‘So what do you do?’
What does it mean to work in a different paradigm and redefine the boundaries between labour and leisure?
For a while now I’ve been wondering whether wider societal transitions towards social and environmental justice require a radical reimagining of our relational models, organisations forms, labour and leisure patterns as preconditions. And if so, how do we test that and live that out?
Evolutionary norms and forms
As with many other institutionalised practices, the work — play dualism can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, with the advent of Robert Owen’s ‘eight hours labour, eight hours recreations, eight hours rest’ model.
“The word ‘leisure’ comes from the same Latin root (licer) which gives us the English word license, meaning to permit or to allow. It implies, therefore, that one group of people will do the allowing and another group will be the beneficiaries of the permission. This suggests continuing patterns of subordination and dependency which characterises the culture of labour. Leisure, or the freedom from work, is therefore freedom from the Institution.”
Fast forward a century and a half and the dynamics set out then still form the prevailing model upon which our society is based. However, the accelerating pace of change is leading to a broader question we might be forced to tackle sooner rather than later — what will we do in a fully automated world or in a ‘post-work’ world? Is this quest for ‘post-work’ alternatives a true inquiry into how we derive purpose and identity as human beings, or is it merely an optimising mechanism of late capitalism? The coin could flip either side.
Countless articles and opinion pieces have been written on the transformative potential of trends such as automation and a world ‘without work’, or questioning the notion of ‘productivity’ altogether or building the case for a universal, unconditional basic income. Digging a bit deeper into the past, these ideas are hardly new — from utopian writers of the past centuries, to Huizinga’s notion of Homo Ludens and the Eamses’ mantra of taking your pleasures seriously, we already have a body of imagined alternatives.
So how do we bring these alternatives to life and most importantly, how can we live them out (or at least test them)?
Shifting definitions
My personal definition of work and leisure is something I’ve been experimenting with as the ‘hats’ I’ve been operating within have increased in number and complexity over time. I am part of organisational structures, I operate in collectives varying from learning groups to project teams, while I identify with different ‘tribes’ along common understandings. I am in relationship as a colleague, peer, network node, expert and novice, as well as an institutional symboliser within hierarchical coordinates. To an outside observer this might look disjointed and cacophonous — and the narrative can be hard to thread together at times. As challenging as that might be, I find it immensely rewarding as well.
Within this space of experimentation with my multiple identities, I’m exploring questions such as:
- How do I create spaces for self-reflection and analysis, while acknowledging the worldly pressures of deadlines and milestones whooshing by?
- How do I support my co-inquiry peers across the different dimensions of our joint and individual projects, ventures, interests and passions? What support do I need in return?
- What does progress and success mean and how is expertise valued beyond the traditional ‘career ladder’?
- What are the new forms of meaning and identity we derive from the different dimensions of work we undertake as experts / volunteers / carers / coaches / mentors / mentees / learners / peers / citizens, etc.?
- When do I need to converge and when do I need to diverge?
- How do we move beyond the dualistic ‘me’ (my work, my impact, my achievements, my ego) and ‘us’ (our work, our impact, our achievements, our collective ego) into understanding and rewarding the fact that we all stand on the shoulders of giants?
“Shifting into a new formal structure is the easy part. The real work comes when we have to relearn how to relate on personal and interpersonal levels and look at the project of self-governance in the context of our full human lives.” Simon Mont, Advancing Critical Conversations: How to Get There from Here.
All these questions are very alive for me and I’m far from having any answers — but spelling them out has at least helped me reconcile with the fact that I’ll never have a smooth one-liner to the question: ‘So what do you do?’.
And that’s also ok.
If these questions have sparked any thoughts or if you’re sharing some of them, I’d love to hear about it. Get in touch @futuresforensic
