I work in a warehouse, for a major online retailer (known herein only as The Company, because they have not explicitly endorsed any of my viewpoints nor are they likely to publicly). I wear a lot of hats there -- driving a forklift, putting boxes and totes full of product on pallets, sorting items to go to different destinations, pulling and putting product in storage, among many others, I look at every job I do in that warehouse and think that there are very few tasks I perform there which couldn't be achieved more swiftly and efficiently by robots.
The Company has been looking into ways to automate more of their inventory, warehousing and fulfillment processes. I sketched out some of my ideas and showed them to a coworker. He immediately saw a major problem: "Wouldn't this eliminate everyone's job in this warehouse?" To which I replied, "Yes! Isn't it wonderful?"
I go into that warehouse four nights a week and see nothing but misery in the faces of every one of my coworkers. Every one of them would rather be doing something else. I see twenty-somethings who would rather be at college, travelling the world, exploring nature, or thousands of other activities. I see men who should be retired lifting fifty-pound boxes and wincing in agony as their knees and shoulders and fingers protest such unnatural activity. I see folks in the prime of life putting on a show, like they're playing a game -- "Let's pretend we work for a major corporation!" -- managing workers by set formulas they learned in some generic classroom taught by a bored professor who doesn't really believe any of the material he's teaching. Everything is performed according to whatever the prevailing business philosophy dictates.
Put a robotic forklift on the loading dock in my place. I'd rather that than spend ten hours a night fighting my arthritic knees and toes and dodging other forklifts and solid stationary objects which could instantly end my life as I know it. (Last night I came with a few arc-seconds of losing a kidney.) I'd rather be puttering in my garden, or writing code, or developing new composting methods, or dicking around on my violin, or a thousand other activities more suited to my physical, intellectual and moral proclivities and which would profit me more than what I do to "earn a living."
I really hope that The Company's efforts to automate bear fruit. I have little doubt they would pay to have me retrained to service those robotic forklifts, or automated conveyors, or special manipulators used to palletize a wide variety of products. I could even leave The Company entirely -- spend my time teaching classes on microagriculture or herbalism or small-scale construction, or simple robotics. I could run a farm, or a small soil reconditioning business, or waste reclamations. The span of my knowledge is vast, and I see the same potential in every one of my coworkers. I go to work "and I see some of the strongest and smartest [people] that have ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it wasted." (Tyler Durden, Fight Club)
The point of automation is to reduce or eliminate menial work. The ostensible reason is to increase productivity and efficiency and thus maximize profit, but I see so much more there. I see the potential to elevate humanity to the status of creators, freeing them from the drudgery of unskilled labor to become artists, engineers, architects, designers, to bear and raise children, to bring forth their true potential. I see a lot of human energy wasted in maintaining a consumer economy, in creating scarcity of resources, in the production and disposal of cheap crap that does nothing to truly improve their lives.
It could be argued that such menial jobs are the only recourse for some people, that they are too stupid or backward to wrap their simple minds around anything more complicated that placing a cardboard box on a pallet. I argue that that is utter nonsense. I have seen people in my life who have, once sufficiently challenged, risen above ignorance and become smarter. I have seen people deemed "mentally challenged" -- or "retarded" -- produce artistic works of sublime beauty and grasp fairly complex mathematical concepts and perform complicated tasks.
It could also be argued that my viewpoint is skewed, that I have natural advantages in my intellect, that I came from a privileged background and received superior education. I argue that that is utter nonsense. I was born into to blue-collar parents, who came from long, long lines of farmers and factory workers, raised in near-poverty, educated in a public school, and attended the equivalent of one year of community college. The only "advantage" that I can claim is parents who encouraged the development of my potential by spending their nickles and pennies to indulge me in books, toys, tools, craft kits, and other objects which would stimulate my intellectual development and satisfy my natural curiosity. In my adult life, I continued to learn, reading everything and anything I could get my hands on, from philosophy to economics to every branch of science to fantasy fiction to how-to guides. Now, I am the woman everyone else comes to when they need to know how to do something.
All that is required for you to excel in your life is for you to accept the challenges put before you and make every effort to overcome them. You may not always succeed, but you will always learn a valuable lesson, increase your knowledge and skill, and have a better chance to succeed against the next challenge. Never should you throw up your hands in defeat or proclaim something impossible. Nothing is impossible. Nothing can defeat a properly-motivated human being. Not even a robot threatening to take away your livelihood.
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