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One of the biggest views I see in my parents and grandparents: work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are

One of the biggest views I see in my parents and grandparents: work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure. This is really hard to respond to, especially with people who have spent 50 years working with this mindset, because they feel "invalidated" or "worthless" if their life's worth isn't measured by their work output. I don't think that's necessarily a "bad" world view to have, especially if it pushes you to provide some social good that you wouldn't if you thought it was OK to be lazy. But I think it's harmful to impose that view on others. If you have no choice but to work or be discarded, then, when the value you can provide via work is less than that required to maintain your life, you have no choice but to attempt to indenture yourself. And failing that, you're truly, completely fucked. The purpose of entitlements ought to be (though currently aren't) to provide reassurance against a requirement to sell yourself to survive. And I truly believe, if we don't correct this failing of entitlements, then we will see mass indentured servitude (though it won't be called that), in developed countries, in my lifetime, of citizens of said country. Currently, we already see mass indentured servitude, but we say it's not that big a deal because [1] The indentured are immigrants [2] The indentured are in un-developed countries [3] The indentured are "ghetto", "whore", or "gangster", which is seen as pretty equivalent to [2]

vijayr 13y ago
work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure Regardless of age, I guess most people feel this way (not just the previous generations - even the people in their 20's and 30's today). What is the alternative to this? If not work - what is important? what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion?
- Ygg2 13y ago
  Which is completely opposite from Antic times, during which work was considered demeaning, because, hey we got slaves to do that stuff. Going out to the field and harvesting was looked upon same as now is rolling in shit. You could do it but highly degrading. Arts and philosophy were all the rage.
  - levosmetalo 13y ago
    Replace slaves with robots and machines, and that's pretty much the world I'd like to live on. Maybe Platonic state is not that far away after all.
    - knodi123 13y ago
      Interesting aside: The word "robot" comes from slavic "robota", meaning drudge work that a serf is forced to perform for his lord. It's funny that the word has evolved to mean "something which frees us from drudge work" instead. And "slave" came from "Slav", referring to a member of the slavic people, who in ancient times were frequently taken as slaves. I love etymology.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  This depends heavily on what you mean by work. If by work you mean a minimum wage job at a McDonalds or Walmart, that isn't exactly what I would call purpose and dignity. For a meaning of work that included intellectual/artistic exploration without a guarantee of economic return on investment, but excluded economically viable but degrading labor, I could agree.
  - vijayr 13y ago
    That's one way to look at it. I'm not disagreeing with it, but another way to look at it would be - any work that puts food on the table is work with purpose and dignity. Yet another (self centric?) way to look at it would be - if the job that I am doing helps me grow intellectually, emotionally etc then it is good work (regardless of whether it is useful to others/society or not). May be these questions would be more important in the future, where most of the boring/mundane jobs would be left to the robots. Then people can spend more time to work on things they like, and less time to work for money.
    - nbouscal 13y ago
      Fairly certain that most people would disagree with "any work that puts food on the table is work with purpose and dignity." Easy examples come to mind: prostitution, arms dealing, etc. The thing about usefulness to society is that we just don't need everyone to be useful anymore. Society will continue on perfectly fine even if half of the population contributes nothing at all, because of technology. The future is not so far away anymore, and societal change is very slow. These are the kind of questions we need to be thinking about now.
- Dewie 13y ago
  Family? At least that's what all those disgruntled workers keep saying. :P Life is meaningless. People just tend to disagree at what existential level it begins to become meaningless. But right now is not meaningless - we can choose to enjoy it. Whether that is by telling ourselves that we have a purpose and acting upon it, or by playing amateur tennis - what's the difference? In the grand scheme of things. Doctors have a purpose, but only because people are sick. Homeless shelters have a purpose, but only because there are homeless people. Soldiers have a purpose, but only because there are wars to fight. Workers have a purpose, but only because there is work to be done. Do people have a feeling of existential purpose only because there is some unfinished work that they can finish, some pain that they can alleviate, or something being a burden that they can take on their shoulders? If so, it's a good thing that Utopia can't become real. Because we wouldn't like it one bit.
  - Killah911 13y ago
