of questionable economic theory which has only held sway for a century or so (see the date of the first use of 'unemployment') and which is now in a state of terminal decline, along with the oppressive attitudes which demean women's work and discriminate against anybody not considered to be fit for real work.
The only way out of the dilemma is a rapid and radical change of emphasis, involving redefinitions of most of the underpinnings of conventional economic theory, including WORK, VALUE, WEALTH and BASIC NEEDS. The official definitions of 'work' are the most insidious, turning people who don't have access to it into second-class human beings with little hope of a reasonable quality of life. Many sorts of employment are literally denied to them: Law and custom have dissuaded old, young and unemployed alike from doing useful work of an informal kind. Unemployed people have even been forbidden to commit themselves to voluntary work or to self-chosen courses of education and training on pain of losing their unemployment pay (James Robertson, 1985).
Frightened politicians, knowing they are fighting a losing battle with the unemployment statistics, keep changing the criteria for the preparation of statistics in the vain hope that people won't notice that things are getting rapidly worse, but the reality is that there is no solution unless 'unemployed' people take issues of work, wealth and money into their own hands.
The signs are that this is happening, and that ignoring official controls and regulations is becoming increasingly common. In addition to the some 11 million people who are officially unemployed in the United States, as well as the 1.7 million discouraged workers and 5.5 million part-time workers, there are others who long ago chose not to be employed in conventional ways. As they drop between the cracks of conventional government accounting, they are not even missed. And as they find alternate economic pathways that satisfy their need for income, support, and meaningful work, they expand the societal network and framework for this kind of economic behaviour (Paul Hawken, l983). Eventually, perhaps, some enterprising government will recognise the need to change their whole emphasis to one of providing a decent livelihood for everyone, beyond the narrow confines of 'employment 'unemployment' (see SOCIAL WAGE).
Work.
[before 12c. Old English weorc, physical or mental effort]
There is nothing wrong with the original meaning: physical or mental effort.
To most people, however, work means something very different. To people with real jobs, and to politicians and economists, work means paid employment in a trade,occupation or profession. To most women it means unpaid drudgery and constant pettiness. To the unemployed it means the grass on the other side of hill.
To most green-thinkers 'work' is an almost meaningless concept - to be alive is .to work, and people are not lazy by nature. Given stimulation, the fulfilment of their basic needs and recogition of their basic rights, human beings do 'make an effort'. People need work not mainly for income, but for self-expression, for self-discipline and for a sense of participation in the human experience (Susan Campbell, 1983).
The problem is that most 'Work' is boring, repetitive, geared to capitalist profit rather than individual purpose, and uninspiring. A great deal is also dangerous and destructive: It is extraordinary that we have people in this country fighting to preserve - the right to crawl on their bellies underground hacking coal out of seems, particularly when their fathers were desperate to keep them out of the pits. But the reason why they are doing this is because we haven't yet offered any alternative to the employee society: they don't know any other way in which a decent, able-bodied person can earn respectability [and money] and contribute to society (Charles Handy, in Mary Inglis and Sandra Kramer (ed), 1985).
The concept of meaningful work, GOOD WORK, is only part of the way to the answer - the green future depends on the breaking down of the basic concepts of. work, employment and UNEMPLOYMENT. There is an old Haitian proverb which I think should be our watchword through this period, and it goes as follows: "If work were a good thing, the rich would have found a way of keeping it all to themselves. (Barrie Sherman, in Mary Inglis and Sandra Kramer (ed), 1985).
Leisure.
[14c, L licere, to be permitted]
The freedom we experience when we are allowed (or allow ourselves) to stop working. This raises the question of what WORK is, since without being clear about what constitutes work it is hard to know whcn we have finished it. It also suggests that 'leisure' is not-work, a concept which the mother with three children at the playground or the allottment gardener breaking up new ground might find difficult. We also need to ask who it is that is allowing us to stop working, and what. rights 'they' have over our time. A change of direction towards ownwork and the SHE(SANE/HUMANE/ECOLOGICAL) future will involve a shift of emphasis away from leisure industries and services to leisure organised for people by themselves.
The dividing line between ownwork and this kind of leisure will often be difficult to draw. People will make use of their leisure - the increasing amount of time at their own disposal - to do useful work on their own account, on their own interests and on their own projects. Leisure activities will then shade into a much wider range of work and activity options than most people have today, when for most [sic] people leisure is what they have when not at work, and the two main options are either to work or to be unemployed (James Robertson, 1985).
Source "A Dictionary of Green Ideas", John Button.
--------------------------------------------
Work Stuff - miscellaneous thoughts on "work".
All work is voluntary work. Ultimately you wouldn't do it if you didn't want to.
(apart from slave labour of course).
It's a bit like almost all food is organic food. The term "organic tomatoes" is a bit silly.
All tomatoes are strictly speaking organic because they are tomatoes.
Work:
Many jobs involve doing things that are simply unnecessary, destructive or (in my view) morally wrong.
"Jobism" is prejudice towards people on account of the nature of their job/paid employment or lack of it.
Production should be for use, not for profit, and certainly not just to provide jobs.
Work should be done to satisfy needs, not just to keep people working.
Think how much pleasanter life would be if the wages system was abolished.
There is always an infinite amount of actual non-paid work to be done but there is never enough paid work.
------
And for any Christians left out there, "consider the lillies" etc. etc. *yawn*
By which Jesus's probably meant that work is not everything in life, and money isn't everything in life etc. etc.....
And that our needs should be little and simple, and we are all capable of gaining our basic needs and we all deserve them.....
=========================
