So people aren’t going to be forced to work, but we probably still will want to. What then needs doing?

If people were not forced to work, would we only care about having fun?

What is fun? I’ll give you my outlook, maybe it resonates with you. Creating is fun.

Creating takes on a whole lot of forms. Even things that at first look simply seem to be actions of consumption often have creative aspects and that is also often the appealing part of that thing.

I used to love playing computer games and a common view is that I was “consuming video-game experiences”. But as most engaged gamers know, the fun is in creating the game experience, creating the game character, strategizing for future developments and feeding events back into game play. Games with limited creative aspects are dull games.

I’ve worked within “corporate culture”, for me a culture that is not strongly linked with the word creative. But here too there were times of great creativity, upstarts of new projects were beset with collaborative and very creative meetings and experiments which made work enjoyable. The creative process that was often present at project initiations were making me work not just because I was asked to in exchange for money but also for the pure joy of creation. It was as this joyous part receded and more work was done in order to satisfy an external authority, like the customer or hierarchical superior, that work also lost its fun aspects.

I have heard of and felt disillusionment with engaging in politics and public administration which can be described in a similar way. Given that we have felt an opportunity to create something better than what we are experiencing we engage with current ideologies, methodologies and bureaucracies and what often ensues is disillusionment. The creative joy is bogged down by the drudgery of institutional behaviors. Employment situations and governmental structures erode the vitality of those seeking public service as a livelihood. The creative joy of making society better gives way to the repairs and maintenance of dysfunctional models.

Or in simpler terms, cooking is more fun than eating, having cooked something also makes the eating more fun.

A Basic Income is a way to remove coercion from the motives for work. Without coercion around terms of employment, collaborative creation will be possible that will engage the majority of our population simply because creating is fun.

So you want to do fun and rewarding things?

Come join the fun as your time becomes available, here are a number of things we need to create:

• A relationship with our ecosystem which meets our physical and psychological needs. This includes regenerative agriculture which will require tremendous amounts of interesting work to be done in cultivating soil, planting trees, harvesting seasonal yields, designing for productivity and diversity. We need to start co-creating the ecosystem in which we are fundamentally and totally embedded.
• An educational space that is free, voluntary and non-judgemental. Where “grades” are irrelevant because learning is done for learning itself. This is fully implementable along side current educational facilities and requires us to move towards using open systems, open knowledge, open sharing and open spaces. Here we need tutors, guides, technical support and tool training. Lots of people can join this space in order to become a learning resource while educating themselves. Learning is creative in building your own wisdom and perhaps even more so in attempting to communicate what your grasp is to others.
• Venues for cultural expression. Exploring creative urges as artistic culture is an act of re-creating yourself and therefore one of our primary modes of creative joy. Cultural expressions are what constitutes our history as a species, from the cave paintings to the letterheads of our legal correspondence. Our innate drift towards cultural expression is undeniable and there are so many new venues to explore as time becomes available. Join in the creation of words, sounds, sculptures, products, designs and structures the define our species.
• A re-enforcement and supplement to our structures for mutual aid. Healthcare in both traditional “hospital/palliative” type setting and all those activities that are more ongoing and revitalizing such as exercise, yoga, therapy, companionship and alternative medicines can engage enormous amounts of people because of the pleasure of creating and supporting health in each other and the great need we have for this service, especially at this time. It is creative service that can often be received with great gratitude.

All of these areas could be areas of the Commons swelling with people where connection, community and meaning is readily available. Something most of us are searching for without finding within the economic situations we find ourselves trapped within.