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I'm convinced that our decision for how much effort to exert on work is not governed by the rational part of our brain. It's part primal - fear of insecurity an

I'm convinced that our decision for how much effort to exert on work is not governed by the rational part of our brain. It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. With smaller societies, we know less and thus expect less from ourselves and our situations. But it becomes more difficult to remain this way as small societies get replaced with large social networks. As a small example, you can be having a great life one day and feel woefully underpaid the next, and the only thing that has changed is your knowledge that in the valley, people get paid twice the amount you do in the UK. I believe we need a generational understanding, acceptance, and appropriation of some of the unintended side effects of modern society.

ekianjo 9y ago
＞ It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. You don't know if you'll have a job 10 years from now. If you have kids you know you need a bunch of cash to make sure they get a reasonable education down the road. Of course you'll feel the pressure to prepare for such eventualities. Not everyone is "living in the moment".
- ako 9y ago
  "Fear of insecurity" was mentioned, and quoted by you.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    It's not just fear of insecurity. I mentioned planning for your kids' future, which is not about insecurity at all.
    - JetSpiegel 9y ago
      The fear that your kid will be a failure if you don't have money so send her to MIT is pure insecurity. It's better to work 40 hours, follow and help her in school than work 80h and be the stranger that throws money over a wall to send her away from home under the guise of "it is good for you, trust me".
      - ekianjo 9y ago
        Sorry, but that's your prerogative. I haven't seen my dad much when I was a kid because he was working his ass off to provide for his family, and help us get in better schools than my family could not afford otherwise. If you can afford to live in luxury with only 40h a week, then it's great, but don't assume that everyone can do it without trade-offs. And if that trade-off is your kid not getting the best chances in education down the road, then it's worth thinking about it twice, if you do love your kids.
- eecc 9y ago
  > Not everyone is "living in the moment" Nor is everyone obsessed with being winners, of the moral high ground as in this case. Sure working your ass off 80h/w will make you a penny or two more but you may die in the process and will have to sacrifice something to make time. My father passed away with 200+ days of unspent holiday, and I cannot remember a moment with him. I for sure won’t make the same mistake
  - pault 9y ago
    I'm sorry to hear that, and you make a really good point. A family friend was an engineer at Boeing and worked his whole life there, never taking time off or doing much outside work. He got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer six months after he retired and spent the last few months of his life in hospice care. Everyone knows they won't live forever but the conscious mind doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of reality without itself present. In many ways you are your own universe and that universe has a finite existence. It's important to approach life satisfaction in the same way you plan for retirement; if you ignore it, it won't happen.
- wsc981 9y ago
  ... You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. ... What I find remarkable is that in Thailand the people on the country-side generally seem to not think too much about the future. My Thai girlfriend sometimes tells me I should think less about the future, same like the Thai people do. She tells me sometimes I think too much about the future. The Thai people don't care too much about saving up for a pension either, probably because they expect their children to provide for their old age. Perhaps this view of life has some roots in the Buddhist religion as well. I do think if I would choose to stay in Europe it would be very hard for me to live in the moment, but I think in Thailand it should be possible. The problem is here you have to pay a lot of taxes, can make little savings and pretty much have to work 40 hours a week to have some disposable income, this is especially true if you have a wife, children, etc... As a software developer it should be easy, when staying in Thailand, to just work perhaps 25 hours a week and have enough income for a very easy, worry-free life.
  - jonreem 9y ago
