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> “The final feature is a reduced sense of personal accomplishment,” Santos said. “You never feel like you’re doing things effectively and so you feel ineffecti

> “The final feature is a reduced sense of personal accomplishment,” Santos said. “You never feel like you’re doing things effectively and so you feel ineffective and like the work you do doesn’t matter. If you notice signs like this, it’s important that you pay attention early on and make some changes in order to feel better.” I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. After all, they are very far away from doing things like obtaining food and shelter or even learning things we are curious about. At some point, I feel like the illusion cannot be held for long: it starts in school when the learning is onstensibly about curiosity but then the gradient between curiosity-driven learning and being a cog slowly eats away at the facade that we have constructed in our minds of actually doing something useful in society until burnout becomes inevitable. Seems rather obvious as society these days is mostly about furthering advanced technology for very little benefit to the average person except that it keeps the economy going only due to the fact that the economy itself is based on broken principles not compatible with our amazingly high human population density.

amunozo 2y ago
I find this specially true in "passion-drive" jobs like research. I am doing a PhD and this is so true in so many levels.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  I got a PhD myself. And I think it's definitely at least partially true: I was told flat-out that I should stick to big-business style research (i.e. research areas with large, complex and directed research plans) and forget following my own curiosity. Of course, once you get tenure in places where it exists or you make it, you can deviate from that. It's even worse in industry, where I worked after academia. I felt like I was using 5% of my brain to do things I was bored to death with. This isn't just me either: many of the people I've worked with feel the same, including virtually all my fellow PhD students. I feel like the only thing keeping it going is the novelty of working in new places, meeting new people, and getting new projects. It's almost as if we have a basal attraction to novelty because it's a survival instinct, but we have distilled life so that novelty is the only thing left, stripped of substance long ago when we traded thought for automation. Of course, it's even harder to see it because we have "propagandists" (i.e. then 1% of people who have carved out a protective bubble for themselves due to a combination of luck, ingenuity, and gaming the system) that say that amazing things are happening.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    If you think: - only 1% of people are happy - they are happy because they are lucky - every happy person is a propagandist You need immediate recalibration of your worldview. You only live once, and you ought to be happy. People managed to be happy throughout human history because it’s a skill. EDIT: I wanted to add that I meant the above in good faith and not as an attack. I used to be unhappy too. But I learnt: - every moment doesn't need to be hedonic bliss - life doesn't have to be easy - one's work doesn't need to meet all of one's needs ... and you can still be happy. Human beings are extremely tough and adaptable, but that is a capability that has to be exercised.
    - RHSman2 2y ago
      What we struggle with is emotions and removing them from who we are. It is very, very subtle but oh so simple (but not easy)
    - barrenko 2y ago
      this was so me.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - pjc50 2y ago
      "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". There is a bit of a problem with the Internet tending to amplify negative views, giving you the impression that everyone is unhappy - no, it's just that all the unhappy people are on the Internet all the time.
      - coldtea 2y ago
        Well, there are also the polls and official stats putting depression, unhappiness, and loneliness, at record levels... Here's major depression - and that's as diagnosed and treated: "An estimated 21.0 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 8.3% of all U.S. adults"
082349872349872 2y ago
That's odd: during my K-12 I had believed (encouraged by MAD magazine?) that school was where we learned how to find meaning in life, despite spending large chunks of it in granfalloons paying (just enough) attention to things other people have deemed Important?
- doubled112 2y ago
  Interesting. Where did you do your K-12? Maybe you had better role models. It seemed to be mostly about beating the individualism out of us, and memorizing some facts on things we didn't care about. Make sure you go to university or you'll be a bum.
- hobs 2y ago
  I definitely got the opposite impression from MAD, it was pillorying everything in life including education.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    Exactly: the take I got from MAD is that the lesson Education teaches is not what it claims to be teaching, but how to survive, if not thrive, between the lines of a bureaucracy. If you manage to live despite the machine in K-12 (when the bureaucracy is at its strongest), then it's all downhill later in life, when you could actually spend time in a karass or two, and at least get more and more control over what you're doing, when, and with whom.
bowsamic 2y ago
