[HN Gopher] You are what you love
___________________________________________________________________
You are what you love
Author : gspanos
Score : 109 points
Date : 2024-02-04 09:57 UTC (13 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (gspanos.tech)
| inertiatic wrote:
| >I find it really challenging to talk with people who have
| completely separated their work from their emotional being. For
| me, work is part of life and it should be a meaningful one.
|
| I like my work too but when I hear things like this it's so hard
| not to cringe because of how much of a place of privilege this
| comes from. Most jobs are things no one would want to do if they
| didn't need to survive, and that's fundamentally built into our
| society and economic system. Let them eat cake though.
| akolbe wrote:
| Aye, you put your finger on something there. Reminds me of how
| common it is for menial jobs to be outsourced to immigrants or
| seasonal labour. Fruit picking in the UK to Eastern Europeans,
| agricultural work in Israel to Thais, etc.
|
| Someone has to empty the bins. I guess like anything emptying
| bins is a job you can enjoy more or less, depending on your
| inner attitude to doing it, and your ability to "make the best
| of it" (by having a laugh with mates on the job etc.) but
| surely it's hard to be _creative_ in it.
|
| There are millions of jobs like that that have to be done by
| someone - unless everyone, including those who enjoy that self-
| fulfilment in their work, somehow were to chip in and do their
| bit.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Ironically emptying the bins and picking fruits might be more
| directly meaningful for people then building the new
| generation ad platform/social media/saas tool.
| jasongi wrote:
| Picking fruit would have been incredibly meaningful if you
| had spent the year doing the variety of agricultural
| activities leading up to it. There's a reason so many
| cultures had harvest festivals. But now rather than a whole
| area getting together to literally pick the fruits of their
| year-long labour and celebrate we've optimised the process
| by just bringing in some seasonal workers.
| elteto wrote:
| So you want all of NYC to have harvest festivals?
|
| Those traditions and rituals are alive and well in small
| communities. Modern agriculture is based on the need to
| feed millions and millions of people. That's why it is
| the way it is.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I think GP means that picking fruit has a direct,
| meaningful impact on _consumers_ --fresh food--whereas
| the positive impact of the next saas thing is indirect
| and often dubious.
|
| But yeah, harvesting as a community sounds more
| meaningful to workers than mass fruit production does.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| I think you both overcomplicate things.
| memonkey wrote:
| Haha, yeah. I have a side story about working in
| construction with my dad. He was a home builder and was
| helping to build out a line of new apartments. It was
| very straightforward work -- he did the tile in the
| kitchen and bathrooms. I was his helper. He was excellent
| at it. All the buzzwords inclusive of efficiency and
| quality. It was fulfilling work to me and I had a sense
| of pride working alongside my dad. I made $10/hour, $80 a
| day.
|
| Now I work in FinTech. The fulfillment is different,
| sometimes it's good. But I reflect on this time often. I
| own a small home now and my dad comes around to help me
| fix or remodel stuff. I'm handier now because of those
| experiences -- I think I do find a little more
| fulfillment when working with my hands. I also find
| myself in my garden more often which brings a little more
| joy than my day job. Perhaps it's just balance.
| wegfawefgawefg wrote:
| Its for the mental exercise, and the practice. But if i had
| to do it a second time id kill myself.
| badpun wrote:
| Some of my friends from Poland went to Western/Northern
| Europe to pick tomatoes, salad, cherries etc. None of them
| ever spoke about meaning of the job, only that it was long,
| hard, uncomfortable hours in sun, rain etc. and that it
| paid good money.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 100%, I was thinking this exact same thing. I couldn't help
| but ponder the irony that during the pandemic, the vast
| majority of "essential workers", i.e. people we really need
| to fulfill the foundational layer of the economy, were
| usually the lowest paid: garbage men, farm labor,
| construction labor, grocery store workers, delivery
| drivers, etc. The famous "Pyramid of Capitalist System",
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System,
| had never felt more spot on to me.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm relatively very highly paid, and while I
| really like my job because I get to work with interesting
| technology and I think my coworkers are fantastic, the only
| reason my job exists at all is because of the extreme
| insanity of the US healthcare system. Literally everyone
| would be better off if there wasn't a reason for my job to
| exist in the first place.
