Bees at work (XII): How Humans work now – Our Present
Have a beautiful Valentine´s week. Most countries on earth celebrate the 14th of February, not just if they have a significant other when it comes to romance, but also because it is a week for friendship commemoration and to honor the significance of love. In consequence, we sincerely wish you a joyful-go-lucky week. We consider you our most prominent and worthy companions in this journey.
Today´s publication has no source of reference or inspiration from third parties. I am stretching our limits higher. More and more we will pursue original and authentic production unless we need some reference in particular. Our today´s unique content (as a corporate strategy state-of-the-art theorist) and further strategic reflections will not be based on any inspiration from other academic researchers, think tanks, university magazines, or substantial journalists. So let´s begin:
An overview of the concept of “now”. This paragraph is an introductory overview of understanding how humans work now. We will conceive a definition of work “now” after the declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in the year 1948. This means the perspective of “now” for Eleonora Escalante Strategy is not only today, or since the pandemic, but during the last 74 years; including our incursion in the ubiquitous mobile phone era (since the year 2000 or Y2K). In one phrase, we will circumscribe “at this present time” labor as the experience that an average contemporary baby boomer (of 74 years old) has breathed and has inherited it to us (any generation X and Millennial individual) after WWII to the present.
What has been the definition of work in this context? Work has been labeled as the intelligent human activity that is applied to produce goods and services. It has been framed as the quotidian labor that men or women do for a living. Synonyms of work during the life of my parents (my mom and dad are both 76 years old) have a huge range of meanings and that affects the philosophy of understanding what is to work “now” Keywords as employment, job, profession, discipline, vocation, occupation, toil, opus, chore, drudgery, hustle, masterpiece, production, physical exertion, intellectual grind, assignments… all these terms have been used to define what is work since the neolithic era, during the past 6,000 years ago. However, something happened with the baby boomers.
If our “Bees at work” hypothesis is correct, when Eleonora Escalante Strategy affirms that humans have just started with 75 years of experiment or testing which working model could be adequately reasonable for our well-being, then we (all the thinkers, philosophers, and economists/business researchers on earth during the last century) we all are simply a group of newbies beginners. And humbly we all need to accept it. The fact that we hold a counterweight ballast of 6,000 years of slavery as opposed to the last 75 years of the declaration of work in freedom by the United Nations, only that piece of evidence, must assist us to be kind with ourselves in our quest to define what is work. We are only starting to define work, and from the conceptualization statement of work in freedom by the United Nations to this day, we as neophytes, all have been simply testing, trying, straining to find the best working model.
United Nations declared in 1948 that we all can choose our work in freedom, and we all have the right to make a decent living (of at least a middle class) with our work endeavors. However just to say it or write it, doesn´t mean that our civilization has overcome the legacy of slavery that we have been inflicted with. Political-economic systems based on collectivism or individualism (Socialism and Capitalism with all its sub-formats and hybrid presentations and/or edges tested since the French Revolution) have been simply a loop of pilot projects tested lately. None of them have demonstrated to us that they are impeccable to get a grading of an A+. Of course, the fallacy of the middle class is irrevocable evidence, that inequality (defined as the gap between the rich and the poor) has not been enhanced as we wish for, yet. And this unevenness occurs in the USA, China, Africa, Latin America, and even in Western European countries which are seen as the most evolved when it comes to reaching out happiness and well-being for all its citizens. So, what is happening with work in the context of our slavery legacy?
We must be kind to ourselves. Our path to freedom has just started. The path to find which are the best working models to apply in societies has just begun. We all are still wet behind the ears (in Spanish we say “Estamos apenas en pañales“), or we are still in our infancy years to overcome the consequences of 6,000 years of work under slavery terms. And to alter this status to what idealistically means to work in freedom has proven that is not automatic. The change to working in total freedom with decent salaries or income (for entrepreneurs) and healthy schedules is not going to be reached in this century or the next one either, even if we use all the current technologies available. The difference between working as a slave and working under free terms is what began with the arrival of baby boomers during the last century. And the clash of two meanings of work (the one under a slavery political-economic system and the connotation of work under a free-will political-economic system) have messed up our present with pizazz warfare that is witnessed every day in the application of the new NAIQIs (Nanotech, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Supremacy, and the Internet) technologies around. For us, the NAIQIs technologies have come to show us how far we are of reaching the status of “work in freedom” as a reality for tous everywhere.
