I'm from Europe, and I agree. Not everyone, but most people look at a job as just a means to a salary, regardless of what they do.
But I'm actually critical of this mindset: if you see things that way, then you are spending a great amount of your time doing something 'because you have to', slogging through the work day just to get to the stuff you like to do.
I know I'm generalizing, but I perceive Americans as more intense workers than Europeans. Maybe it's worse for their health, but look at what it's done to the world: space travel, computers, the internet, smartphones: all things that dominate the world (and are ultimately good, even though they have bad sides) and were made / greatly developed in America.
So hyper-capitalism isn't all that bad :)
And even there, not for the huge majority of the people not doing anything creative. http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
Not to mention, even for creative people who love their job, nobody stops you from working on things on your own free time (e.g. if you're a programmer you can do open source, build stuff you like as side projects, etc, the most "meaningful work" does not have to be your pointy-haired bosses mandated projects at work).
That's even if they have a decent money flow from some pension or whatever. The social isolation and lack of purpose turn a lot of people into lonely couch potatoes, just waiting for death.
I had a bad attitude to work in my youth, until I figured out how to think about it:
A ton of people work to make everything I enjoy. The food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc. Millions of people who get up in the morning and work through the day and come home exhausted make all of this possible. To me, the only decent way to react to this is that I must join in and contribute my part to this system.
That's only when they have been raised in cultures that teach them that their work is their ultimate purpose, and have them structure every aspect of their lives around it.
Nobody dies from not having to work in Mediterranean culture's for example...
>A ton of people work to make everything I enjoy. The food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc. Millions of people who get up in the morning and work through the day and come home exhausted make all of this possible.
Besides the food, the buildings, the vehicles, roads, appliances, etc, that people do want and depend on, billions of people are also forced to work to make all kinds of crap they don't care about, that makes no difference, is marked up 5 to 100 percent, for others to be unhappy consuming them, and to kill the environment with externalities in the process.
E.g.:
I’ve seen some individuals, once retiring, take up hobbies and volunteer and enjoy time with friends at cafés. I think they were aware that they could spend a retirement doing nothing, and that was likely a big motivator to find pastimes.
That's one of the saddest aspects of the current setup - even if you manage to escape the system (say, retire very early), you'll still have no one to hang out with, because everybody else is working all the time.
I would be fine with just relaxing in public places like parks without actually having to interact with anyone, unless some people appear to share interests.
Sadly, safe, clean public places seem to be an exception rather than the norm in the world at large, at least from what little I've seen of it.
So we go back inside enclosures that are commercial establishments (coffeehouses, restaurants etc.) in order to be around other people, but interacting with other patrons there is kind of a social taboo.
From my time on the planet I can only think of video game arcades from my childhood as the best examples of places where people got together to have safe fun and often interacted with each other out of choice and had even more fun in doing so.
Visit Central/Eastern Europe. These places are a norm in there.
As much as I loved '80s arcades (and wasted way too much money in them), "safe" is not exactly a word I'd use. Many of them, in Italy, quickly became drug markets or money-laundering operations (or both). Arguably, the few surviving ones are even worse today. They were not very healthy either, with no natural light and people smoking.
But yeah, it was a place to go with friends, and I have great memories about those times. Our furious NBAJAM challenges were the stuff of legend.
Edit: I realized I wrote this outside of a small cafe in my neighborhood, with people talking, relaxing on their own, and having breakfast. I consider myself an introvert but always seem to work better in cafes like this, with people around (especially if those people are also working). I always thought it was due to the tentative time limit making me focus better on the task at hand (since it would be rude to stay too long in a cafe), but now I'm wondering if just the proximity to other people might also be helping.
Tell that to my insulin, my grandma who had a kidney transplant, my coworker conceiving via IVF, the kid down the street who called 911 on his iPhone when somebody tried to kidnap him...
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- The diabetes and obesity crisis in America can't be cured by technology.
- IVF is often due to advanced aging, due to pressure to work later
- There was a time when kids could be left unattended 100 years ago. I'm curious why this has changed so much.
Kids can be left unattended right now in Japan, it's also a cultural thing. There was a great Citylab writeup about this a few years back. It's typical for Japanese children to run errands alone via the subway at age six. FTA "'[Japanese] kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others.'" [3]
[1] http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2018/03/20/dc...
[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223124259.h...
[3] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-littl...
In the course of the last 12000 years, we've evolved from small, hunter-gatherer tribes, to highly dense, highly competitive, modern human establishments, and in the process have created a world perhaps too complex to successfully navigate without properly augmenting our intellects and social abilities. It seems that much of the technology we have developed recently hasn’t worked in our favor, but rather against us, and one consequence might very well be loneliness.
No matter what we decide the proper course of action is to successfully address the challenges of modern life, we must not forget that the only way forward is to accept our shared destiny and the need for collaboration.
After all, we’re in this together. There’s no need to fight.