I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.
The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your “career” and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.
This is evident with how most people develop “hobbies” outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating “hobbies” and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.
Here’s how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:
- more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
- learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
- more gardening
- participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
- become a tour guide for my city
- cook and bake for my neighbors
- academic research
- open source software (and non-software) contributions
- pick up shifts at a café and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
- pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
- participate in more than one “professions”. I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?
Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It’s unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.
You are asking why people aren’t changing a status quo. That’s different from changing a status quo to a much worse one.
Do you think I will be the only bad apple? Do you have any idea how much crime we have that is not for the purpose of meeting someone’s needs?
Are you still in school?
The idea of utopias like you described always falls apart at the human aspect.
There is no way to just numb everyone’s brains to the point that we eliminate jealousy, envy and judt general “societal bads”. What do you do with the huge amount of religious zealots that claim apples for their religion? People who are judt power hungry? Drug addicts? Alt-rights? People who want money?
Politicians? Anarchists?
I am not the only group that wants all the apple. As soon as i take some apples for me someone else will become jealous and retaliate and satisfy their felt unfairness by taking even more. Are we just gonna kill or put half of the population in rehab?
You assume that the system will have no self resistance. Every system does, except this one will be protecting society’s interests as a whole rather than a ruling class. Everything you said still applies today, and we handle it perfectly (and its not because society is oriented around capital).