How are we going to make our livings in a society becoming increasingly jobless because of hi-tech and outsourcing? Where will we get the imagination to recognize that for most of human history the concept of Jobs didn't even exist? Work, as distinguished from Labor, was done to produce needed goods and services, develop skills and artistry, and nurture cooperation.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the shift in the concept of work and the need for imagination amidst technological changes.
Grace Lee Boggs' quote reflects on the evolving nature of work in society, particularly in the context of technological advancements and outsourcing that lead to fewer traditional jobs. It challenges the conventional notion of employment by suggesting that work has historically been about contributing to the community and expressing creativity, rather than merely earning a paycheck, urging us to reimagine our relationship with work in a jobless future.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the future of work in a seminar on workforce development.
We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.
We urgently need a paradigm shift in our concept of the purposes and practices of education. We need to leave behind the concept of education as a passport to more money and higher status in the future and replace it with a concept of education as an ongoing process that enlists the tremendous energies and creativity of schoolchildren in rebuilding and respiriting our communities and our cities now, in the present.
How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?
You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
The will of God is always a bigger thing than we bargain for.
At least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being, and only for the time being - to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India.
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
And what I would say now is, yes, if a state enacted a law permitting flogging, it is immensely stupid, but it is not unconstitutional. A lot of stuff that's stupid is not unconstitutional.
But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke. I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody asked me to stay.
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