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Most work is meaningless, increasing clicks, increasing engagement, etc Unless you are curing cancer, fighting companies doing bad things, etc many jobs are ve

by b3ing 2y ago

Most work is meaningless, increasing clicks, increasing engagement, etc Unless you are curing cancer, fighting companies doing bad things, etc many jobs are very far removed from any meaning. But does life have meaning, you need to answer that yourself first

abid786 2y ago
Even if you’re curing cancer a lot of the actual work you do is pretty meaningless
vouaobrasil 2y ago
To be honest, in a way, even fighting cancer can seem meaningless. Of course, on a small scale, it is meaningful because it helps people. But on a larger scale, one could argue that we have traded a fulfilling life where we have purpose for a technologically-enslaved one. And in this enslaved one, we are locked in cages and eating/breathing so much artificial chemicals that have actually increased the cancer rate for some kinds of cancers [1]. Thus, fighting cancer is really just making a small correction to a fundamentally unsustainable system to allow the unsustainable system to appear less harmful, but in reality it becomes just less harmful per unit time so that the harm accumulates in later generations. (Lower risk of cancer means lower perceived risk of polluting and hence less backlash against polluting that eventually accumulates so high that the risk becomes even greater than before the medical amelioration of cancer rates.) Thus, I think one must go beyond mere cut-and-dried solutions to find meaning in life. One must figure out what is right and go towards that as best as you can, even if in reality one may never reach that point. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-020-00670-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-020-00670-2
sameoldtune 2y ago
“Does life have meaning” is an nonsense question. You can choose to attach meaning to your actions and your environment. Anecdotally, doing so is very rewarding. You could say the very definition of “rewarding” demands that meaning of some kind exist, so to have a rewarding life you have to make some kind of value structure and then stick to it. Religious people are actually very good at this and can be learned from. For example I’ve learned about all the plants in my area and now taking a walk is very rich in meaning. How are the birches doing this year? Which roses bloom first? When will the fig tree on 23rd and main be ripe? These are only interesting questions to someone who values plant life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that outlines how “quality” and “caring” are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have anything of quality including your existence unless you care about it. A Maserati is just another car if you don’t know how to drive. Wrt/ work, having a “meaningless” job is one in which your actions aren’t tied to any of your value structures. Maybe the answer is to make more values. But jobs today seem more disconnected, remote, isolated, fungible, and temporary than in the recent past. This is likely to make us as a culture more anxious, closed off, cynical, and defeated. And that is a tragedy.
jakobnissen 2y ago
But most people don't work increasing clicks. Most people are waitresses, cooks, nurses, policemen, trash collectors, truckers, masons, and such. Maybe there is just a lot of bullshit in communications-based work, including IT
dukeyukey 2y ago
Going by the jobs of my closest friends: One works on increasing clicks, or rather driving traffic to an admittedly important website. One is a librarian, and does Kids Storytime. One keeps streaming infrastructure for a major broadcaster alive. One works at a famous zoo. One is a nurse. Out of all of them, only the first could really be meaningless.
badpun 2y ago
...in coding. Coding jobs by neccessity are about adding new functionalities, and most of the useful stuff has been written already. So now, whether you're coding for a power plant, a yogurt factory, a bank, or Amazon, you're probably working on some far-fetched idea sold by PM to higher-ups in hopes of improving their career. But, there are other kinds of jobs, and many are far from meaningless. There are still many millions of people working everyday to make sure basic services are available to people.
constantcrying 2y ago
The kind of work the article means is where there is no measurable impact to the work done. These jobs are easily found in large bureaucracies where a wide range of activities exist just so that they are performed, but nobody would notice it if they weren't performed.

by b3ing 2y ago

abid786 2y ago

Even if you’re curing cancer a lot of the actual work you do is pretty meaningless

vouaobrasil 2y ago

To be honest, in a way, even fighting cancer can seem meaningless. Of course, on a small scale, it is meaningful because it helps people. But on a larger scale, one could argue that we have traded a fulfilling life where we have purpose for a technologically-enslaved one. And in this enslaved one, we are locked in cages and eating/breathing so much artificial chemicals that have actually increased the cancer rate for some kinds of cancers [1]. Thus, fighting cancer is really just making a small correction to a fundamentally unsustainable system to allow the unsustainable system to appear less harmful, but in reality it becomes just less harmful per unit time so that the harm accumulates in later generations. (Lower risk of cancer means lower perceived risk of polluting and hence less backlash against polluting that eventually accumulates so high that the risk becomes even greater than before the medical amelioration of cancer rates.) Thus, I think one must go beyond mere cut-and-dried solutions to find meaning in life. One must figure out what is right and go towards that as best as you can, even if in reality one may never reach that point. [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-020-00670-2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-020-00670-2

sameoldtune 2y ago

“Does life have meaning” is an nonsense question. You can choose to attach meaning to your actions and your environment. Anecdotally, doing so is very rewarding. You could say the very definition of “rewarding” demands that meaning of some kind exist, so to have a rewarding life you have to make some kind of value structure and then stick to it. Religious people are actually very good at this and can be learned from. For example I’ve learned about all the plants in my area and now taking a walk is very rich in meaning. How are the birches doing this year? Which roses bloom first? When will the fig tree on 23rd and main be ripe? These are only interesting questions to someone who values plant life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that outlines how “quality” and “caring” are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have anything of quality including your existence unless you care about it. A Maserati is just another car if you don’t know how to drive. Wrt/ work, having a “meaningless” job is one in which your actions aren’t tied to any of your value structures. Maybe the answer is to make more values. But jobs today seem more disconnected, remote, isolated, fungible, and temporary than in the recent past. This is likely to make us as a culture more anxious, closed off, cynical, and defeated. And that is a tragedy.

jakobnissen 2y ago

But most people don't work increasing clicks. Most people are waitresses, cooks, nurses, policemen, trash collectors, truckers, masons, and such. Maybe there is just a lot of bullshit in communications-based work, including IT

dukeyukey 2y ago

Going by the jobs of my closest friends: One works on increasing clicks, or rather driving traffic to an admittedly important website. One is a librarian, and does Kids Storytime. One keeps streaming infrastructure for a major broadcaster alive. One works at a famous zoo. One is a nurse. Out of all of them, only the first could really be meaningless.

badpun 2y ago

...in coding. Coding jobs by neccessity are about adding new functionalities, and most of the useful stuff has been written already. So now, whether you're coding for a power plant, a yogurt factory, a bank, or Amazon, you're probably working on some far-fetched idea sold by PM to higher-ups in hopes of improving their career. But, there are other kinds of jobs, and many are far from meaningless. There are still many millions of people working everyday to make sure basic services are available to people.

constantcrying 2y ago

The kind of work the article means is where there is no measurable impact to the work done. These jobs are easily found in large bureaucracies where a wide range of activities exist just so that they are performed, but nobody would notice it if they weren't performed.