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How did we get so busy?

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Re: How did we get so busy?

#61

Post by nnq »

> “There is so much to learn and produce and improve that we should not spend more than a dribble of time living as if we were in Eden. Grandchildren, keep trucking.” - Richard Freeman, of Harvard

...somebody shoot this guy. Please.

When will we realize that so many great thought were thought because smart people have had free time to "let their minds wonder around". Think Darwin, the leisure-class naturalist with lots of time to travel, and the theory of evolution. Think Einstein, the underachiever working in a patent office with too much free time to think and the theory of relativity. Who will have time to integrate all the knowledge that we "mine" into useful theories, when we've build a society where the smarter we are, the less time to think you have?!

This became obvious since the '30s, when Bertrand Russel realized the direction we were heading (http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html), despite the fact that thinking about such things was not his job, and most likely because at that point in his life he had a lot of free time to think around. As opposed to Keynes, whose job was to think at this, but was probably to "busy" to see the big picture and totally ignore the "red queen effect" of consumerism.

EDIT+: oops, I always forget that Americans can take any invitation to violence seriously :) I toned it down a bit.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#62

Post by chondos »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #21

Of course they blame men. Never mind blaming misguided feminism, pushing women to endlessly new heights of perfectionism, elitism and competition both within and across their fairer sex. And strangely its not OK that the man knows how to relax, minimizes extraneous work and does a sufficient job... Hits a nerve for me if you can't tell.

You sexist... How dare you challenge feminists, They have every right to fight mother nature... So what if they are biologically and mentally a perfect fit for taking care of children and domestic duties. So what if men are the obvious natural choice as breadwinner. So what if this ruins countless marriages and families, so what if kids are raised by day care providers who don't give a lick about them, so what if it causes tens of thousands of abortions by career women each year.

Taking the man who is biologically programmed (via evolution or creation) to be the leader, head decision maker, and breadwinner essentially switching him into the minority power role because he is not the primary breadwinner? How could that ever hurt a marriage? How could that ever make his wife respect him less?

Taking the women and putting her in roles of abstract logic and non emotional decision making against her nature? how could that ever cause stress for her. How could sending her kids off each day to be raised by a day care provider ever cause her guilt or grief due partly to her in-built nurturing instincts/programming? How could she avoid hating her husband for not being the mother that he should be?

How could any of this negatively affect society today and for future generations? That would be obscene. Just look at the positives of where we are today... Emmm better get a microscope.

I don't blame feminists for their beliefs, I blame men (past and present). If men would have respected and taken care of their wife's and daughters the way they should have, they would have been happy, fulfilled, and never started rebelling and trying to turn against men and even against nature itself.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#63

Post by chondos »

How did we get we busy? (or did we?)

Average American watches 5 hours of TV per day: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watch....

Perhaps people spend more time at work then they used to, but while not at work they spend way less time working on things like mowing the lawn, cooking, washing clothes, ETC.

Women blaming men for them being too busy need to weight their options IMO. If you are too busy, quit your job and stay home. To maintain the quality of life that existed while Keynes wrote this book, a single income is often adequate. It's not worth killing yourself over.

I think what much of what explains the wealth gap is free trade and illegal immigration. We import everything from China today. We would not allow these sweat-shops in our country with children working in dangerous conditions for pennies an hour. We wouldn't allow it here, but we do support it by buying these products. This breaks the whole premise that Keynes was basing his predictions on (Illegal immigrant employment as well). People can get rich paying illegal workers almost nothing, or importing a product from China and marking up it's price by 8-10x.

This throws things out of the balance that he envisioned.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#64

Post by malyk »

vidarh wrote: post #47
malyk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should re-calibrate your winning condition to "spends the most time relaxing" instead of "makes the most money". Really, you should do whatever you like, but part of the problem is that our collective winning condition is based on a number that has, after a certain point, little relation to happiness. Personally, I try to optimize my happiness. I'm not doing that great a job though because I still spend more than…

Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" makes the point that very few things actually long-term moves the needle when it comes to happiness: Meditation does. As does therapy. And drugs. These can move our "normal range" of happiness. Most other things, Haidt argues, will temporarily bump our happiness up or down, but we quickly revert to our normal range. Some things that generally don't affect our happiness in t…

Interesting and seems to match my experience.

My guess is the freedom to try new things would be a way to maintain or improve ones happiness. There are a ton of things I wish I had time to do/learn/experience, but the general trend of society is to chase the dollar through "steady" work.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#65

Post by [deleted] »

nnq wrote: post #61

> “There is so much to learn and produce and improve that we should not spend more than a dribble of time living as if we were in Eden. Grandchildren, keep trucking.” - Richard Freeman, of Harvard ...somebody shoot this guy. Please. When will we realize that so many great thought were thought because smart people have had free time to "let their minds wonder around". Think Darwin, the leisure-class naturalist with lo…

[deleted]

Re: How did we get so busy?

#66

Post by wturner »

tldr. I'm basing my below comment on the title of the article.

I think it's just an out growth of our evolution. I mean throughout human history we've had to be 'busy' to survive. Now there is a small historical ripple in that pattern where we empirically don't have to adhere to the same ethic to survive, but it's still ingrained into us from our history.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#67

Post by NDizzle »

jpatokal wrote: post #57
NDizzle wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works a 40 hr/week job and a 20 hr/week job, (and the extra hours associated with learning various things that apply to each) while also having 3 kids, sometimes people are actually busy. I coach little league, too.

I think you've missed the author's point: she's drawing a distinction between actually being busy (non-self-imposed workload) and telling people you're busy (self-imposed workload). The preceding sentences for context: Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Ex…

The self imposed parts keep one sane.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#68

Post by vacri »

voteapathy wrote: post #36

My guess is that we as humans tend to look at what we've missed out on rather than what we've gained. During Keynes's time there wasn't quite as much competition for one's time and attention, and whatever they had probably wasn't as cheap. Now we just have so much entertainment at our disposal that we can't feel satisfied with what we have. I'll call it the Deal or No Deal irrationality . Essentially, if you go on th…

$100... for the hours of your time it takes to apply, get accepted, show up, sit around in the green room, partake in the gameshow itself, and make your way back home. It's not free money.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#69

Post by dwd »

charlespwd wrote: post #27

Hi, I've been a lurker here for some time now. I rarely ever comment on stories because, well, I have better things to do. But now, I really need to broaden my perspective. I just don't get it. *Disclaimer : I am young (23), broke but happy. This past year, I spent four months in Asia travelling. I rock-climbed for a while, tried bungee, canyon swing, diving, trekking and the motorcycle. I was able to afford all that…

Having a family.

Some numbers:

- The average annual mortgage repayment is over $20,000/yr.

- Private/Independent school tuition for one child will also cost you more than $20,000/yr by year 12 and continue through University for degrees in Medicine, Law and Engineering. Multiply that by the average 2.x children.

Add in living expenses, utilities, rates, sports, entertainment and trips, a tax rate that has you working for the Government for almost half the year and the required family income quickly jumps to six figures which is where the extra hours come in. Paid overtime, side projects, freelancing, second jobs; whatever it takes to give the kids the best start in life you can stretch to afford.

I do sometimes wonder whether home schooling them might have worked out better.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#70

Post by da02 »

charlespwd wrote: post #55
da02 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon the random questions: Did you stay in hostels or family-run hotels? Have you written about this somewhere? What jobs did you do for the money for the trip?

Both, and guesthouses and homestay (one of the best experience of my life). I maintained a travel diary but travel blogging isn't something that interested me much. And I worked as an intern turned into a web developer before leaving.

Thanks. Good luck on your next adventure(s).
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