How Unemployment Today Affects Everyone
One of the features of the ongoing and deepening global crisis is the rising unemployment all around the world.
However, most alarming and most socially volatile is the unemployment rate of youths in the Eurozone, particularly in Spain and Greece, but also in the United States. In many countries youth unemployment has risen to or even above 50%.
Young, educated people feel that they spent their best years and the best of their resources (or their parents’ resources) to become qualified for a world that no longer exists. That assessment is not just a gut feeling. In his book, The Brave New World of Work, Professor Ulrich Beck, one of Europe’s leading sociologists, explains that “The work society is coming to an end as more and more people are ousted by smart technologies. To our counterparts at the end of the 21st century, today’s struggles over jobs will seem like a fight over deckchairs on the Titanic. The ‘job for life’ has disappeared … and all paid work is subject to the threat of replacement.”
Whether we want it or not, the crisis will lead to a reduction of redundant industries and to the recognition that most of the world’s population is simply not needed in the job market. Yet, if people are not working now and will not work in the future, what should they do? How will they live? And if they are provided for by the government or some other agency, wouldn’t being idle all day destroy them mentally and emotionally? This could be an explosive situation for any society, a constant cause of unrest, disorder, and crime.
The Secret Of Solving Rising Unemployment
The solution to human idleness will be to send people back to school. However, this will not be high school all over again, nor college, nor even adult education of any kind we know. It will be a “Globalization School for Citizens of the Interconnected World.” Studies at that school will not cost money. On the contrary, the school will grant its participants scholarships, just as university students receive grants and scholarships. The state will finance the grants with the money it will save as it cuts the civil service work force, since unemployment benefits cost the state less than keeping people employed in hidden unemployment.
Also, the growing awareness of our interconnectedness will create an atmosphere in which it will be easier for the “haves” to share some of what they have with the “have-nots.” Some adjustment in taxation is also likely, even if it’s simply in the form of collecting real taxes, rather than the rich evading them through sophisticated accounting. Again, all these changes must happen willingly, once a large majority in society recognizes our interconnectedness and interdependence and wishes to live accordingly.
Sharing does not have to come in the form of money: it may well present itself in the forms of offering inexpensive houses for rent, narrowing profit margins on staple products to help the less affluent, and numerous other means by which one can show one’s support of society.
The reason why the payment for participation in the Globalization School will be considered a grant and not unemployment benefits is that unemployment benefits can carry a negative social tag, while grants do not. It is very important that students at the new school feel confident and even proud of being there. This will make them much more receptive to the material being taught.
At the Globalization School, people will learn how to handle themselves in a world that has become interconnected, where they are dependent on others for their sustenance. They will learn about the course of evolution as discussed earlier in this book, the necessity to adjust human society to that course, the benefits from adjusting, and the harms from delaying the adjustment. People will learn the value of communication, new ways to communicate, and will acquire down-to-earth skills such as home economics and interpersonal communication, and other necessary knowledge for times of rapid change.
Because people will have much more leisure time, they will be able to use it to learn new skills. Because people’s livelihood will not depend on their ability to sell their products, they will focus on developing only what is really needed and helpful. They will manufacture products that are built to last, rather than products with planned obsolescence, intended to force people to spend more than they should or would like.
People will now have time for socializing. They will still attend school or work, but there will be a lot more free time than there is today, and people will use it to socialize. Socializing will not be a goal in and of itself, but a means for enrichment, a learning aid, a chance to gain insights into new realms of knowledge, new depths of thought, or simply to enhance personal confidence by having more friends.
Why New Education Is Needed To Secure Happiness For All
Looking ahead, a few years from now life will be very different. Today people are so stressed they hardly have time to breathe. We are living in a constant rat race on an ever-spinning, ever accelerating wheel. But when the industry contracts and we do not need to work as many hours, we will have more time to cultivate our interests and our social ties. It is then that we will experience real growth and the growth of happiness.
First people, as a result the Globalization School start to realize the necessity and merit of positive human interconnections. Then as they start actively building those interconnections based on positive motivation they received through their studies they will experience a kind of mutual happiness they never experienced before. They will see that truly sustainable, tangible happiness and fulfillment is only possible in such mutual, altruistic interconnections. From that generation onwards humanity’s future is safe as nobody would want to give up such unprecedented pleasures that can be extended infinitely.
Written by Michael Laitman
Michael Laitman is a global thinker dedicated to generating a transformational shift in society through a new global education, which he views as the key to solving the most pressing issues of our time. He is the Founder of the ARI Institute, Professor of Ontology & Theory of Knowledge, PhD in Philosophy, MS in Medical Cybernetics. You can find him on Google+, YouTube and Twitter