Something strange happens when you start being an adult.
When you're in school you are define yourself by your hobbies, by the music, sports, films and other things you like, and what you and your friends do when you're hanging out.
This carries on into university, when you still define yourself by these things, but add onto that what you're studying. How you're trying to understand the world in the field you're specialising in becomes a part of your character that defines who you are.
But as soon as people enter the workforce, a shift seems to happen, where the things that previously defined them fade away, and become subsumed in a list of job titles that they take on as they progress on their career path. What they do becomes the very definition of who they are. Their CV becomes the expression of their personality and the meaning of their lives.
I have never understood why this should be.
If work is a means to an end, and a way to meet our needs and wants, then why should we do any more of it than is necessary? Instead work seems to have become an almost religious duty, done as a kind of penance, or a form of self sacrifice for the greater good of society. But of course we know that most of the work being done is definitely not in the best interests of society, especially if we're talking about work that fuels the engine of consumerism. That is extremely destructive to society, to the environment, to other living creatures, and to our happiness as a whole.
So who's benefit is it being done for? I think that's quite obvious. Glorifying work really only benefits the owners of capital. Those who own businesses, industry, and control credit and the means of production. They are the one's who don't work, but who other people work for, and who other people make rich.
So I propose a different model. Instead of seeing yourself as your CV, why don't you see yourself as your own business? I see so many people with fantastic CVs, great careers, and a very impressive work history, but I wonder what they would look like if we analysed them as businesses?
What does their Balance Sheet look like? What about their Income Statement? And how about their Statement of Cash Flow? What are their assets, and what are their liabilities? What is their debt position? Is their business growing or is it failing?
Your job is you working for money, your business is money working for you. Spending your life building a career and an impressive CV is simply you working for somebody else's benefit, not your own.
Instead we should spend our time accumulating income producing assets, in whatever form, and building a strong balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow in the form of passive income, so we don't need to work very much, if at all, and can go back to living life as being who we are, not just what we do.
Maybe then we'll begin to understand that we don't need a lot of the material things that that everyone is working so hard to produce, but we can be happy with a lot less.
And the planet will be a lot happier too.
Very good post! Seeing yourself as a business instead of focusing on a career/cv seems obvious but somehow people don't see it that way. And if they did, would they see a business that is dependent on constantly working more to grow?
But like you say, there is a penance regarding work—"The Protestant work ethic".
Thank you @superfluousman!
Ironically I've been so busy at work that I've not had any time to write for my blog. I've been writing a really long post for a couple of weeks but I just haven't had the time or energy to finish it! I like the format of your posts, which are a short collection of thoughts on a particular topic, and I think I'll start following that myself.
The point I wanted to get across is that, hopefully, the self discipline and frugality that a person needs to develop and run their own personal finances like a successful business would carry on after they have been successful, and would lead to spending time focusing more on being than acquiring. And if someone in that position still wanted to grow their business, as in, themselves, they would look to invest into socially beneficial projects, rather than purely making more money for its own sake.
I think the "work to earn, earn to spend" mentality is the real problem. In fact, this is where I'd say that what we have today isn't even the Protestant ethic, because a large part of that was frugality and living a spartan lifestyle. What we have now is a culture of extreme work and extreme spending.
I think shifting to a high saving, low consumption, high efficiency, low effort, self-sustaining system is the way we can achieve both balance and abundance.
Yeah, short essays or "attempts". I like long posts as well, but sometimes things can be expressed in just a couple paragraphs/sentences.
This seems like the ideal.
Yeah your right, consumerism,materialism, economism etc...The Protestant ethic just laid the foundation of viewing work in itself as duty to Society or God.
That's interesting, I have to confess I am not an expert in the cultural background of the idea of the Protestant ethic. As you describe it, it's not something I agree with to be honest with you. I don't think any good can come from work done just for it's own sake, and I don't think that's what God wants from us.
In the natural world we see a perfect balance in all things. All nature asks of us is just to play our part in a system of mutual exchange and benefit, where basically everything is in place for us. In humans' natural habitat, tropical forests, all our needs are provided for without the need to do any work besides simply foraging.
Almost all the work humanity has been engaged in throughout its history has, in my mind, been largely destructive or, at best, unnecessary. We could very easily live a kind of "Garden of Eden" existence and I think everyone would be happier for it. It definitely beats what we're doing to the planet now.
I think that's the real difference then between the Protestant Ethic and the kind of "Do-nothing" philosophy of, for example, Masanobu Fukuoka, and eastern philosophy in general. There's an assumption that things are perfect already, and we get closer to God not by doing more, but actually by doing less, and letting what's already there shine.
Well said. Masanobu Fukuoka sounds like a someone I need to know more about thanks for introducing.
Masanobu Fukuoka was one of the pioneers of what later became Permaculture. I really recommend you watch this video too. It's about a Permaculture project in the middle of the desert in Jordan.
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