| Jensson wrote:
| We make sure that all important jobs are easy to do so
| that they can reliably get done. Hard unreliable jobs can
| thus never be as important as the easy ones, they are
| still important but never as important because we don't
| want to rely on unreliable work.
|
| You can see that in software orgs as well, the easiest
| tasks are also the most important, like ensuring the site
| continues to run and handling breaking changes in
| dependencies, those tasks has to be done or your entire
| product is gone. But the highest paid engineers probably
| don't work on those things, instead they might look at
| adding more features or drafting new architecture, those
| tasks aren't as important but they are much harder to do
| so are better paid in general and you require higher
| skilled workers.
|
| So in general the lower paid the more important their
| work is, because higher skilled tasks are harder and less
| reliably done so we try to not rely on them getting done.
| Think famous painter vs low paid icon designer, which
| work is more important? Goes for most things.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks very much. I've heard this phrased different ways
| before and I understand it, but "We make sure that all
| important jobs are easy to do so that they can reliably
| get done" is probably the clearest and most succinct way
| I've heard this put.
| rambambram wrote:
| I worked as a garbage man to pay for the start of my software
| ventures. It was the best combination thinkable of sitting in
| a room on a chair behind a computer, being in the software
| clouds, typing away, and being outside, working out, having
| fun and getting enough sunlight.
|
| These both completely different things balanced each other
| out perfectly.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| So you're saying that collecting garbage enabled you to
| learn about garbage collection?
| akolbe wrote:
| Nice. I think the key thing here is, or was, the mix: the
| two activities complementing each other.
|
| Also, perhaps, the knowledge that both were _temporary_ and
| meant to lead to other, or better, things.
| __s wrote:
| Which jobs are you considering no one would want to do?
|
| I've worked labor in flooring, it's definitely not a job one
| wouldn't want to do without pay, but there was still an element
| of craftsmanship which one could find joy in
| akolbe wrote:
| Right; there is an element of satisfaction that comes from
| doing a job well that is relatively independent of the kind
| of job it is.
|
| In a way, that kind of enjoyment is actually more important
| than extrinsic rewards - it actually _is_ your moment-to-
| moment life.
|
| Which, to be fair, is what Spanos' piece is getting at too.
| c0balt wrote:
| > Which jobs are you considering no one would want to do?
|
| Not OP but most low-skill, sanitation-related jobs are most
| likely the best example. There certainly is craftsmanship
| behind cleaning but it mostly boils down to hard physical
| labor.
| mettamage wrote:
| I once had a conversation with a cleaner, she liked it
| because she could listen to Spotify podcasts all day (she
| was working as a cleaner in Sweden).
| politelemon wrote:
| The Spotify part though, isn't part of cleaning, if that
| makes sense? It happened that she has found an enjoyable
| aspect to the tasks due to its nature, but not that she
| specifically searched for that job because it lets her
| listen to Spotify.
| quonn wrote:
| I can confirm this, I know a cleaner like that as well.
| Additionally the work is not that physically taxing for
| the most part and there is no struggle involved like in
| many problem solving jobs. It's often poorly paid but
| that depends a lot on the country.
| ethanbond wrote:
| having health insurance helps
| j4yav wrote:
| I grew up in pretty severe poverty, the adults around me
| didn't work glamorous jobs but they all took pride in doing a
| good job. Even sanitation jobs, which were pretty common in
| the family. They would actually say something pretty similar
| to what the guy wrote - that if you're going to spend so many
| hours of your life doing it, it's taking pride in a job well
| done, the relationships you have with your colleagues and
| customers you get to know, and things like that that you
| connect with emotionally. Spending 50 years doing a job where
| you try to dissociate emotionally as best you can sounds
| something like a nightmare, and what would a person who
| behaves like that be like to work with?
