OK, so most people just work for the money to survive. But almost all of us work for more than mere survival. We work for luxury items which we’ve been taught to depend on. We work because ‘the devil finds work for idle hands.’ We all know about the Protestant work ethic as theorized by Max Weber, right? And the iron cage within which we willingly lock ourselves? Labour for a wage is not, in fact, a glorious deed which exalts God, but a cruel burden needlessly imposed on us to keep the system in place.

Why is it still so difficult to work part-time or for workers to create their own schedules? It was once predicted that by the twenty-first century no one living in the wealthier nations would be putting in a forty hour week. Instead we would work three or four days a week, or only four hours a day, or share our job with another worker. We would do more work for ourselves and more volunteer work. It hasn’t happened. And why not? Because our system depends on people being engaged in often meaningless work rather than have the time and energy to be thoughtful and creative. Employers would rather manufacture bogus tasks for efficient and organized workers than send them home. They’d rather we waste their time and ours by trying to keep us mindlessly busy.

We are meant to believe that unemployment is a fact of life. In fact, it’s all in how you look at it. Wouldn’t it be better for all involved if the definition of a full-time job with a living wage was altered Then there would be more people working less hours without the need for subsidies for the unnecessarily unemployed. More people could do work because they wanted to, not because they were enslaved.

I saw a documentary about an English man in his early thirties who had never worked a day in his life. He collected the dole which didn’t allow him to live well but to get by. He enjoyed spending time thinking, walking and drawing. He didn’t want to develop any of his skills for the marketplace. He didn’t want to train to be a professional illustrator and he certainly didn’t want the mindless task of organizing people’s drycleaning. Why did most people who saw the program condemn him? Not because they were appalled that their taxes were supporting this dreamy young man but because they were jealous and morally outraged by his rejection of the system which they had allowed to enslave them.