Andreas Widmer argues that humans are fundamentally driven to create and will seek meaningful work even if given the chance not to. He rejects predictions of drastically reduced work hours, pointing to craft and slow-food movements as proof people pursue mastery and dignity in their labor.
Questions this video answers
Joseph (interviewer) and Andreas Widmer (guest).
November 16, 2022.
Chapters
In your book, you assert that work makes us more fully human. Then you also reference how John Maynard Keynes predicted that 50 years ago that by now we would all have like a 15 hour work week. But you say this vision will never be a reality in a prosperous economy. Can you talk a little bit about why that might be?
It's the same reason why, why robots and everything will never replace us. The key part of work, human work is not the same as a donkey or a computer. Human work is something different. Now there was a time at which, and there can be even now, a time that we are physical. You know, we're like incarnate spirits, right? So we have a physical body and we can use our physical body and strength in a way as a machine. Right? And that's legitimate, but that's, that's not going to be the whole of it. We have this uniquely human thing that we have is we can think, reason and go against our nature. If you wish, we can rise above nature, which is how we, with our free will can actually innovate and create. That's, that's the trick of how we innovate and create. An animal can't do this and the computer cannot do this either. And so, so the humans are made to be creative. You can call it work, I like to call it. Humans are made to be creative and if you give them the opportunity, they will do so. I have to tell you, the insight of that came to me once when I was between gigs. So I just left one company and sort of closed with that. And I just couldn't find quite my swing into the next idea. And I was two years on the bench, let's say. But it's, it's the same as I was two years unemployed, like where I just lived on my, on my savings and thank God, you know, I had the luxury to do that. But I tell you what happened. I started to feel inadequate. I started to get depressed in a sense, I started to like, not quite shrivel up, but I started to lose zest for life. That when it's, you know, it's like when it's all party all day long, which it wasn't exactly, but it was not. It was not that the absence of work actually made me less who I am. And that's when I started to realize how much work is a part of our identity. And I'm not saying that we need to be a workaholic, and I'm not saying that's the only thing that matters. But to work is an integral part of who we are as humans. And, and if a human gets the opportunity to work, they will actually do something like that. And it will never be 15 hours a week because the humans are almost like humanity is designed for this and will do this to a large extent of their waking hours. Yeah. I think it's just something that is in our nature and that is something that we should celebrate. But therefore also it means we should create jobs and create opportunities in our companies that is worthy of human beings. It's dignified work.
Yes. Where it's not just a machine. Right. Like you mentioned earlier that.
Yeah, yeah. We should innovate in a way that work can become more and more dignified and just, you know, digging for diamonds, something at slave labor rates or even slave labor. That's not dignified for the human person. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the work in the sense of the creative genius that every human person is.
So if I could, in that case you kind of have to assert that maybe John Maynard Keynes and these ideas like the four hour workweek, which often people are trying to escape the idea of work that is not that creative process. Right. Or not that creative expression. It's not that core human expression. It's. It's a misery to them. Right. It's. It's the. Why are they disconnected? And that kind of goes back to our whole bit on culture that we talked about. Is that, is that those two things are really connected when someone is not enabled to. Enabled in their work to express their creativity. Is that, Is that, am I tracking with you there?
Is that right? Yes, that is exactly right. And you know, I mean I'm a huge fan of Tim Ferriss. I followed him ever since he came on the stage. And you would, I think he himself would say that the four hour workweek was never meant to be a four hour workweek. It's, it's, it has to be the efficiency and getting the stuff that is a little more on the tedious side getting that done.
Yeah.
Tim Ferriss doesn't just work four hours a week, by the way, now that he's affluent and prosperous and everything and God bless him for that. But I guarantee you the guy works a full week and some. But he is working his creative mind. He's living up to the best version of what he can be and in a sense the most productive in the sense of his adding value for everybody who's listening to him and watching him and reading him. And that is something that Maynard Keynes has Had not in mind, he had a utilitarian view of this and say, well, we just need to make this much food and grow this much. He's an economist and he saw this on an economic perspective. There's no variable for human flourishing in economics. And so he of course didn't pursue that.
All of this kind of reminds me of that saying, that very popular saying of like work a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life. But, but it's, it's, it's not that you're not working, it's, you're, you're putting in the work, but you're finding fulfillment in that. And that is fulfilling your, your own desire.
One thing I want to add, one thing I want to add here, Joseph, is that there is this new, and I'm a huge fan of this, this new movement of work that has to do with mastery. And it exists in the food business and in the material, sort of the main street kind of business where people want to go back and become the master at something. So they want to be the master cabinet maker, the master brewer, which you could do with a computer and you could just automatically know they want to learn the human mastery of something. And people want to also buy that human mastery. You see, there is something about this that goes beyond what we can measure, that almost moves into the spiritual realm of human mastery, makes us more human. And when somebody is a true craftsman or a craftsperson, then you're reaching something. I mean, people love to do this in restaurants. So why aren't computers cooking? I want to ask. Because if you get just the perfect steak done by this master chef from Japan or something with, with the grass fed cows and everything, then you're getting something that is so exquisite that, that the creativity of that is so exquisite that a computer could never, a robot could never compete with that. And there's this whole movement, slow food and all. I see this crafts movement that is creating an entire sector of the industry that I just, I'm a big fan, I love.
Makes you think about why is it that we gather at a craft fair and we go and we spend way more money on something because it's been crafted by a person. Like, I, I saw a guy at a, at a craft fair a few weeks ago and he was selling handmade glasses. Now the glasses themselves, they were sunglasses, but the, the glasses, the, the actual polycarbonate inside wasn't made by him, but the, but everything else was, they were sanded. And he, and he, it was such a really cool, a really cool thing. And they were way more expensive than something you would buy that was made of plastic or whatever. But there was something about that handmade touch to it.
