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Culture

Redefining work and life

Many of the decisions I have made these past years are an effort to lead a life that is rich in experience; experiences beyond just launching the next great thing. Moving to Asia was part of that, working hard here was, as was travel. Trying to build a life around increased mobility allows me the time to introduce my family to experiences that being locked down by a regular job can't allow. While I won't discount working in a more traditional work place (in fact I am looking), my work must allow for time with family and provide a location that will both excite them and me.

Leading a life like I want requires a new definition of what work really is. For me it's a natural part of who I am and I have been lucky, mostly, to work on projects I love. But while I call this work so much of what I do doesn't pay. What is work?

Here is what I have been reading:

The Original Affluent Society.

In his intriguing essay "The Original Affluent Society," Sahlins writes that, in an industrial society where "all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity." Our hunter/gatherer ancestors, on the other hand, "lived in a kind of material plenty because they adapted the tools of their living to materials which lay in abundance around them and which were free for anyone to take."

In a situation like this, where no one feels the need to hoard things and no status is attached to ownership, there is also no urgency to constantly improve production rates. As a consequence, hunters and gatherers (there are still people who live this way in remote regions of the earth) never work overtime. In fact, studies suggest they work fewer hours and get more hours of sleep per capita than those of us in more "advanced" societies.

The Hive

A quarter century ago it was inconceivable that a legion of unpaid, unorganized amateurs scattered about the globe could create anything of value, let alone what may one day be the most comprehensive repository of knowledge in human history. Back then we knew that people do not work for free; or if they do work for free, they do a poor job; and if they work for free in large numbers, the result is a muddle. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger knew all this when they began an online encyclopedia in 1999. Now, just seven years later, everyone knows different.

Source: More like life.

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