Not Enough Time

I recently had to fill in different forms for various things, the specifics of which aren't relevant, suffice to say one was 28 pages long, another 16, and the other two were single page forms.  Despite the fact that I think this amount of paperwork is asinine and contributes so such waste and has so many negative impacts on the environment, they also have an impact on our mental health in more ways than we realise.  Filling in a form in and of itself doesn't sound like strenuous work, and in the physical sense it isn't, but it is taxing in a mental sense even to an extent emotionally.  The worst part about these forms is that they often ask you to provide information that by all accounts they should already have - any form that is for the purposes of renewing anything should really have a single page precursor that simply asks has anything changed and if the answer is no then take the previous submission as the template going forward.

Beyond the bureaucracy of this endeavour, the most frustrating part is perhaps not the forms themselves but the turnaround that goes with them.  Two of these forms I can expect a reply within five weeks for each one, and the other two are open ended, I may not get any reply at all for those which makes planning difficult and for someone who suffers from anxiety like me it also creates a cloud of uncertainty that hangs above your head until you get an answer or until enough time has passed that you can become complacent and able to ignore that cloud. 

Whilst it may be taxing to fill out a 28 page form which took 2 hours to complete, they are written forms that are submitted and manually reviewed and I know that the volume of submissions in this particular instance would be very high.  This does make you realise the volume of work created by requiring this form be completed and submitted is not negligible.  From my time working in administration I realised that much of the administrative work I undertook was by design created to create work.  In other words, these policies, procedures, and systems were designed to make work for people not to be efficient.  There were many areas where a simple single page form would have sufficed, and many more where making the entire process digital would have reduced the time it took to do the work substantially.

There has been a lot said in recent years about the impact of Artificial Intelligence and how it will change the world of work.  The comment I hear most from people is that an AI could never do their work - this comment is usually arrogant and entirely misguided, most jobs could be automated even the ones you think only a human can do.  Repetition is ultimately the key to automation, any job that involves doing the same thing all the time is ripe for automation.  One might then ask why many jobs still exist and the simple answer I have to that question is that those jobs still exist for now because people need to be given something to do with their time.

We have been asking the question now for far too long of when AI will be disruptive, I think the question is no longer relevant, instead the real question now should be what will we do with our lives when we no longer have to work - if you can provide a definitive answer to that question and take steps to implement it then the pace at which AI takes over from us in the world of work will increase.  Unions, Strikes, Industrial Disputes, and Political Opposition now stand as the main barriers to widespread automation, technology isn't the problem, it's ready and waiting to take our place, the problem is what to do with us.

If you've ever been made unemployed for an extended period of time, the first few weeks tend to be quite productive, which most people in work think is surprising but this productivity is largely the response of the bureaucratic systems in place that kick in when your employment status changes.  Like a house when someone dies, the wake, and the funeral see the house overrun with visitors, relatives, and well-wishers, it's not until the days that follow when silence falls and you're left with the reality of life without the one you loved that your life changes.  The same is true for loss of employment, it is not until several weeks have passed and what is defined as your new normal takes hold that you realise what your life is going to involve from then on.

After that initial transition period you set out to look for work and devote your time and energy to it but you can't look for a job 24/7 and with most applications once they are submitted they are out of your hands.  If you live in an area with limited employment options its entirely conceivable that you will literally have applied for every suitable job you can find but what do you do with your time after that?  This question is shared with that of a potential future world where work is no longer part of human society, what is left?  For some the first response is education in whatever form is available, either structured or unstructured, guided or self guided, commercial or community and all that's in between.  Is it reasonable or even possible to devote your life to education?

When you work full time you have a list of things you want to do but do not have the time to do, and when you do get free time you are often overcome with obligation or exhaustion, or even the desire to be as productive in your private life as you can be during that time, leaving little room for the pursuit of pleasure or that list of things you wanted to do.  When you find yourself with no work to do for whatever reason and have the opportunity to tackle that list, it's often the case that within a few days, or weeks at most, you clear that list with the magnitude of the tasks being something you did not realise was so small in reality.

When you are left with nothing else to do, what do you resort to in the pursuit of pleasure?  If the world existed without work, what would it resort to in turn?  If the tongue in cheek answer was to say sex then entertain the thought for a moment of a world without work and what that would involve, would we end up fucking ourselves to death?  Less droll perhaps is the response of eating or drinking but again the same question arises, in a world without work would we eat and drink ourselves to death?  The real question that is being asked here by proxy is how much self control does humanity actually have and how much of our humorous attempts at finding moderation are actually the result of the restrictions work places upon us and our time or resources not because of our willpower.

Perhaps to put it bluntly, is the real reason you don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply because you have obligations and can't spare the resources in time, money, energy etc to pursue them?  Is it then fair to say that the reason people who are unemployed at the moment within the current system don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply the result of the same restrictions imposed upon them by limiting resources?  If one were to embrace a more Machiavellian mindset then one would have to ask if we are to transition to a world without work which will need to utilise restrictions as a means to control behaviour then what is going to happen between now and then to reduce the amount of resources we have access to?