| dottjt wrote:
| Well, tech is a bit different in that because it uses a
| computer (and a lot of roles aren't highly monitored, if at
| all i.e. WFH) you have the choice to do things other than
| your job.
|
| I imagine most people working with a computer in a
| corporate role, are spending maybe a few hours of their
| time actually working, and the rest of their time doing
| things they actually enjoy doing.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Delivery, call center, government jobs processing some
| applications or similar, any dirty job, any harmful job etc.
| lambdasmith wrote:
| Agree, people whose job intersects their passions are very
| lucky but they are in the minority. Most people look at their
| jobs for what they are: a source of income that allows you to
| buy food and have a roof over your head.
|
| Nonetheless I believe emotional drive is needed for some high
| skilled jobs. It doesn't necessarily need to be passion though.
| It could be desperation, greedy, peer pressure - whatever keeps
| you going
| agumonkey wrote:
| so many people argue the opposite, to me I often am what I do,
| which is an issue since most people want to get away from the
| tasks as soon as possible
|
| there's also the problem of ending exploited since you will
| accept doing more for less
| djoletina wrote:
| Same here. And when you make a point of it in conversation
| you're considered the crazy one. Let alone mention it to
| coworkers, you're instantly a kissass.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Exactly.
| kubb wrote:
| As an empathetic person, this really makes me feel that we
| should fight for an economic system that gives people more
| leisure. Rewarding life doesn't need to be expensive, but it
| does require us to have the time to do something that we love.
| This is also why I dream about financial independence. I'm not
| lazy, I just want to do something else than what I have to.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _we should fight for an economic system that gives people
| more leisure_
|
| We don't even have an economic system that pays well or
| treats people humanely...
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Compared to what?
| chefandy wrote:
| Maybe compared to ones that don't toss mid and late
| career professionals out like a bag of moldy peaches when
| some confluence of economical and technological factors
| makes them inconvenient, no matter if they've got kids,
| or a cancer diagnosis, are supporting lots of relatives,
| or anything else like that, and then say it's their fault
| for not predicting it. Maybe ones that don't financially
| ruin people because the hospital they got driven to while
| unconscious doesn't take their insurance? That is, if
| they have it because the insurance that costs more than
| local mortgages for many? Maybe the places that sentence
| someone involved in a bank heist orders of magnitude
| longer sentences than white collar criminals that stole
| orders of magnitude more money?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What ones would those be?
| chefandy wrote:
| > What ones would those be?
|
| If you really don't know, I'm not your research assistant
| so I won't go look up things like universal health care
| and the social support strategies of various European
| countries for you. If you're just trying to bait me into
| some sort of pedantic argument, I'm far past the age
| where I felt compelled to interact with people who think
| being deliberately obtuse is a valid conversation tactic.
| Either way, I'm going to let you finish this one
| yourself. Have a fantastic sunday.
| coldtea wrote:
| Compared to one that pays well and treats people
| humanely.
|
| It's not like that in order to suggest that something is
| bad there must be an existing better version. The
| suggestion can be about creating that better version.
|
| That of course is a general answer to your asking for a
| comparison, as if lack of one would refute the point.
|
| Some country first abolished child labour, even when all
| others still had it. Where the people who advocated for
| that misguided, since they didn't have a better example
| to "compare" to?
|
| These are of course also concrete answers to your
| question, like many EU countries where the vacation
| period is one month, where there are better employee
| protections, where there is less discrimination, where
| overtime is frowned upon and the work culture is not the
| US "grind", where waiters don't have to make do on
| tipping, and so on.
|
| They don't have to be perfect in everything either
| (because an easy knee jerk critique would immediately
| point to some other shortcomings in their work
| arrangements). For the point of the suggestion, it's
| enough that they have better aspects than some country
| like the US could also adopt.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| All the evidence point towards the GP's goal being more
| realistic than fixing just that intermediate step.