The thing is that in the past, the "non-useful" work (e.g. intellectual work) was often backed up by a philosophical and religious system. Now there is no sacredness to Reason or to science. In a totally secular worldview (I'm an atheist myself) there isn't an inherent value to doing that kind of work.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  To be fair, philosophers and religious figure throughout history have struggled with "acedia"[1]; which seems very much like something we'd call burnout today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    Yeah I don't think that burnout is a modern problem at all. But I think that I can point to certain aspects in modern society that cause it that may not have been present before, such as the completely emphasis on utility over everything else, and a spiritual and philosophical desertification. I grew up in the UK which has the most extreme sense of "anything unproductive is useless". I completely failed my English oral test but because I was good at Maths and Science they just wrote "A" in my grade for GCSE English anyway. Who cares about humanities education (low wage, low GDP, likely unemployment) if you are good at Maths? Many people on this website will even swear there is no downside to foregoing an education in literature, philosophy, art, etc. We also don't have a liberal education at university: I studied physics and only physics for my entire university education. I sympathise with the article you posted. It's interesting that it has been historically considered a moral failure and even punished: > The Benedictine Rule directed that a monk displaying the outward signs of acedia should;– > "be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule so that the others may have fear." Much of my shame over burnout came from knowing it was sinful. I don't think letting go of that shame has helped, though.
- graemep 2y ago
  I think the problem is not a secular worldview per se (and I am a Christian myself) but a materialist secular worldview that encourages things like the hustle culture and the undervaluing of personal relationships and community.
dartos 2y ago
I don’t think that is always the case. I worked at a company making project management software and, although in the grand scheme of things the product wasn’t meaningful, I enjoyed working on it until the company tripled in size and I was fixing bugs for enterprise support team number 3. I like making things. People find satisfaction in toy making as well (especially at nerf, from what I hear), even though toys are not inherently meaningful. What killed it for me was realizing that my individual contributions didn’t affect anything with the product.
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  Toys are very meaningful. Play and entertainment bring joy which is highly valued by people.
  - revscat 2y ago
    Maybe on a market/profit level. On an interpersonal level, though, joy is not valued. If someone feels that you are expressing joy they are very likely to view you less than they did before. We find the expression of joy to be distasteful and childish, and culturally are disdainful towards it. Only cynicism and stoicism are acceptable.
    - dwaltrip 2y ago
      This doesn’t match my experience of the world. Also, who gives a fuck if someone else looks down on you for being happy? Let them wallow in their own misery and judgment. You don’t need their approval. Live for yourself and not for others. P.S. You might be surprised to find out what they are actually thinking. It’s usually not what you imagined.
      - revscat 2y ago
        > Live for yourself and not for others That makes for a very lonely life. > surprised to find The surprise has come because what they are thinking is, in fact that expressions of joy make them respect you less. They hide it, but only for so long. You don’t get to express joy to family or friends or partners. They will have less respect for you. You do not get to be an adult man and feel joy about anything. You certainly don’t get to express it.
jc6 2y ago
Not only that, the rate of change is increasing or speeding up. Brains are not really capable of handling constant change. There is much more to learn. There are more unknowns. And there is much more competition. If you take competitive sports and look at size of support stuff its ridiculous these days compared to 20 years back. There is coach, physio, shrink, nutritionist, biz manager, social media manager etc So now extrapolate and imagine what things will look like 10 years or 20 years from now on the that trend line. Its just not sustainable. People have to think about rate of change in the environment that surrounds us.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Very useful comment: the rate of change is just as important as the nature of the change. Hence why the change through evolution in the biosphere is generally much more stable that the change brought upon us by technological innovation.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  > Its just not sustainable. Everything feels like that all the time. And yet we constantly find ourselves 10 years down the line, with years of exponential growth piled on top, and some post-Malthusian explanation of how "actually it is sustainable if we just keep pushing through and believe in progress". I'm not saying this or that _is_ sustainable, just that the point people declare it "unsustainable" is often only the beginning. It's a (mis)perception David Goggins speaks of a lot - about just how much deeper an organism can dig in crisis, or how low our pain/risk thresholds are set. Maybe we unconsciously factor that in. Personally I think that's reckless and we are better heeding warning signs. But if we'd done that in 1970 climate change wouldn't be a thing, right.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Well, so far we have proof of unsustainability: we've already raised the extinction rate of species hundreds of times the background rate. So, already unsustainable.
coldtea 2y ago
>I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. Especially since a lot of them are not. It's often corporations acting as middlemen and extracting value like parasites, bussiness making bullshit for conspicuous consumption, modern mega-bloated bureaucracy and busy work
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  How is consumption not meaningful?