    Not worrying about the future works fantastically until the future becomes the present and you are woefully unprepared. I am all for living in the present and enjoying what you have, but you don't want to just pretend the future isn't coming. It is.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      It depends on the culture, you can be a lot more relaxed about the future if you have the safety net of a large family or generous state to rely on.
  - Banthum 9y ago
    There are lots of cultures (national and sub-national) where people don't think about the future. Migration flows are always away from those cultures, and towards cultures where people do think about the future. The thing is, everybody likes to dream about the care-free life, but nobody wants to experience the inevitable ultimate results of that: poverty, crime, underachievement (e.g. never accomplishing anything on a long time horizon), and powerlessness at the hands of people who planned. Never forget the little red hen [1]. [1] http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littleredhen/story/ http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littlered...
kough 9y ago
> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. This is super true. I've been congratulating myself all month on my new job, paying me BIG BUCKS, compared to my friends. Well, just found out an old friend of mine also found a new job, getting payed literally twice as much as me. Now I'm in a funk and it's irrational and stupid but I can't help but look at the same number in a totally different way.
- taneq 9y ago
  It's not irrational or stupid. It's human. We've evolved to be not merely effective but also competitive.
  - kungito 9y ago
    Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"?
    - taneq 9y ago
      I don't understand the distinction. Competition is at the core of biological evolution and so we, like all living creatures, have evolved to be competitive.
      - Blahah 9y ago
        Many living creatures have evolved to be co-operative (including humans). Some (like humans) are often individually competitive within a larger co-operative social system. Others (like ants, bees, mole rats, some shrimps, etc.) are individually altruistic and collectively eusocial or hypersocial. Evolution is competitive at a systematic, somewhat abstract level: traits that promote perpetuation of themselves given the environmental constrains tend to prosper, and if the pool of resources is limited, the prospering of some traits will probably be detrimental to the prospering of others. The distinction is between competition in the sense of individuals or groups competing, over things that are often irrelevant with respect to evolution, vs the fundamental principle that given a set of environmental constraints and a limited pool of resources, an entity that can repeatedly propagate more effectively than others will tend towards a greater relative abundance. The fact that many extremely successful species are not individually competitive proves that evolution does not require all winners to be individually competitive.
laurieg 9y ago
> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. So true. I have enough money to pay for my apartment, hobbies, new technology etc. I know that a lot of my friends earn 3 times my salary and to be frank, it eats me up inside. I have not yet found a good way to combat this feeling.
- manmal 9y ago
  There is this saying that your income should be the mean of your five closest friends’ salaries - is it different for you?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dlp211 9y ago
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I agree with your premise. I know for a fact that I am better off than my parents, my parents were better off than their parents, and my grandparents were better off than their parents, and in general, this is true for families. Yet, IMO, we are less satisfied and it is because there is a real and growing chasm of people in different income groups in regards to quality of life.
- wsc981 9y ago
  ... I know for a fact that I am better off than my parents ... I believe for me this is only true because of my job. Because I am a freelance software developer. If I'd have the same occupation as my father or mother, I am sure I would be much worse of today than they were. In The Netherlands taxation has definitely increased over the last decennia and wages haven't kept up with taxation and inflation for most jobs.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    That's because over here once you reach retirement age (which has gone up from 65 to 67 or 68), you get a free pension from the government which is enough to last you the rest of your life - nowadays 20-30 years if you're lucky. I mean think about it. If you're anything like me, you've spent the first 24 or so years of your life in school (paid for in a large part by the government), and the last 30 years in retirement. That gives you about 54 years of not working and 44 years of working - and that's about 5 days a week, with an extra 21-24 holidays + national holidays. What I'm saying is, you work relatively little yet with the taxes you pay for that you live a very comfortable life. And the work isn't too bad either most of the time.
