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Work/life balance should be difficult

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Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#81

Post by kelseyfrog »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #64
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> 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…

It's more than a social fact. It's a consequence of living in a physical reality with physical wants and needs that require action to be satisfied. The best we can do is move the work around, and have someone else do it. (We can harness physical forces to take care of most of the work in the force-times-distance sense, but we're still a long way from moving the rest.) And the ultimate problem with moving it around so…

"We need work" and "we things to get done" are different things in my mind. I agree just like anyone that we need certain things to get done to survive. "We need work" is a curious little phrase though. It's setup in the same way as "we need food", or "we need safety and security", or "we need to feel loved." The framing is that of a basic human need and it's my impression that's how many people see it. It's interesting that the language follows suit in a Metaphors We Live By[1]-type of way.

1. https://www.biblio.com/9780226468013

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#82

Post by nomel »

ehutch79 wrote: post #32
amw-zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill

Honestly asking, how is it not a survival skill? It's a high level abstraction that's part of the "need" for the company, which is why they're paid to fill out that report, with the skill being all the intelligent/understanding required for that high level abstraction. It's literally paying for all the needs and squishy comforts of life for that individual, most likely much squishier than an average individual.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#83

Post by amw-zero »

ehutch79 wrote: post #32
amw-zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill

That's why I said proxy. The vast minority of members of our society take care of our actual physical needs. The rest of us do other things to provide other kinds of value, so that the farmers can do things like enjoy a nice TV show at the end of their day without producing it themselves.

For some of those other companies, a TPS report is required.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#84

Post by Bancakes »

amw-zero wrote: post #27
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> 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…

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Technology has allowed the rise of "made-up", survivally unnecessary jobs like Metaverse programmer, pop singer, and marketing specialists. If anything, the pandemic proved we don't need restaurants and tourism to survive.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#85

Post by ravitation »

jasode wrote: post #77
ravitation wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work Your reply is entirely reasonable but it seems the gp already covered what you wrote and anticipated it in his disclaimer: ">It needn’t be employment,[...]" He just happened to use the imprecise label "work" -- which is so tainted and overloaded that one can't re-use that word to also describe "non-employment intellectual a…

You're right. This is clear had I actually noted that disclaimer, and was simply an oversight on my part.

With that in mind, I'll just agree with your analysis, redefining "work" to include "non-employment" is detrimental to the conversation. When people discuss work/life balance (i.e. in the original article), they are (almost universally) not talking about balancing intellectually stimulating hobbies and the rest of life. We are, from the onset, talking about jobs, i.e. employment.

Additionally, I think my original comment is still useful when discussing the more common definition of work.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#86

Post by what_is_orcas »

dionidium wrote: post #59
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> 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…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. To me it stands out like pickle in pancake, maybe it can for you too. Something I believe, but can't really prove is that this is completely wrong and there's very little about the need for "work" that's socially determined. We are biological creatures that evolved under very specific circumstances. And "work" in…

That's cute, but it doesn't make sense.

Most (I avoid saying all, because I'm not that smart) animals, when not surviving (finding food, consuming food, finding sex, having sex) are super idle. It's energetically expensive to work, and, so far as I can tell, nothing has evolved to be energetically stressed.

If we're throwing around words like "evolution" we need to understand that we're talking about genetic survival (passing genes on through generations). The state of "struggling to feed ourselves" is directly antithetical to the goal of having sex. At best you could argue that the hypothesis that peacocks attract mates with their flamboyant tail feathers suggests that they've survived to maturity as intact as they are because of their good genes (survival in spite of being an easy, colorful target for predators), but that's a stretch.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#87

Post by Mezzie »

Ancapistani wrote: post #33
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> 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…

> "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…

Could you accept "We need projects" as a revision?

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#88

Post by disambiguation »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> 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…

I think you're also doing a trick here.

While it's not necessary that everyone works, some work is necessary. If people stopped showing up to the farms, or the water treatment plants, everyone would die. So, someone has to work.

Labeling "we need work" as only a social fact is a misguided kind of relativism. "Society has created arbitrary weights and values on which work gets rewards, therefore we only need work if we believe we need it". The logic is just plain faulty.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#89

Post by ravitation »

jimbokun wrote: post #66
ravitation wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work 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…

> Just different definitions of "work".

I'm going to disagree on this simplification. There is a common definition of work, e.g. the definition used in the context of work/life balance (i.e. the context of the original article), that is widely used; redefining it to be as broad as you've described is detrimental to the conversation.

> Something that requires focused effort, and done for some tangible purpose.

Essentially everything can be made to fit this definition, making it, I think, not very useful.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#90

Post by fennecfoxen »

Barrin92 wrote: post #73
fennecfoxen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than a social fact. It's a consequence of living in a physical reality with physical wants and needs that require action to be satisfied. The best we can do is move the work around, and have someone else do it. (We can harness physical forces to take care of most of the work in the force-times-distance sense, but we're still a long way from moving the rest.) And the ultimate problem with moving it around so…

OP talks about 'work' in a particular way, as does the author of the piece. What we need is food, shelter and so on. 'Work' as in conflict with 'life' (i.e the work-life balance) is a social construct. It didn't always use to be that way, and it doesn't have to. That we have physical needs is a fact. That we have alienated work from life, or family, or expressing ourselves is not. That work created an absentee father…

> The idea that you have to 'move work around' (kind of sounds like moving garbage around) wouldn't make sense to a person who is able to express themselves in their work. Ask a craftsman for example, an artist, or someone on a family farm.

When I go over to the printmaking studio, I recognize that in principle someone else might be able to grind the limestone slabs I intend to use for printing, maintain the printing press, clean up the ink, or perform any number of tasks incidental to the expressive portion.

I am just as sure that anyone on a family farm knows they can, in principle, get someone else in the family to do work, and that hired hands exist, and can take care of many tasks or unpleasant chores. They may prefer to do the work themselves, so that they get better results, or have more control or feel useful, or because they have a duty to contribute productively.

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. It is essentially never entirely fun.

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