    Life is meaningless to you... That's a whole another can of worms but a very interesting one nevertheless. While watching a documentary recently, I realized that my existential angst wasn't nearly as pronounced or debilitating when I was struggling to live day to day. Work sucked, really sucked, to the point that some days I'd almost wish I'd rather fallen gravely ill or died rather than go to work. But that was only some days. Harsh world, you do what you have to do mindset. One of the hardest adjustments to not necessarily having to work has been having to figure out the "why" and other existential angst. Yes, religion is a quick fix, but given enough free time, even that luxury may go away as one gets disillusioned with all the BS that goes with organized religion. The author of the article presents a very interesting conundrum indeed. As things get more efficient, there is more free time, more wealth to go around more "leisure" potential than ever before. But on a grander scale is that necessarily a good thing? Apparently some Chinese bureaucrat back in the old day actively decided against industrialization since people wouldn't have work to do. A modernist world clearly dehumanizes people, that's just an artifact of the system. Perhaps a world where labor is cheap and more and more people work helps maintain order and may somehow be more conducive to human happiness as opposed to lots of free time to realize that the system is crap and have war and chaos. (Yes, I know this is a bit hyperbolic). Personally, I'm really happy to not have to work crazy hours to be able to eat. I appreciate it. But I do see a lot of friends trying to come to terms with finding meaning in their lives, and not always with great results (had the unfortunate task to having to prepare a funeral for one in January). A very thought provoking article and certainly an insightful comment (though I am bit of wary of outright declarations of life's meaning or lack thereof)
- tambourine_man 13y ago
  what makes one person a success and another a failure Why not abandon the notion altogether? This is not a competition.
  - infruset 13y ago
    I think it is interesting that in French, this notion of a person being successful has no natural translation (although you can say it if you really want to) and it is something I never hear being mentioned.
  - infruset 13y ago
    I think it is interesting that in French, this notion of a person being successful has no natural translation (although you can say it if you really want to) and it is something I never hear being mentioned.
- yodsanklai 13y ago
  "If not work - what is important?" Family, traveling, learning things, playing sports, spending time with friends, love, and more generally having fun while we can. "what makes one person a success and another a failure" That's quite a binary view of the world! why do you want people to be either a success or a failure? even if that's you want, work is certainly not the only metric for that.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- atmosx 13y ago
  This man[1] didn't work much in his life, he mocked Alexander the Great[2] and it's pretty much famous for his views almost 2500 years after his death. It's quite an accomplishment given the fact that he chose to live as poor man in a very rich society. Aristotle also has stated that More than 3 hours work per day, equals slavery and I'm pretty sure Socrates would have argued that If you don't want to work you should not be working. Of course all these guys lived in the 4th century B.C.. With today's technology, people should not be working for food and rest. Seriously, the fact that there are people in whatever continent homeless and starving is a shame for our evolved society. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope [2] When Alexander the Great took over Athens. He wanted to visit the Wisest man in Athens and the tale (mythology I get) says that the oracle of Delphi (Pythia) had state a couple of years before that The wisest man in Athens is Diogenis of Sinore. Funny, given the fact that Plato was around at the time. So when Alexander went finally found Diogenis in his jar - a jar Diogenis used as a bed/home in the agora - said "Ask for anything and I shall grant it you!" and Diogenis supposedly responded with indifference "*Can you move on the left? You're hiding the sun." ... The answer of course has a deeper meaning, Alexander couldn't give him the sun... And the most famous student of Aristotle (Alexander) was quite impressed as he moved on the left.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    Aristotle also has stated that More than 3 hours work per day, equals slavery Yes, and he was perfectly happy to live comfortably by making use of the products of slaves' work. and I'm pretty sure Socrates would have argued that If you don't want to work you should not be working. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, since he, like Aristotle, was perfectly happy to live comfortably by making use of the products of slaves' work, and as far as I know, he never asked the slaves how they felt about it.
    - mitochondrion 13y ago
      If Zeus himself descends from Mount Olympus and says to you, "I am going to reestablish slavery in society. I will select slaves by lottery, and when it's all over most of the population will be held in the bonds of slavery. No one will remember a time before slavery. It will be as though it has always existed. I will never let slavery be abolished again. I give you, and you alone, the choice to be free or enslaved." Which do you choose?
- gutnor 13y ago
  If my wife didn't have to work for money, she would study archeology and "work" on processing the countless of archeological site that are laying around where she comes from. That would be work. There are plenty of things that people would do - I know of people that would take care of children, some that would teach, some that would code, some that would cook, ... However that's not work, "work" in our capitalistic societies has a specific economic meaning: a work is something that produce profit. So for example in education, you have that silly situation where there is a demand and offer, yet there is no teaching job because the optimal profitability has been reached at a level lower than optimal for people.
- fchollet 13y ago
