What is work for?

I watched a TED by Seth Godin asking that very same question, only he was asking ‘what is school for?’ That got me thinking, what is work for?

This is perhaps a good thing to write about on the eve of going back to work for another week. Do we ever stop to ask that question? What is work for?

For most, it is simply an activity that they do in order to earn money. Then that money is used to buy stuff. Most of us have been prepared to do exactly that for the rest of our adult lives by school.

We have been trained to comply and be good workers in the mechanised, sanitised and industrial world.

We’ve been sold the dream that if we work hard, we’ll get more money, we’ll be able to get a bigger house, which we can use the bigger income, to fill with more worthless trinkets.

Most of those trinkets lose their shine and end up in a skip. We are encouraged to constantly replace our trinkets, with updated more ‘fashionable’ items, even if the trinkets are still perfectly usable.

So work is for the benefit, mainly, of the owners of work and not us. We are merely fodder to keep the system working.

Surely there is something more meaningful for human kind to be doing each day than simply working to consume stuff that benefits just a few.

Surely it is better to be creating something that enhances human kind? Surely it is better to be caring for one another? Surely it is better to be creating our own stuff and not simply working to line the pockets of a few.

Anyone for work? or perhaps we’d all be better off working in collaboration in communities creating our own individual stuff to share with each other?