Jim Dator <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>Separating "work" entirely from access to goods and services, and
>permitting/enabling people to live meaningful, satisfied lives without
>"working" seems one of the biggest challenges of the present, and
>foreseable future. Trying to create more jobs is futile and degrading.
My expectations of the future vary radically with my mood. Sometimes I
feel like a dark and wretched `Bladerunner' world is inevitable,
other times I think a radical reworking of society to a more practical,
sensible, compassionate model has to be just around the corner.
It is in these latter moods, that I speculate how people living a
few hundred years in the future will look back on this century, from
a society of compassion and abundance, and wonder how we could live
in a world like this. I imagine adherents to religions which stress
the virtue of charity thinking how we in this century missed the
opportunity to distribute our wealth among those less fortunate,
thereby gaining great blessings unavailable to these future citizens
in whose world no poverty exists. I also imagine, in such a culture,
the opportunity to do work to keep the machinery of society rolling
will be regarded as a rare privilege, to be pursued for its prestige
alone, or perhaps regarded as a minor necessary action expected of
any civilized human, to be done for a few hours a week, on a par
with vacuming the house; or perhaps both, depending on the type of
work required.
The true, key difference between the dark and enlightened visions of
the future lies in the security and self worth of the individual citizen,
their sense of their place in society, and their faith in its valuing
of their participation. It is the difference between a society of
greedy, immature, insecure children, and one of poised and confident
adults.
-Pete Vincent