  In my experience, producing things you care about, and doing so in a way that allows you to express yourself, is what gives meaning and purpose to your life, and what allows you to define who you are. Often, it does not qualify as "work", in that you won't receive money for it. Making Art would be the canonical example of this. But you actually find it in a many diverse things, from building a cool, unique app to solve a problem you care about, to building beautiful furniture for your house, to writing an essay explaining a view you care about, to elegantly solving a math problem that had been exciting your curiosity. What does not provide meaning and purpose to your life, is work with no room for self-expression, self-direction and self-definition. Most jobs done "for the money" fall into this category.
- imgabe 13y ago
  > what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion? These are the questions everyone has to answer for themselves ultimately. People like to go around praising everyone they believe to have succeeded and condemning everyone they believe to have failed, but you need to decide for yourself what the purpose of your life is. Otherwise you'll just end up chasing what everyone else believes.
- arca_vorago 13y ago
  "What is the alternative to this? If not work - what is important? what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion?" First, there is the definition of success. For any given species or individual of that species, simple survival is the first level of success. This includes basic shelter, food and water sources, and protection from dangers. Beyond that, once our more immediate needs are met, I think the next level of success is breeding. At one point, during my "Descartesian reset", I determined that throughout most of history, the primary purpose people had was to reproduce as a way to ensure their own well being in old age, but also as a sort of abstract, indirect immortality through their offspring. There is a reasons there are many cultures who still largely center around first-born. For many of the proletariat, the safety and security of offspring was ensured through numbers (high mortality rates in the past) and through work servitude that was seen not just as an exchange of labor and time for money, but as an exchange of labor and time as an investment in their offspring, with money only being a tool to that end. I think that, with the advancement of the arts and technology though, this otherwise ancient traditional model has been largely upended. Kings built castles, and Pharaoh's built pyramids, and other builders build structures that would last well past their deaths as their version of immortality, but normal people always were mostly just reproducing their dna. I think this is also why there is still so much reverence for glory and honor, particularly in battle, in that, if dying in a sufficiently glorious way, you are more likely to be remembered longer. Past that, at some point I sat down and made a list. Essentially it boiled down to things that have a lasting impact for the greatest number of people beyond my death. Things like art, architecture, scientific discovery, writing, actions taken, etc. I don't remember the entire list, but it was fairly expansive. The thing to keep in mind about all of these is the indirectness of their totality, that it to say a piece of art in itself may not actually be that big of a deal in the long term, but lets say that piece of art inspired another persons mind to do something great that they might not have had the inspiration to do otherwise. tldr; Essentially, I think it all boils down to humanity's ancient tradition of trying to cheat death, and the way we do that has been changing. To me, as an atheist, the afterlife isn't a place where I exist, per se, but is more like the butterfly effect of my consciousness upon the universe it experienced before it's having been extinguished. Of course, I'm hoping I can get my hands on a telomere regeneration mod to buy enough time to transplant my consciousness into a hopefully by then sufficient computer and kick off the singularity, but I digress. To answer your original question, it isn't the work in itself that gives purpose. It's that a purpose is found and then striven for through whichever means are available, which for most people is usually indentured wage slavery. Ergo, when an older generation sees not working as a lack of purpose, do not mistake it that they think the work gives purpose, but that the work supports an already existing purpose. (which for most of them was child-rearing)
- return0 13y ago
  Those are the classic middle class values. I guess as the west keeps getting richer the middle class will move more into upper class ethics. I m not upper class so I don't know how they occupy their minds, but in the 19th century they used to bother with traveling, archaeology, nature, science, philosophy, writing, and having affairs.
TausAmmer 13y ago
You need others to validate your beliefs, then impose your beliefs on others. So you can believe these made-up beliefs yourself. In rare cases you can believe yourself if no one agrees to you. How fragile we are as humans.
- icebraining 13y ago
  How fragile we are as humans. Compared to what?
esw 13y ago
Workers with this mindset also tend not to think of their jobs as an exchange of labor for money.
atmosx 13y ago
To impose any view on others is bad a priori, no matter what the view is.
- chc 13y ago
  Is this statement meant to be as ironic as it is? You're telling us that we must unquestioningly accept that telling people to unquestioningly accept our opinions is bad.
rayiner 13y ago
The problem I have with your viewpoint is that it's contrary to what we've seen empirically. Sub-cultures where people don't work, but have their basic needs met aren't exactly flourishing. Work doesn't just give people purpose and dignity, it creates essential social structure without which communities dissolve. I think it's quite possible that we could organize communities around something other than work. Colleges, for example, are a pretty good example. But I think proponents of basic income ignore the vital necessity of having some alternative before pulling the rug out from under people.
- conception 13y ago
  Don't work? Or can't work?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- pgeorgi 13y ago
