COVID-19 and The Human Revolution
THE FUTURE OF WORK arrived faster than anyone anticipated, in the form of a global pandemic. Although we were already slowly waking up to the importance of flexibility and human-centered workplaces, COVID-19 was the rude jolt that shocked us awake – the little brother who hits you in the face with a pillow in the middle of the night. It could be called The Great Awakening.
Who would have guessed that, suddenly, in March of 2020, everyone (who could) would be working from home? That most businesses would be either shut down or thrust into a remote-work trial! It’s an evolve-or-die situation that occasionally pops up in the natural world, and in the business world.
And everyone quickly found that many of the stories they were telling themselves about how “flexibility is impossible” or “it’s not for our business” were complete rubbish. Polite skeptics around the world have been exposed to a new way of working, and they’ve realized that it can work. The sky didn’t collapse when people could sign in from home.
Escaping the commute and the grind of the open-plan office, and the specter of mortality that came with seeing many around the world get sick or die from this virus, have woken us up from our mechanical lives where we were just going through the motions.
I thought I was already awake because I had been able to work with full flexibility. But I was suddenly reawakened and shaken into reassessing what’s important – what I should be focusing on and what I should be slashing out of my life.
Much of the awakening that has happened was the realization that many of our needs are unfulfilled due to the grind of everyday life. People were able to experience leisure again, for the first time in years. They were able to connect more with family and friends, even if they weren’t physically in the same place. They took courses to learn things they’ve wanted to learn for years but haven’t had the time or energy for.
They took up hobbies. They started gardening. They started cooking.
They assessed their identities outside of their profession.
They questioned everything.
It was beautiful!
But as I write this, people are imagining what their lives will be like when they have to leave these things behind and go back to their “normal” lives, their stressful commutes and nine-to-five offices. You can hear the dread in their words. They’re scared they’ll fall back to sleep and that their humanness will again be relegated to the fleeting gaps outside of work.
If you’re reading this, you already know more than me about how all this turned out, but I believe this was the spark to ignite The Human Revolution, where our needs are prioritized at home and at work, regardless of occupation or industry.
In The Human Revolution, people are no longer agents of capitalism, to be used up for the benefit of a few wealthy business owners and shareholders; they’re valued and prioritized as humans.
In The Human Revolution (Figure 13.1), as we’re seeing glimpses of during the pandemic, there are strong themes of decentralization and self-sufficiency – highly human traits.
Our skills are broadening and deepening; our incomes and identities are being spread over more than a single job or profession (many have jumped toward starting their own businesses); we’re cooking healthy food, fixing clothes, making friends, caring for our neighbors, healing from past traumas, and growing on the inside.
We’ve reversed the trend of being highly specialized, of never having time to do anything but our main thing. It’s a reversal of the Uber-ization of everything, where we pay strangers (too little) for all the things we can’t do ourselves.*
Figure 13.1. Conceptual graph of the level of needs-fulfilment during pre-agricultural times, the Industrial Revolution, and The Human Revolution – the near and hopeful future, where due to advancements in technology and a prioritization of people, our needs will be more fulfilled than at any other time in history.
And the purpose of business is changing. It’s no longer just a tool to make money for owners and shareholders. It’s now a living organism with which we can enrich the lives of managers and employees and customers, have an impact on real-world problems, and make money! ere’s a realization that capitalism and humanism are beautiful bedfellows, when all along we thought they were enemies.
Instead of being an arena where individuals try to out-compete each other, in this revolution business serves as a community where we’re all helping each other be our best for the benefit of all. We’re achieving much more than any individual could achieve on their own, which is what it is to be human!
This revolution is returning us to a more natural place, but augmented by high technology. Humans can be humans again because of the robots, because we’ve had to figure out how to combine technology with sustainable human lives.
Three major themes will be uncovered in this revolution: universal basic income, valuing humanness, and the unleashing of true human potential.
Universal basic incomes (UBIs) are going to be necessary, any way you slice it. Capitalism has always resulted in a few people disproportionately benefiting over the rest of us, because through a combination of luck and ingenuity they ended up in control of the means of production. This is especially true as artificial intelligence and robotics give this disproportionate distribution of power and wealth a shot in the arm of nuclear-powered steroids (it’s a thing).
