10 Steps
Orthoprada, Thomas Schneider - Vienna Biennale Die 10 ersten Schritte
Reformation or revolution. Throwing everything that has existed so far overboard would be an understandable but probably exaggerated reaction, and therefore belongs among the less intelligent proposals for what now needs to be done. Nevertheless, the power and dominance of capitalist economic activity also need a strong and powerful response. One assumption of New Work New Culture is that the response could lie in withdrawal. More and more people are not only mentally saying goodbye to this way of living; they are putting on gloves in order to roll up their sleeves somewhere completely different. We need indignation and a Solidarność 2.0 that simply gets to work where politics looks away.
“We as the building people of the coming world”
New Work-New Culture is so groundbreaking and also means such comprehensive change in everything that one could spend a lifetime dealing with it. Not even Professor Frithjof Bergmann had the time and leisure to grasp every aspect of the new epoch of work into which we are entering. Precisely for that reason it makes sense not to wait until everything around New Work appears clear, logical, and structured enough, but simply to begin with New Work New Culture.
Work Matters – Wage Labor, Calling, Self-Provisioning
Changing work can be approached quite pragmatically. NWC offers three basic approaches for this: redesigning existing wage labor, redefining one’s personal attitude, or quite concretely becoming a prosumer. It does not have to be an entirely new job; it does not have to be a leap into cold water, although for some people that might do them good after years of routine. The model of the three pillars makes it possible to find one’s emphasis between different forms of work and to shift between them as needed, ultimately finding one’s own personal style of work and life.
Step 1 – Thinking About a Personal Alternative
One can enter wage labor at a solid, financially strong company or at an experimental start-up. One can look for work at a company such as Semco SA in Brazil, in a system where management functions without managers – that is, in a revolutionary, self-referential leadership model – or place oneself in the hands of a charismatic and trustworthy leader. Some would rather found a company on their own or work as a one-person enterprise in a “third existence”, collaborating with changing teams from project to project. What may be decisive is that one takes what one really, really wants seriously and also applies it to the other forms of one’s working life. If one gains the possibility of responding with one’s working time and, for example, becoming more independent of monetary remuneration by making things oneself, spaces open up in which one can explore how to find, sustainably, for oneself, for one’s family, for the employer and for society, a stable, meaningful, and healthy work system close to happiness.
New Work-New Culture Principles
* Work as little time as possible for fiat money.
* Work as much as possible on what you really, really want and what fulfills you.
* Work as much time as necessary in communal self-provisioning.
Thinking Work from Life – Fields of Action
Examples:
– Health – The health of the individual is strongly linked to their willingness to perform and their potential abilities.
– The question of meaning – We are burning the violins. The social compatibility of one’s own work; looking at the common-good balance sheet for oneself.
– Money&Value – relations of domination. Freeing oneself from one’s own limitations and from those of others. How and where do we see our value?
– Performance – Individual talent is more important than the concept of performance. When one passes through today’s job centers and the rituals of the modern economy, the performance demand is excessively determined by others and fundamentally wrong in its claim to be good for society. The concept is used against life, against aliveness. Thinking work from life means here: if performance is to be a principle at all, then it would have to be self-determined performance. Performance must be an experience that motivates me because I notice that it is good for me, because it is exciting, alive, inspiring. In the present system, the diversity of the definition of performance is reduced, and with it the intelligence in the system. With the concept of performance we can once again develop strength, develop energy, create an ecosystem of talents. What do I nourish myself from? That is the central question one has to ask, and what can I do to take a courageous step?
Examples of Obstacles:
– Change often means fear and worry. In principle, this is all right. It lives in human beings as an important aid to orientation. But often it blocks us in completely illogical ways. That is why irrationality has to be reduced in processes of change. Change triggers emotions that are not necessarily rationally anchored and can therefore be difficult to justify. Often they are archaic patterns that well up from our self-understanding like demons. What are these demons, where do they come from, and how are they programmed into us? It is about reducing loss of control and learned helplessness.
Steps 2-10 for Thinking Work from Life
(After Harald Welzer)
2. Finally trust your feeling that a grand theater of illusion is taking place around you. The scenery simulates stability, but the play is a farce: again and again fat men appear and shout “growth!”, speculators play country dominoes, and number girls keep dancing across the stage with images of catastrophe. The audience is annoyed and angry, yet remains seated until the end of the performance. But: when will that come?
3. Better leave the performance and begin asking very simple questions. For example: why do people have to work more and more when they are already working more and more? Why do debts grow larger when more and more is being saved? Why does everything else shrink when the economy grows?
4. Look for answers together with your friends. For example: because all the idiots are working more too. Because the savings wander into other people’s pockets. Because many listed companies form parallel societies remote from the state.
5. Decide from now on not to participate anymore if your answers trouble you.
6. Begin by stopping. Stop believing European politicians. Stop believing economic research institutes all the more. And, for God’s sake, stop allowing yourself to be told without objection that any decision was without alternative. There is no such thing in democracies.
7. If you have now reached the point where you no longer tolerate everything, use your room for action. You live in one of the richest countries on earth, perhaps you are even excellently educated, you enjoy life and think fairly well of yourself. Why the hell do you do the same thing every day and never anything different?
8. Your room for action? Simply look at what others are doing. There are incredibly good approaches and projects: energy cooperatives, neighborhood gardens, fair consumption, local currencies, great foundations, companies that refuse the compulsion to grow. Write more politically if you are a journalist. Research for a different future if you are in academia. Change the break-time topics if you work on the assembly line. Shop differently if you run a restaurant. Ask where the fish comes from when you go out to eat. Take an interest in the future of your pupils if you are a teacher. Merge with a kindergarten if you run a senior citizens’ home. Think of hellfire if you head one of the four large energy companies. Produce cradle to cradle if you own a factory. Risk something if you consider yourself intellectual.
9. Try to belong somewhere where you can proudly say: “We do this differently!” Find ideas more interesting than experience; do not live at the expense of others.
10. Form laboratories of the future and have fun doing it. Forget the “five minutes to midnight” chatter of the ecological movement and the talk of the “world community” and the necessity of global solutions. No one stood at your cradle and said in a hollow voice: “You have come to us to save the world!” It is completely enough if you begin to deal responsibly with your life, your loved ones, and your country. But please start right away ; ))
