Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Loose Associations On Work

The mad houswife has some good thoughts on parenting and work which sort of reminded me of something that I thought of after reading about seasteading and then watched some of Carrier on P.B.S.

Women (and men of course) are still trying to fit themselves in an industrial/corporatist type career when it's increasingly unecessary. We can reclaim a more family based lifestyle, a more balanced lifestyle, without necessarily losing the benefits of division of labor with technology. It's somewhat uncharted territory, but once people start making a commitment to the concept, we will start finding ways.

With Carrier, the director went in search of relationships, emotion, and turmoil. He found a couple on the ship who actually met in high school and were engaged, but on an aircraft carrier there is a strict no dating policy. Of course, they were always in some sort of trouble, but at least so far, not enough to get kicked out. Now, in a system such as the Navy, relationships like theirs tend to destablize, but why can't we devise a system where strong relationships are a net benefit?
It's unlikely one can do such a thing with a military, because such a system needs to be prepared for and welcome children, but within something like seasteading it may be done- assuming the people actually planning that have any clue that they need to.

I think it started with homeschooling because so many parents can see the damage school does to their children, and at least some parents were in the position to do something about it. The process doesn't need to end there. In fact, I doubt homeschooled children will be particularly satisfied with careers as we know them now.

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