It's hard to argue that someone born in 1982 shares much (if anything) in common with someone born in 1998.

http://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html

I clicked on the link expecting the Socrates quote and was not disappointed. But, if you read the page through to the end, it seems that this quote was made up in by William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson and published in "Personality and Adjustment, p. 277" in 1953. It was popularized in the 1960's to trivialize complaints by the older generation against the hippies. I have believed for a long time that this was a true quote from ancient Greece and it has shaped my world view. I have used this quote in many conversations and I still am hoping the quote is authentically from ancient Greece. I'll have to poke around the internet some to convince myself one way or another.

‘And way, way before that, a letter published in a 1771 issue of Town and Country manages to sound laughably familiar, in sentiment at least: “Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt.”’

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-childre...

Right now, you may well feel more or less entitled to a flush toilet and the ability to access all of the world's information in your pocket. In years past, these things were luxuries. Most of you reading this: Almost everything in your sight was once a luxury.

So here's the thing: You are lazy and entitled. That is both a good and bad thing. It's good, because it shows we have made progress. It's good, because you now have the time and resources to do something positive. Where it's bad, is that you also have the choice to do something positive with those time and resources, or not. Where it's bad, is that you will have a harder time understanding the magnitude of the sacrifices that got us where we are.

Your choice. It's up to you now.

That said, the social/theocratic hegemony of western Christianity wasn't all good, but it also wasn't all bad. The same probably goes for the secular ideological "religion" you see in communist countries.

Well, indeed. In my experience it varies very widely and pretty much follows the pattern you see everywhere else - intelligent, curious people with good job options tend to be less concerned with patriotism; the less fortunate find solace in it.

The most loudly and irrationally patriotic chinese person I know is from guangzhou. Still wants to move away though of course, what's a little cognitive dissonance between friends?

Then, there are also people with memories of what happened in the 1st part of the 20th century.

And if Fujian somehow became a part of Taiwan, you might not notice much difference in CPC support between the province and the island.

And if Fujian somehow became a part of Taiwan

Parts of Fujian are claimed by Taiwan.

A special case to be sure.

So yes, definitely like Church ;)

[1] http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

  XIV. Of Works of Supererogation.
  Voluntary Works besides, over and above, God's Commandments, which they call Works of Supererogation,
  cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare,
  that they do not only render unto God as much as they are bound to do,
  but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required:
  whereas Christ saith plainly When ye have done all that are commanded to you,
  say, We are unprofitable servants.

And that's an interesting quote. Perhaps that rule would be better reinstated.

I do agree however that the author should have been more careful with their choice of words.

Couple of years ago, I had raised staying late in office as a big concern at my workplace. My manager told me a story about how his daughter will not eat certain food items. He said he would killed to have those food in his plate. But now, he has to strong arm his daughter into finishing her plate. Next thing I know I am rated as a under-performer because I don't "stretch" enough hours like rest of the team.

My mother told me something similar about never having enough mung bean sprouts.

There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week. For most of human history people lived in abject misery and precariousness and in comparison 72 hours a week and most folks having all the comfort of modern city life is not as bad as it sounds like.

But as China has gotten richer it's only natural that Chinese citizens will want to convert some of their hard earned wealth into more leisure time instead of more physical goods so average hours worked per week will tend to decline.

The same sort of thing happened in America and elsewhere.

I don't see the connection, help me here.

"There's no such things as "human rights standards" for how much you should work per week."

A 40 hour work week isn't (in my view) a "human right" in the way that life, liberty and property are rights. It's an exchange of time/work for money. People can choose to work a lot or work a little depending on how they value their time vs their leisure.

The 40h a week is pretty artificial default that has been imposed on most of the people by business interests. That's how I view it historically at least.

So we might not agree on slippery terms like "basic human rights" but modern phenomena as burnout and work depression are pretty widespread already and can thus serve as an example as to how the current workload standards might be broken.

What's more likely however is that 40h a week seemed more reasonable than the baseline at the time.

Still doesn't make it good for the humans in general though. Time and again studies show humans have no flat productivity rate, and some studies are trying to prove that 40h a week is too much and the people don't have enough productive hours left outside of that to actually tend to family, house cleaning, cooking, leisure hobbies etc.

Past excesses are how we got to current "human rights standards". Also, rationally, good feeling from being tough on those entitled lazies should not be reason to stop discussion about whether such schedule is reasonable.

While you are right that life was difficult, your sense of the past is warped to the point of caricature.

However, the rest of the time was spent with military duty (feudal levy), preparing/preserving food, collecting firewood, takig care of livestock and general homesteading like repairing your mudbrick house.

You still can, but not death in the sense of your target ceasing to breathe, rather the death of everything they've worked for in life being violently ripped out from under them, such as their careers, by the court of public opinion. Still sad when it happens though.

I made that point because someone referred to "human rights" when it comes to working hours. There is just no such thing and there has never been.

http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

The argument that there never has been such a thing is basically arguing that we should stop all progress. That nothing that doesn't already exist should ever be created

Only after developing agriculture do societies start having 12 hours a day of work

Besides, modern times have allowed us to avoid raising children if we don’t want to. We just don’t have to wait until the baby is a fully formed human and born from its mother’s womb to make that decision. In practice it may feel better to do it that way, but the basic effects are the same.