Let´s explore more the meaning of work as the baby boomers inherited it. The generation of people who are between 65 to 85 years old inherited the concept of work attached to the legacy of slavery, but they added the concept of “salary”, the retribution of money in exchange for working. The baby boomers acquired the sense of work as a paid position of regular employment. They grew up with a functional concept of work for serfdom or occasionally for entrepreneurship (for those more courageous who were able to start their companies). They nurtured the notion of work tied to augment the productive capacity to create wealth, so they divided work into specific roles to accomplish a list of activities to make companies profitable. They coined and matured the belief that there were two types of works: those who are classified as intellectual or specialized, and those who are categorized as manual or physical. Baby boomers conceived that there are two big sorts of people: those who are the owners of the entities, and those who work for the owners of the organizations. For the latter group, the great majority, who receive a paycheck every month, the term “employees” was stamped instead of the term slaves. So it was a bondman or bondwoman “plus” status because employees could use their salary to buy whatever they wanted, how they wished, where they hoped until they enjoyed it. Don´t take me wrong: the improvement happened from slave to employee (bien sur, the progress from slavery to employment was a significant metier). But it has not been enough, because inequality and poverty still exist for 84% of the global population).
In addition, with baby boomers, the differentiation of employees was instituted with different classifications. In general, there have been different types of employees who have worked into 2 major categories (mainly):
- Those works related to general occupations such as carpenters, physicians, accountants, managers, professors, lawyers, farmers, etc. Those who dedicated years of study and preparation (which are paid by meritocracy) have been able to cash higher rewards or become more well-paid in comparison to those who do not have an academic or specialized experience background.
- Those works related to specific concentrations, specialties, or specializations, in which a group of people of the same profession or occupation are divided to do only a specific type of activity. For example, in the group of factory workers (with the same technical background), each different operator performs a different manufacturing or quality control phase to complete the process of a finished article. Another example is in the health industry, in which you can classify doctors per specialization, sub-specialization and specifics.
A final work category: The black sheep of the family where those careers or works related to art and intellectual production, these latter ones are categorized as free-lance in which there is no factory, no schedule, or no boss around. These are the roles in which the oeuvre is bought directly from the consumer who has the pleasure to see, hear, learn or read the artist’s artworks; or to the intellectual free-will producer of literature, music, painting, sculptures, photography, cinema, etc. This is the spot zone in which Eleonora Escalante is uncovered and in which we wish to continue raising up, not just to gain in-depth expert wisdom, but to contribute to those who teach, those who advise, those who wish to begin to think integrally, those who are contributing to make this world a better place, beyond my dedication to those who read and those who create other forms of art too.
What about the economic retribution for employees? What about the schedules? What about the technologies that are complicating things for the worst, and why? What about the societal implications of the current status of work? What about the last 22 years of working with the mobile phone? We will find out about these topics in our civilization during the last 75 years next Friday. We will stop here for today.
Strategic reflection music section:
Why did we pick Darlene Zschech songs? Those who profess any Christian religion (of whatever denomination you can think of) have at least listened to one of Darlene´s songs. As a member of Hillsong in Australia, Darlene took the Christian adoration services as a storm in the 1990s decade. Her adoration music to God has accompanied us since then. She probably doesn´t have a list of Grammys or Oscars for her gospel music, but she also deserves recognition from us in our sagas, a remarkable legacy for those who sing for Christ nowadays.
Song for today: We will open your ears to Alexander Desplat. Three songs from him. “The Meadows”, (From “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”). The second, “Griet’s Theme”, from the movie “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”, which interpreted by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. And the last one “A princess without a voice” from the movie “The Shape of Water”(2017), with a video made and shared by Andrea Lopez on Youtube. You will find out why we have picked Mr. Desplat, in our next episode. If you wish to explore Desplat’s astonishing canons of music, watch on Youtube a collection of his best soundtracks. Click any of the two links below please:
Alexandre Desplat’s Greatest Hits 1993-2018
Thank you for reading to me. See you next Friday. Blessings!
Sources of reference used for this publication. None.
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, most of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
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