Now what happens then when you introduce technology into production?
You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods but at the same time you put people out of work.
You can say, "Oh but there will always be more jobs."
Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs.
They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful.
And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do."
You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods but at the same time you put people out of work.
You can say, "Oh but there will always be more jobs."
Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs.
They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren't even beautiful.
And therefore an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busy work, bureaucratic and otherwise, has to be created in order to keep people working, because we believe that "the devil finds work for idle hands to do."
But the basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked; that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary!
And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose - we live in a constant state of self-frustration.
And if we don't allow it to achieve its purpose - we live in a constant state of self-frustration.
- Alan Watts
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