6 ms·

> This, to paraphrase Portlandia, is one of the dreams of the ’90s — that our work selves and our true natures could be one and the same. I have always wanted

> This, to paraphrase Portlandia, is one of the dreams of the ’90s — that our work selves and our true natures could be one and the same. I have always wanted to achieve this (to no avail so far). To live for something bigger. To be pushed to use my talents in full. To evolve without stop and throw away the old self without hesitance. These three to me are arguably the important characteristics of a true human-being. They (and some other characteristics) tell humans from animals. It may sound like, but is not, workaholism. Workaholism is escapism. Workaholism, like alcoholism, roots from a certain sad history one wants to avoid. This is not workaholism, but a conscious pursuit of perfection, of "Godhood", as one may say as an atheist.

j4coh 2y ago
Even Epsilons can be useful in this brave new world of finding purpose through your job.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Kifflom!
MomsAVoxell 2y ago
You will be a functioning part of an egregore whether you like it or not!
trhway 2y ago
>To be pushed to use my talents in full. To evolve without stop and throw away the old self without hesitance. These three to me are arguably the important characteristics of a true human-being. They (and some other characteristics) tell humans from animals. A wolf walking half the Europe or an Arctic fox crossing the Arctic, and you think you have the drive to push, to evolve and to throw away the old self.
voidhorse 2y ago
Unfortunately, wage labor as our primary labor structure has a tendency to produce Severance far more frequently than it does a meaningful marriage between work and personal purpose. There are a lot of people that argue that if you were to eliminate wage labor, and distribute goods as equally as possible or at least take care of basic needs for free through universal income or some other means that people would get lazy and stop working...but it's not true. As your post illustrates, working and producing is just as essential of an aspect of human life as consuming is—people want to produce, they just want it to be meaningful! They want to work on stuff that aligns with their own interests and beliefs. Ironically the people that claim that this isn't the case are probably the few that actually would prefer to never work (they want to keep wage labor in place so that they can extract capital from laborers while they relax and "lead" instead of produce themselves).
- jajko 2y ago
  You should travel around the world (or even your own country) a bit more. There is a lot of such people in various cultures and places, but you won't see them if living in any sort of success bubble (ie SV). One of main reasons communism always failed - it never took this basic human nature into account, rather working with some idolized Star trekkish human with strong desire to work on bettering oneself and society, incorruptible, not selfish at all and so on.
  - voidhorse 2y ago
    Sure, but you do realize the alternative is basically to impose artificial scarcity to force people to work for their survival and do jobs that they don't want. I can't see how that is at all morally superior to communism, or how it is any less of a capitulation to the worse tendencies of human nature (hoarding resources for yourself, imposing destitution upon others to get them to do what you want, believing other people are worthless and lazy and that you alone have the wherewithal to be a true hard working human and thus you deserve the extra capital you extract). All these arguments about "human nature" are bogus. Back then we were not as technologically advanced as we are today. Today we effectively have the means to ensure the goods of society are evenly distributed as a baseline and we also have the means to effect that distribution (think that's not true? Look at amazon. It is basically a privatized version of this idea). The thing holding us back today are these straw man bs arguments that point to ghouls and ghosts like "human nature" and "lazy people" that try to argue that the degradation of society is a natural consequence of equality. No. It isn't. You are witnessing the degradation of society in some countries right now and in almost every case it is because they are grossly unequal and people hoard resources for themselves.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > the alternative is basically to impose artificial scarcity to force people to work No, the alternative is reality: people pay each other to do things they want done and for things they want to buy from them. There's no artificial scarcity. There's a vast amount of intricate, well-priced effort to reduce or remove scarcity.
stevenae 2y ago
This still strikes me as escapism.
- narratives1 2y ago
  What are you escaping from in this case?
  - fullshark 2y ago
    Awareness of your mortality
    - sershe 2y ago
      You have to do something with your life anyway, right? I always envied people who have a calling they are good at and work on essentially until they die (especially in academia and art), since I'm not sure if I have one and if I do (designing 4x God sim games?) I'm unlikely to be paid for it even if I was good, which is itself also unlikely. Then there's also the case where following your passion is near impossible without a large organization, anything from space to medicine. But even forgetting all that, there is no reason engineering challenges, team dynamics and sense of accomplishment at a work project can't be higher than for the personal projects you'd do by yourself. Granted, most jobs aren't like that (for myself or for most people) but some of my most challenging and exciting projects were at work. If you're gonna spend time until you die doing tech things you might as well get paid for it. The less you need the latter the pickier you can be, with your own thing becoming /another option/ at some point.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
You might find "Laborem Exercens"[0] a good read. [0] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...

j4coh 2y ago

Even Epsilons can be useful in this brave new world of finding purpose through your job.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Kifflom!

