We’ve got an extremely short amount of time. A mere few decades, if we’re lucky. And only a fraction of those with our full faculties. For most of our lives we’re children, old and decrepit, sleeping, doing basic maintenance chores required for living (eating, shitting, cleaning ourselves and our environment, etc.) or sick (if we’re lucky the later is a small fraction… but a lot of people aren’t that lucky).
That leaves us precious little time to actually live our life. To enjoy ourselves. To share with our loved ones. And then we have to go and spend a vast majority of that already insufficient fraction earning the right to keep surviving (or more than a majority; an increasing percentage of people have to spend not only all their available healthy free time working, but also an ever larger amount of the time we’re sick, or old). That includes not only the time wasted working as such, but also the time spent going to work and back (for which most of us don’t get paid), or acquiring the tools needed to be able to work and get to work (car, gas, work appropriate attire, and so on; which also come off of our surviving another day budget).
That is evidently horrible. Monstrous. Inhumane.
You can argue that we should find jobs we enjoy, but that’s only possible for a statistically irrelevant lucky minority… and even then most of said minority isn’t able to choose what portion of their time to spend working, so they’re still not free to enjoy themselves as they should.
You can argue that it’s the human condition, that it’s just how we’re made. But it’s not. We evolved to be hunter-gatherers, not office or factory workers. And hunting and gathering are hard work, sure, but they’re healthier, they can be done on your own schedule, and they leave a surprising amount of free time, much more than we can afford now. Our bodies and minds didn’t evolve to be able to support our current lifestyle (or workstyle, rather, since it can hardly be called life) without breaking down. We’re not only wasting what little time we have, but we’re hurting and killing ourselves in the process.
You could argue that tough luck, there’s nothing we can do about it, and going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is obviously not possible given the amount of people on the planet. But while it’s true that we can’t go back, it’s also a fact that we’re producing much more resources than we’d need to be able to comfortably sustain every person on the planet (and throwing a vast portion of them away). We have the means to automate practically every job. We could become a post-scarcity society if we wanted to. But our society isn’t built around people (much less around people’s wellbeing), it’s not even built around corporations; it’s built around the blind pursuit of short term stockholder profits (have you never considered how utterly monstrous and dehumanising the term “human resources” is? we’re not people, we’re not even workers… we’re mere resources to be ground and processed into profit, and discarded once all profit has been extracted from our carcasses.
It’s monstrous. It’s Inhumane. And if left unchecked it will continue until the time we can physically dedicate to earning our right to exist isn’t enough to pay for the cost of our survival (which might take a while; the bastards are looking for ways to exploit lucid dreaming to make us work in our sleep), and either society collapses or we are forced to rise and fight for our right to exist and be human.
I didn’t expect such an extensive reply tbh. My writing skill doesn’t compare to yours, but I kind of feel compelled to answer.
The initial thought was that it’s “inhumane” to work for a living. I agree with you on most points that you brought up, but they don’t really support this idea.(imo)
Our bodies and minds didn’t evolve to be able to support our current lifestyle (or workstyle, rather, since it can hardly be called life) without breaking down.
That much is certainly true, and thus we haven’t really come far from our ancestors. We have evolved as social creatures, where it was essential for everyone to contribute to a society to ensure mutual survival. It’s wired in our brains, as we naturally like those who help us and dislike selfish individuals.
That leaves us precious little time to actually live our life. To enjoy ourselves. To share with our loved ones.
This is true as well, but closer to wishful thinking. We have been able to even entertain this thought only for a small fraction of human history. This is not inherently natural, but more of a perk of human progress.
it’s also a fact that we’re producing much more resources than we’d need to be able to comfortably sustain every person on the planet
Who is “we” in this case? It’s certainly made possible by millions of people working these jobs. And not only agricultural, because this efficiency couldn’t be achieved without the modern economy, science etc.
