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You are not your job

jry.io

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Re: You are not your job

#291

Post by guzfip »

bogrollben wrote: post #249
rc-1140 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even software people have bills to pay and mouths to feed. I think people like the article author are either single or have no dependents, and it's a big reason I cannot take many of these posts seriously. Much like the story of Peter Pan, the authors of these posts are college students who never grew up and had to be responsible.

I agree 100%. The issue isn't losing my job. Many of us could deal with that by simply finding another similar job in the same (coding) industry. The issue is losing the entire industry. That thing you spent years becoming good at? Getting paid lots of money for? Oh, we killed it. Start over and pick something else. You probably won't be paid well, if you can even find anything, because you're starting from ground ze…

> You probably won't be paid well, if you can even find anything, because you're starting from ground zero and competing with all the other people flooding the job market.

You won’t be paid well because rent is due next week, but the new job requires you to fund your training.

So you find something else that doesn’t pay well, but gets you something coming in. But in order to pay the rent you need to work 60 hours at this job. Of course, no way they’ll schedule you for 60 hours, so you’ll get an additional lower paying job or two.

Suddenly you don’t have the time nor the money to retrain for a higher paying job. All the money from your two jobs is going to ever ballooning housing and energy costs.

Eventually you surrender, understand your place as a peasant, and sell yourself into debt slavery in hopes in a decade you can start from scratch again.

Re: You are not your job

#292

Post by ramesh31 »

sph wrote: post #224
abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

> The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we value about ourselves are generally not that valuable to others. I love my own personality and humanity, my soul if you will, but nobody's paying me for it, and so I have to value it accordingly. A good example of what tribes did better vs civilization: if you can do anything to help the tribe survive (I am a good hunter, you can create good bows), you are a pr…

>A good example of what tribes did better vs civilization: if you can do anything to help the tribe survive (I am a good hunter, you can create good bows), you are a prized member. If you can't do anything, at least we still love you because you are kin.

Indeed it seems that there really are two "modes" for human civilization; one where human beings are scarce and valuable, and one where they are abundant and cheap. The West has spent the last 400+ years in the former mode, as the plague decimated Europe and they spread into the vast new world, where humans were so scarce they had to be forcibly imported via mass enslavement, and wage earners could demand a premium. Now that globalism has brought us all onto the same stage as the Eastern masses, things are starting to feel pretty crowded.

Re: You are not your job

#294

Post by stalfie »

sph wrote: post #224
abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

> The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we value about ourselves are generally not that valuable to others. I love my own personality and humanity, my soul if you will, but nobody's paying me for it, and so I have to value it accordingly. A good example of what tribes did better vs civilization: if you can do anything to help the tribe survive (I am a good hunter, you can create good bows), you are a pr…

This is incredibly naive. Hunter gatherer communities, especially those in regions without an abundance of food, are and were extremely selective about who were accepted and who weren't. This starts from infancy where non-desirable babies were simply killed. Estimates vary greatly but perhaps around a third to half of "modern" hunter gatherer tribes practice infanticide. The stated reasoning behind infanticides is often extremely vicious and comes down to "he/she is not a good fit for the tribe", or in other words "nobody likes him/her". This fact alone might be one of the major explanations of the high rate of prehistoric infant mortality.

But if you are even allowed to grow up and become an individual, things might be somewhat better once you are part of the in-group, but that does not factor in the fact that human empathy has an overall tendency to switch off if you're not. Even if you're loved because you're kin, your neighboring tribe might still kill you, or you and your kin might kill them, for entirely petty or cynical reasons. The prehistoric bone record supports this as well, seemingly human-weapon related reasons is the most common cause of death.

