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Work/life balance should be difficult

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Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#181

Post by as300 »

aulin wrote: post #56
as300 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point (and the broader point being assumed by the author) was that "spending your time in activities that realize your self" does, in fact, feel a lot like work.

And that's true for a limited subset of people lucky to work in a field where the two aspects overlap.

I still don't think you understand.

If your passion is painting, and its something you would do for free, then fulfilling your artistic potential is still work. It still requires hours upon hours of deliberate practice. The great masters would spend years working on a single painting. You don't think there would be times when they just didn't feel like making progress? Where they wanted to just take the day off and hang out at a bar with their friends?

Part of the human condition is struggle, imo. That's what I think the OP is getting at when he says that human beings need work. Maybe not a 9-5, but we all need something worth staving off instant gratification for.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#182

Post by _dw7s »

amw-zero wrote: post #174
decebalus1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survival is easy. I mean not easy-easy but I mean survival is a pretty low bar. There are ton of places on the planet that don't benefit from the 'modern economy'. Hell, there are places that are actually getting screwed over the by the 'modern economy' and there are war torn anarchy-ridden places (for real anarchy, not the Fox News take on Seattle) and people still survive, procreate, etc.. if you actually want to t…

You miss pretty much the entire point of the article, as well as the purpose of life in general. Work is good for the worker. Because humans need a purpose in life. We don't even need to experiment to see what society would be like if no one worked and a few robots produced our food. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking this would be a utopia - no, it would be a worse dystopia than you could possibly imagin…

> as well as the purpose of life in general.

That's unnecessarily condescending.

> Work is good for the worker.

That's some hardcore boomer logic right there..

> Because humans need a purpose in life.

Work is work and jobs are jobs. You can work without a job and you can have a purpose in life without a 9 to 5. Homemakers don't work or have no purpose in life? You're talking about a different thing here.. I was referring to what people are required to do in order to survive, eat and have shelter in modern society, not have purpose and fulfillment. Does caring for sick relatives with no pay constitute work in your view? Or is that person a slacker and a burden on society? If your purpose in life is your shitty 9 to 5 job then you kinda failed at life. I'm pretty sure the person blowing the leaves of the sidewalk doesn't stay awake at night with an existential life crisis thinking that he missed a spot.

It's the exact same narrative I always have to defend against when talking about financial independence. This is not to say people will be idle and just sit around doing nothing. People still do 'things' whether or not the things they do make money or not.

> left with a bunch of morally bankrupt people

There's that disgusting protestant work ethic again. It's really baked into the fabric of our society.. It's not your fault. Read a book or two, open your mind, I guarantee you'll recover.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#183

Post by disambiguation »

diordiderot wrote: post #180
supernovae wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why we don't switch to a 20-30 hour work week or 4 work days a week... And not in some bs "part time vs full time" but that we have enough humans on this freakin planet that you should only need to work 30 hours a week to live a healthy, balanced life.

This is going to sound cold but we could save hundreds of billions by 'letting go' demented / terminal elders suffer undignified quality of life because their descendants, too guilty to let go, but to busy to visit, are happy to let the public pick up the bill

I wonder how much the public would save by "letting go" of you and I?

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#185

Post by DarylZero »

romwell wrote: post #169
DarylZero wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't struggle "for existence" because high tech manufacturing has made production highly reliable and regular and abundant. We struggle for _inclusion_ in the institutions that allow is to consume from this fountain of wealth. Production is reliable, but inclusion is always precarious.

And who would that royal "we" be? The "we" that doesn't have to pay rent? The "we" for whom food is free? The "we" whose student loans were paid off by someone ? The "we" that doesn't know that being homeless is, essentially, illegal? The "we" that doesn't realize that there is no alternative to inclusion in the system of institutions? Seriously, what do you think "exclusion" here is. The only way out is 6 feet under…

Really confusing response. Must be some miscommunication.

> Seriously, what do you think "exclusion" here is.

Exclusion from any of the social institutions of income distribution. Whether private or state. Whether a job, a government pension, an unemployment check, or a dividend from a private fund.

