To many people, "work" is something that is a necessary drag. It is not a fun thing. When
they talk about it, it sounds like an activity that they would like to end as soon as possible.
They live from holiday to holiday; throughout the week they count the days until the weekend.
Add all these people (who have work but don‘t enjoy it) to the large number of people who
receive a sickness benefit for psychological reasons. It gives us a good reason to have a
closer look at this thing called work.
When a person accepts a job, there are expectations he/she will have to meet. Unfortunately many
employers (but also employees) don‘t know what exactly is expected.
Even more annoying it
gets when tasks become contradictory/conflicting. Hierarchy doesn‘t make things easier either.
And then, after years of commitment, people are told that their contribution is no longer
needed...
In our village we must make sure that this kind of problems will not arise.
We can try and do so by not wanting to be bosses. If we don‘t have bosses, we will not have
servants. This does require us to co-operate well. There are people who know that they are not
good at that; for them we can look for jobs that are fit for one man (and there are plenty of
such jobs).
For those who can and are willing to work together, we would like to have small businesses in
which a maximum of seven people work together. (Seven seems to be the ideal number for
co-operation).
The expectation is, that one of these seven people is the most skilled/experienced. That
doesn‘t mean, however, that this person is also the best planner or the best person to prepare
the work. The challenge is trying to make visible the maximum of talents in one group. If every
participant makes his/her talent work, we will together form a complete group that will be able
to do a good but also enjoyable job. This will offer the best way of working together.
A different challenge is the rediscovey of crafts and trades. Most highly-educated people in
the western world want a job in management. But what about becoming a miller, what about
learning to see from a distance what the quality of grain is? Learning to recognize which sound
comes with which part of the mill? Learning which flour is best for which product?
When we bring back crafts and trades into our lives, we will learn anew to be proud of our work,
and to enjoy both the process and the result of the work we do. Working-hours become of less
importance. We will no longer think in terms of "being allowed to quit work", but will instead
enjoy our work in such a way that time will get a different meaning. We will leave our
hastiness which is so familiar to us now behind, we will find many more moments of rest than in
the traffic jam. We will stop our work because there will be a new day tomorrow. And because
there will be fun things to do in the village tonight, which we find good and significant as
well.