| thfuran wrote:
| What evidence is there for that?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The fact that we have several viable proposals for that,
| and that partial versions of them already work on
| practice.
|
| While we have no idea at all of any interventions that
| only achieves the partial result you want.
| polio wrote:
| I think we're at a point in the history of Western
| civilization where we should strive to guarantee non-painful
| survival for all our citizens. This doesn't necessarily mean
| comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States
| should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean
| water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep. I only
| restrict this tentatively to citizens because I think these
| programs would fare better politically if limited to
| citizens.
|
| People of all backgrounds will find that non-painful survival
| is still profoundly unfulfilling and will continue to
| innovate, create, work. I think the fear of succumbing to the
| elements in America is too real and that that fear is a
| massive drain on the economy and the spirit of our people.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| I totally agree and I don't understand why everyone isn't
| on board with this vision. Sometimes I look around and
| think "this can't be the end of the story, there has to be
| a better way to run society".
|
| What's interesting are the libertarian types who want the
| opposite. You don't get anything by default, you have to
| fight for everything. All I can think of is 1) why? and 2)
| is that really their vision of the future? Like in 100
| years we'll still have to work meaningless jobs just to put
| food on our table? Is that really the future we want?
| becquerel wrote:
| They want that future because they ultimately believe in
| human hierarchies.
|
| Sometimes those hierarchies are natural and essential
| (race, gender, age, whatever), sometimes they're
| contingent and constructed (skillset, grindset, 'hard
| work', whatever), but it always has the same end result:
| they think that you can categorise people like insects,
| and that some groups of people deserve better things than
| others. Naturally they believe they would not be at the
| bottom of the hierarchy.
|
| You may also be interested in the term 'capitalist
| realism'.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| Hah, I'm right there with you. I'm definitely aware of
| capitalist realism, and what you said about hierarchies
| is exactly why I claim libertarians are right wing.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who
| grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder
| about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet,
| warm, and secure place to sleep.
|
| Western civilization has brought more food, clean water,
| and rescued more people from poverty in the 20th century
| than the entire history of human civilization. None of that
| was done by offering guarantees, it was achieved through
| free market capitalism. Competing economic systems that
| offered the guarantees you're describing not only
| slaughtered millions and caused mass starvation but
| collapsed from economic dysfunction.
| polio wrote:
| I agree with both statements you've made, however I don't
| see why offering food and housing security would
| necessitate mass murder, if we were to try it from a less
| ideological fervent posture. It wouldn't be described as
| a proletariat revolution or seizing the means of
| anything. It would just be another social program that I
| hope would be administered efficiently and ambitiously,
| and which would replace some of the other legacy programs
| we've built. I'd hope we'd test it at a small scale and
| then go from there. The scope of the communism you're
| identifying in my suggestion would be limited.
|
| I'm generally a supporter of capitalism, but I think
| present conditions could be improved to facilitate that
| competition. Workers need to be able to use public
| transit in peace, which means getting homeless people
| out. We need to be able to offer shelter so that forceful
| removal is justifiable. Children need unequivocal access
| to nutrition so that malnourishment doesn't impair their
| ability to compete in the arena of idea-generation and in
| the knowledge economy. I think if the government were in
| the business of offering floors on quality of life that
| people could spend their time more productively instead
| of solving the same hunter-gatherer types of problems
| individually over and over again. Food insecurity may
| have been the impetus for work in the past, but I believe
| that status insecurity can replace it going forward.
| Nobody needs to starve for the West to prosper.
| gspanos wrote:
| This is what motivated me to start a company. It is a tech
| company because that's what I know. But at the end of the
| day, it's my way of creating what I consider a healthy
| environment. I was very fortunate to work in an environment
| like that 6-7 years ago and now I want to re-create it
| through my company.