You can also examine your own emotions to get some idea of our evolutionary environment. Loneliness hurts, to the point where it has measurable negative health impacts equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes each day. Your brain is screaming at you not to be lonely, but why? Well, in our ancestral environment, being excluded from the social group meant death, so most individuals that did not have a profound and visceral fear of that happening got their genes consistently removed from the gene pool. For loneliness to be that big of deal, being excluded must have been an easily available option. If everyone loved and accepted everyone unconditionally, this emotional state would simply not have evolved.

Humans quickly become extremely brutal once the environment necessitates it, up to and including cannibalizing your own kin. Infanticide and murder of both ingroups and outgroups is historically commonplace because it was also commonplace prehistorically. Even modern tribes, that live in relative abundance, are still brutal in many ways to this very day.

But of course, when you look at any group of individuals in a tribe survivorship bias will dictate that it all looks nice and rosy. But you might want to check the skeletons in the cave before you pick that as your conclusion.

Re: You are not your job

#295

Post by CaptWillard »

giantg2 wrote: post #248
xdertz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many instances of braces and artificial limbs or that were found or fossilised bones that showed crippled people that grew into old-age, which provides evidence that people cared for 'non-productive' members.

Finding evidence that disable people existed does not provide evidence that they were not able to contribute in some way. It's incredibly ableist to assume they couldn't.

I say this with all due respect and as someone who is struggling to envision their own ability to meaningfully contribute in the likely future:

Nature is ableist. Humanity rises above it to the extent that we can, but ...

Re: You are not your job

#296

Post by [deleted] »

tock wrote: post #283
bigDinosaur wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domestic tourism is massive even in countries with terrible work culture like China, so your claim is not particularly strong. Either way, hobbies and holidays are certainly not unique to NA and Europe.

1. There are far worse places to work than China :) 2. I was comparing everyone against EU. NA included.

[deleted]

Re: You are not your job

#297

Post by bigDinosaur »

tock wrote: post #283
bigDinosaur wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domestic tourism is massive even in countries with terrible work culture like China, so your claim is not particularly strong. Either way, hobbies and holidays are certainly not unique to NA and Europe.

1. There are far worse places to work than China :) 2. I was comparing everyone against EU. NA included.

I don't think your initial claim is well supported considering the size of domestic travel and entertainment sectors in most of the world (although I'll admit that the way people allocate non-work activities in many places may not lead to a relaxed life in the way, say, a Swiss person on a sabbatical has). Points 1 and 2 in this recent comment are different ones again, though and not ones I disagree with.

Re: You are not your job

#298

Post by 9rx »

galleywest200 wrote: post #51
jazz9k wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any friends? Your job is a good topic that allows you to find something in common with another person.

I prefer to ask people what they do for fun when looking for something in common, as opposed to what they do for work. Some people are recently laid off, and asking what they do for work might sting a bit.

> I prefer to ask people what they do for fun when looking for something in common, as opposed to what they do for work.

Hasn't the question always implied to be about what you do for fun? It has never occurred to me that should answer "I wash the dishes".

Re: You are not your job

#299

Post by thrance »

I don't tie my self-worth to my job, but I still need the dough and I don't see myself doing anything else, hence why I've been so concerned as of late. I only started working four years ago, and I don't have the luxury to retire and go biking for the rest of my days. What a ridiculously bad article. I don't need Facebook-tier self-help "advice", I need reasons to feel confident in the fact that I'll be able to provide for myself in the future by doing something reasonably enjoyable.

Re: You are not your job

#300

Post by zbikowski »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #155
abcde666777 wrote: post #122

Being able to see ourselves as something beyond our job (our means of survival) is a luxury. If a person can't provide for themselves the rest goes out the window fast. The only way to ease the anxiety in people isn't with fluff about their 'human worth', but rather to help them envision other tangible and plausible ways in which they can provide for themselves. The cold reality, in my opinion, is that the things we…

Reminds me of a very old essay on Cracked that says something very similar: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...

Thanks very much for sharing this - despite his declaration of his majority audience, this is excellent, hard-hitting advice for anyone who feels lost in the gap between their achievements and their "potential."
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