    - tugberkk 9y ago
      I know you said 'over here' but still, this is very different for different countries. Retirement age, the amount of money you get, etc.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Where's "here"? I'd guess USA? People often say the government pay for something without breaking that down and realising it's tax-payers/society who pay. That's always worth remembering IMO.
ElysianEagle 9y ago
I read a really interesting book that talked about precisely this (among other things), ie, how in the past people were content to be known in their little circle for whatever expertise they possessed, but now, with the internet and globalization, you're always reminded of how much better any number of other people elsewhere are. This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20
ionstraub 9y ago
Does it work the other way, too? If I am made aware of someone who makes half of my salary for the 'same' work does it follow that I am happier? I don't find this very convincing. This would only seem to be the case where the amount of effort is tied to one's salary, but for hourly wages this is much less likely to be true. I also don't think it's a kind of built-in part of our brain structure; this feels like a very "human nature" type argument which is wholly unsubstantiated. It is true that what we consider to be "human nature" (such as the arising of the desire for personal fame) actually originated in definite periods of history. It is also true that various economic orders, those feudalistic, capitalistic, of the slave society etc. bring about different changes in consciousness. So for that reason, I don't think it's wise to project the desire to be more well off than one's peers as an innate factor especially considering alternative modes of organization in which overwork for this sake does not occur, or at least has no good reason to occur. The trouble with what I'm saying is that humans are 'stamped' with the mark of their current productive forces such that imagining alternatives is not only difficult but it seems utopian and impossible. I also don't really buy the small society vs big society dichotomy as you have used it here. Even in small societies there are times where people 'earn' more for the same amount of work, are there not? I would argue that the problems you suggest exist are merely exacerbated by a global capitalist society rather than caused by it, but also that they are nevertheless features of any capitalist society.
- dcow 9y ago
  I think the point is, when society values money, and considering a job yields money, it's not hard to see why people overwork themselves. And to call such a primal desire for money human nature is somewhat reductionist and thus rather unsubstantiated, naturally.
- spyckie2 9y ago
  It's not being aware of someone else's situation - it's being aware that your own situation is not as good as it could be by comparing your situation with others out there. In smaller societies, you have less people to compare to.
ikeyany 9y ago
These are the arguments Ted Kaczynski laid out, if I'm not mistaken.
- kombucha2 9y ago
  Yeah basically.
- spyckie2 9y ago
  Didn't know that - now I do. Don't really agree they are the same observations, but do see the similarities.
CM30 9y ago
> I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. With smaller societies, we know less and thus expect less from ourselves and our situations. But it becomes more difficult to remain this way as small societies get replaced with large social networks. This sort of logic is also part of why social media can be so damaging in general. Sites like Twitter, YouTube and Instagram heavily spotlight outliers who've become incredibly successful at their field, which will by definition make many people feel like failures in comparison. And well, with most people being very image focused and only showing their successes on these sites, it can give the impression everyone else in the world is wildly successful while you're the only one struggling at all. Still, that's something the internet reinforces in general really. That regardless of what you're interested in or seemingly good at, that there will always be hundreds or thousands better than you at it.
- spyckie2 9y ago
  The glass half-full version of this is humans have an increased awareness and participation in pushing the limits of innovation, novelty and progress. But yes, the half-empty version is the depressing awareness that you're not really "good" at anything.