| j4yav wrote:
| On the other hand, sometimes it's also refreshing to just hear
| about what makes someone happy and appreciate it on its own
| merits without assessing its validity against others who have
| it worse in various ways. There's a time and a place for both,
| I think.
| brabel wrote:
| Before the modern age, most humans worked in agriculture.
| Really, really hard work, day in day out, no vacations, no sick
| days, you had to be there no matter the weather (except extreme
| events where your live would be endangered too much, probably).
| It's amazing how today we can actually even think that "work
| should be a meaningful part of life" rather than just a means
| to keep you alive. Today, I would say most people still do
| either menial jobs or "pointless" jobs that they have very
| little emotional attachment to. They do it because they must do
| something to survive. But there's also the higher ups who don't
| really love at all what they're doing, but feel like they need
| to keep "going up", from engineer to "lead" to C-level to CEO
| to founder etc. I don't think anyone really loves doing those
| things (except extremely narcissists who feel pleasure being in
| charge), they do it because they know that they have the
| potential to do it and they feel social pressure to climb the
| ladder. If we lived in a completely equal society where CEOs
| were not seen as "higher" than individual contributors, and
| consequently didn't receive ridiculously larger paychecks, who
| in their right mind would choose to do that? Even though I do
| enjoy my job, I am pretty sure that's in large part because I
| managed, like most other well functioning adults, to
| rationalize my situation so that I don't feel like working day
| in day out on my desk it not a stupidly pointless way to spend
| life - and pretend like I wouldn't much rather be surfing in
| the Pacific islands, working as a bartender at night, sharing
| stories by a fire on the beach until sunrise, living the simple
| life without responsibilities.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > Before the modern age, most humans worked in agriculture.
| Really, really hard work, day in day out, no vacations, no
| sick days, you had to be there no matter the weather (except
| extreme events where your live would be endangered too much,
| probably).
|
| Btw this is simply not true. People worked less in
| agriculture than a 9-5. You'd only really be working hard at
| specific times of the year- harvesting, seeding, etc. You'd
| be doing other things like working on the house, feeding
| various animals, churning butter or making clothes, etc, in
| the in-between.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| As soon as i read this a beautiful and peaceful life
| flashed before my eyes.
| raducu wrote:
| > As soon as i read this a beautiful and peaceful life
| flashed before my eyes.
|
| I lived such a life on my grandparents subsistence farm
| in early post-communist Romania, where we only bought
| store made bread and nothing else for months (and even
| that was optional, but store made bread tasted better
| than homemade).
|
| I would LOVE to go back in time to that house on a summer
| night, 0 light pollution, starry night, just the crickets
| and occasional sound of the hooves of the cows or horse
| against the stone pavement in their yard when they went
| for a drink, or the dog being happy you visit him outside
| when you take a piss.
|
| Or the late evening dinner on the high porch, people
| across the stone-wall fence returning from the fields in
| their horse pulled carriages overburdened with hay. Or
| the strong sense of community of the people gathered at
| their out of the gate benches smaltalking in the evening.
|
| Or the rain-invocation rituals that involved splashing
| the village virgins dressed only in leaves in their late
| evening procession. Or the taste of milk straight after
| being milked out of the cow (I don't know how I never got
| sick), or the taste of fresh butter, or cheese or whey
| cheese.
|
| Or fetching sheep milk from the herd manager over the
| bouncy wire bridge, starry night, accompanied by swarms
| of fireflies, wind whispering through the alder leaves.
|
| Or the cows opening the iron gate with a thud in the
| evening when they return with the communal herd.
|
| Or riding the horse without a saddle because my shoeless
| feet hurt from walking over freshly scythed grasslands.
|
| Or returning with my grandpa late in the night from a
| long trip up the mountain to his lonely uncle's house. We
| brought him meaty treats and he showed us the squirrels
| in his roof attic.
