Into the Workplace?
To a large degree, everyone shares in the material abundance of our society. We live longer and more comfortably than any society in history. The workplace provides the abundance we enjoy by organizing our life and our society to provide the most output for the least input.
Yet our extraordinary abundance creates a paradox felt across all levels of society. The more we have the less secure we feel. People often experience this as confinement – "no way out" – trapped rather than liberated by the good times. We find ourselves either exhausted from keeping up or resigned to falling behind. We are often too poor to live well in material terms or too rich to live well in human terms. The workplace is, at best, indifferent to this condition. Work environments are generally hostile to the intangibles of life that have the deepest meaning for individuals and society. It expects and often demands the sacrifice of what we hold as priceless. Many people accept the resulting incompleteness as a sign of personal failure.
In the workplace, efficiency and flexibility are valued the most. Maximizing returns comes before family or personal loyalty. People are “human resources”. The workplace cannot account for intangibles like human values because it cannot recognize costs that are not its own or liabilities it causes that someone else will have to pay for. Workplaces are financially rewarded for refusing to be responsible for the same values that define us as humans.
People value qualities like human freedom, dignity, equity, democratic expression and self-reliance. The moral obligations of living in a society runs deep. They define our responsibility to self, family and community. These obligations are demanding and include fully realizing one’s potential, personal behavior, family, protecting culture, preserving wisdom, admiring beauty and nurturing the earth. They form the basis of living well with or without money. Because of this, they are a greater source of happiness than material positions. We cannot change our deepest values without loosing what it means to be human. So we must change the workplace.
SAWSF is an opportunity to answer the question of how to live wisely, agreeably and well. To do this, we must look at the very nature of the workplace. Human needs and aspirations must become the organizing force of business not the other way around. We are committed to changing the workplace little by little to make more space for life through innovations that eventually become common practice. Only then can we stop working for a living and start living for a living.
- Russell Baker
rbaker@cymbic.com
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