Having inherited a life of relative comfort and abundance, a life almost never disturbed by "Fight or Flight", you and I have the luxury of spending our time in pursuits other than desperate self-conservation. The many missions this opens up can be broadly classified into such things as self growth, creative expression, exploration, and contributing to society. I want to discuss the latter pursuit for awhile. You've always felt compelled to change the world, make it a better place, leave a legacy; how can you make the biggest impact with your finite time on this planet?
Getting A Job
One of the most popular ways to contribute to society is to assume a specific role- to get yourself a job. You can contribute to society this way, but the contribution is actually a bit overrated. A lot of work is really quite useless to society as a whole. Last night, my girlfriend and I watched a movie set in the late 1920's; the protagonist was a supervisor at a switchboard where dozens of women connected peoples' phonecalls. Nowadays, all that work can be done by one single computer, faster and more accurately; so the value those women were providing was of a very temporal nature.
More and more, computers and robots can do the work of man. When I was in the Air Force as a weather forecaster, I felt extremely frustrated. Weather forecasting may sound like a very mentally stimulating job, but the truth is most of the time was spent copying computer-generated models, if not literally copying-and-pasting text from one window to another. Sure, we wrote up "explanations" for our forecasts, but these were just junk. If it's been storming all week and the models call for more storms, I'd say: "Recent atmospheric conditions will persist, thus I predict thunderstorms." If it's been storming all week and the models call for clear skies, I'd say: "The recent storms have exhausted the atmosphere, thus I predict mild weather."
Volunteer Organizations
Doing a little pro bono for the local soup kitchen is another way to contribute to society. Many people with free time on their hands like to volunteer at the public library. While contribution varies widely between jobs and organizations, you can broadly generalize that volunteer work provides greater value than paycheck work. But the reason is not what most people think. It has nothing to do with the fact that you're working for free, and everything to do with the fact that you're working on your own time. Volunteers generally work when they want to work, there's no mandatory schedule, no obligatory overtime, usually no pointless staff meetings, no warming a seat just to fill your hours, and no pink slips. "But what difference does this make? It's the same work, no matter how you do it, isn't it?" The answer will become clear by the end of this article.
Charitable Donations
Ahh, the old noblesse oblige. Surely if all else fails, you can leave society a better place by sending lots of money to some very noble causes, right? Actually, the truth is, this creates no benefit to society. Let's say, for example, you donate a million dollars to a hospital. It's not as though the doctors are going to take the cash, melt it down, and inject it into people who suffer iron deficiency; the real effect of your donation is to influence other people to take action. Maybe your donation will go to doctors' salaries: in that case, the doctors are the ones making the actual contribution to the world. But, one can argue, the doctors need to eat to work, and they need money to eat! But when the doctor buys food at the grocery store, all he's doing with your money is convincing the store not to call the cops, as they would otherwise do if he tried to simply walk out with the food. But don't the farms need the money to provide the supermarket? No, the supermarket merely uses the money to compel the farmers (and the truckers, and the stockers, and the cashiers) to work. All these parties are the ones making the actual changes in the world.
You can continue this kind of thought experiment indefinitely. At no point does the philanthropist's tithe really add an ounce of value: all it does is convince other people to do labor, and the value is added by the people doing that labor. Moreover, most of them can and will eventually be replaced by robots and computers!
The Truth Behind "A Christmas Carol"
You've probably read or watched Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol", where a miserly banker is visited by ghosts who convince him to donate money to a family so they can afford surgery for their little boy. The true villain in this tale is not the miser but actually the surgeons. Those cold-hearted bastards would sit by and watch a poor cripple die in agony, if Mr. Scrooge didn't use his vast authority (in the form of money) to basically force them off their lazy, evil butts.
The Best Way to Contribute to Society
By far the best way to stimulate your world is to actively, joyfully participate in it. Merely by walking around outside, you provide profound cultural value. Culture is nothing more than the people in it, and without those people, it is nothing. This is admittedly a little bit of an unconventional way of looking at things, so let's consider a concrete example.
Joe is an insurance analyst. He gets up very early and drives to work, further congesting the already overcrowded morning rush. During the drive, his car pumps poison into the air. At work, he alternates between slacking off and doing insurance analysis, with an emphasis on the former but always with great care to look busy. What little analysis he performs is used by the company to maximize profits through tiny tweaks to peoples' insurance rates. Finally he goes home, his car pumping more toxin into the world. Exhausted, he watches some TV and hits the sack.
Societal contribution: FAIL.
That same day, Joe's neighbor Bob calls in pretending to be sick. Instead of working, he throws a potluck and invites lots of friends who live nearby. At the get-together, new friendships are formed, connections are made. People laugh and talk about everything under the sun. Guests are introduced to new types of food and music. Both of them a little buzzed, Bob ends up hooking up with that nice girl down the street after the party. In short, everyone has a really cool time.
