The Job Culture Vs. The Alternative

Luke Skywalker
Jul 22, 2017 · 8 min read

In today’s world and America largely our time is occupied mostly by one thing; and that’s jobs. Always have to have a job. Getting a job is what’s it's all about. Its how you make your living and money and pay for a house and support a family etc. Pay for vacations and everything else. Well we have to do some kind of work because work is what is needed to be done. We need farming done, we need people to drain septic tanks and dig for and install and replace water wells, we need people to put out our fires and to teach and to weld and do other manual labor. That’s just a fact of life right? Majority of people are stuck at a menial labor job from 9 to 5 or so 40 plus hours a week barely getting by and living paycheck to paycheck. You know the story the working middle class. Well anything can happen but people who work hard and in construction don’t always get paid what they deserve and have to put in extra and odd hours sometimes. But they spend most of their energy and time doing this. Some of this needs to be done. We need people to lay cement and lay brick and lay asphalt. Carpenters as well. Then we have things we don’t necessarily need and people can do themselves that are self help that we don’t need but it helps to have jobs for. Then you have greeters and people who push carts and load grocery bags. Pizza delivery and fast food workers. Fast food workers are busy most of the time but they are steadily doing the same thing over and over. What does doing the same basic menial thing over and over do to the human brain? It numbs it out and bores it etc. Working on a forklift and whatever else it doesn’t matter. Most of our jobs and paperwork that’s unnecessary pre-occupies the lives of many and is a pastime for most. Jobs they don’t like are slave labor and redundant tasks over and over again to no end in sight. People are stuck in these buildings over and over again sometimes for their whole life. Some tasks are needed some aren’t. But even if they are does have to be as many hours everyday and every week the same pay same tasks with the same company and same people and even if all of that is fine you have no energy or time or money to do much else. Just doing your job and what your told and get paid what you get paid with little hope of expanding or moving up. This describes most of the working class. I’m not against jobs or having one but is there another way to approach the situation? This there an alternative? Is there a different and better way to maximize the potential of the human mind? Is this the only way to live life does it have to be lived this way? It's all about ideas right? All the ideas and best ideas you’ll have in your lifetime? What is the best and most efficient and interesting way to expand on this ability of ideas to get more out of a person? Is it by doing the same thing and standing in the same spot with the same boring task over and over again their whole life? Is that how? So we have invented and discovered so many things that have improved life and amazing discoveries that have produced so much prosperity and made life better and easier and added to our truth content so much and the best we have for most people is the shopping isle? Folding cloths and stocking the shelf? Working a cash register? Nothing wrong with doing those things if one likes to but is there another way a better way that humans are made for? Not just boring monotonous tasks over and over for years on end? Can we raise a generation with the alternative and have it taught the same way? It's a good question and we can. So what is this alternative I’m referring to…?

