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(I don't write the following to impugn your choices; I'm only drawing a contrast between your view of the world and mine so we can discuss the differences.) It

(I don't write the following to impugn your choices; I'm only drawing a contrast between your view of the world and mine so we can discuss the differences.) It's interesting to me that you wrote the payment is important to you because it shows that what you are doing is important. My outlook is that the thing I am paid to do is arguably the least important activity out of any I do in the world. I'm paid to ensure that a particular set of bits are turned on and off in the appropriate way so that other people can manipulate those same bits to influence how data is represented elsewhere. In essence, I feel as though I'm the digital version of a paper-pusher, merely moving reports from one end to the other. It's not bad, as such, just not something I imagine as an important thing. But, it's what the market / society / the invisible hand has decided is deserving of almost outlandlishly wealthy levels of pay, so I do it. On the other hand, the things I find most important are the activities I either don't get paid to do or I actively pay to do them. Volunteering at my library showing kids and older adults how to read and find information. Being a guide at the zoo, hanging out with animals and encouraging others to see them as worth conserving. Knocking on doors for my preferred candidate in local elections. These are all things that, should I deduce some way to continue to pay my usual bills without having to digitally-push-paper, I would happily do for the rest of my days and let someone else occupy my chair at work. That I don't get paid to do them is almost part of the charm, though I wish society valued the work highly enough that I could get paid to do one or more of those instead of dealing with the latest wrinkle in "site reliability engineering."

BurningFrog 7y ago
Let's be careful here: I'm not saying getting paid is the only important thing. Far from from it! But what I am saying is that it shows what I'm doing is important to other people. It's not just something I'm doing for myself. > it's what the market / society / the invisible hand has decided is deserving of almost outlandlishly wealthy levels of pay, so I do it. That's true, but I prefer to deabstractify it a bit. There are real people, who have decided to spend substantial money on paying you and me to do what we do, because they think it's important. That makes it very real to me. And confirmed by an independent outside "reviewer", so to speak. I came into this way of thinking after being a stubborn youth who hated work and dreamt about never having to do it. But I couldn't get the ethics of it all to add up. So this is how I made sense of things. Of course, what you describe sounds like working for the benefit of others as well.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Let's be careful here: I'm not saying getting paid is the only important thing. Far from from it! But what I am saying is that it shows what I'm doing is important to other people. It's not just something I'm doing for myself. > it's what the market / society / the invisible hand has decided is deserving of almost outlandlishly wealthy levels of pay, so I do it. That's true, but I prefer to deabstractify it a bit. There are real people, who have decided to spend substantial money on paying you and me to do what we do, because they think it's important. That makes it very real to me. And confirmed by an independent outside "reviewer", so to speak. I came into this way of thinking after being a stubborn youth who hated work and dreamt about never having to do it. But I couldn't get the ethics of it all to add up. So this is how I made sense of things. Of course, what you describe sounds like working for the benefit of others as well.