I have seen a lot of talk lately about work, idleness, UBI, jobs programs, and the like.
I really need to write a for-serious essay about this stuff. But for now, my thoughts aren’t quite that organized, so have a rambling Tumblr post.
Interesting ramble.
I am flabbergasted, though, at your ideas about domestic work as fulfilling. To my mind, outside of a few hobby implementations like recreational baking, housework and carework are the absolute epitome of soul-killing work. Domestic work is futile, boring, repetitive, endless Sisyphean drudgery. Those kinds of tasks are sludge in the day and my quality of life rises to the extent I am able to minimize the number of minutes per day allocated to them. The perfect-world ideal is 0 minutes per day.
I would literally rather spend a given hour lying on the couch playing a match 3 game, which produces zero value (well, it provides my brain’s back office with background decompression time by occupying the restless antsy front brain, but this probably wouldn’t have utility if I weren’t dealing with the effects of chronic overwork due to the decades of continuous full-time employment people think is such a holy grail for human fulfillment mumble; I am prepared to ascribe it zero value) but which also imposes no torture-grade tedium or backbreaking effort, than spend that hour cleaning my apartment or cooking a workaday meal, which produces high but utterly ephemeral short-term value (i.e., if cost:benefit favors doing it it favors doing it regularly and often) but which is extremely tedious and frequently uncomfortable.
I think that this preference is perhaps toward the far end of normal – most people have better motor skills etc than I do which allow them to at least somewhat enjoy activities like cooking, which decreases the cost side; probably most people put higher value on household-level social cohesion and homemaking than I do, which increases the benefit side – but I think that it is within the broadly understandable and relatable spectrum of feelings and is not a totally idiosyncratic and personal weirdness. I am genuinely surprised to my core by seeing this sort of work held up as the obvious answer to the soul-nourishing and fulfilling work in a theoretical post-scarcity future question.
Something something grumpy mumbling about gender and gender failure and the differential damage done by male and female socialization.
I mean, I’m the wrong person to ask about the details of the psychological mechanisms here.
But my impression is that, well, people have a wide range of tolerances for tedium. And I have some sense that “perform a simple task that requires little complex thought and has little risk of failure, but demands enough effort that you can feel that you’ve made a difference by performing it as opposed to not, and know that in so doing you are making life better for someone whose welfare and gratitude matter to you” captures much of the benefit that many people get from the not-being-idle thing.