  I think it's because such subcultures are self-selecting - why would a Wall Street banker (of which most seem to be terribly motivated) become part of such a group? There are a number of experiments (eg. across Africa) where a BI-like model made relatively desolate towns flourish. Basic Income needn't provide luxuries- as long as it eliminates the threat of physical harm out of the job market (thus allowing everyone to walk away from any given job at a given rate), it works as designed IMHO. To add drive to people who aren't self-motivated, there's still societal status and its symbols, some of which will naturally cost more than BI can afford - otherwise they won't be status symbols for long.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > There are a number of experiments (eg. across Africa) where a BI-like model made relatively desolate towns flourish. Can you provide citations? I've suggested this kind of experiment as a proof-of-concept for BI, but I've never actually heard of it being done except for That One Neighborhood In Montreal or wherever it was.
nostromo 13y ago
An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. You don't get a first world country economy without hard work somewhere by someone.
  - jdimov 13y ago
    Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. None of this has changed today. What IS changing, however, is that as knowledge becomes more readily available, fewer and fewer people are willing to buy into this crap. And that's good. Now, you may begin to worry about who is going to do all the work that slaves are doing today so you may continue to live comfortably. The correct answer, of course, is: machines. (And btw., no, we're not where we are because of your grandparents' hard work. If your grandparents had anything to do with humanity's progress, it was ONLY through insight, not through hard work.)
    - nhaehnle 13y ago
      The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. How is this an argument against what ekianjo wrote? Yes, there has (almost?) always been a privileged upper class that had much more leisure than the masses. Still, the fact remains that living standards would have been lower had a majority of the population not worked their asses off. Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In our current world, inequality is so high, and to a large extent unjustly high, that it's sickening. But there is still a whole lot of work that needs to be done to maintain our living standards.
hrktb 13y ago
I don't know if it's on purpose or not, but when you mention your parents, are you referring to both ? My parents both worked, but not the same amount and not at the same periods. The parents of my wife are splitted: one is still working (for pleasure, really) at 64+ and the other never took a long lasting full time job. There might be a question of what we mean by "work", but traditionally the task of sustaining a home and growing kids is not categorized as "work". Defining the purpose of someone through the amount of work goes straight into this issue, and it's my main problem with the idea.
josephschmoe 13y ago
[3] is mostly unemployed right now from what I understand.
erichocean 13y ago
> If you have no choice but to work or be discarded, then, when the value you can provide via work is less than that required to maintain your life, you have no choice but to attempt to indenture yourself. And failing that, you're truly, completely fucked. Work or be discarded? Really? Most people have, you know, other people in their lives. Hell, 20% of the country at any given time is children, and they don't work at all. Somehow, miraculously, they aren't just discarded. The same is true with old people (i.e. parents). This world you imagine is a complete fantasy, and has never, ever, anywhere been the case.
- chadwickthebold 13y ago
  Are you aware of the history of the U.S. before 1865?
  - anonbanker 13y ago
    Are you aware of the history of the US after 1868? Ever wanted to understand why the first section of the fourteenth amendment says "Subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States? Subject, in this case, means subordinate. The newly-minted dual citizens (of federal and state citizenship) of 1868 and beyond are no longer "the people" that the government serves. They are the subordinates (slaves) of an authority no longer accountable to "The People", as there are technically none left post-1868. If you think I'm exaggerating, I invite you to read SCOTUSblog sometime, and you'll eventually find someone (often a SCOTUS justice) mentioning how the first ten amendments of the bill of rights have now been "filtered" through the fourteenth, to see what stands and what doesn't. The only one yet to be filtered through the fourteenth is the third amendment (quartering troops). Thanks to DC V. Heller, the only one to escape unscathed is the second. here's[1] a list of interesting cases directly affected by the 14th amendment. [1] http://americanhistory.about.com/od/supremecourtcases/tp/Key-Supreme-Court-Cases-And-The-Fourteenth-Amendment.htm http://americanhistory.about.com/od/supremecourtcases/tp/Key...
  - dang 13y ago
    Please don't post nasty sarcasm to Hacker News, either in the form of a question or in any other form. I don't mean to pick on you personally. This is a community ailment.
mcv 13y ago
> One of the biggest views I see in my parents and grandparents: work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure. Well, it is certainly good to do something good for society. But it doesn't necessarily have to be paid. Plenty of volunteer work might give more purpose and dignity than some of the more meaningless and tedious jobs. But it turns out that, according to Dutch law, it's sometimes possible to be banned from doing specific kinds of volunteer work if you're unemployed. If it's something that could be a paid position, you're not allowed to do it for free in you receive unemployment benefits. No, you're forced to sit at home and do nothing.

vijayr 13y ago

work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure Regardless of age, I guess most people feel this way (not just the previous generations - even the people in their 20's and 30's today). What is the alternative to this? If not work - what is important? what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion?

Ygg2 13y ago
Which is completely opposite from Antic times, during which work was considered demeaning, because, hey we got slaves to do that stuff. Going out to the field and harvesting was looked upon same as now is rolling in shit. You could do it but highly degrading. Arts and philosophy were all the rage.
- levosmetalo 13y ago
  Replace slaves with robots and machines, and that's pretty much the world I'd like to live on. Maybe Platonic state is not that far away after all.
  - knodi123 13y ago
    Interesting aside: The word "robot" comes from slavic "robota", meaning drudge work that a serf is forced to perform for his lord. It's funny that the word has evolved to mean "something which frees us from drudge work" instead. And "slave" came from "Slav", referring to a member of the slavic people, who in ancient times were frequently taken as slaves. I love etymology.
nbouscal 13y ago
This depends heavily on what you mean by work. If by work you mean a minimum wage job at a McDonalds or Walmart, that isn't exactly what I would call purpose and dignity. For a meaning of work that included intellectual/artistic exploration without a guarantee of economic return on investment, but excluded economically viable but degrading labor, I could agree.
- vijayr 13y ago
  That's one way to look at it. I'm not disagreeing with it, but another way to look at it would be - any work that puts food on the table is work with purpose and dignity. Yet another (self centric?) way to look at it would be - if the job that I am doing helps me grow intellectually, emotionally etc then it is good work (regardless of whether it is useful to others/society or not). May be these questions would be more important in the future, where most of the boring/mundane jobs would be left to the robots. Then people can spend more time to work on things they like, and less time to work for money.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    Fairly certain that most people would disagree with "any work that puts food on the table is work with purpose and dignity." Easy examples come to mind: prostitution, arms dealing, etc. The thing about usefulness to society is that we just don't need everyone to be useful anymore. Society will continue on perfectly fine even if half of the population contributes nothing at all, because of technology. The future is not so far away anymore, and societal change is very slow. These are the kind of questions we need to be thinking about now.
Dewie 13y ago
Family? At least that's what all those disgruntled workers keep saying. :P Life is meaningless. People just tend to disagree at what existential level it begins to become meaningless. But right now is not meaningless - we can choose to enjoy it. Whether that is by telling ourselves that we have a purpose and acting upon it, or by playing amateur tennis - what's the difference? In the grand scheme of things. Doctors have a purpose, but only because people are sick. Homeless shelters have a purpose, but only because there are homeless people. Soldiers have a purpose, but only because there are wars to fight. Workers have a purpose, but only because there is work to be done. Do people have a feeling of existential purpose only because there is some unfinished work that they can finish, some pain that they can alleviate, or something being a burden that they can take on their shoulders? If so, it's a good thing that Utopia can't become real. Because we wouldn't like it one bit.
- Killah911 13y ago
  Life is meaningless to you... That's a whole another can of worms but a very interesting one nevertheless. While watching a documentary recently, I realized that my existential angst wasn't nearly as pronounced or debilitating when I was struggling to live day to day. Work sucked, really sucked, to the point that some days I'd almost wish I'd rather fallen gravely ill or died rather than go to work. But that was only some days. Harsh world, you do what you have to do mindset. One of the hardest adjustments to not necessarily having to work has been having to figure out the "why" and other existential angst. Yes, religion is a quick fix, but given enough free time, even that luxury may go away as one gets disillusioned with all the BS that goes with organized religion. The author of the article presents a very interesting conundrum indeed. As things get more efficient, there is more free time, more wealth to go around more "leisure" potential than ever before. But on a grander scale is that necessarily a good thing? Apparently some Chinese bureaucrat back in the old day actively decided against industrialization since people wouldn't have work to do. A modernist world clearly dehumanizes