  - ajdlinux 9y ago
    One aspect of the half-empty version is that if you don't feel you're good at something it can discourage you from even trying to push the limits. I think I've noticed this a bit in myself - before I had broadband internet I was more willing to play around and tinker with things, now I struggle a bit harder to find motivation to try anything I'm not already good at.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > That regardless of what you're interested in or seemingly good at, that there will always be hundreds or thousands better than you at it. When I come across these people, rather than feeling inferior to them, I try to learn what I can from them so that I can do and be better the next time. Feeling inferior is nothing more than an (likely false) acknowledgement that you don't want to be a lifelong learner.
amelius 9y ago
> I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. But what about the rise in real estate prices that happened just about when people were getting double income? Overwork may be market-driven more than we think.
- TuringNYC 9y ago
  Good Point - but double income is just part of it. The other parts are: - ZIRP and resulting housing price increases - overleverage on housing, driving up housing prices - mainstream acceptance of spending 50% of income on housing in many markets But your point remains -- costs are out of line from our parents' generation. I cannot afford to buy my father's house even with 4x the salary he made. Salary-Housing multiples are insane and drives people to make poor work choices.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- spyckie2 9y ago
  I actually really like this point. Market forces make it difficult to sustain long periods of vastly above average standards of living. If a place has high standard of living, competition to live there will make people willing to pay more to live there until standard of living is back to the mean.
wslh 9y ago
I have a radically different thinking and I think it is related to culture and the country where you live. I rather prefer a strong health/education/housing umbrella where I have time to focus my energy in what I consider more important work than, for example, optimizing ads.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  If you are thinking about some of the Western European countries I wonder if it's greater equality rather than anything else. In the UK politicians like to talk about social mobility but I can't help feeling that is a lesser issue than equality. People only want to move up the social ladder because they are at the bottom.
- brlewis 9y ago
  I agree that it's related to culture and country. The early northeastern U.S. settlers who survived the winters were the ones who did the most work preparing for winter. Today quantity of work is still important, but it isn't the determining factor in success. Further, I think even the early settlers could have benefited from working smarter, not just harder. Indigenous Americans built shelters using mud and straw that insulated much better than settlers' houses, for example. Imitating the success of people already here might have saved lives.
dominotw 9y ago
I think it has more to do with insecurity about future. Sure I can work less and live a pretty cozy life a software developer. But I have no idea what will happen to my profession and to me in 10 yrs. Who knows if I'd be able to keep up with tech in 10yrs, maybe my brain will slow down. My job can be outsourced tomorrow or I can be replaced by someone younger, cheaper and more * hard working* than me. Better to work and make money and position while you still can. Thats the reality of the modern world. I don't care about the joneses by do I care about my inability to provide in future. Old age these days is 3-4 decades, I've seen what happens to people who end up with little money when they are old. It makes me insecure and scared. I am not sure how easy or hard it is to decide to end your life before you are too old, I am guessing its not easy to convince yourself.
- profalseidol 9y ago
  Reality of capitalism. Work or die! or join them in keeping the masses overworked
  - dominotw 9y ago
    I think its the reality of humanity. There is always someone more desperate, more hungry than you to take what you have.
  - randallsquared 9y ago
    Reality of the universe. A desert island has no capitalism, but still has work or death.
    - iamcasen 9y ago
      There exist many more friendly ecosystems than a desert island my friend. Capitalism is indeed a desert island, with fortified garden paradises hidden behind insurmountable walls. The fundamental question is whether or not man can evolve enough to not be a greedy piece of shit that's willing to claw and stab his way to the top.
- b4lancesh33t 9y ago

