Around a week ago, I had an idea about writing a new article to follow up my older article "Sunday Evening Musings: Education and Employment", and I even mentioned it in my latest article, "Ideological Journey". At the time of writing that article, I also felt compelled to write about how much hatred I hold towards a certain coworker of mine. Since then, things happened: my coworker threatened a senior colleague of mine, insisted on us working 9-to-5 when our contracts say that our work hours are flexible (we just have to work 40 hours per week), etc. Yesterday, I threatened to resign and reported my supervisor to the CEO, and we're yet to see the consequences of that.
Nevertheless, I thought to myself - what better time to write a follow-up to my older article, and invent a new concept?
Unschooling
Unschooling is not a new concept. There's literally a Wikipedia page about it. As the video mentioned in the older article says, school is not education.
BDobbinsFTW made a very long video about video games and education:
It's a one-hour video, and it's well-worth watching, as every second of it is gold. But in case you can't be bothered, at least skip to the important parts: at 38:53, he talks about how school deprived children of their desire to explore, and at 42:16, he begins talking about unschooling.
Unschooling integrated learning into play, but not in the obviously fake "forced fun" style that characterizes workplaces and jobs - instead, the goal is to direct children towards actually being willing to learn and explore, to discover their passions, and create that route accordingly. Our one-size-fits-all education system forces children to cram down all sorts of factoids, and they end up forgetting over 95% of them after school. I know I did. Don't even get me started on having to learn a bazillion poets - sure, good for cultural preservation, but it's not practical at all. It would be better to just give children more free time, and maybe encourage them to explore the wonderful world of literature out of their own free will. Even avowed book-lovers get squeamish at the idea of being forced to read a book against their will on the instruction of a teacher.
Unschooling is defined by many as "a more natural way of learning" - in fact, many would describe any and all education that doesn't take place within the boundaries of school as "unschooling", especially when both the student and the teacher decide to go through the process willingly and voluntarily.
Are teenagers naturally rebellious? One could argue that, since teenage is that awkward transitional phase between adulthood and childhood (where you're biologically almost adult and sexually mature, but mentally still somewhat childish), the sudden explosion of hormones makes the infamous teenage rebellion inevitable. A reasonable explanation, but I disagree.
My preferred hypothesis, is that teenage rebelliousness merely the explosion of years of pent-up frustration that they had to endure as children under the public education system? Who knows. What I do know for a fact however, that children, by their nature, have an innate desire to learn, to explore the world and know about new facts. This desire - along with their creativity - simply gets killed by the public education process, and what comes out is teenagers who hate the very concept of education. Some of them may regain a love for education and knowledge as adults, but the damage has been already done, and the scars just won't go away.
Work and school as an analogy
As a child - especially as a high school student - I was fascinated by the concept of unschooling. I read anti-school literature, and I kept reading article after article. You have to keep in mind, that my family is one of comformists, who don't want to stick out of the crowd (not to mention, homeschooling is mostly illegal in Hungary anyway) - so obviously, the idea of me getting an alternative form of education was out of the question. Hell, my mother strongly defends the idea of me remaining employed at the company that's making me miserable, and when I mention quitting, she immediately replies that I won't get another job - the idea of freelancing, or becoming self-employed doesn't even cross her mind. So, being born into such a conformist family, I pretty much become a black sheep by getting into different ideologies.
But I am simple man, who first and foremost cares about what is directly effecting him at the moment. I lost my interest in unschooling when I was in college - the best years of my life, really -.... however, I became very immersed in anti-work literature in less than half a year after I began working. I just can't stand the concept of work. I even began writing anti-work articles on this site.
So, what better to progress my anti-work agenda, than to coin a new term, analogoues to unschooling? Unworking is to work what unschooling is to schooling. If you're confused, I'll elaborate.
The main function of school is not education, but indoctrination. Children go in, obedient adults ready to enter the workforce go out - or rather, that's how it's intended to happen, but more and more "waste" has been produced lately. It's a simple industrial transformative process. As the first video I have shown in this article says, to the extent that education DOES take place in school, it's a happy accident or a by-product, but not the primary goal. The main goal of school is to produce loyal worker-ants who don't question authority - real education would have the opposite effect, producing thinkers who work smart instead of hard, thinkers who question authority and are skeptical of everything they're told. But that would be inconvenient to our ruling elites, wouldn't it?
Likewise, the main point of work is not productive labour.
Let's define our terms here: productive labour is any kind of expenditure of energy that is beneficial for yourself, your family, your community, your nation or all of humanity, regardless of the monetary compensation or motivation. In contrast, "work" is synonymous with waged labour (or forced labour according to Bob Black), encompassing everything you do to survive (to put food on the table, to pay the bills, etc.) in a transactional economical system (not just Capitalism, but also Socialism, and just about every post-Medieval economy) within the boundaries of legality.
Yes, work can overlap with productive labour, but that's not the main purpose - otherwise, busy work wouldn't exist, bull**** jobs wouldn't exist, etc. I fail to see how sitting by your computer and browsing social media (after all your tasks are done) while desperately waiting for your 8-hour shift to end is productive labour, as opposed to things like cleaning up the streets, writing Wikipedia articles or creating open-source software for free. The main purpose of work is control - why else would boomer bosses be so adamant to send all the workers back to the office after Covid-19 has proven the commutes to be unnecessary and research has some home office to increase productivity? Let's not forget what happened during the Summer of 2020 in the United States of America: people had free time, and used it to conduct political activism, which is precisely why we never saw any major reduction in worktime since the 1930s (when the 40-hour workweek / 8-hour workday became enshrined in law). To the extent that productive labour DOES take place during "work", it's a happy accident or a byproduct.