Societal contribution: KACHING!
As a matter of fact, the best way to do your part and enhance humanity, is simply to do whatever makes you feel good. When calculating the pros and cons of some action to your surroundings, remember that those surroundings include you; culture isn't just made up of all those other people, it's you too, so when you make yourself happy, you're adding to the fabric of civilization. That's why volunteer work is a more efficient way to contribute than a paid job-- although neither is as efficient as just going on social outings.
Even if you're not a naturally extrovertive person, you can contribute a ton to society thanks to the internet. Post on forums, chat in chatrooms, update your Facebook profile, etc. In fact, I highly recommend everyone start their own blog. When I first began Glowing Face Man, I had no idea that through it I'd be contributing so much to the world. I've added much more value to the world by writing than I ever could have added as a weather forecaster. And I've done it at my own leisure, writing exclusively about what I feel like writing, accepting no deadlines, no bosses.
If this article seems extreme now, bear in mind that it will become more extreme in the future. While humans insist on bleeding their lives away at "work" even as more and more work is taken over by machines, the remaining jobs will add less and less value to the world. But computers will never be able to enjoy this awesome playground which is our universe-- that's the one thing that gives true meaning to the short life of a man!
FURTHER READING
51 Things That Won't Matter When You Die
10 Metaphors For Life
Sex Before Marriage
Campus Homelessness and Mooching
Getting A Job
One of the most popular ways to contribute to society is to assume a specific role- to get yourself a job. You can contribute to society this way, but the contribution is actually a bit overrated. A lot of work is really quite useless to society as a whole. Last night, my girlfriend and I watched a movie set in the late 1920's; the protagonist was a supervisor at a switchboard where dozens of women connected peoples' phonecalls. Nowadays, all that work can be done by one single computer, faster and more accurately; so the value those women were providing was of a very temporal nature.
More and more, computers and robots can do the work of man. When I was in the Air Force as a weather forecaster, I felt extremely frustrated. Weather forecasting may sound like a very mentally stimulating job, but the truth is most of the time was spent copying computer-generated models, if not literally copying-and-pasting text from one window to another. Sure, we wrote up "explanations" for our forecasts, but these were just junk. If it's been storming all week and the models call for more storms, I'd say: "Recent atmospheric conditions will persist, thus I predict thunderstorms." If it's been storming all week and the models call for clear skies, I'd say: "The recent storms have exhausted the atmosphere, thus I predict mild weather."
Volunteer Organizations
Doing a little pro bono for the local soup kitchen is another way to contribute to society. Many people with free time on their hands like to volunteer at the public library. While contribution varies widely between jobs and organizations, you can broadly generalize that volunteer work provides greater value than paycheck work. But the reason is not what most people think. It has nothing to do with the fact that you're working for free, and everything to do with the fact that you're working on your own time. Volunteers generally work when they want to work, there's no mandatory schedule, no obligatory overtime, usually no pointless staff meetings, no warming a seat just to fill your hours, and no pink slips. "But what difference does this make? It's the same work, no matter how you do it, isn't it?" The answer will become clear by the end of this article.
Charitable Donations
Ahh, the old noblesse oblige. Surely if all else fails, you can leave society a better place by sending lots of money to some very noble causes, right? Actually, the truth is, this creates no benefit to society. Let's say, for example, you donate a million dollars to a hospital. It's not as though the doctors are going to take the cash, melt it down, and inject it into people who suffer iron deficiency; the real effect of your donation is to influence other people to take action. Maybe your donation will go to doctors' salaries: in that case, the doctors are the ones making the actual contribution to the world. But, one can argue, the doctors need to eat to work, and they need money to eat! But when the doctor buys food at the grocery store, all he's doing with your money is convincing the store not to call the cops, as they would otherwise do if he tried to simply walk out with the food. But don't the farms need the money to provide the supermarket? No, the supermarket merely uses the money to compel the farmers (and the truckers, and the stockers, and the cashiers) to work. All these parties are the ones making the actual changes in the world.
You can continue this kind of thought experiment indefinitely. At no point does the philanthropist's tithe really add an ounce of value: all it does is convince other people to do labor, and the value is added by the people doing that labor. Moreover, most of them can and will eventually be replaced by robots and computers!
The Truth Behind "A Christmas Carol"
You've probably read or watched Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol", where a miserly banker is visited by ghosts who convince him to donate money to a family so they can afford surgery for their little boy. The true villain in this tale is not the miser but actually the surgeons. Those cold-hearted bastards would sit by and watch a poor cripple die in agony, if Mr. Scrooge didn't use his vast authority (in the form of money) to basically force them off their lazy, evil butts.
The Best Way to Contribute to Society
By far the best way to stimulate your world is to actively, joyfully participate in it. Merely by walking around outside, you provide profound cultural value. Culture is nothing more than the people in it, and without those people, it is nothing. This is admittedly a little bit of an unconventional way of looking at things, so let's consider a concrete example.