ekianjo 9y ago

＞ It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. You don't know if you'll have a job 10 years from now. If you have kids you know you need a bunch of cash to make sure they get a reasonable education down the road. Of course you'll feel the pressure to prepare for such eventualities. Not everyone is "living in the moment".

ako 9y ago
"Fear of insecurity" was mentioned, and quoted by you.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  It's not just fear of insecurity. I mentioned planning for your kids' future, which is not about insecurity at all.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    The fear that your kid will be a failure if you don't have money so send her to MIT is pure insecurity. It's better to work 40 hours, follow and help her in school than work 80h and be the stranger that throws money over a wall to send her away from home under the guise of "it is good for you, trust me".
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      Sorry, but that's your prerogative. I haven't seen my dad much when I was a kid because he was working his ass off to provide for his family, and help us get in better schools than my family could not afford otherwise. If you can afford to live in luxury with only 40h a week, then it's great, but don't assume that everyone can do it without trade-offs. And if that trade-off is your kid not getting the best chances in education down the road, then it's worth thinking about it twice, if you do love your kids.
eecc 9y ago
> Not everyone is "living in the moment" Nor is everyone obsessed with being winners, of the moral high ground as in this case. Sure working your ass off 80h/w will make you a penny or two more but you may die in the process and will have to sacrifice something to make time. My father passed away with 200+ days of unspent holiday, and I cannot remember a moment with him. I for sure won’t make the same mistake
- pault 9y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that, and you make a really good point. A family friend was an engineer at Boeing and worked his whole life there, never taking time off or doing much outside work. He got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer six months after he retired and spent the last few months of his life in hospice care. Everyone knows they won't live forever but the conscious mind doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of reality without itself present. In many ways you are your own universe and that universe has a finite existence. It's important to approach life satisfaction in the same way you plan for retirement; if you ignore it, it won't happen.
wsc981 9y ago
... You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. ... What I find remarkable is that in Thailand the people on the country-side generally seem to not think too much about the future. My Thai girlfriend sometimes tells me I should think less about the future, same like the Thai people do. She tells me sometimes I think too much about the future. The Thai people don't care too much about saving up for a pension either, probably because they expect their children to provide for their old age. Perhaps this view of life has some roots in the Buddhist religion as well. I do think if I would choose to stay in Europe it would be very hard for me to live in the moment, but I think in Thailand it should be possible. The problem is here you have to pay a lot of taxes, can make little savings and pretty much have to work 40 hours a week to have some disposable income, this is especially true if you have a wife, children, etc... As a software developer it should be easy, when staying in Thailand, to just work perhaps 25 hours a week and have enough income for a very easy, worry-free life.
- jonreem 9y ago
  Not worrying about the future works fantastically until the future becomes the present and you are woefully unprepared. I am all for living in the present and enjoying what you have, but you don't want to just pretend the future isn't coming. It is.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    It depends on the culture, you can be a lot more relaxed about the future if you have the safety net of a large family or generous state to rely on.
- Banthum 9y ago
  There are lots of cultures (national and sub-national) where people don't think about the future. Migration flows are always away from those cultures, and towards cultures where people do think about the future. The thing is, everybody likes to dream about the care-free life, but nobody wants to experience the inevitable ultimate results of that: poverty, crime, underachievement (e.g. never accomplishing anything on a long time horizon), and powerlessness at the hands of people who planned. Never forget the little red hen [1]. [1] http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littleredhen/story/ http://www.enchantedlearning.com/stories/fairytale/littlered...

kough 9y ago

> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. This is super true. I've been congratulating myself all month on my new job, paying me BIG BUCKS, compared to my friends. Well, just found out an old friend of mine also found a new job, getting payed literally twice as much as me. Now I'm in a funk and it's irrational and stupid but I can't help but look at the same number in a totally different way.

taneq 9y ago
It's not irrational or stupid. It's human. We've evolved to be not merely effective but also competitive.
- kungito 9y ago
  Isn't competitiveness at the core of biological evolution and not something we have "evolved to"?
  - taneq 9y ago
    I don't understand the distinction. Competition is at the core of biological evolution and so we, like all living creatures, have evolved to be competitive.
    - Blahah 9y ago
      Many living creatures have evolved to be co-operative (including humans). Some (like humans) are often individually competitive within a larger co-operative social system. Others (like ants, bees, mole rats, some shrimps, etc.) are individually altruistic and collectively eusocial or hypersocial. Evolution is competitive at a systematic, somewhat abstract level: traits that promote perpetuation of themselves given the environmental constrains tend to prosper, and if the pool of resources is limited, the prospering of some traits will probably be detrimental to the prospering of others. The distinction is between competition in the sense of individuals or groups competing, over things that are often irrelevant with respect to evolution, vs the fundamental principle that given a set of environmental constraints and a limited pool of resources, an entity that can repeatedly propagate more effectively than others will tend towards a greater relative abundance. The fact that many extremely successful species are not individually competitive proves that evolution does not require all winners to be individually competitive.

laurieg 9y ago

> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. So true. I have enough money to pay for my apartment, hobbies, new technology etc. I know that a lot of my friends earn 3 times my salary and to be frank, it eats me up inside. I have not yet found a good way to combat this feeling.

manmal 9y ago
There is this saying that your income should be the mean of your five closest friends’ salaries - is it different for you?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dlp211 9y ago

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I agree with your premise. I know for a fact that I am better off than my parents, my parents were better off than their parents, and my grandparents were better off than their parents, and in general, this is true for families. Yet, IMO, we are less satisfied and it is because there is a real and growing chasm of people in different income groups in regards to quality of life.