|
| Or to hear my grandparents extraordinary survival stories
| or stories about supranatural occurences.
| richrichie wrote:
| Not quite day in and day out. Agricultural work pre modern
| times was seasonal.
| badpun wrote:
| There was stuff to do outside the growing season still.
| There were farm animals to tend to, you fixed up your house
| and the farm buildings, made and mended clothes etc.
| Although, since the days were shorter, the work time was
| naturally shorter as well, as artificial light was
| expensive.
| hnfong wrote:
| I guess you could always get into a situation where you
| manage a farm that exhausts all your available time.
|
| But work is indeed seasonal, and I doubt you'd actually
| be able to be so effective that you don't have any free
| time at all. (And if you manage that, presumably you'll
| be a rather rich farmer...)
|
| Also, in many places, there's nothing much to do in the
| winter except stay inside the house around a warm fire
| and try not to freeze. Yes you could take on some other
| work using the light from the fireplace as well... but
| did everyone actually exert themselves so much that they
| didn't have a single day of rest? I really doubt it and
| it's more likely it's a tale told by capitalists to scare
| us into being grateful for being employed.
|
| PS: much of Europe also observed the Sabbath too, so
| there's also at least one day off per week.
| huytersd wrote:
| This is bullshit. I directly know families in Asia that farm
| a moderate sized one acre plot without heavy machinery. It is
| long days of work during planting and harvest but that's less
| than 2 months of the year. The rest of the year is
| maintenance and other support work and starting at 6 in the
| morning they're usually done by 1-2p.
| j4yav wrote:
| That's actually sort of a myth. If you work on a farm, there
| are a few very intense parts of the year, but most days are
| otherwise prep work and maintenance and you can actually wrap
| up fairly early and manage your own schedule. What sucks
| about farming is thin margins and how a bad crop can wipe you
| out.
|
| Possibly different on a factory farm that maximises
| production every day but that's not really what you're
| referring to.
|
| This comes from personal experience working on productive
| small farms.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Isn't fixating on "privilege" a way of avoiding more troubling
| thoughts far beyond guilt? As if God made some people rich and
| some poor, and that's the way the world is. Let's all say a
| prayer for them?
|
| The Protestant work ethic once contained many good things like
| a sense of duty, efficiency, self-discipline and so on.
| Emancipation of others, and helping others out of poverty was
| always built into that!
|
| But under late stage capitalism it becomes disfigured and
| twisted.
|
| That guilt is used against us. We make "work" into something
| that must be miserable by definition. And some of us even revel
| in that self-flagellation. We stop distinguishing between
| laborious chores and work as art and living. "Money and
| survival" eclipse all else. The abject penury of that mind-set
| is a sort of work in itself.
|
| It need not be. Ten thousand years of artisan labour,
| craftsmanship, labours of love building cathedrals and
| monuments, cooking delicious meals... Half of all the work done
| in the world is childcare and caring for the old.
|
| It's the power relations of capitalism that make work shitty,
| and we all know it. There's nothing "fundamental" about it. We
| are at a very unique and hopefully short moment in history
| where modern employers will go out of their way to fit
| suffering, humiliation and self-loathing into the job-
| description, maybe in order to feel justified for what they pay
| - often cynically hiding behind false notions of efficiency and
| necessity, security or whatever.
|
| Some of the most miserable and fucked-up people I've ever met
| work in banking, advertising. and other places of "privilege".
| ttt11199907 wrote:
| I'm not sure many workers building cathedrals considered it a
| labor of love. Particularly those cathedrals that took many
| generations to build.
|
| > Half of all the work done in the world is childcare and
| caring for the old.
|
| This is a really profound statement, thanks for making me
| think slightly differently!
| penjelly wrote:
| > I'm not sure many workers building cathedrals considered
| it a labor of love. Particularly those cathedrals that took
| many generations to build
|
| youre kidding right? of course some of them were proud of
| their contribution.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Guess we could think of the Giza Pyramids as a counter-
| example. Plenty of religious monuments got built on the
| bones of slaves.
