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Things are transitioning, and disruptively so. Transitions aren't necessarily collapses, but they can certain look and quack like it before any benefit arises. Just take the whole arc of the Industrial Revolution for an example: more goods start flowing and more resources start being available, but simultaneously, people are pushed to work harder for lower wages; sunrise to sunset at the factory, tenement housing, etc. It takes generations before most really start seeing the visible benefit to their lifestyle. And the benefit is achieved through a series of fights - violent ones - to secure a new social contract. So where does it end? Where do we get the source of optimism for this transition? Well, look at the people analyzing the stats. Hans Rosling has long been popular for his positive framing of demographic changes. More recently Tony Seba has taken on a similar role in framing technology changes. They point to the graphs and say: "our trends are going here, not there." And "here" looks pretty good, but also surprising, because it doesn't behave linearly. The thing is, we don't address most societal challenges in a "Fix-it Felix" heroic fashion: either we find a technology that changes the game (which is produced mostly from people given the necessary access to resources to commit to lengthy trial and error - hence a lot of advancements are perceived as elite phenomena), or we let it fall into the political sphere, where a fight takes place and someone is declared a winner and their opinions become the law, for a while. Given the option to do so, don't be too concerned about picking a "right" job. Jobs emerge from what the market can support, and when some jobs are called more right than others, that's a factor of politics. The only way to truly remove the politics is to create more spheres of autonomy, which could happen not just "within" jobs but "without", by e.g. trying to redefine your household lifestyle. |