Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Wow, gee whiz. Here’s the problem. Here’s what it would looked like if it were solved. Now, just go make it better. How the hell did that get into TED? He didn’t talk about the hard work it would take to change society so that if you have professional skills, you can still find a job (not work as a freelance consultant with no income security and no health insurance) and achieve a less than 10 hr/day work life. I think it’s time for professional business classes like software engineers to unionize so that it is possible to find professional employment that only requires you being at the office for 35-40 hrs/week. Otherwise, if you just march in and declare you’re only going to work 40 hrs/week, you’ll end up working 0 hrs/week.
A good speaker with nothing to say.
As somebody outside his target audience but, at first glance, well within it, I found his talk lacking in many ways. But I’ll focus on just one thing: his proposed society is utterly vulnerable to cheating.
If pretty much everybody joins this ideal society of his, and work-life balance becomes the universally-acknowledged GOOD THING, the rare individual willing to game the system and put in 60-hour workweeks, and not have children, and not develop these long-term hand-waving-emotional-investment “spiritual” things, that rare individual will find themselves in a very dominant position in their local social network – they become the boss, in other words.
So, the ideal work-life balance society is vulnerable to rapid invasion by cheaters, bringing it back to something like our current work-comes-first society. Even if I thought his ideal society was really good (I’m not convinced), it’s unstable.
For me, being a high-powered exec is more important than being a good parent.
Things cost money. Staying at home doesnâ??t buy things. Going out there and making as much money as possible is the best thing to do. Everyone wants to live the good life. But the good life costs. So what if you canâ??t make it to the softball game or the ballet recital! If you are bringing home big bucks, you are doing more for your family than any amount of time will.
A parent that doesnâ??t make a ton of money is shameful. Kids want iPhones, computers, jeans, sneakers, and other cool stuff. How can a kid be cool if mom or dad only works 40 hours a week but brings home diddley squat? I would rather work a ton of hours and make a ton of money than come home at the same time and sit in the house with a nagging wife and bratty children. A family has to understand that having things is more important than being together. Working less is not an option!