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The part that Fox hit the nail on the head was asking them what they really wanted to do in life. They responded saying to teach Philosophy, now all jokes aside

The part that Fox hit the nail on the head was asking them what they really wanted to do in life. They responded saying to teach Philosophy, now all jokes aside, what's stopping this person from going after that? This movement that this person supports isn't going to get them to where they want to be in life, or atleast have a go. Like all things people have their own interpretation of what "anti-work" is. For me it's centered around making sure that people aren't working crazy hours at the expense of enjoying the life we live. I'm thinking the Amazon workers who seem to be getting treated terribly. Or its people that work extremely long hours and get paid a very average wage. Or its people burnt out from having worked very hard in their careers. It's the burnout work culture. Unfortunately in this case, the viewpoint that was taken by the media and certainly communicated by the mod was around simply doing the least amount of work possible. For some people this is okay, but I wouldn't be encouraging it to live a fulfilled life. If this person had said, I work x number of hours a week dog walking so I can follow my passion of x, then that's completely fine.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Off-topic: Amazon or in general delivery workers are a case where the IT industry heavily failed to improve work or be a positive influence. Instead of providing people with information, they are put under heavy surveillance. This is the only application a lot of the older generation can think of when the topic of digitisation comes up, but it is not restricted to that. The consequence is an inhumanly clocked working schedule for people in that field. But consumers support it too. The ability to not track a package results in a moderate life crisis. A benign benefit that has severe results on the job. No wonder nobody wants to do deliveries anymore. This phenomenon does extend to other industries like any production. Surveillance of production is sensible, surveillance of people is not and I don't think there is any benefit to it and a lot of negatives. In that regard I understand why people just don't want to work in such an environment. It doesn't even net increased productivity.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
> If this person had said, I work x number of hours a week dog walking so I can follow my passion of x, then that's completely fine. What if one can follow their passion of x without walking the dog? Would that then not be fine with you anymore?
- NoPicklez 5y ago
  Well if they don’t have a job at all and/or their passion does not bring in an income from said passion then I don’t know how they will put food on the table. My point was that this person conveyed themselves as a 30 year old dog walker who sleeps on the job and wants to work less hours. But if they could follow their passion they would want to teach. But this person was not making any strides in achieving this at all.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    There's enough food to go around. We no longer need to base the foundation of survival on subsistence farming. Like 1% of the population is literally "putting food on the table", i.e. farming. The remaining 99% are doing things of questionable utility, like art, religion, philosphy... Only a hypercapitalist would not understand how anyone could exist without a "job". What does "making strides" towards philosophy even mean? Philosophy is largely about taking the time to think about stuff. This person in question seems to have that down. Sure they might fail to figure anything meaningful out, but that's valuable in its own right. A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment.
    - yung_steezy 5y ago
      Academic Philosophy is definitely not like that. The amount of effort it takes to even keep on top of new papers being published (within whatever subfield you happen to specialise in) is extraordinary.
    - NoPicklez 5y ago
      Okay, but be realistic. If I quit my job tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before I could no longer afford rent. What you're proposing might be true, but that's currently not how society is at the moment. No, this person wanted to teach philosophy, not be philosophical themselves. Please watch the interview. A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment, if that was the case and this person did believe that then they would have said that their passion was walking dogs because it provides them with philosophical thought.
bjourne 5y ago
No, antiwork is the idea that work is unnatural, forced upon us and not part of what it is to be human. For example, I work in academia so I have lot of personal freedom and I enjoy my work. However, work itself is still forced upon me. I have no practical choice on over whether I should work or not. Antiwork means that you think this is bad and that you should have that choice. Antiwork is not Socialism, it is not workers' rights. It can't be because antiwork means that workers shouldn't even exist! Would I be happier unemployed? No, probably not. I'd feel like shit. Because society is setup so that if you are unemployed you are poor and people think you are a loser. Careers are how we measure ourselves and others. But this is part of what is crap with this system. It's insane that I (and most others) would feel bad for having too much leisure time.
- ethagknight 5y ago
  Curious, forced upon you by whom? if you move somewhere where no one else can force you to work (maybe the wilderness?), then what forces you to work?
  - dajoh 5y ago
    Just because you're in the woods does not mean you can ignore the law. Where do I find this mythical wilderness where no laws apply to me?
    - mlac 5y ago
      Alaska. You can move out there by yourself, do whatever the hell you want (as long as its by yourself and doesn’t impact others), and no one will notice or care. Or you can be a hermit.
      - mlac 5y ago
        In re-reading this thread, I realize something: if you move to Alaska to avoid being forced to work by society, you better damn well believe that you will be forced to work by nature. I think this says something about the very nature of work. In our modern times it is detached from its purpose (survival of self and species), but that is ultimately what drives the need to work. This idea that a capable, working-age living thing should be able to free load off of others’ work to stay alive is not dignifying for that person, and unfairly burdens the one who is working to keep the other person alive. Put another way, just because a farmer can make enough to feed a town doesn’t mean the farmer should only be allowed enough grain to feed his family, with everything else divided among those who don’t work. What’s the incentive to work? And when you introduce government rules to enforce those things, the farmer is compelled by violence and force to give away his labor. Just like missing the connection between work and survival, people miss the connection between government regulation and the promise of force behind it as a punishment for non-compliance. The reason people pay taxes (which is the only way we have as a society to redistribute resources from those who work to those who don’t) is because their money will be taken if it is not paid, or they will be put in jail if they lie about how much they owe. So while the original comment complains about how you’re compelled to work, that’s actually not true. It is a societal norm to work and to have a good quality of life, but no one is forcing you. But at the same time they are asking to increase government benefits and force those who work to pay for their survival. All this said - if the conversation is framed around how much work it takes to survive, I think as a society it would make sense for that number to drop as we’ve increased scale of production and automation.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Off-topic: Amazon or in general delivery workers are a case where the IT industry heavily failed to improve work or be a positive influence. Instead of providing people with information, they are put under heavy surveillance. This is the only application a lot of the older generation can think of when the topic of digitisation comes up, but it is not restricted to that. The consequence is an inhumanly clocked working schedule for people in that field. But consumers support it too. The ability to not track a package results in a moderate life crisis. A benign benefit that has severe results on the job. No wonder nobody wants to do deliveries anymore. This phenomenon does extend to other industries like any production. Surveillance of production is sensible, surveillance of people is not and I don't think there is any benefit to it and a lot of negatives. In that regard I understand why people just don't want to work in such an environment. It doesn't even net increased productivity.

