So what would you do if you didn’t have to do anything? Say you’ve won the lottery, or someone solves the great problem of peace on earth and work becomes obsolete. Or maybe you just ascend to heaven, where you have all of eternity to do… what? What do you do when you aren’t required to do anything?
My thesis is this: the things people would do, if they didn’t have to do anything at all, fall into two basic catagories:
- Things for personal pleasure/fulfillment. This category includes the usual stuff of hedonism, but also those things you do for other people out of love - you do for others because it makes you feel good to make other people happy.
- Things you do because you feel obligated by your beliefs. These aren’t things you have to do, but things you feel you should do. Things that are right, but not necessary - remember, you don’t have to do anything.
Discuss.
If I didn’t have to do anything, i would probably feel really fucking weird and get depressed for a few weeks because I would have to reset myself. I do a lot of thinking of what I have to do, and not that much about what I want to do.
I would have to build a relationship with my muse first. If I could do anything though, I would like life to be full of projects and whims. I would spend far too much time building art projects. I would try to think up the best way to build a sustainable house and then build it. Then I would write about it and research ways for other people to get tax breaks to build houses for themselves. I would start a magazine. It would be politically savvy, and directed toward me and my crazy poly, kinky, survivalist friends. When one talks about subjects that no one wants to cover, we would have a place that would publish them, if they were well researched.
I would set up trust funds for my friends so that they could go to college and have their living expenses paid for. I would travel, see everything that ever struck my fancy. And I would get a couple of massages a month. And I would buy everyone I liked a Tesla.
I think that given enough time most people would find things to do that satisfied the urge humans have to be creative and productive for its own sake. It’s stifled in our society by the way we envision work - but given enough time away from the life and soul draining jobs most of us do now we would start “working” in ways that we loved.
Well, that’s the whole premise of the Star Trek future — that people find themselves doing the same things they’d always done. There’d still be restaurants, but no one would want to be the dishwasher. I suspect there’d also be a resurgence in the media that have languished in recent years such as fiction books. Generally, things that take the sort of time that people don’t have now might be the order of the day. Perhaps there’d even be something of a return to nature movement that makes Oregon Outdoors-y look silly in comparison.
I, for one, would still farm, and I’d still write, though it’d be about topics that interested be far more than multi-level marketing and skin infections. I’d certainly cook (even if there were replicators) and I suspect the arts would flourish to the point that everyone was expected to be a virtuoso of some sort. Just like Captain Picard’s brother said, there are some things that just can’t be replicated.
I wonder though, would society divide itself into the strivers and those just entertaining themselves until they die, or would we all become adventure junkies? I have no idea since, as Matt keeps telling me, I’m not an average dog.
The last time I didn’t have much that I HAD to do - shaking tail 12 hours a week not being terribly strenuous though quite lucrative after all - I still found myself driven to do so many things because I had time, resources, and energy to spare, not to mention this infernal blue-collar work ethic that pushes me into the damndest projects. I mastered Indian, Persian, Japanese, and Greek cuisine. I taught myself to knit. I volunteered my time as a safe sex educator. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making and pouring sugar glass just to see if I could produce a professional result (I can!). I watched hours of arthouse cinema and took the Amtrak every chance that I could. I devoted entire days to devouring stacks of books. I wrote copiously. I grew peppers in my flower bed out front of my little apartment. I saw my friends more. I coordinated fundraisers and performed at benefits for charities I admired. I became more knowledgeable than most sane people are about sake, coffee, chocolate, and tea.
In short, it was bloody brilliant and I want to get back to living that way.