It's the Pursuit of Knowledge. Instead of being a job and pharmacy culture why can’t we be a culture of knowledge. A culture that feeds off of the pursuit of knowledge and is built and based around that very thing? Isn’t that really what life's about. When jobs get replaced or erased isn’t it because of some new invention or technology where that drudgery of labor isn’t needed anymore? We can have machines do it. But inventions make life that much better. They do this. The greatest inventor Nikola Tesla that gave us the electrical age said he wanted to see if he could make life a little easier for men. As soon as we don’t need coal we don’t need people mining and dying of lung cancer or whatever disease they get. Those people can now enjoy a life after the pursuit of knowledge. Our best game in town. If everyone was inventing like Tesla then what kind of world would it be? So do we need such full time professional labor. Maybe an hour here from a person and an hour there. Do they need to spend their whole life this way? Isn’t the pursuit of knowledge what we enjoy as humans and are really built for? Work to but when did we become a job culture and why? Okay so someone needs a well installed now we did let’s get back to the microscope examining bone marrow or the telescope examining Saturn’s rings. I don’t see how this has to do with democracy either or what the fathers of the declaration of independence had in mind. We could be a culture based on the pursuit of knowledge and spend our lives doing that rather than menial slave labor jobs and live as if a kid in wonder our whole lives. Oh what kind of world it could be. It's only an increase in knowledge and discovery and invention that makes life better, safer, healthier, smarter, more purposeful, useful, problem solving, life saving and disease curing, eye opening, surprising, exciting, interesting, work worthy, more worth living and more rewarding and well spent and fulfilling. Knowledge gives us prosperity the very thing we dream of and strive for everyday at our jobs. We certainly can make it so we make money this way if we wanted. Rather the pursuit of knowledge seems to go to a select few ignoring all of the other kinds of intelligence out there and potential. I think somewhere along the way we fell into a dead end trap for most. An increase in knowledge is what will make the GDP and quality of life dramatically go up. It's what extends the lifespan of people. It's what makes life worth living the most. The pursuit of knowledge is what it's all about. Would you rather get up in the morning to look through a telescope examining DNA and other human tissue and smash particles of atoms together and dabble with forces of nature and program computers or push carts? Or paint everyday all day and we get people to think this is all they can do. Well the only reason they aren’t so book or white collar or scientifically smart is because they don’t get to spend their whole life doing that. It's really a catch 22. No one has to spend their whole life painting or putting up sheetrock. No one. They can if they want. But I think our culture is backwards and missing it. Plus if they quit their job they can’t make money right now off of pursuing knowledge or some field of inquiry. And one week or month off of their job and they are already behind on bills.We should be able to spend most of our time to pursue knowledge for the good of mankind rather than stuck tiling floors. I do think this messes with our psychology as humans as well. Our investigative brains are the most powerful tool we have with so much possibilities. Now think of it this way. Say we live in a society where a great deal of general labor is either done part time or by the young or mostly artificial intelligence. Say crime is no more. We as a people are no longer so preoccupied with money. What would we do then? How would we spend our time? No more jobs? What if you got to wake up to everyday which is what it would be with all of these other problems of crime and poverty and political corruption gone and with AI and middle class and slave menial general labor out of the way would be waking up to exploring new things and a culture entirely based on learning and maximizing not only human capital and intellectual potential but a culture where we aim to space travel and shoot for the stars and discover new things and use the best microscopes and telescopes and lenses to peer into unseen things and play with the elements of life and chemistry and contemplate reality and philosophy and used advanced math and enhance transportation and computers to the next realms and learn what’s all out there. We could be a culture that spends its time based on learning rather than being job slaves. Cause lets face it we as a people are job slaves. Your a job slave that’s what most of your are. To find out if that’s what you are just answer a few basic questions in which it could be a list of much longer list of questions: 1. Do you like your job? most people its no! 2. Do you spend at least 40 hours if not several more a week there? Yes. Do you have very little time to pursue your other life passions and family time and are struggling to make ends meet and pay the bills and living paycheck to paycheck? Yes. Do you find on your job doing the same repetitive thing that’s rather dull over and over occupying most of your existence and find very boring and doesn’t excite you? Yes! Is there much expanding or moving up in your job? No! Is it dead end? Usually this ends up being yes! Okay so then with all of these answers and plus one additional question do you get to spend much time at your job learning and adding to the knowledge of mankind? No probably not that much right? And not much learning and not learning of your choosing or that grand. Okay so then with all of these answers I think its clear your a job slave. We could be a culture where our time spent pursuing knowledge and contributing to the knowledge of mankind. So why not make that our mission as a culture. So that’s the alternative. You want a political revolution make it to be a culture about the pursuit of knowledge. The very thing we are meant to do as humans. The very thing that pulled us out of the dark ages and out of the caves and got us passed horse and buggy and gave us rockets and airplanes and jets and trains and cars and the electric car and the power grid and computers. The very thing that gave us the historical age of the enlightenment, renaissance, and the scientific revolution. The kind of people we were meant to be and born to be. That’s the way culture is supposed to be. Its our current Job Culture Vs. The Pursuit of knowledge culture we could be. That would make life far more exciting, accomplishing and purposeful and worth living. I guarantee its different kinds of learning that where people’s true heart and passions lay. That’s our alternative so lets become the culture of people that’s after the pursuit of knowledge rather than job slaves.

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