> The only way out is 6 feet under, otherwise you are still a part of the system

The system is a system of exclusions (or a hierarchy of exclusivity) used to enforce rules against or create incentives for the included. Prison is a kind of exclusion, and so is unemployment.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#186

Post by kube-system »

Bancakes wrote: post #162
kube-system wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art, entertainment, and communication are not new human creations. These jobs are the result of psychological needs that humans have. Maslow's Hierarchy is more than a cave, nuts, and berries. Furthermore, not everyone can survive without specialization of labor. Prior to specialization of labor, it was much more common for people to die young, and the world's population reflected this.

Specialisation of what labor? We've always had hunters and gatherers, and still do. We've always been specialised. What I'm saying is Maslow's scale is tipped upside down with an overabundance of leisure and scarcity of high quality basic fulfillment. There's so much entertainment, that we can afford for a few markets to crash and disappear, hence why I called them "made-up".

We have tons of high quality basic fulfillment. Food is higher quality, more abundant, and cheaper than it ever has been. Educational attainment is the highest it has ever been. Global measures of violence are at historical lows. Specialized healthcare is more available than it ever has been.

I think you've got cause and effect reversed. It's our exceptional progress on basic fulfillment that has enabled our economy to support these so-called "made-up" jobs.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#187

Post by [deleted] »

xupybd wrote: post #150
romwell wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He's saying that it should be a constant struggle to balance off things that you care about, because that shows you care Yay, survival should be a struggle, because it shows you care (about increasing the ROI for the shareholders you'll never see)! "We need work" is justified by "we need shelter and food". The only thing a constant struggle shows is that you don't have the freedom to choose how you spend your life.…

I think we need work for more than food and shelter. We need a place in the world, something to strive for and something to help us find meaning. You complete with others to stretch yourself. People that build huge businesses keep push and building for more. Many like the money but are more motivated by the Vision of what they're building. There is something built into us that wants to strive that wants to work. Hobb…

[deleted]

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#188

Post by MisterBastahrd »

shard wrote: post #99
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually people who have retired from their IT jobs to drive garbage trucks. If the garbage hauling job doesn't itch a scratch that you have, then find something else or raise the pay until someone is happy to haul your trash.

Sounds like there are hierarchies in the garbagemen business. I recall reading an article a few years back about garbagemen, the ones who ride on the back of the trucks, they do back-breaking work, and it's definitely a young man's gig.

I've admittedly never seen our garbage trucks in operation here in my Dallas suburb, but for over a decade in Louisiana, our garbage trucks were a 1 man crew who ran a robotic arm.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#189

Post by Bancakes »

kube-system wrote: post #186
Bancakes wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialisation of what labor? We've always had hunters and gatherers, and still do. We've always been specialised. What I'm saying is Maslow's scale is tipped upside down with an overabundance of leisure and scarcity of high quality basic fulfillment. There's so much entertainment, that we can afford for a few markets to crash and disappear, hence why I called them "made-up".

We have tons of high quality basic fulfillment. Food is higher quality, more abundant, and cheaper than it ever has been. Educational attainment is the highest it has ever been. Global measures of violence are at historical lows. Specialized healthcare is more available than it ever has been. I think you've got cause and effect reversed. It's our exceptional progress on basic fulfillment that has enabled our economy…

I don't necessarily agree. Food has always been "organic free range humaine grass fed unpesticized sun-shined unprocessed" - nowadays you'd go bankrupt buying everything from certified health stores. Education is aimed at an acceptable mean in large groups instead of pedagogues. Death and injury rates are down because of advances in medicine - people are inexplicably violent still (please read or listen to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman). European healthcare is great.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#190

Post by diordiderot »

disambiguation wrote: post #183
diordiderot wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to sound cold but we could save hundreds of billions by 'letting go' demented / terminal elders suffer undignified quality of life because their descendants, too guilty to let go, but to busy to visit, are happy to let the public pick up the bill

I wonder how much the public would save by "letting go" of you and I?

Depends, are you of sound mind, do you provide anyone with anything beyond a feeling of guilt.

Is there anything you would die for?

Is there anything you fear worse than death?

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