Look, I agree with what you’re saying. It’s just that saying “having to work is bad, unnatural, inhumane, monstrous” is a little bit over the top, that’s all. Anyway, thank you for taking your time to explain your point. I appreciate it.
We’ve got an extremely short amount of time. A mere few decades, if we’re lucky. And only a fraction of those with our full faculties. For most of our lives we’re children, old and decrepit, sleeping, doing basic maintenance chores required for living (eating, shitting, cleaning ourselves and our environment, etc.) or sick (if we’re lucky the later is a small fraction… but a lot of people aren’t that lucky).
That leaves us precious little time to actually live our life. To enjoy ourselves. To share with our loved ones. And then we have to go and spend a vast majority of that already insufficient fraction earning the right to keep surviving (or more than a majority; an increasing percentage of people have to spend not only all their available healthy free time working, but also an ever larger amount of the time we’re sick, or old). That includes not only the time wasted working as such, but also the time spent going to work and back (for which most of us don’t get paid), or acquiring the tools needed to be able to work and get to work (car, gas, work appropriate attire, and so on; which also come off of our surviving another day budget).
That is evidently horrible. Monstrous. Inhumane.
You can argue that we should find jobs we enjoy, but that’s only possible for a statistically irrelevant lucky minority… and even then most of said minority isn’t able to choose what portion of their time to spend working, so they’re still not free to enjoy themselves as they should.
You can argue that it’s the human condition, that it’s just how we’re made. But it’s not. We evolved to be hunter-gatherers, not office or factory workers. And hunting and gathering are hard work, sure, but they’re healthier, they can be done on your own schedule, and they leave a surprising amount of free time, much more than we can afford now. Our bodies and minds didn’t evolve to be able to support our current lifestyle (or workstyle, rather, since it can hardly be called life) without breaking down. We’re not only wasting what little time we have, but we’re hurting and killing ourselves in the process.
You could argue that tough luck, there’s nothing we can do about it, and going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is obviously not possible given the amount of people on the planet. But while it’s true that we can’t go back, it’s also a fact that we’re producing much more resources than we’d need to be able to comfortably sustain every person on the planet (and throwing a vast portion of them away). We have the means to automate practically every job. We could become a post-scarcity society if we wanted to. But our society isn’t built around people (much less around people’s wellbeing), it’s not even built around corporations; it’s built around the blind pursuit of short term stockholder profits (have you never considered how utterly monstrous and dehumanising the term “human resources” is? we’re not people, we’re not even workers… we’re mere resources to be ground and processed into profit, and discarded once all profit has been extracted from our carcasses.
It’s monstrous. It’s Inhumane. And if left unchecked it will continue until the time we can physically dedicate to earning our right to exist isn’t enough to pay for the cost of our survival (which might take a while; the bastards are looking for ways to exploit lucid dreaming to make us work in our sleep), and either society collapses or we are forced to rise and fight for our right to exist and be human.
I didn’t expect such an extensive reply tbh. My writing skill doesn’t compare to yours, but I kind of feel compelled to answer.
The initial thought was that it’s “inhumane” to work for a living. I agree with you on most points that you brought up, but they don’t really support this idea.(imo)
That much is certainly true, and thus we haven’t really come far from our ancestors. We have evolved as social creatures, where it was essential for everyone to contribute to a society to ensure mutual survival. It’s wired in our brains, as we naturally like those who help us and dislike selfish individuals.
This is true as well, but closer to wishful thinking. We have been able to even entertain this thought only for a small fraction of human history. This is not inherently natural, but more of a perk of human progress.
Who is “we” in this case? It’s certainly made possible by millions of people working these jobs. And not only agricultural, because this efficiency couldn’t be achieved without the modern economy, science etc.
Look, I agree with what you’re saying. It’s just that saying “having to work is bad, unnatural, inhumane, monstrous” is a little bit over the top, that’s all. Anyway, thank you for taking your time to explain your point. I appreciate it.