Work As A Fluid: Moving & Taking Shape

One can easily chart the supposed 'evolution of humanity' (which anyone who has been to Las Vegas could easily disupte) through the lens of human work and labour. Agricultural Revolution. Industrial Revolution. The Age of Information. Each suggests a movement or progression in a collective sense. They seem to stand out as the passages by which a species has evolved, come into itself, adapted, changed, transformed. As such, work may be defined somewhat differently in each age or era.

When I first went to work it was not to take care of a family. Being a child who was the product of preceding revolutions in agriculture and industry it came to pass that work became more of a means to satisfy my own personal desires/inclinations. I did not have to work in order to survive. I worked not because I needed to, but because I wanted to. My own desires (rather than, say, necessity) made work appealing. Work was the road I would travel to satisfaction (or, at the very least, the illusion of satisfaction!).

Anthropologists have attempted to understand various human cultures in relation to their form and manner of work. In Marxist terms, it is to ask and ponder the question of 'How does a specific culture acquire the material means to subsist, if not prosper?' Do they hunt and gather? Do they produce commodities for exchange? Do they rape and pillage? Do they sow and reap?

The potential answers that reveal themselves in the asking of such questions can disclose much about who we are, what we value, as well as what will be expected of us by the members of the culture that we are embedded in. For work evolves. Work is transformed relative to the individual as well as the collective. It is a more increasingly known fact that the average person can expect to change jobs upwards of 10 times in their lifetime. It seems to indicate to us how very fluid work is becoming. The era of adopting a vocation and adhering to a particular path (though still relevant for artisans, craftsman, and artists alike) is not the apparent fate of many. It is even moreso becoming the case in an era marked by global competition where multinational corporations can leverage the work-force/people of one nation against the work-force/people of other nations. Those corporations threaten the worker with constant flight if the workers do not concede to concessions across the board--that include the end of healthcare and retirement, as well as the cutting-back of wages and other benefits. It makes work an even more tenuous place for human-beings to inhabit.

Which maybe makes 'following one's bliss' all that much more appealing. I mean, if you are going to have insecurity at work, then you might as well have it while doing something you love, right?