Work/life balance should be difficult

Re:Work/life balance should be difficult by kelseyfrog on Wednesday December 15, 2021 @02:18PM (#29570373)

Everyone agrees that people need to do certain things to survive. What complicates this line of thinking are the social facts that are assumed when we conceptualize work. The way that work is conceptualized is culturally specific across space and time. The construction "eating implies survival implies work" doesn't imply that our culturally specific conceptualization of work is implied. There are many interesting ways to have conversations about work means, how it changes, and what factors influence how people think about what work is and isn't.

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Re:Work/life balance should be difficult by amw-zero on Thursday December 16, 2021 @08:19AM (#29577822)

I buy this. Maybe this is what people mean when they are anti work - they're just anti modern work?

I think it's good to be critical, we can always improve the system. But I also personally believe our society is actually incredible at self-optimizing, and we are pretty darn close to an ideal system in practice. It's easy to focus on the bad, but our society has produced truly immeasurable good (very little relative violence, hunger, boredom, etc.) Of course it can be improved, and there are some real problems, particularly around wealth inequality. But I can't help but think that we're doing pretty damn good.

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Re:Work/life balance should be difficult by DarylZero on Thursday December 16, 2021 @08:52AM (#29578059)

> I buy this. Maybe this is what people mean when they are anti work - they're just anti modern work?

It's not "modern work" but work-the-social-institution. Which is the primary definition of "work."

What they don't mean is productive activity. Every productive activity that takes place within the social institution of work also takes place outside of that social institution. For example, farming, building construction, cooking, cleaning, education -- all of these take place both inside and outside of work.

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