5 ms·
Jobs often make people feel useful. While many can be the happy unemployed person playing Counterstrike 24/7, many others need some sort of occupation for self-
by danielrpa 4y ago
Jobs often make people feel useful. While many can be the happy unemployed person playing Counterstrike 24/7, many others need some sort of occupation for self-realization. This is actually a common problem, which can even became a major psychological issue, with people entering retirement.
Maybe one day we can live in a world where machines are doing all the work and there are fulfilling hobbies for everybody, but I fear this will require more changes, on a much longer time horizon, than the short-term issues just around the corner due to the recent AI advances.
- tap-snap-or-nap 4y agoAnyone who has been unemployed may know how badly it affects a persons self-worth.
- ResearchCode 4y agoThat has more to do with discrimination against the unemployed.
- starkd 4y agoPerpetual victimhood is also devastating for one's sense of self-worth.
- XorNot 4y agoDiscrimination against poor people, more specifically. No one cares how unemployed you are if you're rich. Or at least well off enough to be reclassified as "eccentric" and thus okay.
- therealdrag0 4y agoEh I’ve read plenty of essays by people who have retired early and it was not good for their psyche even though they were loaded.
- i_am_toaster 4y agoSounds like self projecting
- ResearchCode 4y agoI don't see it
- therealdrag0 4y ago[deleted]
- paulcole 4y agoBecause modern adult life is built around working. If working wasn’t the default state then being unemployed wouldn’t feel bad. Does an 8-year old feel “bad” because they are unemployed?
- ilyt 4y agoIt would probably be much less impact if you knew you won't get kicked out of your apartment in few months coz you run out of money to pay rent. Like, sure, "nobody wants to have me working" isn't great, but going to job that barely covers your rent isn't much better.
- mvanbaak 4y agoThis is more a problem with the non-existing income stream
- livrem 4y agoThe people at the top of society never had any problem enjoying life while everyone else worked for them. We're just need machines at the bottom of society so that all humans are in the owning class and can enjoy not working. Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness, 1932 seems increasingly true to me. The richest has kept a monopoly on idleness while tricking everyone else to see work as their purpose in life (to work to make it possible for the rich, idle, people to have nice lives without having to work). "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever."