![]() ![]() The centrepiece of this theory is the link (typically causal and/or mental) between what I do and what happens in the world around me. ![]() Here is one concern you could have about this type of meaning in the postwork future. Why so? Because my actions would have helped to attain the Good (maybe also the True). This would make my life meaningful (perhaps very meaningful). If I succeed, and my actions realise (or at least form some significant part of) the cure for cancer, the world would be a slightly better place. For example, I could dedicate my life to ending cancer. Under this account of meaning, your activities (and your intellect) must bring about valuable changes in the external reality. The more we do of each, the better our lives are. In other words, our lives flourish when we act to bring about the moral good, to pursue and attain a true conception of reality, and produce (and admire) things of great aesthetic beauty. Our lives flourish and accumulate meaning when we contour our intellects to the pursuit of these three things. In one of his papers (LINK), Metz argues that there are three main sources of value in life: the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Here is one plausible theory of meaning, taken from the work of Thaddeus Metz. Theorisation is needed for a full defence of the antiwork position. In other words, they lack clarity about what it takes to live a flourishing and meaningful life, and how that life might be enhanced in a postwork world. This is because their vision of the good life is often undertheorised. One thing I noted on those occasions is that antiwork theorists are good at explaining why work is bad but not-so-good at explaining why non-work is better. I have analysed this argumentative posture on previous occasions. A Pessimistic View of the Postwork WorldĪntiwork theorists think that work is bad and nonwork is better. And third, I will have to argue that this analysis provides one way of defending Black’s ideal of the ludic life.ġ. Second, I will have to outline Hurka’s analysis of games and the good. First, I’m going to have to start with a pessimistic view, one suggesting that a postwork world would robs us of some value. To make this case, I’m going to have to do three things. It is distinct from that included in traditional understandings of the good life, but it may provide a plausible blueprint for a postwork utopia. I want to suggest that a purely ludic life (one consisting of ‘games’) does allow for a certain type of flourishing. I do so by drawing from the work of Bernard Suits and Thomas Hurka, and in particular from the argument in Hurka’s paper ‘ Games and the Good’. I want to provide that deeper analysis in this post. Only then will we know whether it provides for the kind of flourishing we seek. But deeper analysis of this ludic life is needed. ![]() I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. creating a new way of life based on play in other words, a *ludic* conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. game-playing) life we can live in the absence of work: He paints a rosy picture of the ‘ludic’ (i.e. Can those conditions be satisfied in the absence of work? Black seems to think they can. Philosophers think that in order to live a flourishing life you need to satisfy certain basic conditions of value. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.īut is the postwork world really all that desirable? To me, it all depends on what it takes to live a meaningful and flourishing life. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Bob Black, in his famous polemic ‘ The Abolition of Work’, makes the case that: And the absence of compelled work sounds utopian. It is a world in which we no longer have to work in order to secure our wants and needs. What would life be like in such a world?įor some, this is the ideal world. In other words, the productive gains of the technology do not flow solely to a handful of super-wealthy capitalists they are fairly distributed to all (perhaps through an guaranteed income scheme). Suppose, at the same time, that we all benefit from this state of affairs. ![]() The result is that there is no economically productive domain for human workers to escape into. The new wave of automating technologies take over most forms of human employment. I want to start with a thought experiment: Suppose the most extreme predictions regarding technological unemployment come to pass. ![]()
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