The Future Looks Bleak. What Are You Gonna Do About It?
I know I’m not the only one with what is sometimes rather unromantically referred to in modern parlance as a ‘side-hustle’, desperately trying to keep my head above water. I also know I’m not the only one filled with fluid ounces of ontological dread every time I read a newspaper. The question is, is there anything that can be done?…
Do teachers even ask kids that question anymore. You know the one I mean: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
It used to be an easy answer (other than the existential struggle of deciding what your future might hold, of course). You picked a job, say ‘doctor’ and let fly. Wise nods (“Oh, that’d be right up your street!”) or knowing, belittling smirks (“I’m not sure that would be quite right for you, my dear…”) would ensue and then you’d just go back to your colouring-in or comic book.
Kids answering the same question these days ain’t got it so easy. It has, after all, rather ominously been foretold by all and sundry that the machines are taking over and that AI will take the place of the majority of human workers in the not too distant future, in a kind of miserable dystopian future-hell, populated by irritating, smart-arsed robots and small-headed humanoids implanted with Apple’s idiot chip version 83, gliding about the place with a sort of glassy-eyed, brain-massaged pseudo-happiness plastered all over their hairless mugs. With that in mind then, are there any safe bets for predicting one’s future employment path? Picking a profession to aim for seems a bit more of a gamble these days, doesn’t it?
Sure, it might be tough for our kids and our kids’ kids to earn a crust, but until the not-too-distant future when the robots are cutting our hair, making our coffee and teaching our doggies to backflip, we should be alright, shouldn’t we? We can just keep doing our 8-hour shifts and waiting for our paychecks at the end of every month, safe in the knowledge we’ll have enough to pay rent, buy food and cover expenses with a little left over for a rainy day. Right? RIGHT?!
Well, no. With rising prices across the board, the promise of picking a profession and sticking with it your whole life, knowing that a hard day’s work for a fair day’s pay would be enough to support not just yourself, but perhaps a family as well has been well and truly trodden into the existential muck for a huge number of people.
So, how to fight back? What can we do?
Side-hustles and second jobs
Ah, the inevitable second job. Yes, it’s not enough to just have one, steady well-paid job anymore (do they exist?!). We’ve got to fight tooth and nail working ourselves to the bastard bloody bone doing second and sometimes even third jobs to survive. Sure, sometimes these side-gigs can be fun (take Medium for example, if you can earn enough) but more often than not, they’re miserable grinds, when we’d much rather be spending time at home with our loved ones. Take gigs like delivery jobs, dog walking and even tutoring. Sure, on the surface they sound innocent enough, but on top of another full-time position, they can really take their toll not just mentally but physically. I tutor ungrateful, snot-nosed little punks after I’m done with my main job and I can tell you, I’m bloody knackered at the end of it.
Selling Shit on the Internet
Yes, this is another option for the money-hungry amongst us. There are plenty of people with side-gigs selling garbage online to idiots. Amazon affiliate, drop-shipping blah blah blah. My eyes are drooping even thinking about it it’s so boring. Not to mention quite probably destructive to the environment. In the week of the inevitable dead rubber COP26 climate summit, what the world doesn’t really need is loads of morons buying crappy Chinese made plastic shit and then sending it to other morons, often on the other side of the world who don’t need it in the slightest just to make a few extra cents. There HAS to be a better way.
All Out Revolution
This is it. They only solution. We need a full-scale rebellion; all-out war on the system. Smash it down, kick it to pieces, squirt lighter fluid all over it and then piss on the fire and snort the ashes. It’s time George Monbiot and all those whining, whingeing Guardian-reader types had their way. For years I thought they were just smelly lefties with chips on their shoulders and pints of bad beer in their hands but it turns out they had a point. The world is fucked. The system (if you can even call it that anymore) has been vaporised by a warp-speed adoption of online technology and communications, leaving a gaping great hole where humanity and civilization used to exist. Jobs and means of making a living will soon disappear and for many, traditional labour models we’ve been thrust into are already starting to fail in what they were designed to do.
Life as we know it is unsustainable. We don’t have the leadership to tackle the very real and scary problems around labour, industry, health and the environment that are plaguing us in a constant biblical shitstorm of misery. We have to work it out for ourselves; no-one is gonna help us and no one is gonna do it for us.
BURN IT DOWN!! BURN IT ALLL DOWN!!!