hypertele-Xii 5y ago

> If this person had said, I work x number of hours a week dog walking so I can follow my passion of x, then that's completely fine. What if one can follow their passion of x without walking the dog? Would that then not be fine with you anymore?

NoPicklez 5y ago
Well if they don’t have a job at all and/or their passion does not bring in an income from said passion then I don’t know how they will put food on the table. My point was that this person conveyed themselves as a 30 year old dog walker who sleeps on the job and wants to work less hours. But if they could follow their passion they would want to teach. But this person was not making any strides in achieving this at all.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  There's enough food to go around. We no longer need to base the foundation of survival on subsistence farming. Like 1% of the population is literally "putting food on the table", i.e. farming. The remaining 99% are doing things of questionable utility, like art, religion, philosphy... Only a hypercapitalist would not understand how anyone could exist without a "job". What does "making strides" towards philosophy even mean? Philosophy is largely about taking the time to think about stuff. This person in question seems to have that down. Sure they might fail to figure anything meaningful out, but that's valuable in its own right. A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment.
  - yung_steezy 5y ago
    Academic Philosophy is definitely not like that. The amount of effort it takes to even keep on top of new papers being published (within whatever subfield you happen to specialise in) is extraordinary.
  - NoPicklez 5y ago
    Okay, but be realistic. If I quit my job tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before I could no longer afford rent. What you're proposing might be true, but that's currently not how society is at the moment. No, this person wanted to teach philosophy, not be philosophical themselves. Please watch the interview. A lifetime of sleep walking dogs could lead to enlightenment, if that was the case and this person did believe that then they would have said that their passion was walking dogs because it provides them with philosophical thought.

bjourne 5y ago

No, antiwork is the idea that work is unnatural, forced upon us and not part of what it is to be human. For example, I work in academia so I have lot of personal freedom and I enjoy my work. However, work itself is still forced upon me. I have no practical choice on over whether I should work or not. Antiwork means that you think this is bad and that you should have that choice. Antiwork is not Socialism, it is not workers' rights. It can't be because antiwork means that workers shouldn't even exist! Would I be happier unemployed? No, probably not. I'd feel like shit. Because society is setup so that if you are unemployed you are poor and people think you are a loser. Careers are how we measure ourselves and others. But this is part of what is crap with this system. It's insane that I (and most others) would feel bad for having too much leisure time.

ethagknight 5y ago
Curious, forced upon you by whom? if you move somewhere where no one else can force you to work (maybe the wilderness?), then what forces you to work?
- dajoh 5y ago
  Just because you're in the woods does not mean you can ignore the law. Where do I find this mythical wilderness where no laws apply to me?
  - mlac 5y ago
    Alaska. You can move out there by yourself, do whatever the hell you want (as long as its by yourself and doesn’t impact others), and no one will notice or care. Or you can be a hermit.
    - mlac 5y ago
      In re-reading this thread, I realize something: if you move to Alaska to avoid being forced to work by society, you better damn well believe that you will be forced to work by nature. I think this says something about the very nature of work. In our modern times it is detached from its purpose (survival of self and species), but that is ultimately what drives the need to work. This idea that a capable, working-age living thing should be able to free load off of others’ work to stay alive is not dignifying for that person, and unfairly burdens the one who is working to keep the other person alive. Put another way, just because a farmer can make enough to feed a town doesn’t mean the farmer should only be allowed enough grain to feed his family, with everything else divided among those who don’t work. What’s the incentive to work? And when you introduce government rules to enforce those things, the farmer is compelled by violence and force to give away his labor. Just like missing the connection between work and survival, people miss the connection between government regulation and the promise of force behind it as a punishment for non-compliance. The reason people pay taxes (which is the only way we have as a society to redistribute resources from those who work to those who don’t) is because their money will be taken if it is not paid, or they will be put in jail if they lie about how much they owe. So while the original comment complains about how you’re compelled to work, that’s actually not true. It is a societal norm to work and to have a good quality of life, but no one is forcing you. But at the same time they are asking to increase government benefits and force those who work to pay for their survival. All this said - if the conversation is framed around how much work it takes to survive, I think as a society it would make sense for that number to drop as we’ve increased scale of production and automation.