people, that's just an artifact of the system. Perhaps a world where labor is cheap and more and more people work helps maintain order and may somehow be more conducive to human happiness as opposed to lots of free time to realize that the system is crap and have war and chaos. (Yes, I know this is a bit hyperbolic). Personally, I'm really happy to not have to work crazy hours to be able to eat. I appreciate it. But I do see a lot of friends trying to come to terms with finding meaning in their lives, and not always with great results (had the unfortunate task to having to prepare a funeral for one in January). A very thought provoking article and certainly an insightful comment (though I am bit of wary of outright declarations of life's meaning or lack thereof)
tambourine_man 13y ago
what makes one person a success and another a failure Why not abandon the notion altogether? This is not a competition.
- infruset 13y ago
  I think it is interesting that in French, this notion of a person being successful has no natural translation (although you can say it if you really want to) and it is something I never hear being mentioned.
- infruset 13y ago
  I think it is interesting that in French, this notion of a person being successful has no natural translation (although you can say it if you really want to) and it is something I never hear being mentioned.
yodsanklai 13y ago
"If not work - what is important?" Family, traveling, learning things, playing sports, spending time with friends, love, and more generally having fun while we can. "what makes one person a success and another a failure" That's quite a binary view of the world! why do you want people to be either a success or a failure? even if that's you want, work is certainly not the only metric for that.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
atmosx 13y ago
This man[1] didn't work much in his life, he mocked Alexander the Great[2] and it's pretty much famous for his views almost 2500 years after his death. It's quite an accomplishment given the fact that he chose to live as poor man in a very rich society. Aristotle also has stated that More than 3 hours work per day, equals slavery and I'm pretty sure Socrates would have argued that If you don't want to work you should not be working. Of course all these guys lived in the 4th century B.C.. With today's technology, people should not be working for food and rest. Seriously, the fact that there are people in whatever continent homeless and starving is a shame for our evolved society. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope [2] When Alexander the Great took over Athens. He wanted to visit the Wisest man in Athens and the tale (mythology I get) says that the oracle of Delphi (Pythia) had state a couple of years before that The wisest man in Athens is Diogenis of Sinore. Funny, given the fact that Plato was around at the time. So when Alexander went finally found Diogenis in his jar - a jar Diogenis used as a bed/home in the agora - said "Ask for anything and I shall grant it you!" and Diogenis supposedly responded with indifference "*Can you move on the left? You're hiding the sun." ... The answer of course has a deeper meaning, Alexander couldn't give him the sun... And the most famous student of Aristotle (Alexander) was quite impressed as he moved on the left.
- pdonis 13y ago
  Aristotle also has stated that More than 3 hours work per day, equals slavery Yes, and he was perfectly happy to live comfortably by making use of the products of slaves' work. and I'm pretty sure Socrates would have argued that If you don't want to work you should not be working. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, since he, like Aristotle, was perfectly happy to live comfortably by making use of the products of slaves' work, and as far as I know, he never asked the slaves how they felt about it.
  - mitochondrion 13y ago
    If Zeus himself descends from Mount Olympus and says to you, "I am going to reestablish slavery in society. I will select slaves by lottery, and when it's all over most of the population will be held in the bonds of slavery. No one will remember a time before slavery. It will be as though it has always existed. I will never let slavery be abolished again. I give you, and you alone, the choice to be free or enslaved." Which do you choose?
gutnor 13y ago
If my wife didn't have to work for money, she would study archeology and "work" on processing the countless of archeological site that are laying around where she comes from. That would be work. There are plenty of things that people would do - I know of people that would take care of children, some that would teach, some that would code, some that would cook, ... However that's not work, "work" in our capitalistic societies has a specific economic meaning: a work is something that produce profit. So for example in education, you have that silly situation where there is a demand and offer, yet there is no teaching job because the optimal profitability has been reached at a level lower than optimal for people.