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    It is meaningful but it is often pushed to artificial extremes and used to replace more meaningful things that we once had.
  - 127 2y ago
    In the same way digging ditches and then filling them up isn't meaningful. Creating things that last for a year or two, creating food that leaves you hungry, drinks that leave you thirsty. Designing things just to create work instead of value.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    I think that they are talking specifically about conspicuous consumption. That is: consuming things just to display to society that you have the resources to consume them.
- brookst 2y ago
  Was it ever any different? I’m very skeptical that there was ever a time when the average person did personally meaningful and constructive work. I think we all have this sense that life should be nothing but personal fulfillment, and anything getting in the way of that is a problem. And maybe it’s even true that that’s how things “should” be, but I really don’t think it ever has been.
  - 2y ago
nullindividual 2y ago
> I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. Most of our jobs are not meaningful. They'll carry no impact beyond our tenure, the company's existence, and so on. Most don't help society in any form or fashion, sans generating revenue.
- parpfish 2y ago
  when i'm feeling down about the meaninglessness of my company/work, i try to find small wins wherever i can. someday you'll be stuck untangling a giant muddy ball of legacy code to help a company solve a problem that you don't care about (or even arguably makes the world worse). but just re-scope your expectations and realize that "hey, i made life a little easier for some of your coworkers by fixing some annoying things
- chasd00 2y ago
  One thing you can do is think about having a meaningful life instead of job. Your job doesn't have to be meaningful in order to have a meaningful life.
macNchz 2y ago
In the same vein, I was thinking recently about how this ever increasing number of “abstraction layers” in the economy impacts day to day life and community–I think it’s much more likely someone would feel connected to their community and a sense of purpose in life if they, for example, worked out of their own small bakery and met their customers all day, versus working in the back room of a corporate chain supermarket making minimum wage. We seem to be losing things that anchor our communities together, and I wonder if being directly dependent on other people in the community, as opposed to indirectly through layers of bigger, abstract businesses, isn’t one. There are obvious myriad and complex reasons we’ve arrived where we are, but it’s an interesting topic to ponder. I’ve also thought this shift could be responsible for other societal phenomena: it’s fairly well known that some portion of people are pretty awful to the people working in shops or restaurants. Is this perhaps a behavior that only really develops in a world where people rarely visit owner-operated businesses (where they might face consequences for treating the owner poorly)?
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  It's helped me a lot to move to a small town that is thriving near a big city, then volunteer on ambulance and firefighting. I see my neighbors every day when they most need help. I get to show up and give them a helping hand. In just two years I've met so many people and made so many friends. It helps to feel like I'm doing something valuable to society and not just fixing the validation on an input form for the 1000th time. I feel deeply connected to my neighbors now in a way that I never would have imagined. It also breaks up the day to get to run down for a call, and not just be stuck behind a keyboard all day. Sometimes I'll go work from the station, which has great AC and WiFi.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Likewise, I’ve become a parent and moved into a small community and it feels a lot better for sure. Im still ball tied to a corpo for a living but even that seems to have got somewhat more bearable by being part of some community.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments. That's not that abstract to me, and it certainly feels meaningful.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments. I feel that is not a logical conclusion. What if someone paid a hitman to kill their boss because they got into a fight with them and they aren't emotionally stable enough to have a discussion? Yes, an extreme example, but consider this: not every increase in perceived value is necessarily good.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
    An extreme example indeed, and a heinous one, which is probably why contact killings are so rare and so expensive. My key operating words of "on average" and "over the long term" are in full effect here. I direct interested readers to David Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_ for some worked examples of how capitalism might minimize such actions from taking place.
- sentimentscan 2y ago
  They can pay because they had make a mistake or don't have a knowledge. For example I was working with a team of 6 creating a project for a bank that was discontinued after 3 months, without any reason and code was simply deleted.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Just substitute money for tubers. Hunter Gatherer: collect nuts, tubers, kill some bison. Modern Man: get the money, collect some skills, fire some underlings. Maybe our brain has adapted those base instincts. And modern burn out is more equivalent to what early man would experience in a famine, during times of scarcity. If you can't get the money, you starve. Burn Out is the Modern Man equivalent to the stress the Early Man would feel in a harsh environment and near starving.
koonsolo 2y ago
I highly doubt it. Look at artists, what they do can hardly be described as "survival" or "productive". Yet they seem to get a great amount of joy from their work. Even if no other person cares.

