61–70 of 192 posts
This is a stupid take. Work life balance could be easy if we didn't live in a system that forced you to sell your life to wealthy sociopaths in exchange for the right to exist.
Let's take away the modern economy - what would you have to do for survival?
This is a stupid take. Work life balance could be easy if we didn't live in a system that forced you to sell your life to wealthy sociopaths in exchange for the right to exist.
I’ll argue this in good faith. Let’s take your preconditions as fact for the purposes of this discussion - employers are either “wealthy sociopaths” or agents of the same. You may find the options they offer to be unacceptable, but what if they didn’t exist? What options available to you if that were the case are not available to you because they do exist? As far as I can see our current system is beneficial, if only…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our society needs people to haul garbage away. I would bet many of them don’t do it because it’s rewarding. It just gives them money to pay for things they care about. Should all those people leave hauling our garbage?
Hauling away garbage is a thankless but virtuous task that benefits society. I would bet that a fair number of workers in that space actually do find satisfaction in it. Likewise, my usual UPS delivery driver seems to take pride in his work and I've noticed and appreciate it. The longer I work in tech, the more I get the itch to quit and work as a handyman or something for a few years.
> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…
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> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…
> Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. Would your abilities feel stretched by being a cashier? How about a janitor? Waiter? These jobs are what "work" actually is for most people. I think most people could go without doing those things. Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work (and for most people those things and "work" are hardly relat…
Just different definitions of "work". I think the sense meant by those saying people "need work" is "meaningful toil". Something that requires focused effort, and done for some tangible purpose.
So cashier, janitor, waiter would fit that broad definition, even though they are not a focus of intellectual life. But there can be other types of work that also fulfill intellectual needs, that might be more fulfilling for many (most? all?) people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…
That's not work, that's life. The opposite of working is not idling, it is spending your time in activities that realize your self without being constrained by the survival struggle.
Some people still consider tasks they enjoy doing a form of "work". Work doesn't have to be compensated activities engaged in out of a desperate need to provide basic necessities.
Just different people using the same word to mean different things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…
> Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. Would your abilities feel stretched by being a cashier? How about a janitor? Waiter? These jobs are what "work" actually is for most people. I think most people could go without doing those things. Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work (and for most people those things and "work" are hardly relat…
We need action towards results.
We do not need 16 hour workdays.
To be honest I work too hard, but I'm not deluded that I'm somehow an especially good person for doing so. The world is full of awesome people whose energy mostly goes to things outside their jobs, and who make more meaningful contributions because of this.