Unless of course you’re currently in the middle of something vital to saving lives, preventing some kind of harm to someone, or where harm or death could occur if you stop.
If the so called “leaders” of the world had any fucking sense whatsoever, they’d have said this a few decades ago … but on the economy churns, burning up what remains of the planet in a desperate attempt to prove the viability of a fundamentally flawed economic paradigm.
So let’s look at this hypothetical scenario …
What if everyone just stopped working?
Ok, we have to be a bit more precise to avoid pointless arguments, so let’s define this hypothetical scenario a bit more accurately. Here’s what we’re talking about:
- Identify all current and upcoming vital activities, vital being defined by “that which directly prevents harm to sentient beings”:
- So if you’ve got people who are still homeless, then you’ve got to build homes;
- If you’ve got people who are sick, you need doctors and nurses;
- If you don’t continue education, there’s not going to be a next generation of doctors and builders;
- If someone else needs you to complete your task, so they can exit their task safely, you complete the task;
- If you’re doing something which reverses or repairs ecological damage or reduces suffering, keep going;
- … but everything else, if you don’t love doing it, and especially if it’s chewing up huge resources … just stop;
- Immediately cease work on anything that doesn’t make the list as being vital;
- Immediately disband all banks & the entire financial system;
- Ensure adequate nutritional food production;
- Determine any stress in vital services due to short staffing, and give priority for training and hiring new staff so that no one has to contribute anymore than they’re comfortable doing … understanding this is an interim measure of damage control / prevention and risk management;
- Ask people to stop breeding for a while, and to limit families to maximum of 2 children (with the exception of adoption);
- Take all reserves of fossil fuels and dedicate them for the exclusive support of the still running essential services;
- Determine the best possible alternative ecologically friendly power generation technologies, and allocate a portion of fossil fuel energy reserves for the immediate production of increased capacity of such power generation, such as to remove any reliance on any further fossil fuel use;
- Decommission all such mining and power infrastructure as soon as its capacity is replaced, to ensure the absolute minimisation of ecological risk from otherwise abandoned facilities;
- Having now secured food, medicine, shelter and power … set about arranging priorities for the replacement of the property / trade / currency based economic paradigm, with something capable of achieving an ever evolving and growing maximisation of standards for ecological and social outcomes.
Arguably, this is what any sensible person would have done many decades ago, if not more than a century ago … we didn’t need the Internet to know this would be the best for all concerned (including other species), though it certainly does help now that we can spread information so fast. So spread this information, because this is what should be happening, and it’s not happening … and if they’re not going to do it, then I’ve got an alternative plan that doesn’t require their cooperation in shutting down the existing systems, but it’s a low slower, as it has to wrest power from them without violent conflict.
How would such actions change things?
Assume for a minute we had done all the above … what would be the immediate impact?
Imagine this for a minute … if you have a house to live in, food on the table, medical aid if required, education for yourself and kids, and the only responsibility you have beyond that, is IF something you’re involved with in life was in that list of vital activities of our hypothetical scenario.
In such circumstances, aside from the stress of knowing your planet is on the brink and this is a desperate attempt to make things right … is there anything about this situation which is unbearable?
- You have food
- You have shelter
- You have health
- You have relative security
I’m sure someone will come up with something in their head to say this situation would be chaos, but the truth is, they really don’t know that … they’re just trying to justify a belief. I’m not saying there’d be no conflict or troubles, but there’s no reason to assume that (properly managed) the situation couldn’t remain stable enough to get us where we need to go.
I think for a great many people whom arguably just want to live in peace, they’d enjoy the break from regular work, they’d do what they could to contribute, and they’d band together for community protection, hopefully with the assistance of those of better character from military and police backgrounds who have the guts to stand up for defence of innocent people, if some cock-head decides to cause trouble.
All we have to do, is hold tight, take care of each other, and focus on repairing the damage.
What to do with your time?
Well, it depends on how concerned you are with making a better future for yourselves and your kids.
For many people, I would imagine after the stress of life at a 9-5 job (or the lack of one), they’d probably just get on with living, and perhaps dissociate to some degree from the problems of the world, or worrying about whether they’re solved … and that’s fine, as they’re no longer quite such a gigantic resource guzzling consumer, they can spend their days at the beach or gardening, whatever they want … it really doesn’t matter.
What matters for those of us who care to do so, is to identify ecological damage, stop it, and reverse it; to do the same of course for social problems, though the priority is slightly less, as its not going to make a lot of difference if there’s no planet to live on … but arguably, no one should have to live in suffering.
So a lot of people will either be involved with solving problems, or research and studying about how to identify and solve other problems.
In other words: the focus is now on either living, or making the world liveable … there’s no longer any focus on “profit”.
So where to next?
Assuming for a minute all this came to pass, where we go to next is (I would suggest) exactly the same as the remainder of my vision … the only difference between this new hypothetical scenario, is that:
- one is a largely smooth transition, more comfortable, let risk, stress and conflict;
- the other (this one), is a last ditch attempt to save ourselves, if we continue as we’re going, and miss our window of opportunity for the first option … it has far greater risk, stress, and chance of failure.