fchollet 13y ago
In my experience, producing things you care about, and doing so in a way that allows you to express yourself, is what gives meaning and purpose to your life, and what allows you to define who you are. Often, it does not qualify as "work", in that you won't receive money for it. Making Art would be the canonical example of this. But you actually find it in a many diverse things, from building a cool, unique app to solve a problem you care about, to building beautiful furniture for your house, to writing an essay explaining a view you care about, to elegantly solving a math problem that had been exciting your curiosity. What does not provide meaning and purpose to your life, is work with no room for self-expression, self-direction and self-definition. Most jobs done "for the money" fall into this category.
imgabe 13y ago
> what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion? These are the questions everyone has to answer for themselves ultimately. People like to go around praising everyone they believe to have succeeded and condemning everyone they believe to have failed, but you need to decide for yourself what the purpose of your life is. Otherwise you'll just end up chasing what everyone else believes.
arca_vorago 13y ago
"What is the alternative to this? If not work - what is important? what makes one person a success and another a failure, and what gives purpose and dignity to life, in your opinion?" First, there is the definition of success. For any given species or individual of that species, simple survival is the first level of success. This includes basic shelter, food and water sources, and protection from dangers. Beyond that, once our more immediate needs are met, I think the next level of success is breeding. At one point, during my "Descartesian reset", I determined that throughout most of history, the primary purpose people had was to reproduce as a way to ensure their own well being in old age, but also as a sort of abstract, indirect immortality through their offspring. There is a reasons there are many cultures who still largely center around first-born. For many of the proletariat, the safety and security of offspring was ensured through numbers (high mortality rates in the past) and through work servitude that was seen not just as an exchange of labor and time for money, but as an exchange of labor and time as an investment in their offspring, with money only being a tool to that end. I think that, with the advancement of the arts and technology though, this otherwise ancient traditional model has been largely upended. Kings built castles, and Pharaoh's built pyramids, and other builders build structures that would last well past their deaths as their version of immortality, but normal people always were mostly just reproducing their dna. I think this is also why there is still so much reverence for glory and honor, particularly in battle, in that, if dying in a sufficiently glorious way, you are more likely to be remembered longer. Past that, at some point I sat down and made a list. Essentially it boiled down to things that have a lasting impact for the greatest number of people beyond my death. Things like art, architecture, scientific discovery, writing, actions taken, etc. I don't remember the entire list, but it was fairly expansive. The thing to keep in mind about all of these is the indirectness of their totality, that it to say a piece of art in itself may not actually be that big of a deal in the long term, but lets say that piece of art inspired another persons mind to do something great that they might not have had the inspiration to do otherwise. tldr; Essentially, I think it all boils down to humanity's ancient tradition of trying to cheat death, and the way we do that has been changing. To me, as an atheist, the afterlife isn't a place where I exist, per se, but is more like the butterfly effect of my consciousness upon the universe it experienced before it's having been extinguished. Of course, I'm hoping I can get my hands on a telomere regeneration mod to buy enough time to transplant my consciousness into a hopefully by then sufficient computer and kick off the singularity, but I digress. To answer your original question, it isn't the work in itself that gives purpose. It's that a purpose is found and then striven for through whichever means are available, which for most people is usually indentured wage slavery. Ergo, when an older generation sees not working as a lack of purpose, do not mistake it that they think the work gives purpose, but that the work supports an already existing purpose. (which for most of them was child-rearing)
return0 13y ago
Those are the classic middle class values. I guess as the west keeps getting richer the middle class will move more into upper class ethics. I m not upper class so I don't know how they occupy their minds, but in the 19th century they used to bother with traveling, archaeology, nature, science, philosophy, writing, and having affairs.

