Just a thought...

Lately at work, I’ve been wondering what would happen if I didn’t. Work, that is. I’m pretty sure the economy wouldn’t collapse. I’m not that instrumental in its continuance. Probably, someone else would take my place pretty quickly, that is, after all, the beauty of the division of labor. But what if they didn’t? What if we all agreed that next Tuesday, just for example, we all stopped. Not quit, but stopped. Would the world end? Probably not.

I remember sitting in calculus in high school and realizing that for me, calculus was math for math’s sake. It’s not like addition and subtraction, where your teacher can say with a straight face and a clear conscience that you will use this every single day. I won’t use calculus every single day and my life would not be materially affected if I couldn’t find the area under a curve. I’ve begun to feel the same way about most work. It is work for work’s sake, like those stupid worksheets you remember from high school that you completed so that the teacher could do something other than teach, like read a romance novel.

So I’ve decided to be a conscientious objector to work, along the lines of Tolstoy and his Dukhobors. I don’t recommend that we strip naked to demonstrate our extreme pacifism and give up all our possessions. Instead, we should just move to a new continent and peacefully resist society’s oppressive demand for our (futile) toil.

I’m not saying it will be easy. We would have to accustom ourselves to this level of scientific advancement. But this isn’t so bad. Remember when internet came through a wire and made dinosaur sounds and jammed the phone line? I’m posting this using internet floats around in nothingness by some miracle of science! That’s pretty sweet. My cell phone is small and has a full keyboard. My computer is impossibly light. We have microwaves, toasters, George Foreman grills, lights that simulate the sun’s light and machines that simulate peaceful night noises. I’m not sure we’re going to get much better than that. Remember: we're not digressing, we're just stopping. In our tracks. But we still get cute shoes.

There are a few down sides. It seems we will not get past our dependence on fossil fuel because after we stop working, we are not going to develop any alternatives. So it’s goodbye ANWR. But all that global warming we will create with our continued use of fossil fuels will elongate the growing season in much of the Northern Hemisphere, especially Northeastern Europe. The Kremlin will thank us for our efforts. They may finally be able to use the resources locked in the Siberian permafrost, including all that natural gas. I guess we won’t run out for quite some time!
And speaking of Russia, we can finally implement communism. We won’t need any incentives for innovation because we will all stop working. And all of our labor units will finally be interchangeable. As producers of…well…nothing, we all make an equally valuable contribution to society. (Oooh! A benefit I did not foresee…equality of outcome rather than just of opportunity. What luck!)

Unfortunately, not everyone gets to stop. There are somethings I can't live without. Doctors, for one. Hair stylists. Waiters and busboys. Lawncare workers. IT support personnel. Concierges. But we don't need gas station attendants, bank tellers, lawyers, engineers, architects, researchers, lab technicians, or grocery store clerks. (Everyone knows those automated checkout things are more fun anyways...)

OK. I won’t lie. There are some flies in the ointment. But we do get ointment. And the flies wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t attractive. So think on it. Let it just kind of vegetate. And remember, if we go through with this, you can join this idea in vegetating. Sounds pretty good, huh?