And what better way to connect the analogy between our highly flawed way of schooling and our highly flawed way of working, than to make the connection between the rebellious teenager, and the washed-out, jaded adult, the resentful wageslave?
It is a commonly repeated lie, that humans have a phobia against productive labour, and would rather lie down, and either sleep all day, or spend their time watching movies and playing video games. Guilty as charged, after one year of wageslavery, I'd definitely need a lot of that just to get over the trauma, but.... no. Not really. Oblomovism and the apparent "laziness" are merely the adult wageslave analogue to the teenage student's clumsy rebelliousness, the manifestation of years of pent-up frustration and tiredness. Humans by their nature are perfectly willing to help their fellows (co-operation - not competition - was the primary driver of human evolution during the Paleolithic and Neolithic), until their childhood innocence is killed by the cruel reality that we have to endure. Things like (free) time and (disposable) money are in short supply, so people like me grow highly reluctant to spare any of them for the benefit of a fellow human being. We grow into resentful adults, just tired and wanting to simply lay down.
Unworking
If we have unschooling as an answer to the flaws of school, then what is the answer to the flaws of work?
To this, I propose coining a new term: unworking.... oh wait, Wiktionary already has a definition on "unworking". A process of undoing or destroying something previously made? Yes. Even when re-defined by me, unworking ought to be a process of undoing and destroying the exploitative, ineffective and oppressive system that mandates unnecessary work just for the sake of work.
But jokes aside, if I were to have the power to reform the English language and arbitrarily change the meanings and definitions of words, I would re-define "unworking" to mean something analogous with unschooling, which is correctly defined as a set of educational philosophies which champion education outside the standard school environment- I would redefine unworking to mean a set of philosophies which champion productive labour outside the standard work environment or formal economical system.
Have you ever learned - completely out of your own free will - about something you are passionate about without the aid of any formal institutions, and made practical use of the knowledge? Then congratulations, you have engaged in unschooling without even knowing about it.
Have you ever done any household chores, helped an elderly lady cross the street, contributed to an open-source software project, edited a Wikipedia article, or fixed something for your neighbour without expecting monetary compensation? Congratulations, you have engaged in unworking without even knowing about it. And if you grow your own food and don't have a boss, then congratulations, you have reached the pinnacle of unworking.
Just as the Industrial Revolution has led to the rise of the working class, God willing, the Automation Revolution ought to lead to the rise of the unworking class, hopefully. Currently, very powerful people with a lot of money are actively working to prevent it from happening at all costs, but in a better world - where your job being automated away was a cause for a celebration, and we had a Universal Basic Income - unworking would be the future of work.
When work ceases to be necessary for survival, when the employee-employment contract will no longer be held up by the threat of death by starvation, unwork will be all we'll have left.
The Leap of Culture
Rome wasn't built in one day. Even if we got rid of all the fake bull**** jobs, poured all our money into automation and a Universal Basic Income, we wouldn't have a work-free utopia, at least, not initially. What we'd have would be a system where UBI would provide the basic necessities, and you'd work for anything beyond that. Gradually, as automation would keep on advancing and swallowing jobs (please stop inventing fake jobs to replace the lost jobs), the UBI benefits would increase accordingly, until one day, all we'd have left would be unworking... or Star Trek.
However, just like unschooling, unworking would require a huge change in culture.
Our current culture is one that promotes authoritarianism, conformism, risk-aversion, avarice and trampling on your fellow human beings. Standardization, one-size-fits-all, with fake plastic advertisements, helicopter-parenting, and so on an so forth. Unorthodox thinking was never practically well-appreciated in any society - past or present - but today's world is far more insidious, in its false celebration of superficial differences while suppressing dissenting opinions with far more ruthlessness than any system in the past.
In our current culture, under the rule of our current politicians, I can't see either unschooling or unworking taking root. The current system as it stands - in terms of both schooling and work - are just way too convenient for the powers that be to let go of that, and the idea of a free-thinking and educated populace having actual free time and helping each other without relying on the government or big corporations straight-up frightens the powers that be.
A utopian future, where most of us live comfortable lives without having to give up over a third of our waking hours for a job we hate, receive education in what we're passionate about, voluntarily help our neighbours with no strings attached, and still enjoy Freedom of Speech and Expression? Never gonna happen.
Judging by current trends, a far more likely future is a dystopian future, where government regulations have made it all but impossible for everyone except big corporations to produce and distribute goods and services, where all productive jobs have been automated away, and instead of implementing a Universal Basic Income, we simply replaced the lost jobs with meaningless office jobs that pay a starvation wage - just enough to buy poisoned food that'll erode your brains into mental retardation and shorten your lifespan. Oh wait, we're already living in that dystopian future, or at least halfway there.
Don't believe me? This whole Covid-19 fiasco saw the biggest transfer of wealth from the working-class to the top dogs, to the likes of Jeff Bezos. And it's not gonna get any better, not by a long shot. Not unless there's real change real fast.