amunozo 2y ago

I find this specially true in "passion-drive" jobs like research. I am doing a PhD and this is so true in so many levels.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
I got a PhD myself. And I think it's definitely at least partially true: I was told flat-out that I should stick to big-business style research (i.e. research areas with large, complex and directed research plans) and forget following my own curiosity. Of course, once you get tenure in places where it exists or you make it, you can deviate from that. It's even worse in industry, where I worked after academia. I felt like I was using 5% of my brain to do things I was bored to death with. This isn't just me either: many of the people I've worked with feel the same, including virtually all my fellow PhD students. I feel like the only thing keeping it going is the novelty of working in new places, meeting new people, and getting new projects. It's almost as if we have a basal attraction to novelty because it's a survival instinct, but we have distilled life so that novelty is the only thing left, stripped of substance long ago when we traded thought for automation. Of course, it's even harder to see it because we have "propagandists" (i.e. then 1% of people who have carved out a protective bubble for themselves due to a combination of luck, ingenuity, and gaming the system) that say that amazing things are happening.
- FredPret 2y ago
  If you think: - only 1% of people are happy - they are happy because they are lucky - every happy person is a propagandist You need immediate recalibration of your worldview. You only live once, and you ought to be happy. People managed to be happy throughout human history because it’s a skill. EDIT: I wanted to add that I meant the above in good faith and not as an attack. I used to be unhappy too. But I learnt: - every moment doesn't need to be hedonic bliss - life doesn't have to be easy - one's work doesn't need to meet all of one's needs ... and you can still be happy. Human beings are extremely tough and adaptable, but that is a capability that has to be exercised.
  - RHSman2 2y ago
    What we struggle with is emotions and removing them from who we are. It is very, very subtle but oh so simple (but not easy)
  - barrenko 2y ago
    this was so me.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjc50 2y ago
    "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". There is a bit of a problem with the Internet tending to amplify negative views, giving you the impression that everyone is unhappy - no, it's just that all the unhappy people are on the Internet all the time.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      Well, there are also the polls and official stats putting depression, unhappiness, and loneliness, at record levels... Here's major depression - and that's as diagnosed and treated: "An estimated 21.0 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 8.3% of all U.S. adults"

082349872349872 2y ago

That's odd: during my K-12 I had believed (encouraged by MAD magazine?) that school was where we learned how to find meaning in life, despite spending large chunks of it in granfalloons paying (just enough) attention to things other people have deemed Important?

doubled112 2y ago
Interesting. Where did you do your K-12? Maybe you had better role models. It seemed to be mostly about beating the individualism out of us, and memorizing some facts on things we didn't care about. Make sure you go to university or you'll be a bum.
hobs 2y ago
I definitely got the opposite impression from MAD, it was pillorying everything in life including education.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Exactly: the take I got from MAD is that the lesson Education teaches is not what it claims to be teaching, but how to survive, if not thrive, between the lines of a bureaucracy. If you manage to live despite the machine in K-12 (when the bureaucracy is at its strongest), then it's all downhill later in life, when you could actually spend time in a karass or two, and at least get more and more control over what you're doing, when, and with whom.

bowsamic 2y ago

The thing is that in the past, the "non-useful" work (e.g. intellectual work) was often backed up by a philosophical and religious system. Now there is no sacredness to Reason or to science. In a totally secular worldview (I'm an atheist myself) there isn't an inherent value to doing that kind of work.

