The Future of Work & the Power of Us

Tagged: #career

Tonight I attended a gathering that’s part of a movement recently started here in Colorado called the Power of Us. The gatherings are a series of dinners in small groups where we connect to what’s meaningful to us to cultivate inspired action. It’s a bridge between spiritual growth and political engagement.

In this session we shared what we envision for the future, and it’s amazing how many of us independently described a vision of the future that involved each and every person having the freedom and resources to use their gifts, to be able to pursue purposeful and fulfilling work.

I’ve been deeply invested in understanding life callings and vocational callings for most of the ten years that I’ve been working in career development. Sometimes when I bring this up to people, they express skepticism about the emphasis on work. “But wouldn’t an ideal future be one where we don’t work?” Work is associated with toiling, with stress, with just getting by.

The issue isn’t work itself, it’s what work is for so many people in the present. It’s that we have to work to get by. In a utopian future, there will still be work, but it would look much different.

I recently re-watched The Orville, the Star Trek homage created by Seth MacFarlane. In the very last episode, “Future Unknown” (S3, E10), Commander Grayson is explaining to a new arrival how a future with no scarcity functions: “If you do something, anything, that benefits our society, and you work hard at it, you’re rich. And that could be anything from being a great scientist, or a great doctor, a great chef, or a great waiter. It’s all valued.”

I don’t want a future without work. I want a future where no one has to work at something that doesn’t fulfill them. Whether it’s because we have a sufficient social safety net, or because we end up in the 24th century where scarcity no longer exists because of synthesizers, people deserve the freedom to listen for what makes their heart sing and pursue it.

In The Orville, that future is described as only being possible once we are ready to put aside greed and work together. “Technology and societal ethics have to progress hand in hand, each one supporting the other incrementally.” The ability to eliminate poverty isn’t a technological issue, it’s a social issue.

If this resonates with you, and if you’re looking for a way to get involved in a positive, purposeful movement toward social change, check out Power of Us. I don’t know how we’ll create the 24th century that The Orville envisions, but I do know it starts with connecting to each other and taking action one step forward at a time.