The 4-Hour Day

The idea of a four-hour workday is simply a teaser for a radically different worldview, and, in the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to suggest the general outlines of the larger beast.More questions will be raised than answered, and that itself is a key insight into the four-hour world.

The history of the universe is the history of self-reflective development, of evolution from the simple to the complex, the smooth to the tangled. This development proceeds in fits and starts, and we humans typically find ourselves on the crest of a revolutionary wave or in one trough or another. Our current situation is one of stagnation following the last great advance of capitalist development. A recurring plague of human history is the division of society into master and slave, and the blessing of industrial society is the recognized necessity of universal education and personal development. Hence the partial democratization of political processes and the dainty disguise of economic dictatorship. The next significant advance of human culture will be the complete democratization of our political and economic institutions, and anyone who believes this is, of course, a socialist. I’ve been a socialist for quite some time, but ideology is not the focus of fourhourism.

Political agendas are important, but the brain follows the heart. At this dismal stage of human history, the primary requirement is the gathering together of people who are naturally optimistic and inclined towards grand visions. For the time being, the expansive soul trumps the analytical cerebrum. Historically, the voice of socialism has been the cry of the angry male hellbent on justice and violent confrontation. From Marx to Lenin to Mao, the vision is one of apocalyptic triumph of labor over capital, followed by a legal latticework of ironclad egalitarianism.

But there is an alternative whisper among all the shouting and shooting. Jesus and Gandhi, among a very few others, made the remarkable discovery that the universe contains no neat distinction between good and evil. If injustice exists, the balance is restored only through compassion and a relentless elevation of our perspective. In no way is this a passive acceptance of the status quo. Study the political campaigns of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and you see a robust and aggressive methodology designed to shove humanity towards a grand reconciliation. This is the wellspring from which the four-hour day flows. This is the anticipation of a revolution sweeping all in its path.

Now, despite the aversion to pointless violence, the transition to a new order could well be cataclysmic. The pattern of universal development seems to demand regular floods, fires, and pandemics. We also observe that the current Dark Age began in full with the First World War and will continue for decades to come in one form or another. The choice between bankers and religious fundamentalists leaves only the one option of social disaster. So, given this bleak assessment, a fourhourist might run around trying to put out fires and comfort the afflicted, yet we’re ever mindful of the long view. The transcendence of capitalism, and not its reform, remains front and center.

So, is this a religion? Does our perspective and our allegiance to Jesus and Gandhi demand a god? Absolutely, and that “god” is simply the mystery of impetuous creation and development.

The more we exercise our own creative capacities the more we stand in awe of ourselves and the natural world. The transcendence of good and evil demands a heartfelt wonder at the complex, raging, highly sexual ambitions of the whole. Our rational minds are wonderful expressions of this self-reflective dynamic, but logical analysis can never comprehend itself, let alone the birth of time.

The beauty of this “religion” is that it’s a methodology of infinite self-questioning. Permanent answers and rigid ideology are inconceivable. Priests are comic figures. Nothing in fourhourism is sacred or above ruthless reconsideration. And neither are we cloistered philosophers. The popular image of Gandhi is one of hunger strikes and mass demonstrations (and fourhourists do that, too), but his primary focus was the “constructive program”. The only remedy for the mass humiliation of capitalism is a village economy with every citizen a master of productive technology. For Gandhi, this meant the spinning wheel.

For the four-hour day, it’s hammers, tongs, nuclear power plants, computers, and anything else we can get our hands on. The articulation of the four-hour day has little to do with the words I now write. The bottom line is our ability to construct a human economy as the old order shatters and splits. A four-hour steel mill is worth more than a stack of bibles. (see “commune”)

Beyond this, our sole contribution to the non-violent tradition is the explicit goal of matriarchy. The problem with capitalism is largely hormonal. We behave exactly like our chimpanzee forefathers with the full regalia of violent hierarchy. But Bonobo chimps and elephants learned a different genetic harmony, and the shift of sexual balance results in a radically different social order. Testosterone doesn’t disappear, but the channels of expression cause far fewer casualties. What exactly is a matriarchy? Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll find out when we get there, and get there we will.

Of course, the problem with writing a manifesto of four-hour principles is that it comes across as an intellectual final exam. If you’ve done your homework and read Gandhi, Tolstoy, and King – if you know about Lenin and correctly identify his mistakes – then you’ve passed the test and are eligible for membership in the club. Nothing could be further from the truth.