wsc981 9y ago
... I know for a fact that I am better off than my parents ... I believe for me this is only true because of my job. Because I am a freelance software developer. If I'd have the same occupation as my father or mother, I am sure I would be much worse of today than they were. In The Netherlands taxation has definitely increased over the last decennia and wages haven't kept up with taxation and inflation for most jobs.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  That's because over here once you reach retirement age (which has gone up from 65 to 67 or 68), you get a free pension from the government which is enough to last you the rest of your life - nowadays 20-30 years if you're lucky. I mean think about it. If you're anything like me, you've spent the first 24 or so years of your life in school (paid for in a large part by the government), and the last 30 years in retirement. That gives you about 54 years of not working and 44 years of working - and that's about 5 days a week, with an extra 21-24 holidays + national holidays. What I'm saying is, you work relatively little yet with the taxes you pay for that you live a very comfortable life. And the work isn't too bad either most of the time.
  - tugberkk 9y ago
    I know you said 'over here' but still, this is very different for different countries. Retirement age, the amount of money you get, etc.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Where's "here"? I'd guess USA? People often say the government pay for something without breaking that down and realising it's tax-payers/society who pay. That's always worth remembering IMO.

ElysianEagle 9y ago

I read a really interesting book that talked about precisely this (among other things), ie, how in the past people were content to be known in their little circle for whatever expertise they possessed, but now, with the internet and globalization, you're always reminded of how much better any number of other people elsewhere are. This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20

ionstraub 9y ago

Does it work the other way, too? If I am made aware of someone who makes half of my salary for the 'same' work does it follow that I am happier? I don't find this very convincing. This would only seem to be the case where the amount of effort is tied to one's salary, but for hourly wages this is much less likely to be true. I also don't think it's a kind of built-in part of our brain structure; this feels like a very "human nature" type argument which is wholly unsubstantiated. It is true that what we consider to be "human nature" (such as the arising of the desire for personal fame) actually originated in definite periods of history. It is also true that various economic orders, those feudalistic, capitalistic, of the slave society etc. bring about different changes in consciousness. So for that reason, I don't think it's wise to project the desire to be more well off than one's peers as an innate factor especially considering alternative modes of organization in which overwork for this sake does not occur, or at least has no good reason to occur. The trouble with what I'm saying is that humans are 'stamped' with the mark of their current productive forces such that imagining alternatives is not only difficult but it seems utopian and impossible. I also don't really buy the small society vs big society dichotomy as you have used it here. Even in small societies there are times where people 'earn' more for the same amount of work, are there not? I would argue that the problems you suggest exist are merely exacerbated by a global capitalist society rather than caused by it, but also that they are nevertheless features of any capitalist society.

dcow 9y ago
I think the point is, when society values money, and considering a job yields money, it's not hard to see why people overwork themselves. And to call such a primal desire for money human nature is somewhat reductionist and thus rather unsubstantiated, naturally.
spyckie2 9y ago
It's not being aware of someone else's situation - it's being aware that your own situation is not as good as it could be by comparing your situation with others out there. In smaller societies, you have less people to compare to.

ikeyany 9y ago

These are the arguments Ted Kaczynski laid out, if I'm not mistaken.

kombucha2 9y ago
Yeah basically.
spyckie2 9y ago
Didn't know that - now I do. Don't really agree they are the same observations, but do see the similarities.