marginalia_nu 2y ago
To be fair, philosophers and religious figure throughout history have struggled with "acedia"[1]; which seems very much like something we'd call burnout today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Yeah I don't think that burnout is a modern problem at all. But I think that I can point to certain aspects in modern society that cause it that may not have been present before, such as the completely emphasis on utility over everything else, and a spiritual and philosophical desertification. I grew up in the UK which has the most extreme sense of "anything unproductive is useless". I completely failed my English oral test but because I was good at Maths and Science they just wrote "A" in my grade for GCSE English anyway. Who cares about humanities education (low wage, low GDP, likely unemployment) if you are good at Maths? Many people on this website will even swear there is no downside to foregoing an education in literature, philosophy, art, etc. We also don't have a liberal education at university: I studied physics and only physics for my entire university education. I sympathise with the article you posted. It's interesting that it has been historically considered a moral failure and even punished: > The Benedictine Rule directed that a monk displaying the outward signs of acedia should;– > "be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule so that the others may have fear." Much of my shame over burnout came from knowing it was sinful. I don't think letting go of that shame has helped, though.
graemep 2y ago
I think the problem is not a secular worldview per se (and I am a Christian myself) but a materialist secular worldview that encourages things like the hustle culture and the undervaluing of personal relationships and community.

dartos 2y ago

I don’t think that is always the case. I worked at a company making project management software and, although in the grand scheme of things the product wasn’t meaningful, I enjoyed working on it until the company tripled in size and I was fixing bugs for enterprise support team number 3. I like making things. People find satisfaction in toy making as well (especially at nerf, from what I hear), even though toys are not inherently meaningful. What killed it for me was realizing that my individual contributions didn’t affect anything with the product.

ericjmorey 2y ago
Toys are very meaningful. Play and entertainment bring joy which is highly valued by people.
- revscat 2y ago
  Maybe on a market/profit level. On an interpersonal level, though, joy is not valued. If someone feels that you are expressing joy they are very likely to view you less than they did before. We find the expression of joy to be distasteful and childish, and culturally are disdainful towards it. Only cynicism and stoicism are acceptable.
  - dwaltrip 2y ago
    This doesn’t match my experience of the world. Also, who gives a fuck if someone else looks down on you for being happy? Let them wallow in their own misery and judgment. You don’t need their approval. Live for yourself and not for others. P.S. You might be surprised to find out what they are actually thinking. It’s usually not what you imagined.
    - revscat 2y ago
      > Live for yourself and not for others That makes for a very lonely life. > surprised to find The surprise has come because what they are thinking is, in fact that expressions of joy make them respect you less. They hide it, but only for so long. You don’t get to express joy to family or friends or partners. They will have less respect for you. You do not get to be an adult man and feel joy about anything. You certainly don’t get to express it.

jc6 2y ago

Not only that, the rate of change is increasing or speeding up. Brains are not really capable of handling constant change. There is much more to learn. There are more unknowns. And there is much more competition. If you take competitive sports and look at size of support stuff its ridiculous these days compared to 20 years back. There is coach, physio, shrink, nutritionist, biz manager, social media manager etc So now extrapolate and imagine what things will look like 10 years or 20 years from now on the that trend line. Its just not sustainable. People have to think about rate of change in the environment that surrounds us.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
Very useful comment: the rate of change is just as important as the nature of the change. Hence why the change through evolution in the biosphere is generally much more stable that the change brought upon us by technological innovation.
nonrandomstring 2y ago
> Its just not sustainable. Everything feels like that all the time. And yet we constantly find ourselves 10 years down the line, with years of exponential growth piled on top, and some post-Malthusian explanation of how "actually it is sustainable if we just keep pushing through and believe in progress". I'm not saying this or that _is_ sustainable, just that the point people declare it "unsustainable" is often only the beginning. It's a (mis)perception David Goggins speaks of a lot - about just how much deeper an organism can dig in crisis, or how low our pain/risk thresholds are set. Maybe we unconsciously factor that in. Personally I think that's reckless and we are better heeding warning signs. But if we'd done that in 1970 climate change wouldn't be a thing, right.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Well, so far we have proof of unsustainability: we've already raised the extinction rate of species hundreds of times the background rate. So, already unsustainable.

coldtea 2y ago

>I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. Especially since a lot of them are not. It's often corporations acting as middlemen and extracting value like parasites, bussiness making bullshit for conspicuous consumption, modern mega-bloated bureaucracy and busy work

ericjmorey 2y ago
How is consumption not meaningful?
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  It is meaningful but it is often pushed to artificial extremes and used to replace more meaningful things that we once had.
- 127 2y ago
  In the same way digging ditches and then filling them up isn't meaningful. Creating things that last for a year or two, creating food that leaves you hungry, drinks that leave you thirsty. Designing things just to create work instead of value.
- harimau777 2y ago
  I think that they are talking specifically about conspicuous consumption. That is: consuming things just to display to society that you have the resources to consume them.
brookst 2y ago
Was it ever any different? I’m very skeptical that there was ever a time when the average person did personally meaningful and constructive work. I think we all have this sense that life should be nothing but personal fulfillment, and anything getting in the way of that is a problem. And maybe it’s even true that that’s how things “should” be, but I really don’t think it ever has been.
- 2y ago

nullindividual 2y ago

> I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. Most of our jobs are not meaningful. They'll carry no impact beyond our tenure, the company's existence, and so on. Most don't help society in any form or fashion, sans generating revenue.

