"If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done." - Bucky Fuller
As the US national election approaches, the debates continue to focus on jobs, most candidates want to create more jobs and many people believe that they are supposed to work, perhaps it's time to step back and consider the concept from Bucky Fuller's perspective. One of the first disciplines Bucky Fuller made in 1927 when he initiated his 56 Year Experiment to determine what one individual could achieve was his decision to no longer work for a living. This is not to say that he did nothing or begged others for money. Fuller worked very hard at what he saw needed to be done that was not being attended to (another of his 1927 disciplines as outlined in his book Critical Path).
He maintained this unique way of living until his death in 1983 while having an annual income of approximately $250,000 (approximately $750,000 per year in today's dollars) during the last decades of his life. The questions that arise for most of us is, "How did he manage to do this?" and "How can I follow in his footsteps?"
The answer is that what Bucky achieved is not that difficult for any of us. In fact, in today's society, it's even easier than it was back then. Bucky's ability to live in this manner proves his assertion that we are all part of Nature, and if we are doing something that is needed by Nature we will be supported by Nature. Trees don't have to earn their right to life, and there are no artificial trees. Either a tree is a tree, or it does not exist.
More important, from this perspective, traditional work and jobs are obsolete. No longer do we have to do things that we do not want to do in order to earn our living (or as Bucky would say, our right to life). No longer must we listen to the dictates of those in power when they tell us to specialize in something that will help us earn a good living. No longer do we have to worry about our children and grandchildren making good career choices early in their lives. And no longer will such early choices haunt us forever, as we feel stuck in a job we hate.
This is the vision that Bucky Fuller shared again and again in his speaking and writing, and it's well worth revisiting at this time of great global upheaval when "job creation" is such a hot topic. When he would speak about this concept, the first objection he usually heard was often stated as the simple reality, "I have to work for a living."
Bucky would then use that teachable moment to offer the idea that working for a living became obsolete when we reached the point of having enough resources to support all life on our Spaceship Earth. Bucky had devoted much of his life to examining how we humans were doing so much more with so much less that in Critical Path he was able to say that in the 1970's we reached a point where there was enough resources to support everyone on Earth.
Critical Path was published in 1981 less than two years before his death. Interestingly, The Zeitgeist Movement has just made Critical Path its October Book of the Month. So, three plus decades after it was published, many more people will finally become aware of the actions we need to take in order to create Bucky's vision "a world that works for everyone" and perhaps take one step away from their traditional vision of work and jobs. When that occurs, we may just recognize that true abundance that surrounds us and begin cooperating with one another to create more livingry and less weaponry.
Here's a short video of Bucky talking about our emerging newly abundant world where traditional jobs are obsolete.