As time goes on there will be even fewer people with even more of the income-generating means of production who will receive even more of the total benefits. And they won’t need to pay a single human for their services (Jeff Bezos can finally sack the last of those pesky humans who keep demanding better pay and acceptable working conditions).
The people who own businesses are becoming less and less reliant on other people to get work done. They benefit immeasurably from the technological progress we’ve all made as humans, while the majority of us are made redundant. And we’ll have our first trillionaires – individuals who possess more wealth than entire countries – while billions can’t afford to live a dignified life.
We already know this.
Wealth inequality has always been a painful product of a purely capitalist society, and experiments for UBIs in the modern world have been taking place as a potential remedy. Rich people can continue to be rich, while everyone else can still put food on their plates and reach their inherent potential.
For examples of successful trials and great arguments for UBIs, check out Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman. Ultimately, ensuring that the rich are taxed properly, and distributing their wealth (which they’ve been able to accumulate because of the progress of all humankind), is the only way to move forward.
Valuing Humanness
Didn’t we all gain a new appreciation for people who work in healthcare during the pandemic? They came into work day after day, risked being coughed on by the wrong person, slept on floors so they could save lives and prevent the spread of the disease to others in the community.
We also gained an appreciation for teachers, who, it turns out, don’t just teach our kids. They look after them and care for them and spend time with them while we’re at work.
And we gained a new appreciation for leaders who have strength and compassion. If New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern wasn’t considered the coolest leader of a country before COVID-19, she certainly is now.
What we’re seeing is a re-valuation of what it is to be human, especially in our professional lives and the economy. This was described a while ago by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) when they were advocating for twenty-one-hour work weeks. They introduced the concept of a core economy, which has found new and striking relevance:
The human or “core” economy is made up of the abundant and priceless assets that are embedded in people’s everyday lives – time, energy, wisdom, experience, knowledge and skills – and in the relationships between them: love, empathy, watchfulness, care, reciprocity, teaching, and learning.
If they are neglected, they will weaken and diminish. If they are recognized, valued, and supported, they will flourish and grow. They hold the key to making the welfare state sustainable and fit for the future. But growing the core economy depends on changing the way we use time.1
I believe (hope) that we’ll start to value this human or core economy with dollars and secure, enriching ways of working in the same way that we’re currently valuing it with our praise and our prayers.
Human Potential
If you haven’t noticed yet, one of the biggest themes in this book is human potential. I believe that every single one of us has a certain potential, and we know in our heart of hearts whether we’re fulfilling it or not. It eats away at the deepest part of our core if we’re not moving toward it, even if we haven’t figured out what “it” is.
Fulfilling this potential is an enormous part of the fundamental human need of identity. And I think the biggest cost of working too much in rigid patterns has been, for many, missing out on discovering and achieving their full potential as human beings.
Humans, all humans, are capable of extraordinary things. Contrary to robots, who (currently) specialize in doing one thing, humans can become masterful at multiple and varied pursuits.
Humans can spin across ice on a blade of steel with one leg in the air, question their place in the universe or how quantum particles interact, paint a landscape that touches the hearts of other humans in subtle and beautiful ways, create and learn new languages, leverage technology to travel much further and faster than their legs could carry them, analyze and influence the thoughts and emotions and behaviors of themselves and other humans and even other species, imagine the future and past and realities that don’t exist, cure diseases and prolong life, play a freakin’ harp, love openly and fully, solve complex problems, even those created by ourselves, and a billion other things, many of which we haven’t even thought of yet.
Our potential is infinite.
But how many of us haven’t reached our full potential as a human being?
How many people, throughout history, have used up all their best time and energy, for their entire adult lives, on nothing but work and going through the motions and administration of life, too tired to even think about their potential?
And how many have been too busy to follow most of their dreams?
How many Albert Einsteins wasted their gifts, gifts that could have been used for themselves and the world, by going through the motions of each day, working long and rigid hours, surviving, coping, and then watching TV while sucking down some beers for a bit of respite before the next day begins?