CM30 9y ago

> I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. With smaller societies, we know less and thus expect less from ourselves and our situations. But it becomes more difficult to remain this way as small societies get replaced with large social networks. This sort of logic is also part of why social media can be so damaging in general. Sites like Twitter, YouTube and Instagram heavily spotlight outliers who've become incredibly successful at their field, which will by definition make many people feel like failures in comparison. And well, with most people being very image focused and only showing their successes on these sites, it can give the impression everyone else in the world is wildly successful while you're the only one struggling at all. Still, that's something the internet reinforces in general really. That regardless of what you're interested in or seemingly good at, that there will always be hundreds or thousands better than you at it.

spyckie2 9y ago
The glass half-full version of this is humans have an increased awareness and participation in pushing the limits of innovation, novelty and progress. But yes, the half-empty version is the depressing awareness that you're not really "good" at anything.
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  One aspect of the half-empty version is that if you don't feel you're good at something it can discourage you from even trying to push the limits. I think I've noticed this a bit in myself - before I had broadband internet I was more willing to play around and tinker with things, now I struggle a bit harder to find motivation to try anything I'm not already good at.
cr0sh 9y ago
> That regardless of what you're interested in or seemingly good at, that there will always be hundreds or thousands better than you at it. When I come across these people, rather than feeling inferior to them, I try to learn what I can from them so that I can do and be better the next time. Feeling inferior is nothing more than an (likely false) acknowledgement that you don't want to be a lifelong learner.

amelius 9y ago

> I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. But what about the rise in real estate prices that happened just about when people were getting double income? Overwork may be market-driven more than we think.

TuringNYC 9y ago
Good Point - but double income is just part of it. The other parts are: - ZIRP and resulting housing price increases - overleverage on housing, driving up housing prices - mainstream acceptance of spending 50% of income on housing in many markets But your point remains -- costs are out of line from our parents' generation. I cannot afford to buy my father's house even with 4x the salary he made. Salary-Housing multiples are insane and drives people to make poor work choices.
- deleted 9y ago
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spyckie2 9y ago
I actually really like this point. Market forces make it difficult to sustain long periods of vastly above average standards of living. If a place has high standard of living, competition to live there will make people willing to pay more to live there until standard of living is back to the mean.

wslh 9y ago

I have a radically different thinking and I think it is related to culture and the country where you live. I rather prefer a strong health/education/housing umbrella where I have time to focus my energy in what I consider more important work than, for example, optimizing ads.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
If you are thinking about some of the Western European countries I wonder if it's greater equality rather than anything else. In the UK politicians like to talk about social mobility but I can't help feeling that is a lesser issue than equality. People only want to move up the social ladder because they are at the bottom.
brlewis 9y ago
I agree that it's related to culture and country. The early northeastern U.S. settlers who survived the winters were the ones who did the most work preparing for winter. Today quantity of work is still important, but it isn't the determining factor in success. Further, I think even the early settlers could have benefited from working smarter, not just harder. Indigenous Americans built shelters using mud and straw that insulated much better than settlers' houses, for example. Imitating the success of people already here might have saved lives.

dominotw 9y ago

I think it has more to do with insecurity about future. Sure I can work less and live a pretty cozy life a software developer. But I have no idea what will happen to my profession and to me in 10 yrs. Who knows if I'd be able to keep up with tech in 10yrs, maybe my brain will slow down. My job can be outsourced tomorrow or I can be replaced by someone younger, cheaper and more * hard working* than me. Better to work and make money and position while you still can. Thats the reality of the modern world. I don't care about the joneses by do I care about my inability to provide in future. Old age these days is 3-4 decades, I've seen what happens to people who end up with little money when they are old. It makes me insecure and scared. I am not sure how easy or hard it is to decide to end your life before you are too old, I am guessing its not easy to convince yourself.

profalseidol 9y ago
Reality of capitalism. Work or die! or join them in keeping the masses overworked
- dominotw 9y ago
  I think its the reality of humanity. There is always someone more desperate, more hungry than you to take what you have.
- randallsquared 9y ago
  Reality of the universe. A desert island has no capitalism, but still has work or death.
  - iamcasen 9y ago
    There exist many more friendly ecosystems than a desert island my friend. Capitalism is indeed a desert island, with fortified garden paradises hidden behind insurmountable walls. The fundamental question is whether or not man can evolve enough to not be a greedy piece of shit that's willing to claw and stab his way to the top.
b4lancesh33t 9y ago