Social Justice in the 21st Century
It’s hard to predict the future. That said, I’m sure that work will be radically different in 20 years. Nearly everything has changed in the last 100 years about the type of work we do and how we do it. Sadly, our jobs have only become evermore more mechanical, disconnected activities, ones that keep us both dependent and disempowered.
In the 19th and early 20th century, workhorses were a regular site. They were essential for transportation. By 1915 there were an estimated 20 million horses in the United States. Unfortunately many died working in the streets of America’s biggest cities. In 1880 New York City alone removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets. Eventually, the torture came to an end as they became useless with the arrival of the automobile. Within a few decades, millions of workhorses became displaced, causing a mass killing for horse meat.
Luckily we aren’t workhorses, but we risk becoming just as useless. The impending AI and robotics revolution may upend employment as we know it. If it does come about it would only be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Our system of work has been failing us for decades. More and more people are disengaging from their work, and work-induced burnout continues to increase. We are failing to address the problem.
Part of the problem comes from our worldview — our beliefs about what work is. Working is something that we all recognize as valuable and an essential part of our society. If we question work in any way, we risk being called weak, lazy or worse. The thing is, work is not the problem; it’s the stories that reinforce our beliefs.
The stories themselves aren’t understood. We can’t see them, yet we believe them to be the reality. The fact is our system established long ago is now destroying our dignity and subjugating us in ways few of us even recognize. Our view of work is incredibly clouded by how society frames it. Many of our social issues stem from the detrimental impact of the global system of work on our lives.
The symptoms haven’t gone unnoticed. There are people taking charge and working to change how organizations are structured. They’re helping develop new management models. But, as a whole, we’re treating the problem as an organizational issue, rather than the social justice problem that it is.
We’re forced to work by the realities of our society. Few if any of us can live outside of the modern workforce. From birth, we’re conditioned to see being hired by an organization as a life goal. We dream of working for corporations that provide us the status we seek. The constant buzz of the jobs mantra across our societies is never-ending.
We need jobs, but jobs are the domain of corporations, and their goal is to make a profit, not to employ people. They would prefer not to hire people. Business is about keeping costs low, and for most corporations, people are the most significant cost.
This is our reality. Work has become tied to the needs of corporations. They ignore our needs as people. We need work that is meaningful and connects us with others. We want to work on things that will help make the world a better place. Though this is often framed as naive and irresponsible, in reality, it is the way human beings have lived their lives for millennia.
We have become indentured to the system of work, and we can’t even see it. We feel it, and we know the impact on ourselves and those we love, but we can’t see the truth of our bondage. We believe we’re free to do what we want. We are not free! Like the workhorses of a century ago, we are being forced to work in ways that are not sustainable. We are working for the system on its terms, not ours.
It’s not the people who run the corporations that are to blame. They too are living the fictitious stories. For the most part, everyone is incentivized to do what they’re doing. We’re all suffering under the tyranny of the system. The fight is not us against them. It is humanity against an unjust system of subjugation.
We can’t overcome this by just changing work structures. We need to wake up the masses. To shine a light on the injustice of our current system and the relentless harm it is causing every one of us.
We have no choice but to change the stories around work. Our human needs and those of our environment must be our priority. We were not born to serve a human-made system!
People conceived of the stories that created the system in the first place. We have the power to introduce new beliefs, true stories, stories that help bring human-dignity back into work.
Let’s start a movement, the Radical movement. Help us make work radically human. We must overcome this social injustice. It’s up to us to cause this change. We can’t allow the next generation to be subject to these same outrages. If we do, they risk becoming a generation of replaceable workhorses.
