Work Vs Paid Work

Work is an integral part of present-day society, as it structures the way people live. Many people centre their entire lives around work, as work defines them, and how they interact with the material and social reality. Work identifies the self realization of a person, and allows the person to be a respected member of the community. The idea of work in contemporary society is meant to provide people with meaning and contentment in their lives, while being remunerated for their services. However, I will argue the work many of us do, limits our need for fulfilment in our lives, as work determines our ability to choose how we live and make use of our time, in order to eat, live and exist in society. The choice, or freedom to take ownership of …show more content…
Work is unable to be defined by a person without a context, as work is shaped by various political, cultural and religious ideologies. However, this argument will present work as a form of paid work. Paid work undermines our ability to choose how to make use of our time, which inadvertently affects our choices in what makes our lives content. Work robs us of our time, and that it threatens to demand more from us even outside our working hours. Lars Svendensen mentions that work in the modern age has now started to transcend into work- leisure and that flexible working hours have infiltrated work into every hour of our day. The idea of work pushes the conditional focus of looking for work, and societal standards dictate that we have no ability to do otherwise. This limits the idea of freedom, and that we do not have the ownership of our own lives in order to spend time on things which we find fulfilment …show more content…
An individual who may truly enjoy the work, and finds contentment in their lives truly does not have a say in the matter of freedom, as the reality is, people have to work, as society’s systematic notion embraces the necessity of work, and the commitment one must have to work in order to have basic needs. The limitations of human’s time through exploitative means are the very essence of work. Where work is not yet realised, humans have the available freedom to find fulfilment in their lives in areas outside paid labour. Freedom provides the ability to choose what we find contentment in, rather than being dictated by finding contentment in societal working options.
The idea of work and freedom dictates what we find contentment in. It is plausible to suppose that work limits freedom, in the sense of time, the essential and most valuable resource which identifies contentment outside of work. Work is derived from an exploitative system which forces us to work in order to exist in society. This affects the decisions in which we choose, and what we value, and distract us from finding what we really need to be