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ork is integral to a
person’s wellbeing. A job is not.
Work is something you choose to do; a job something to which
you are directed to by another and so the matter of choice is no longer yours.
Therein is a small, but critical and significant difference.
Freedom is about choice and so as your freedom to choose
goes, so does you actual freedom.
“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” has been the mantra of most, if not all,
in their bid to secure public validation for personal political ambitions.
Everyone from the Prime Minister down chants what is a
social more with the success of a society, or the government, being measured by
the number of jobs created within that same society.
The drive and need to create jobs is further evidence of our
social obedience to a way of life that has drawn its sustenance from the brutal
mechanics of the Industrial Revolution and for centuries now has seen profit
prioritised ahead of the welfare of people.
Our allegiance to the idea of jobs is evidence of what was at
first a flirtation and then an affair to become a habitual way of life that
meshes cleanly with the fundamentally contradictory consumerist idea that we
can grow infinitely on a finite planet.
Jobs are intimately and intricately entangled with the
growth economy, whereas work brings with it more ancient connotations;
connotations that are about the provision of essentials; helping us find what
we need, rather than want; jobs have a sense of mass production about them;
work has an artisan affiliation, allowing for personal expression and a sense
of satisfaction and fulfilment that is rarely experienced in our money driven
society.
Jobs and our insistence on their creation, from the upper
echelons of society, is about maintenance of the modern status quo, whereas
work is about the ancient human need to contribute to your community and within
that repair and rebuild your sense of self.
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| Confucius - "Choose a job you love and you never work another day in your life". |
The difference between having work to do and a job is subtle,
but such that it is a damning significance; a contrast that can distort human
values to drive people to pursue ideas that would not have normally have
attracted them.
Yes, jobs are the salvation of the modern profit-driven
world and yes, jobs erode peoples’ expansive thinking and embrace of the other,
while work does not until circumstances turn it into a job.
It was Confucius who said: “Choose a job you love, and you
will never have to work a day in your life.”
And through a different prism: “Love the work you do and you
will never have worry about finding a job.”
Our communities would be emotionally sounder and richer
places if the emphasis was on work rather than finding jobs.