MomsAVoxell 2y ago

You will be a functioning part of an egregore whether you like it or not!

trhway 2y ago

>To be pushed to use my talents in full. To evolve without stop and throw away the old self without hesitance. These three to me are arguably the important characteristics of a true human-being. They (and some other characteristics) tell humans from animals. A wolf walking half the Europe or an Arctic fox crossing the Arctic, and you think you have the drive to push, to evolve and to throw away the old self.

voidhorse 2y ago

Unfortunately, wage labor as our primary labor structure has a tendency to produce Severance far more frequently than it does a meaningful marriage between work and personal purpose. There are a lot of people that argue that if you were to eliminate wage labor, and distribute goods as equally as possible or at least take care of basic needs for free through universal income or some other means that people would get lazy and stop working...but it's not true. As your post illustrates, working and producing is just as essential of an aspect of human life as consuming is—people want to produce, they just want it to be meaningful! They want to work on stuff that aligns with their own interests and beliefs. Ironically the people that claim that this isn't the case are probably the few that actually would prefer to never work (they want to keep wage labor in place so that they can extract capital from laborers while they relax and "lead" instead of produce themselves).

jajko 2y ago
You should travel around the world (or even your own country) a bit more. There is a lot of such people in various cultures and places, but you won't see them if living in any sort of success bubble (ie SV). One of main reasons communism always failed - it never took this basic human nature into account, rather working with some idolized Star trekkish human with strong desire to work on bettering oneself and society, incorruptible, not selfish at all and so on.
- voidhorse 2y ago
  Sure, but you do realize the alternative is basically to impose artificial scarcity to force people to work for their survival and do jobs that they don't want. I can't see how that is at all morally superior to communism, or how it is any less of a capitulation to the worse tendencies of human nature (hoarding resources for yourself, imposing destitution upon others to get them to do what you want, believing other people are worthless and lazy and that you alone have the wherewithal to be a true hard working human and thus you deserve the extra capital you extract). All these arguments about "human nature" are bogus. Back then we were not as technologically advanced as we are today. Today we effectively have the means to ensure the goods of society are evenly distributed as a baseline and we also have the means to effect that distribution (think that's not true? Look at amazon. It is basically a privatized version of this idea). The thing holding us back today are these straw man bs arguments that point to ghouls and ghosts like "human nature" and "lazy people" that try to argue that the degradation of society is a natural consequence of equality. No. It isn't. You are witnessing the degradation of society in some countries right now and in almost every case it is because they are grossly unequal and people hoard resources for themselves.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > the alternative is basically to impose artificial scarcity to force people to work No, the alternative is reality: people pay each other to do things they want done and for things they want to buy from them. There's no artificial scarcity. There's a vast amount of intricate, well-priced effort to reduce or remove scarcity.

stevenae 2y ago

This still strikes me as escapism.

narratives1 2y ago
What are you escaping from in this case?
- fullshark 2y ago
  Awareness of your mortality
  - sershe 2y ago
    You have to do something with your life anyway, right? I always envied people who have a calling they are good at and work on essentially until they die (especially in academia and art), since I'm not sure if I have one and if I do (designing 4x God sim games?) I'm unlikely to be paid for it even if I was good, which is itself also unlikely. Then there's also the case where following your passion is near impossible without a large organization, anything from space to medicine. But even forgetting all that, there is no reason engineering challenges, team dynamics and sense of accomplishment at a work project can't be higher than for the personal projects you'd do by yourself. Granted, most jobs aren't like that (for myself or for most people) but some of my most challenging and exciting projects were at work. If you're gonna spend time until you die doing tech things you might as well get paid for it. The less you need the latter the pickier you can be, with your own thing becoming /another option/ at some point.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

You might find "Laborem Exercens"[0] a good read. [0] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...