Although economies are reopening in many countries as more and more people are vaccinated, a crucial part of the job market is still struggling to restart: workers. The customers are there; the businesses are open, the employers are hiring, but the workers seem comfortable staying at home. In some countries, and in some occupations, the situation is so dire that job applicants are interviewing potential employers instead of the other way around. There are even bizarre cases where employers actually pay applicants just to come to a job interview!
When Covid-19 just started, I wrote that when humanity comes out the other end of the pandemic, it will be a different humanity. It seems like we are seeing it unfolding. Some people say that people got too much money as Covid relief, but I think it runs much deeper than that: People simply do not want to work. They realize that their jobs were a type of slavery and they have opted out. This is what is happening.
I think it’s better for everyone that this is happening. There is less pollution, less exploitation of people, animals, and natural resources, and everyone is gaining besides the tycoons, who want to keep piling up billions, but for what purpose?
Our jobs, and even more so career jobs, used to determine our self-esteem. But many people don’t care about this anymore. They don’t care what people think; they want to rest and pass their time in peace, and it is better for everyone that they do, especially for our poor planet.
The more idle we are, the less contradictory we are to nature. Take any animal, and you will see that when it doesn’t search for food, shelter, or tends to its young, it rests peacefully. Until now, we haven’t been like animals. We spent every moment working more hours, making more money, or spending our money and making other people work more hours. The result was that we have polluted and nearly ruined our planet. If people lived like animals, working only when they need to, we wouldn’t create all the problems we’ve created for ourselves, we wouldn’t be exhausted, and we wouldn’t be stressed.
It is in our interest to be lazy, and it is in the interest of tycoons that we will work as hard as possible. This is why they sell us the notion that our job title defines who we are. But when we don’t really care what people think of who we are, then we have no reason to impress them with fancy job titles. We can finally rest!
Now that we have more free time, we will gradually find more meaningful things to do with our time. We will ask why we are here, and we will discover how our presence here relates to the presence of all the other people in the world and to the world around us. We will see that the world is one system; we will find our place in it; and we will be happy and at peace. This is why I’m grateful for this new trend of not working needlessly.
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