How many Serena Williamses put down their racket once they reached the workforce because there’s no way they could train two hours a day and work on their feet on a production line for ten hours, and were resigned to having a hit with friends once every few weeks when they can fit it in?
It’s not just genius and greatness, by our traditional definitions, that the world is missing out on, either. Every single person who can become the best version of themselves adds something amazing to their own lives, their family, their friends, their street, their community, and, subsequently, the entire world.
How would it impact the major problems we face in society if we were each more free and able to give more of a shit about things beyond paying bills and getting through the week? If we were capable of fully understanding ourselves, of facing and conquering our own inner demons instead of thrusting them onto others in the form of hatred and fear and aggression (the things on which the current, fractured global political climate thrives)?
There’s so much power in finding creative ways to change our own lives. We can learn to live sustainably with plastics and energy and food, understand people who are “different” by spending time outside our own circles or tribes, gain knowledge and expertise with personal finances, become physically and mentally and emotionally healthy with much less reliance on drugs and other forms of medical intervention, volunteer within the community, the political process – resulting in more elections decided on actual policies, and a realization that we’re all pursuing the same fundamental things in life.
Billions of people working on things that matter, even in small ways in their own backyards or kitchens or living rooms, even in their own heads, could surely help us progress to a sustainable, connected, caring, flourishing world. And they could do it much faster than just a few people with specialized occupations trying to solve all of our problems for us (while profiting from those solutions).
The rampant consumption of television, and recently the explosion of video-streaming services such as Netflix and Disney and Apple Plus, resulting in us addictively staring at strangers doing things on screens, are results of this disconnectedness with our own humanity when work sucks us dry.
We didn’t evolve to consume and live vicariously through other people’s lives; we evolved to create and connect and have our own adventures. But we’re too tired to live our own lives after eight hours of work and two hours of commuting. And in our desperation to fulfill our needs of leisure and creation and affection and participation we fall into a trap of unlimited consumption. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry built on numbing us from our unsustainable lives.
Humans have been creating art for hundreds of thousands of years, but now it’s done by only a select few. But the ability to try to understand and express beauty, ugliness, and abstraction is within all of us – it’s a fundamental part of who we are. We’re wasting our talents, and our joy, when we confine the practice to graphic designers or illustrators or artists.
(I’m on a roll, so I’ll just keep going!)
Wisdom – something I’m not sure we value anymore after the Trump of it all (or maybe something we’ll value even more after the Trump of it all) – seems to have fallen by the wayside in our rush to buy stuff and fill the gaps in our lives. Thinking on a deeper level, about what’s right and what’s wrong, why they’re right and why they’re wrong, why we even exist, is fundamental in developing strong identities and rich and wholesome lives.
But who can think, truly think, about these things when they’re rushing through life with dry buckets? In a half-dazed quest to survive, can we really question ourselves?
What about parents?! Many don’t have a chance, once they have small humans to take care of and a rigid job, to do anything other than look after their small humans and work their rigid job. Other interests tend to become a laughable dream (that they can look forward to only when the kids finally move out!). As fulfilling as becoming a parent is (so I’ve heard), wouldn’t it be great if parents could be more than parents and keep taking care of their own growth and development as humans? Wouldn’t it be great for parents to just have some time to sit down and do nothing?
That thing – doing nothing – enables us to do something that entire generations have missed out on: spending quality time with our own mind. Listening to our thoughts. Feeling our emotions. Letting our supercomputers do some unfettered rambling through the infinite universe within. There’s nothing more human. It’s the only way we can be sure we’re putting our energy toward the things that are worthwhile, the things that light us up.
What if we had a world where flexibility was normal, and everyone, no matter who we were or what our job was, had enough time and enough energy in our buckets to regularly step back, take a breath, and ponder our own existence?
What happens when we can all reach our full potential as humans?
What sort of world will that be?
* I acknowledge this is kind of a crazy statement with the amount of Uber Eats everyone is ordering while trapped at home, but that is a necessary evil to get through while we’re not able to go to a restaurant – learning to cook takes time!