Since ending my adjunct teaching duties last week, I found myself jumping back this week into meetings with different folks. Each time involving conversations that connect me to less academic stuff and more real-world ones.
Increasingly I see these conversations as fuel for my creative thinking and writing. They provide content for me to muse and expand upon further. Hopefully to broaden and deepen my understanding of issues in today’s world and keep me informed. While insights from these conversations don’t necessarily end up in my writing or blog posts, they stimulate my thinking and teach me plenty.
I call these encounters my “knowledge conversations” and the end product my “knowledge work”. These knowledge work can take the form of a piece of writing or blog post. Or material for an interview I field. Or simply conversations that scintillate and provoke further reflections.
Knowledge Conversations Around Fertility
Something that was especially real-world in my conversations this past week had to do with recent announcements by our government to incentivize more couples here to bear children.
As mentioned in a previous post, my country had the unenviable position last year of being second only to South Korea in having the most abysmal total fertility rate (or TFR) in the whole world.
Our country’s population is facing its most challenging of existential crises — not enough babies born to replenish the nation. Add to this the fact that people are living longer, and we’re looking at a future where not enough men and women are available to care for the elderly in our midst.
And while we’re not alone (many First and Third World economies are facing the same catastrophe), we must find our own unique solution. For no two countries are exactly alike. What solutions we might ‘borrow’ from another country may or may not work here.
But therein lies the rub.
The “solution” to reverse the declining birth rate has proven to be an elusive one for nearly every nation that’s experiencing plummeting TFR. This issue of low fertility is akin to a complex machinery with many moving parts. Some that might be easily adjusted by government policies, but many other parts that cannot.
Highlights of My Knowledge Conversations This Week
This week, I met up with folks who are in the business of supporting and championing family values. I also met students doing final year projects on social issues. Along the way I had conversations with fellow parents about the issue of TFR. I even spoke to a news reporter wanting my thoughts on the matter.
In many ways I was grateful I could engage in every one of these conversations with plenty to share. After all, I’ve been fascinated by (and researching a lot about) this topic since the start of the year when our government announced our worst-ever TFR showing for all of 2023.
It just felt to me like this was the most pressing issue of our time. One that warrants our every attention and effort to focus upon and address.
As we conversed this week and I shared what I’ve learned through my readings and research since February, I found myself invariably trumpeting the merits of marriage and parenthood. I saw no other way I could contribute except to extol the virtues of these twin pillars (as I call them) that prop up the global human population!
Several of the folks I spoke to (including the reporter) were actually in their 20s. One, a newlywed aged 25, was already sold on the idea of parenthood. However, the rest were living proof of what statistics and surveys have shown to be the prevailing sentiment in my country — they preferred to remain single or not have babies after marriage.
There were various reasons cited. Most were what had already been surveyed and reported ad nauseum.
Cost of living. Climate change. Prioritizing career. Desire for agency, freedom and independence. Fear of childbirth. Doubts about raising a kid well. (And the list goes on)
While I could understand every one of the reasons, I also couldn’t help wondering. Perhaps many people don’t have all the facts and knowledge that they could have had. If they did, they might arrive at different conclusions and make different decisions.
How can I do my bit to encourage them to dive deeper? Especially when their decisions can have such irreversible impact on something as important as humankind’s very existence!
Which brings me to the importance of Knowledge Work.
Knowledge Work Requires Effort
This week, I started reading Professor Cal Newport’s latest book Slow Productivity, and the term “Knowledge Work” (which he expounded on in pages 38 and 39) leapt out at me.
For those unfamiliar, Cal Newport is an MIT-trained computer science professor at Georgetown University, USA, who is well-known for writing about the intersections of technology, work, and the quest to find depth in an increasingly distracted world. (I highly recommend reading his earlier books like Deep Work)
Newport defines Knowledge Work as the economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort. It is a less obvious form of work than say manual work done by an automechanic or construction laborer. Or service work done by a nurse or a hotel concierge.
However, it is still work. It requires effort, even if its output isn’t always obvious, visible, or immediate.
Newport contends that on the surface the definition of Knowledge Work covers the usual suspects — computer programmers, marketers, accountants, and so on. Yet it also covers many professions that have existed long before the days of the corporate desk. Professions such as musicians, playwrights, philosophers, and my favourite, writers!
And then it dawned on me.
What I’ve been doing with my blog since it began five years ago, and the knowledge conversations I’ve been having, are what Newport would mostly certainly refer to as Knowledge Work.
In other words, Knowledge Conversations + Writing = Knowledge Work.
If only I can find someone to pay this Knowledge Worker for his efforts!
Regardless, I will continue to muse and post my reflections on topics like marriage and parenthood. And, God willing, I hope that some of what I share will at least make you the reader think harder on where you stand on these matters.
Because both you and these matters, matter!