parpfish 2y ago
when i'm feeling down about the meaninglessness of my company/work, i try to find small wins wherever i can. someday you'll be stuck untangling a giant muddy ball of legacy code to help a company solve a problem that you don't care about (or even arguably makes the world worse). but just re-scope your expectations and realize that "hey, i made life a little easier for some of your coworkers by fixing some annoying things
chasd00 2y ago
One thing you can do is think about having a meaningful life instead of job. Your job doesn't have to be meaningful in order to have a meaningful life.

macNchz 2y ago

In the same vein, I was thinking recently about how this ever increasing number of “abstraction layers” in the economy impacts day to day life and community–I think it’s much more likely someone would feel connected to their community and a sense of purpose in life if they, for example, worked out of their own small bakery and met their customers all day, versus working in the back room of a corporate chain supermarket making minimum wage. We seem to be losing things that anchor our communities together, and I wonder if being directly dependent on other people in the community, as opposed to indirectly through layers of bigger, abstract businesses, isn’t one. There are obvious myriad and complex reasons we’ve arrived where we are, but it’s an interesting topic to ponder. I’ve also thought this shift could be responsible for other societal phenomena: it’s fairly well known that some portion of people are pretty awful to the people working in shops or restaurants. Is this perhaps a behavior that only really develops in a world where people rarely visit owner-operated businesses (where they might face consequences for treating the owner poorly)?

JackMorgan 2y ago
It's helped me a lot to move to a small town that is thriving near a big city, then volunteer on ambulance and firefighting. I see my neighbors every day when they most need help. I get to show up and give them a helping hand. In just two years I've met so many people and made so many friends. It helps to feel like I'm doing something valuable to society and not just fixing the validation on an input form for the 1000th time. I feel deeply connected to my neighbors now in a way that I never would have imagined. It also breaks up the day to get to run down for a call, and not just be stuck behind a keyboard all day. Sometimes I'll go work from the station, which has great AC and WiFi.
- grugagag 2y ago
  Likewise, I’ve become a parent and moved into a small community and it feels a lot better for sure. Im still ball tied to a corpo for a living but even that seems to have got somewhat more bearable by being part of some community.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments. That's not that abstract to me, and it certainly feels meaningful.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
> Womeone is paying me to do a thing. Therefore, what I'm doing must, at least on average and over the long term, be so valuable to some number of people that it's worth continuing those payments. I feel that is not a logical conclusion. What if someone paid a hitman to kill their boss because they got into a fight with them and they aren't emotionally stable enough to have a discussion? Yes, an extreme example, but consider this: not every increase in perceived value is necessarily good.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  An extreme example indeed, and a heinous one, which is probably why contact killings are so rare and so expensive. My key operating words of "on average" and "over the long term" are in full effect here. I direct interested readers to David Friedman's _The Machinery of Freedom_ for some worked examples of how capitalism might minimize such actions from taking place.
sentimentscan 2y ago
They can pay because they had make a mistake or don't have a knowledge. For example I was working with a team of 6 creating a project for a bank that was discontinued after 3 months, without any reason and code was simply deleted.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Just substitute money for tubers. Hunter Gatherer: collect nuts, tubers, kill some bison. Modern Man: get the money, collect some skills, fire some underlings. Maybe our brain has adapted those base instincts. And modern burn out is more equivalent to what early man would experience in a famine, during times of scarcity. If you can't get the money, you starve. Burn Out is the Modern Man equivalent to the stress the Early Man would feel in a harsh environment and near starving.

koonsolo 2y ago

I highly doubt it. Look at artists, what they do can hardly be described as "survival" or "productive". Yet they seem to get a great amount of joy from their work. Even if no other person cares.