Well… often, yeah. I mean, we long ago reached a point where automation was a serious threat to jobs. It has largely been lobbying and social resistance or fear of the entire system collapsing that have kept automation as at bay as they have been coupled with cheap under regulated labor (outsourcing.) chances are you do a job that probably doesn’t need done. Either your job could ge handed off to a machine etc, or your job essentially exists as a form of “unemployment” to keep you occupied and justify paying you. There are exceptions to this- but the jobs that represent the highest slice of the career field tend to be jobs that could be automated away, completely erased, or are basically at the end of the spectrum where they don’t provide enough benefit to justify the cost of automation and it is cheaper or easier to use a human.
If you have a job like this, wether it is menial labor or some form of “middle management” that basically exists as a way to retain or appease long time or hard workers who don’t quite have what it takes to go to the “next level” but expect something in their career…. Yeah. Work can be pointless and humiliating. How many people find their sense of purpose or fulfill their passions or need for intellectual stimulation by mindlessly sorting things or filling out paperwork or giving status reports on work they didn’t do to bosses who’s main work function is giving status reports to their bosses?
It doesn’t HAVE to be that way. So much depends on us too- but society at large and business certainly have cheapened passion and excellence.
It doesn’t HAVE to be that way. So much depends on us too- but society at large and business certainly have cheapened passion and excellence.