The world is changing, rapidly. One of my tasks in helping my clients to generate breakthroughs is to pay attention to emerging trends. When a new trend appears, especially one that is not a direct follow-up of the past, it tends to go unnoticed in its early stages of appearance. This Fulcrum is about one such new trend: The changing nature of work. While it’s a symptom of a much bigger trend, it is highlighted here in the context of cognizance assistance for emerging leaders.
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There are two kinds of work:
1. Working to earn one’s life
2. Working to earn a living
You know all about working to earn a living, so there is no need to elaborate. Earning one’s life, however, is a term lost to the 21st century and thus requires a clear meaning location.
“But I already have a life. Why does a life need to be earnt?”, you may think. Well, there is a big difference between what was given to us to work with and what we do with it – what we create in and around ourselves by how we live the life we were given.
Working to earn one’s life is about developing one’s human capacity: Making sensible choices; connections to one’s natural human potential and talents; developing one’s creative capacity; developing character and qualities; building values and standards; growing in stature and capability and much more, depending on how well informed one is about the human possibility.
Ideally, the processes of working to earn one’s life and working to earn a living would exist in a state of harmony and cross-fertilization. More ideally, a scenario where working to earn one’s life and working to earn a living is one and the same thing. If you are one of those fortunate few, the above may apply to you in various measures and balances. However, the case for billions of 21st century citizens is that their lives are enslaved to earning a living, where the governing conditions are antithetical to the process of earning one’s life.
The 21st century is a culture of ‘the more frenzy’. More power, more money, more speed, more resources, more stress, more pressure, more population, more conflict… Thereby defining the nature of work to be: More work, more stress, more demand.
Towards what end?
To an endeavouring human, the unlimited – rather than the limiting – dimensions of living have got to be firmly in one’s sight.
The unlimited cannot be accessed through the limiting. Example: One cannot connect with the spiritual dimensions using quantum computers with the most advanced AI. They belong to different worlds that have no common denominator.
The 21st century has a voracious appetite for the limiting and limited. Again, there is no need to elaborate much here, you likely know the score in terms of the destructive nature of ‘the more frenzy’. As the population keeps growing, more of everything will continue to be needed. When do you think might be the point in time where nature and its supreme intelligence unpredictably reacts to put an end to this before it’s too late for nature itself? The answer is: Nobody knows.
Human development and spiritual evolution have no known limits. There is no limit to wisdom, perception capacity, range and depth of self-awareness, self-discovery, the power of belief, elevating states of being, growth in stature and creative capacity. Especially when merged and combined in the pursuit of constructive purposes.
There is currently a raging debate regarding the concern of robots and AI ruling the world. This is only possible in a world with occupants in the throes of severe personal development deficiency. In a world as meant to be, humans would enjoy the benefits of advanced form of personal development and spiritual evolution, where technology is unquestionably in service to human development and not the other way around. Note that spiritual elevation reveals knowledge, ideas and know-how that are inaccessible to ‘the more frenzy’ mind, as brilliant as it may be.
This is not to down-cry in any way the high achievements of modern science but to rather raise awareness to the fact of the existence of a gradient of possibilities that is only partially occupied by the 21st century.
It is suspected that in your heart you know that a radical global course correction is needed. Creating space for the work to earn one’s life naturally leads to the discovery of new ways to work to earn a living – and so much more, such as new approaches to children’s education – thereby transforming the outlook of life in ways that are unimaginable to ‘the more frenzy’ mindset.
You also know from your experience that when those in charge of an organization look after their own personal development and the development of their people, it has a profoundly constructive impact on the bottom line and innovation edge.
And the business prospers, because it is driven by happier employees that are putting to use and experiencing the profound impact of their developing capabilities and natural talents.
If you build it, it will come, in the most positively surprising ways
Please do leave a comment – your feedback is most welcome.
David Gommé
World Copyright 2019© David Gommé