They are not wrong. https://jacobin.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-graeber-work...
Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#42[dead]
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#43In reality when you really think long and hard many jobs are kind of useless. I could argue that in the grand scheme of things our existence might be completely useless and irrelevant. Yet we spend our short existence doing things which have almost no meaning, some of us try to impress our friends and neighbors. Put up some accomplishments on our useless CV before we turn into dust. Others will raise their offspring…
Agreed. We are what we give our time to, and to those that would "brag" about how many hours a week they work, I ask "so, you are just your job, and nothing more?" When I meet a new person, one of my first questions is what hobbies they have. It throws people off more often than it should that my first question is not about work, and in fact, I specifically avoid talking about work at all. In many of those cases, the…
> When I meet a new person, one of my first questions is what hobbies they have
Same here(!), as a chronic collector of hobbies.
With that being said, within the past year I've added body maintenance (i.e., diet/exercise/enough-sleep) into my daily schedule and I've yet to recover from the loss in time. It's starting to make me feel like Mr. Rat Race.
Granted, I have three children (9/6/4) and work full-time, but in the recent past I had more time to devote to doing the things I love.
Do you have any suggestions?
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#44In reality when you really think long and hard many jobs are kind of useless. I could argue that in the grand scheme of things our existence might be completely useless and irrelevant. Yet we spend our short existence doing things which have almost no meaning, some of us try to impress our friends and neighbors. Put up some accomplishments on our useless CV before we turn into dust. Others will raise their offspring…
I can guarantee you being a "useless" code monkey making 2-5x the average wage of your country is better than being a "useless" min wage factory/warehouse/service worker Much easier to find a meaning in the former than the later
What you're claiming is in direct contradiction to main plotline of Office Space.
Granted, it's a movie, but given its following, I reckon its existence is sufficient to undermine your guarantee.
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#45One of the wonders of the modern economy is that you don't need to know the purpose of your job, in fact it probably has 1000s of purposes. You can just do it. Anyone working in finance is basically making capital allocation more efficient and as a result steering millions of decisions in tiny ways. Do they understand it? No. But they don't need to...
That’s why people burnout and take up fighting martial arts or buy a motorcycle
People have a need to feel the feedback from their actions
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#46In reality when you really think long and hard many jobs are kind of useless. I could argue that in the grand scheme of things our existence might be completely useless and irrelevant. Yet we spend our short existence doing things which have almost no meaning, some of us try to impress our friends and neighbors. Put up some accomplishments on our useless CV before we turn into dust. Others will raise their offspring…
Ecclesiastes in the Bible begins with: The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” 3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. and it ends with: Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matt…
So if God is just a adaption to a endless cycle of strife, the answer is worship a gut instinct to continue the cycle? As in never question your program? Never strife for more?accept the unacceptable.. That is the whole answer..
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#47Does this line of thinking mean that companies should be firing more people?
This is the problem I have with Graeber's "bullshit job" idea. It does "feel true". Yet we are generally so useless as individuals that there is no alternative but to play along. And, if the pantomime were to stop, then we'd all just starve, right? I think his purpose was noble: "Peoples' time is terribly misallocated, and we could do a lot better by setting everybody free." But this isn't some abundant Nature that surrounds us; it's a synthetic hellscape, where the trees on which food grows have been cut down to make way for parking lots, the buffalo have been slaughtered for the sole purpose of control, and it is illegal to build a house except from Home Depot materials. We are pathetically dependent and utterly owned. So the little guy also has to maintain the illusion of usefulness to the hand that feeds. Again, without it, then he, by which I mean we, would starve.
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#48https://libcom.org/article/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gr... Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” ... But rather than allowing a massive reduc…
>It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working
Well yes. Full employment is considered a social good, so voters and governments encourage it, so the system finds ways to figure out jobs for people to do.
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. We are what we give our time to, and to those that would "brag" about how many hours a week they work, I ask "so, you are just your job, and nothing more?" When I meet a new person, one of my first questions is what hobbies they have. It throws people off more often than it should that my first question is not about work, and in fact, I specifically avoid talking about work at all. In many of those cases, the…
> When I meet a new person, one of my first questions is what hobbies they have Same here(!), as a chronic collector of hobbies. With that being said, within the past year I've added body maintenance (i.e., diet/exercise/enough-sleep) into my daily schedule and I've yet to recover from the loss in time. It's starting to make me feel like Mr. Rat Race. Granted, I have three children (9/6/4) and work full-time, but in…
I don't realy have any suggestions other than constantly examine how you spend your time, and make adjustments wherd needed. Some examples I can think of are:
1. Try to find ways to combine your exercise time and spending time with your kids. Lots of activities such as sports, martial arts, hiking, etc, might work here.
2. Classify your hobbies and interests into "passive" and "productive." For example, I love reading old science fiction. I also love tinkering with electronics. Reading books is fun, but does produce lasting results in me the way that learning new stuff by building gadgets does. So, I make more time for my workbench, and my reading is reserved for times when I want a bit of entertainment, but can't be at the workbench (such as on lunch at work).
3. Check your screentime. It's disturbingly easy for us to lie about how much time we actually waste on our smartphones, computers and televisions. Every few months I have to start jotting down times I sit down to my computer, or get an app to track my YouTube watching, just to keep things to a minimum. These days it's less, but it took awhile to build that mindfulness and set up some mental pivot points for when I've had enough Internet for the day.
I have no idea if any of this will help you. We all have different values and needs that factor in to how we spent our most precious resource; time. As a fellow dad (although my kid is an adult now), I'd say make most of that time about your kids. You might be surprised how much you grow as a person just by doing that, although with 3 kids, I imagine you already have a pretty good idea about that!
Re: Significant slice of the U.S. workforce believes their jobs have no purpose
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ecclesiastes in the Bible begins with: The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” 3 What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. and it ends with: Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matt…
So if God is just a adaption to a endless cycle of strife, the answer is worship a gut instinct to continue the cycle? As in never question your program? Never strife for more?accept the unacceptable.. That is the whole answer..
Isn’t life (regardless of species), by nature, simply an endless cycle of strife?
The universe as a whole is completely pointless. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth experiencing. I say this a collection of particles from which that pointless universe is made, so what do I know.