Work Is Essential to Happiness
Freed from the daily obligation to provide for ourselves, most of us would be miserable.
By Rob Henderson
As artificial intelligence advances, some are beginning to welcome a future without work. But giving everyone a universal basic income won’t reveal most people’s inner Mozarts. It will make them profoundly unhappy.
In his 2020 book “Suicide: The Social Consequences of Self-Destruction,” the sociologist Jason Manning points out that those who lose their jobs are more likely to kill themselves compared with those who had not lost their jobs. This effect was particularly strong for men. If losing a job can do that, we should think carefully about what happens when an entire society is organized around not having one.
People say they want comfort but feel better when tasked with challenges that match their skills. Free time sounds appealing, but it has no built-in structure. You have to shape it yourself, and most people let time pass them by rather than use it to cultivate their skills or interests.
This helps explain a strange pattern. Between 1965 and 1995, the typical adult gained about six hours of leisure each week due to technological advances, adding up to roughly 300 hours a year. People could have used that time to learn new skills or build meaningful things. Instead, most of it went to watching more television. Today when we are unexpectedly rewarded with free time, most of it goes to scrolling.
A small share of people, unshackled from the burden of work, use their free time to create, build and explore. But for most, that isn’t what happens. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described what he called “the paradox of work.” It gives us satisfaction and a sense of self-worth. Yet when asked, we generally say we want to work less and have more leisure time.
Sigmund Freud had a simple answer to the question of happiness: “Work and love.” Find meaning in what you do and in the people around you, and you are already close to a good life. Happiness comes from earning your way, supporting yourself and taking care of others. Work isn’t a barrier to a meaningful life. It is part of what makes it possible. A society that removes the need to work risks removing one of the main sources of meaning in life.
I think back to my own jobs. Washing dishes, bagging groceries, collecting carts, maintaining electronic warfare systems on cargo jets for eight years in the Air Force. For some stretches of time, I didn’t enjoy those experiences, but I am glad I went through them. Those years taught me that I could handle difficulty. That I could show up, do the work and come out the other side. You don’t learn that on a sofa.
Mr. Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.”
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The trouble with doing nothing to you never know when you’re done.
It’s not so much work as having purpose. Something to motivate you to get out and do is what’s key. Work is an easy substitute, and many define themselves by their job role. Once that motivating force is gone, one suffers. You see this in the late fifties to early sixties crew with empty nesters, retirees, silver divorces, and so on.