[Books & Thoughts] Are all these things 'real labor'?

[Books & Thoughts] Are all these things 'real labor'?

Corona 19, which has 'locked down' the world for over two years, has made people doubt about conventional wisdom and practices. Among them, the question of labor deserves the first place. This is because, as telecommuting and teleworking have spread widely in general workplaces, many people are starting to tilt their heads towards the way they used to work. Do I have to go to work and keep my seat to work? Did things go well without all kinds of meetings and meetings? New perspectives lead to more fundamental questions. What is labor and productivity? How is our labor measured? 

Danish anthropologist, consultant, philosopher and critic, the two authors of this book (published locally before Corona) declare that much of work in modern society is an illusion. Everyone is busy and working for a long time, but if you know it, it means that there is a lot of 'fake labor' which is a meaningless waste of time. Various interviews and research cases are presented as the basis for this. Labor, which was revered as a source of value creation in classical political economy, has now been pointed out as an activity that is close to a mirage mixed with all kinds of absurdity.

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About 90 years ago, Keynes, the father of modern economics, and Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, predicted that in the future human beings would work 15 hours a week, 4 hours a day, would be enough. As technology advances, machines will replace much of human labor. But what about reality? Washing machines and rice cookers were invented, but household chores are still plentiful, cars and e-mails have arrived, but people spend more time on the move and texting to communicate with others. The system is becoming more complicated, and he spends his days empty by being bombarded with unnecessary chores and meetings, and countless referenced e-mails. Technological advancement is not the only problem. Humans have created meaningless jobs to protect and show off their place and organization as they are human beings. This is because work has changed from an era when work was an individual means of survival and cricket or shooting and lounging around was a virtue of the upper classes, to an era in which people looked up to high-ranking and managerial positions (which seemed to be busy and had a lot of work to do).

Of course, not all work is like that. When essential workers who do 'visible things', such as bus drivers, cleaners, and teachers, let go of their hands, society stops. The problem is the office workers, such as consultants, IT experts, managers, researchers, PR team members, and support team members, who emerged through industrialization in the 20th century. So what should I do? It's a cliché, but the answer is that humans have no choice but to change themselves. Stop wasting time on fake labor and return to play and leisure. That way, you will be able to develop yourself, think deeply, and reflect on something.