People love to complain about work, but in reality if they become unemployed, many people's lives are destroyed.

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.

>People love to complain about work, but in reality if they become unemployed, many people's lives are destroyed.

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.:

https://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/10/the-gift-of-death/

http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

I notice a lot of retirees like this (close family included!) but I think this is a matter of conditioning and temperament. Having had a habit of working or going to school one’s entire life, suddenly having plenty of time to yourself is likely a huge sudden change.

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 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.

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.