Imagining a caring economy

Let's leave the boring, unproductive shit to AI

Photo by Mikita Yo.

My four-year-old son has recently been identified as being extremely mildly somewhere on the autistic spectrum. This is beautiful. It is society’s way of highlighting that this little boy has specific mental and social preferences, and perceives the world in a uniquely pronounced way. We should all be so lucky as to receive that kind of recognition.

It’s also not surprising. Though neither my wife or I have ever been officially “diagnosed,” that’s mostly because neither of us particularly feels the need, at this stage in our lives, to have an expert place a label on either of us, or our neurodiversity. If you know, you know.

In response to my son’s newly unlocked achievement, our plan for raising him won’t drastically change, because the plan was always based on a foundation of listening carefully to him when he expresses his needs, and loving him unconditionally. The same is true for his older sister.

Some things, however, will change. For one, we’re looking at enrolling him in a special educational support program (in addition to the preschool he currently attends) specifically designed to keep him engaged and to nurture his social skills. We’re fortunate to live in a country that devotes resources to these kinds of programs.

We recently took him to an introductory session at one of these support centres, where he interacted one-on-one with a children’s education specialist (who everybody called “sensei”) through a series of songs, stories, memory games, and motor skills activities. While my son was initially a bit skeptical – at first taking the situation in quietly and responding with limited gestures – he gradually opened up, and enjoyed responding to sensei’s prompts. I watched my son’s every move closely, trying to view the situation through his eyes. I wondered how bright the colours appeared to him, and how imperative it felt to him to find the right solution to the vegetable flash card problem.

It was an incredible experience. But not only because of what it meant for my child, and my family.

I was deeply impressed by that sensei, a young man perhaps in his mid-twenties. He didn’t only present my son with a fun and challenging half hour. I would have been plenty grateful had that been all he’d done. But he also left me feeling inspired, and with greater hope for the future of humanity than I had when I arrived.

Let me explain.

This young man has chosen a professional path devoted to nurturing the needs of young people. Specifically, young people who don’t quite fit into a rigidly-structured norm. He is clearly talented, and excelling in his chosen profession. While the activities he performed were simple by design, he performed them with care, efficiency, and accuracy. Anyone who has attempted to keep a four-year-old engaged for even a few minutes – without the use of a screen – can tell you how difficult it is. This man made it look not only easy, but like a work of art. He was a sleight of hand magician whose best trick was assessing the various cognitive faculties of a preschooler.

When you encounter someone who is truly gifted at what they do, it elevates the spirit. We’re used to that concept when we observe it in athletes, and entertainers. They are celebrated in society, and they deserve to be. We don’t celebrate or recognize this level of performance in care workers, the people who choose to build their careers around supporting the most vulnerable members of our society.

Here are some questions I think about a lot: What work, in our society, is worth doing? And not only doing, but excelling at? What if that work is essentially guaranteed to never make you wealthy, for reasons beyond your control?

My answer to the first two questions: Work that demonstrates care for others, and that helps others reach more of their potential, is worth doing, and doing well.

My answer to the third: All too often, you’re going to have to choose between doing that kind of deeply meaningful work or making a sizable amount of money.

Perhaps society simply needs a way of trying to prevent assholes from becoming nurses and kindergarten teachers and elder care workers. Let the assholes become stockbrokers and plastic surgeons and cryptocurrency advisors. At least that way I’ll never have to deal with them directly.

Fortunately, for all of us – and I do mean all of us – the kinds of courageous people who choose to devote their lives to deeply meaningful work are not primarily motivated by money. I don’t believe in god, but the existence of these kinds of people gets me closer to believing than just about anything else.

Think about the grace and the generosity of spirit required to devote your life to that kind of essential service. Maybe you’ve thought about it before, but if you’re like me, you haven’t thought about it enough. It’s hard work, and often thankless work. But think of the deep satisfaction that must come from knowing you’ve directly tried to improve the quality of life of at least one other human.

We humans are capable of a whole lot of bullshit. We’re good at demonstrating that. We do it all the time, and the news media thanks us for it.

But we’re also better at caring for one another than anybody else (except maybe dogs, who mean well, but let’s be honest, there’s things you’d rather not trust dogs to do).  

Now, here’s the part where I talk about AI, because here in 2023, you’ve got to be talking about AI.

Look, we already know that AI and deep learning algorithms are capable of doing incredible work. Right? Well, more accurately, they’re capable of doing incredible amounts of (dubious and often inaccurate) work. But a consensus seems to be forming around one valuable element of their contribution: We can use them as tools to help us humans perform a lot of mundane, routine tasks more quickly and efficiently. This is good, the theory goes, because it frees us humans up to do more meaningful and creative tasks.

What’s more meaningful than creatively addressing the needs of, and caring for, each other?

Let the AI handle the boring, repetitive shit. I’m all for that.

White collar jobs are often aimless and unsatisfying. The advent of AI tools will only make them more so. Already, nobody really wants to do those jobs, but they’re a convenient way of satisfying our societal need to ensure that everyone is working forty hours per week (but really more, in most cases). We’ve got that quota to fill, goddamn it.

People need something to do. Can’t everybody be a YouTuber or an influencer or a podcaster. (At least not full-time. Though shit, we should certainly all give those activities a try too, why not.)  

The kinds of care economy jobs I’m envisioning might not seem like they’d warrant a salary at all. But if even one billionaire decided that, in fact, they do, watch how fast we’d all embrace it.

Imagine a world where it isn’t just kids with identified special needs who can meet with caring individuals to help bring them out of their shells and have a richer life experience.

Imagine customized, individually-tailored emotional and cognitive support. Not just for the people who can afford it, but for everyone who feels they could benefit from it.

Imagine senior citizens who don’t have to be lonely and frustrated by the frailty that comes with age, because they have someone who will listen to them and assist them in the ways they, uniquely, need.

We can design a new economy in which these “care jobs” help individuals shore up naturally-occurring weaknesses in their social skill toolboxes. These don’t all need to be full-time jobs. They can be gigs. Let’s get the infrastructure in place.

You might be thinking, what about personal coaches? What about escorts? What about therapists? Well sure, this is already happening to some extent, but mostly for affluent people, who are already “successful” by just about every metric. What about the people who need help in order to, you know, even have the chance to succeed in the first place? Who need help just fitting in and being accepted for who they are?

So…

Am I advocating the commoditization of friendship? Economic incentives for just being decent to one another? Maybe I am. If that would help make the world a more pleasant place for more of us, then why not at least give it a try?