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How would you feel if it turned out that no one needed you, that you had no real chance of finding a job? We all know people who have lost their jobs, and many others fear that they too may suddenly find themselves without work, unable to meet their daily needs. The fear of unemployment and lack of income actually points to two separate issues.
The first issue is that the person does not know how they will support their family: their spouse, children, home, and debts. Sometimes they also carry the burden of aging parents, while they themselves are nearing retirement. It is a chain, an extended circle that depends on the working individual. This pressure intensifies and becomes a widespread concern.
The second issue is that a person who loses their job no longer knows what to do with themselves. Areas with high unemployment often become breeding grounds for crime, prostitution, and drugs. In the end, society pays a much higher price than it would to find a way to employ the unemployed.
Moreover, someone who has not worked for years finds it very difficult to rejoin the workforce. Simply put, they lose the habit, i.e., the routine of working daily, committing, being accountable, commuting, and returning home.
This is not just a problem for the unemployed. Widespread unemployment can boomerang back on society in ways we might no longer be able to manage. Today, we still discuss relatively small numbers of the unemployed. However, when it becomes masses, it will be very difficult to even supply basic needs like food, clothing, housing, and healthcare.
Beyond that, such masses will not settle for basic necessities as before, since they will accumulate significant power. This is not just about the threat of revolutions or riots sweeping the globe. The problem is far more complex and deep. It demands a fundamental change in our attitude toward work and employment as a whole.
Evolution of Work in Society
As human society evolved, the need for physical labor to ensure basic survival diminished. Gradually, people shifted into commerce, industry, culture, art, fashion, media, law, accounting, and other service professions. Today, these fields and their extensions form the vast majority of occupations.
When examining a major city, we find that its inhabitants do not farm or raise livestock, nor do they work in large factories on the outskirts. Big cities sustain themselves mainly through services provided by residents to one another.
Today, millions live in each major city. If they lose their income sources, they cannot produce food themselves. They are no longer connected to the land.
This raises a critical question: How do we reorganize ourselves in the face of mass unemployment, when most of the world’s population now lives in cities?
To understand this, we must look back 200 years and trace the roots of the current situation. Before industrialization, people worked hard without the help of machines or modern technology. What they produced was primarily for survival. As technology advanced, mass production became fast and efficient, an overall blessing. However, the free time this development created was used unwisely.
Throughout societal development, we filled our newfound free time with trivial pastimes and distractions instead of using it for a higher goal, building a happy human society where everyone could flourish, realize their full potential, develop personal and social awareness, and enjoy meaningful relationships.
The Paradox of Modern Work
Look where we have ended up. Modern life has become increasingly intense. We work longer hours, the boundaries between work and home blur, and our online availability has become a form of modern bondage. Sociologists call this “modern slavery.” Excessive consumption and the race for brands and luxury are considered hallmarks of an affluent society, but at what personal, familial, and societal cost?
The growing middle class must work ever harder and make more personal and family sacrifices just to maintain their economic standing. Unwittingly, we have become remote-control parents, compensating our children with costly extracurricular activities and gadgets.
We are tethered to our workplaces in every possible way. Even our vacations, such as our trips, weekends, and overseas travel, are often organized by our employers. Some organizations even provide daycare, gyms, and a variety of dining and snack options.
In today’s world, nothing seems more important than work. When we meet someone new, the first question that comes to mind is, “Where do they work?” and the second is, “How much do they earn?” We do not ask, “What fulfills you? What excites or interests you?” but rather, “What do you do?”
Our social status and self-worth are determined by our job and workplace. Thus, work becomes the center of our lives, making it very hard to detach. People worry about what they will do when they retire because they are used to being in a constant rat race, filling their lives with intensive work. Typically, modern people develop only professionally, learning trades and attending job-related courses and training.
Therefore, in the past 200 years of industrial and technological development, we lost the human being.
By the mid-19th century, some voices warned that could not continue indefinitely.
