by Daryl D. Tan
How Remote Work can save "The Provinces"
It's been roughly a year since lockdowns were first imposed across the globe and while cumbersome restrictions still exists in the form of curfews and onerous rules and regulations, things are starting to loosen up a little, at least where I'm from, and also in certain based States in the USA such as Mississippi and Texas.
I've come across a few humorous tweets about the eventual end of lockdowns being a cause of anxiety for some people. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, while devastating to public health and the global economy, has had the consequential effect of shifting the mindsets of many.
To explore this further, I'm going to delve into a little history here:
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, the world became heavily intoxicated on the principles of neoliberal globalism. As Paul Gottfried, in his assessment of Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History and the Last Man', puts it:
"Without a Soviet enemy, the American combination of democratic polity and market economy was free to spread throughout the world. The effect of this benign process would be the conversion of most of humankind to a way of life based on peaceful consensus and material improvement. History, as the experience of human conflict and violence, was drawing to a close, and the acquisition of creature comforts would have the result that Nietzsche and other advocates of heroic life found odious in commercial societies, the softening of human manners."
This "acquisition of creature comforts" and subsequent expansion of "commercial societies" (commercialism on steroids, basically) Gottfried speaks of inevitably led to the obliteration of localism and regionalism and along with it - a sense of family, community, and other lindy things that have kept large segments of humanity happy for centuries. The advent of this hyper neoliberalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated an exodus. More people than ever before began to flock, en masse, to big cities such as London, Paris, New York City, and other ridiculously crowded metropolitan areas to engage in all sorts of unscrupulous money-making activities and debauchery - the singular goal being to become part of the new cultural urban elite. "Who gives a shite about them "bridge and tunnel" people?!" they say.
The long-term effect of this is that such metropolises teeming with skyscrapers eventually turn into what Spandrell refers to as "IQ Shredders". Singapore is an IQ Shredder. As Spandrell puts it:
"How many bright Indians and bright Chinese are there, Harry? Surely they are not infinite. And what will they do in Singapore? Well, engage in the finance and marketing rat-race and depress their fertility to 0.78, wasting valuable genes just so your property prices don't go down. Singapore is an IQ shredder."
A less controversial and more popular term with regards to this issue is the "brain drain" effect.
As per Investopedia:
"Brain drain causes countries, industries, and organizations to lose a core portion of valuable individuals. The term often describes the departure of groups of doctors, healthcare professionals, scientists, engineers, or financial professionals. When these people leave, their places of origin are harmed in two main ways. First, expertise is lost with each emigrant, diminishing the supply of that profession. Secondly, the country's economy is harmed because each professional represents surplus spending units."
While Spandrell's IQ Shredder theory focuses more on Total Fertility Rate, and the "Brain Drain" theory focuses more on economic impact, there's also the long-term cultural impact of this exodus to cosmopolitan hellholes - the erosion of sacred culture within "the provinces". When I speak of Provinces here, I'm basically referring to any kind of territory outside huge cities. Some people prefer to say small towns; others prefer to say rural areas, but being the prude that I am, I like the term "Provinces". Bite me.
Now back to lockdowns lest I digress too much. While I'm not the biggest fan of lockdowns, I take what I can get. I try to see the silver lining in everything. The silver lining here is that thanks to the lockdowns being imposed, Remote Work has become the standard mode of working - at least for the time being. Whether it's a temporary solution or a permanent fixture remains to be seen. We should definitely strive to make it a norm, though. Why?
Remote work could help to solve the problems I mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier regarding the erosion of culture within the Provinces and the whole brain drain crisis. If remote work were to become a permanent fixture even after Covid-19 abates, we would see local communities flourish since there would be no need to migrate to/travel to city centres (remember Gilets Jaunes?!). One would be closer to family, culture - and staying in one's locality also allows small businesses to thrive. This leads to a renaissance of heritage and tradition; as well as greater appreciation for family and idyllic lindy walks in sacred places that burst forth with meaning. So wholesome!
To get a better sense of the sanctity of places, it's imperative to watch this clip from 'Gods and Generals' in which Robert Duvall, portraying General Robert E. Lee, talks about how places - especially ancestral homelands - carry with it a special kind of sacredness:
"This is where I met my Wife. That's something these Yankees do not understand - will never understand. You see these rivers, valleys, and streams, fields, even towns. They are just markings on a map to those people in the war office in Washington. To us, they are birthplaces and burial grounds and battlefields where our ancestors fought, places where you and I would learn to walk, to talk, to pray. Places where we made friendships, fell in love - the incarnation of all our memories, and all that we are."
How remote work can save you from being a 4HLer
One thing that Remote Work was able to achieve was exposing the neoliberal work ethic as a complete fraud.
Naval Ravikant said it best when he spoke to Scott Adams last year about the implication of working from home:
“Let’s face it; most white-collar jobs are just larping—people running around, attending meetings, and pretending like they’re doing work. I think this will expose a lot of that.”
Neoliberalism and modern work culture has made most of us 4HLers, a term created by Paul Skallas (also known as LindyMan).
As Paul Skallas/LindyMan puts it:
"A modern employee, let’s use a white collar office worker as an example, will usually get around 8 hours of sleep, will work around 8 hours a day, spend 4 hours commuting going to the gym, having meals, and then end up with 4 hours to him or herself during the day. So they own 4 hours. We can call this class of people 4HLers. It may seem vulgar to reduce a person’s life to the amount of hours he has free in a day, but then again, how many hours you have to yourself is kind of a big deal. Time is an important concept to a 4HLer. He is obsessed with time. he has to be. His livelyhood depends on it. So he has an alarm clock, because he has to wake up at the same time everyday, he has to take lunch around the same time everyday and get off of work around the same time everyday. He has deadlines that are due and he has to be reliable. It’s his job to be reliable. But wait, isn’t his job to do his job? Not quite.
There is a reason corporations do not contract work out piece by piece. It may be cost effective, but you don’t know if that contractor will be around. He may take off for a better deal and leave you in the dust. So you need to hire someone to sit there and wait for work. You even have to pay them if there isn’t work. It’s kind of expensive. But what do you gain? Reliability. A 4HLer is now in a position where he serves one employer, and has thus removed all optionality from his portfolio. And now the 4HLer has downside. If the employer wants to get rid of them, he can easily do so. But the 4HLer doesn’t have a stake in the company, he has a salary. So if the business gets sold, it doesn’t matter to him, as long as he keeps his position. So, no upside. But downside."
Of course this is with regards to people within the Consistency Space and not the Payoff Space (The Payoff Space is where the person in question owns the business and is not an employee and by extension a 4HLer.)
Now with remote work, you get to save time that you would otherwise spend commuting to work. Whenever there's downtime at work, you can actually do something you like - such as reading a few more pages of that book you've been struggling to finish since forever, or my Substack posts, or heck, even digesting a few extra minutes of that incredibly intellectual podcast episode on who Lady Gaga is dating now - and all this till your boss pings you and tells you to generate a report of last month's sales before 5pm.
As Skallas mentions, the only reason why you are wanted in the office is not that you are actually needed from 9-5, but so that you are simply seen at your desk. It's really mostly LARPing and signalling. If Remote Work becomes the norm for good, you get some of your time back. Instead of being a 4HLer, you can get to be a 5HLer, or a 6HLer, or a 7HLer. Whatever. The point is that more time to yourself = more independence for yourself.
And, even if you really do find the topic of who Lady Gaga is dating to be intellectually stimulating content, at least that keeps you happy, and that makes me happy that you're happy and not being a 4HLer (though for obvious reasons I won't be asking you out for a beer).
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