Joe is an insurance analyst. He gets up very early and drives to work, further congesting the already overcrowded morning rush. During the drive, his car pumps poison into the air. At work, he alternates between slacking off and doing insurance analysis, with an emphasis on the former but always with great care to look busy. What little analysis he performs is used by the company to maximize profits through tiny tweaks to peoples' insurance rates. Finally he goes home, his car pumping more toxin into the world. Exhausted, he watches some TV and hits the sack.
Societal contribution: FAIL.
That same day, Joe's neighbor Bob calls in pretending to be sick. Instead of working, he throws a potluck and invites lots of friends who live nearby. At the get-together, new friendships are formed, connections are made. People laugh and talk about everything under the sun. Guests are introduced to new types of food and music. Both of them a little buzzed, Bob ends up hooking up with that nice girl down the street after the party. In short, everyone has a really cool time.
Societal contribution: KACHING!
As a matter of fact, the best way to do your part and enhance humanity, is simply to do whatever makes you feel good. When calculating the pros and cons of some action to your surroundings, remember that those surroundings include you; culture isn't just made up of all those other people, it's you too, so when you make yourself happy, you're adding to the fabric of civilization. That's why volunteer work is a more efficient way to contribute than a paid job-- although neither is as efficient as just going on social outings.
Even if you're not a naturally extrovertive person, you can contribute a ton to society thanks to the internet. Post on forums, chat in chatrooms, update your Facebook profile, etc. In fact, I highly recommend everyone start their own blog. When I first began Glowing Face Man, I had no idea that through it I'd be contributing so much to the world. I've added much more value to the world by writing than I ever could have added as a weather forecaster. And I've done it at my own leisure, writing exclusively about what I feel like writing, accepting no deadlines, no bosses.
If this article seems extreme now, bear in mind that it will become more extreme in the future. While humans insist on bleeding their lives away at "work" even as more and more work is taken over by machines, the remaining jobs will add less and less value to the world. But computers will never be able to enjoy this awesome playground which is our universe-- that's the one thing that gives true meaning to the short life of a man!
FURTHER READING
51 Things That Won't Matter When You Die
10 Metaphors For Life
Sex Before Marriage
Campus Homelessness and Mooching
Posts
6 comments:
Of course, contribution implies the verb 'give', that is, giving value. Isn't it better to find ways to make money from the contribution value than to get a job?
Yes, in the sense that the money makes you happier. Money isn't what it used to be, though. Technological advances which eliminate jobs SHOULD make up for it by making some product/service cheaper. This doesn't actually happen (at least, not nearly as much as it should) because of the profit motive. The result is that our money system is quite broken by now.
I disagree about the value of charitable donation. It's not that a given doctor isn't doing a lot of work, it's that someone has to pay for the doctor's equipment and or more doctors, in the case of medical donations.
Aside from that, in donating to aid for the homeless etc., you are not paying for a construction working to get off his butt and making some buildings instead of sitting around. A construction worker is going to be doing their job in some way. You are really paying for that person to reallocate his work to a cause you agree with.
You are able to influence a lot more people to action through your money than you are able to with just your own personal action (there you can just influence one person to act).
A similar point can be made when you are buying food for starving people etc., the food is going to exist no matter what money you pay, but you are paying for it to go in a direction you like.
David, the thing is, by the time you're donating the money, the contribution has already been made. Money, by its very nature, is supposed to measure already-made contribution. I have $100, in principle, because I contributed $100 worth of wealth to society, or someone else did so for me (wealthy dead uncle, publicly traded company, etc.) If doctors lack equipment, it's not because I didn't give them my $100. Who is more responsible for equipping doctors, me (a blogger and math teacher) or the people who build medical equipment? If the latter is letting people suffer unnecessarily, don't blame the philanthropists.
There are several points in this article which I share and some which I oppose. The main which I oppose is this: >At no point does the philanthropist's tithe really add an ounce of value: all it does is convince other people to do labor, and the value is added by the people doing that labor.< Definitely can not agree with it. Simply thinking about Economics 101, you could remember that in the simplest model there are 2 sources of value creation: labor and Capital!
Yes, the "simplest model". See the previous article, "The Map is not The Territory".
Imagine technology continues to improve, to the point where there's a limitless robot workforce, any robot capable of doing any human job, using nothing but free solar power. Now the "simplest model" of Economics 101 completely breaks down: Labor (implicitly meaning "human labor") is utterly worthless, and the robots don't need paychecks.
Of course, such a utopia is not here yet, but a model's performance changes continuously, not abruptly. If you grant that the model is worthless when robots are perfected, then it follows the model performs less and less well as technology improves. (This is precisely the same logical reasoning behind the "Laffer Curve", btw)
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