Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity.
— Sigmund Freud
In 2017, I predicted the "gig economy" would soon enforce downshifting and make a universal guaranteed income mandatory.
But Mother Nature had other plans.
She used a pandemic to enforce downshifting and PPP to guarantee income.
The pandemic has also unpredictably spurred a popular uprising known as the Antiwork Movement.
Marxist in nature, the Antiwork Movement calls for an end to slavish, fear-based jobs in favor of "idling" and finds voice within industries like high tech, hospitality, and healthcare—the same sectors leading the Great Resignation.
My money says they don't.
Covid will soon morph into a common cold, and there will remain plenty of workers eager to step into jobs abandoned by "idlers" (we call those eager beavers "immigrants").
What Covid and the Antiwork Movement have done is cast a bright light on "bullshit jobs."
Bullshit jobs are those make-work occupations first described in 2013 by anthropologist David Graeber: stupid jobs such as concierge, bailiff, closet organizer, medical coder, tax attorney, Instagram marketer, and human resources executive; demeaning jobs so pointless they represent, in Graber's words, a "scar across our collective soul."
As 2022 progresses, I predict, we will see Covid-19 and the Antiwork Movement run out of steam and be replaced by an Antibullshit Movement.
We'll see more and more workers move from meaningless, dead-end jobs into jobs that combine Freud's cornerstones, work and love. Jobs like school teaching, woodworking, art conservation, investigative journalism, firefighting, farming, fundraising, truck driving, and hospice working.
And we'll see fewer and fewer workers becoming dog washers, pizza deliverymen, telemarketers, community organizers, diversity trainers, celebrity chefs, and professional shoppers.
Idling, too, will fall from grace.
After all, there's no money in it.