TausAmmer 13y ago

You need others to validate your beliefs, then impose your beliefs on others. So you can believe these made-up beliefs yourself. In rare cases you can believe yourself if no one agrees to you. How fragile we are as humans.

icebraining 13y ago
How fragile we are as humans. Compared to what?

esw 13y ago

Workers with this mindset also tend not to think of their jobs as an exchange of labor for money.

atmosx 13y ago

To impose any view on others is bad a priori, no matter what the view is.

chc 13y ago
Is this statement meant to be as ironic as it is? You're telling us that we must unquestioningly accept that telling people to unquestioningly accept our opinions is bad.

rayiner 13y ago

The problem I have with your viewpoint is that it's contrary to what we've seen empirically. Sub-cultures where people don't work, but have their basic needs met aren't exactly flourishing. Work doesn't just give people purpose and dignity, it creates essential social structure without which communities dissolve. I think it's quite possible that we could organize communities around something other than work. Colleges, for example, are a pretty good example. But I think proponents of basic income ignore the vital necessity of having some alternative before pulling the rug out from under people.

conception 13y ago
Don't work? Or can't work?
- deleted 13y ago
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pgeorgi 13y ago
I think it's because such subcultures are self-selecting - why would a Wall Street banker (of which most seem to be terribly motivated) become part of such a group? There are a number of experiments (eg. across Africa) where a BI-like model made relatively desolate towns flourish. Basic Income needn't provide luxuries- as long as it eliminates the threat of physical harm out of the job market (thus allowing everyone to walk away from any given job at a given rate), it works as designed IMHO. To add drive to people who aren't self-motivated, there's still societal status and its symbols, some of which will naturally cost more than BI can afford - otherwise they won't be status symbols for long.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > There are a number of experiments (eg. across Africa) where a BI-like model made relatively desolate towns flourish. Can you provide citations? I've suggested this kind of experiment as a proof-of-concept for BI, but I've never actually heard of it being done except for That One Neighborhood In Montreal or wherever it was.

nostromo 13y ago

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

ekianjo 13y ago
Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. You don't get a first world country economy without hard work somewhere by someone.
- jdimov 13y ago
  Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. None of this has changed today. What IS changing, however, is that as knowledge becomes more readily available, fewer and fewer people are willing to buy into this crap. And that's good. Now, you may begin to worry about who is going to do all the work that slaves are doing today so you may continue to live comfortably. The correct answer, of course, is: machines. (And btw., no, we're not where we are because of your grandparents' hard work. If your grandparents had anything to do with humanity's progress, it was ONLY through insight, not through hard work.)
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. How is this an argument against what ekianjo wrote? Yes, there has (almost?) always been a privileged upper class that had much more leisure than the masses. Still, the fact remains that living standards would have been lower had a majority of the population not worked their asses off. Should the distribution of work be adjusted? Absolutely! In our current world, inequality is so high, and to a large extent unjustly high, that it's sickening. But there is still a whole lot of work that needs to be done to maintain our living standards.

hrktb 13y ago

I don't know if it's on purpose or not, but when you mention your parents, are you referring to both ? My parents both worked, but not the same amount and not at the same periods. The parents of my wife are splitted: one is still working (for pleasure, really) at 64+ and the other never took a long lasting full time job. There might be a question of what we mean by "work", but traditionally the task of sustaining a home and growing kids is not categorized as "work". Defining the purpose of someone through the amount of work goes straight into this issue, and it's my main problem with the idea.

josephschmoe 13y ago

[3] is mostly unemployed right now from what I understand.

erichocean 13y ago

> If you have no choice but to work or be discarded, then, when the value you can provide via work is less than that required to maintain your life, you have no choice but to attempt to indenture yourself. And failing that, you're truly, completely fucked. Work or be discarded? Really? Most people have, you know, other people in their lives. Hell, 20% of the country at any given time is children, and they don't work at all. Somehow, miraculously, they aren't just discarded. The same is true with old people (i.e. parents). This world you imagine is a complete fantasy, and has never, ever, anywhere been the case.

chadwickthebold 13y ago
Are you aware of the history of the U.S. before 1865?
- anonbanker 13y ago
  Are you aware of the history of the US after 1868? Ever wanted to understand why the first section of the fourteenth amendment says "Subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States? Subject, in this case, means subordinate. The newly-minted dual citizens (of federal and state citizenship) of 1868 and beyond are no longer "the people" that the government serves. They are the subordinates (slaves) of an authority no longer accountable to "The People", as there are technically none left post-1868. If you think I'm exaggerating, I invite you to read SCOTUSblog sometime, and you'll eventually find someone (often a SCOTUS justice) mentioning how the first ten amendments of the bill of rights have now been "filtered" through the fourteenth, to see what stands and what doesn't. The only one yet to be filtered through the fourteenth is the third amendment (quartering troops). Thanks to DC V. Heller, the only one to escape unscathed is the second. here's[1] a list of interesting cases directly affected by the 14th amendment. [1] http://americanhistory.about.com/od/supremecourtcases/tp/Key-Supreme-Court-Cases-And-The-Fourteenth-Amendment.htm http://americanhistory.about.com/od/supremecourtcases/tp/Key...
- dang 13y ago
  Please don't post nasty sarcasm to Hacker News, either in the form of a question or in any other form. I don't mean to pick on you personally. This is a community ailment.

mcv 13y ago

> One of the biggest views I see in my parents and grandparents: work provides purpose and dignity, and without work, you have no purpose, and therefore, you are a failure. Well, it is certainly good to do something good for society. But it doesn't necessarily have to be paid. Plenty of volunteer work might give more purpose and dignity than some of the more meaningless and tedious jobs. But it turns out that, according to Dutch law, it's sometimes possible to be banned from doing specific kinds of volunteer work if you're unemployed. If it's something that could be a paid position, you're not allowed to do it for free in you receive unemployment benefits. No, you're forced to sit at home and do nothing.