Reaching a Dead End
Why? It is because, if a person is destined to be a slave to their job and their life’s purpose is only professional success, then it is as if they were born only to work. The first 20 years of life are spent preparing for work, then decades are spent working long hours, and when they are no longer capable, they survive a few more years with the help of medication. In short, society channels them to devote the majority of their lives to work.
The essential question is: Were we born for this? Is this our sole purpose?
Some realized long ago that this is illogical and unsustainable. Back then, ecological issues had not yet surfaced with full force, and overproduction was not seen as destructive to the Earth and depleting its resources. Today, we know global warming is intensifying. Natural resources like oil, gas, and coal are finite and dwindling.
Today’s crisis marks the end and the conclusion of our 200-year development. Throughout this period, experts warned that humanity was headed toward a dead end. As early as 1972, the .Club of Rome released its first report, The Limits to Growth, showing that finite natural resources could not sustain unlimited industrial expansion. Eventually, humanity would hit a wall.
Unfortunately, driven by egoism, humanity did not stop to think about the future. Instead, we developed more industries and products, not to meet real human needs, but to satisfy greed and vanity. Around this grew a culture of aggressive marketing, media brainwashing, and overconsumption.
We closed our eyes, ignored the fact that we were destroying our common home—our Earth—and thus ourselves, our children, and our future. Now that we are in a critical state, we are forced to realize that change is necessary.
A New Direction
So what kind of change is needed?
First, like shaking out a dusty cloth, this crisis will sweep away excessive industry and unnecessary jobs that upset the natural balance. These only burden our lives and force us to work longer hours. Unnecessary work overloads society and the planet.
Second, through a comprehensive perceptual and socio-educational shift, our entire outlook on life and others will change. When we meet someone, we will care about how they grow as a person and how they contribute to creating a new society, because this will become everyone’s central occupation.
To achieve this goal of promoting human development, we need to upgrade the human schedule for the 21st century. What does this mean? The hours freed from unnecessary work will no longer be free time in the usual sense. Instead, that time will be used to learn how to create mutual connection and mutual responsibility. Building a harmonious, just, and equal society requires understanding nature’s law of development, the balance it demands between us, and aligning ourselves with it.
To ensure the success of this entire process, we need a new, universal, and integrative education system. A comprehensive new social program should allocate daily activity hours differently: a few hours for essential work, and the rest for studying the new world and engaging in constructive social activity. With this new life routine, people will gradually change together with their surroundings, becoming active partners in building the new society.
Group settings—proven effective in psychology and sociology—are ideal for such socio-educational processes. Therefore, groups should be organized with workshops, games, discussions, exercises, and activities, where people will discover the joy of being together. Such group activity will demonstrate its benefits, how it supports everyone and what positive outcomes collaboration can achieve.
Without this major investment, we will be unable to be reborn from the crisis or progress to the next stage of human evolution. The crisis reveals our flaws, helping us move forward.
We need to repair family life, children’s education, spousal and neighborly relations, national and global relations, and our relationship with the environment.
A New Job: Building the Human Being
Unemployment crises offer us a new job, which can be called “building the human being.” We have never engaged in this before because, historically, we were preoccupied with survival and providing for ourselves. Then came technological progress, but we misused the resulting free time. We filled it with distractions that we had no need for.
Now is the time to change course. We, and our children, need education suited to this new era. Until now, we mainly aimed to give the next generation a good profession to ensure personal success. Now, reality compels us to change our priorities, to first provide children with social education that will shape them as human beings and prepare them for life in the new world.
A new life means fundamentally changing our outlook on life, moving beyond work-centered existence, and creating entirely new social, economic, educational, and cultural systems. When, in the future, we work only a few essential hours a day and spend the rest of the time learning and engaging in diverse social activities, society as a whole will undoubtedly change. The new values we adopt in this process will form the foundation for building a new human society.
Based on episode 7 of “New Life” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on January 4, 2012. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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