|
| But I wonder, factoring out the physical toil, whether
| future generations might look at giant technological
| monoliths, maybe The Internet of 2100 and say;
| "Those techies were unhappy slaves. they laboured in
| basements and cubicles. They wrote code just to
| eat! It was obscenely inhuman."
|
| Or maybe historians might pore through HN archives and
| say; "Those who believed in the Great
| Singularity", devoted their lives out of religious
| fervour. Many of them wrote code without being
| paid, just because they had a vision. "
|
| Or maybe there will be no trace of us. Anyway, history
| can tell us facts about what happened, but maybe isn't so
| good at telling us what went on the minds and dreams of
| people past.
|
| edit: s/Interest/Internet/g
| t0bia_s wrote:
| What would be a fix for capitalism that cripples our attitude
| to work?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > What would be a fix for capitalism that cripples our
| attitude to work?
|
| Us. Our culture.
|
| FWIW I'll try to explain a little more. I mean, that's a
| great question but I think it's the wrong question, if you
| don't mind me saying that.
|
| Nobody can see outside the logic of their own epoch.
|
| Capitalism can't be "fixed", because it's just what it is.
| If we "fixed" it, it wouldn't be capitalism any more, it
| would be something else. In fact it's been many different
| things over the past centuries as it transforms, much as
| people like Smith and Marx predicted.
|
| Most people at this point say "Okay, smarty.. so what will
| you replace it with?". And again, wrong question. There is
| no list of "systems" that could simply be plugged in as
| replacements. That kind of nonsense leads to great leaps
| into famine and 20 million starving. Politics is not
| software like that. At best it's a set of potential slow
| paths that all start at where we are now. It is not even a
| set of destinations, because every end point we pursue
| changes with the dynamics of time and change itself.
|
| The question, as I see it, is what do we change in
| ourselves to make capitalism work. What makes capitalism
| into a non-toxic system that does not destroy our planet
| and lead us to perpetual cycles of war, and misery and
| self-hatred?
|
| Now if you want to talk about that list... that's another
| conversation.
| thfuran wrote:
| But we can change the way capitalism works (see the EPA
| or FLSA) much more easily than we can change human
| nature.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I don't think we can ever change human nature (if such a
| thing exists), no?
|
| That's not the same as changing culture. That by
| definition must change.
|
| You're talking about changing rules (EPA)
|
| Are you familiar with the work of Meadows? She gives
| names to each of these levels and sets up a relation
| between them.
|
| Here's a couple of digs into that if you're interested
| [0,1]
|
| [0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=19
|
| [1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=21
| slimrec77 wrote:
| "More communism man"
| rawgabbit wrote:
| 100% agree. For me the cringe is that this belief is often used
| to justify ridiculous work place demands. What, you don't want
| to work 60 plus hours a week for another month?
|
| You are not defined by how "useful" you are to your job.
| karmakaze wrote:
| It's also a recipe for a bad work environment. It's good to
| have passion and accountability in doing good work. It becomes
| a problem when you _identify with your creations_ , then
| anything said about it can only be taken personally without an
| ability to detach from it and speak/think objectively.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Actual artists are a little better at this.
|
| Despite the passion they pour into their work, they
| understand that once it's out there in the world, it's not
| theirs anymore. The moment the artist lets go of it, it
| belongs to the viewer, who will interpret it differently
| through the lens of all their personal experience. And if the
| thing is any good, it will be heavily analyzed and critiqued,
| so to stay sane the artist has to completely let go of it and
| focus their energy on their next creation.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I was lucky to have learned this lesson from day one. My
| Atari 400 had no storage since it was beyond my budget and
| I wanted to save for the diskette drive rather than
| cassette. So I'd spend days making and playing with a
| single program creation, never turning it off. Eventually
| I'd want to do something else so click, playing Asteroids,
| and repeat.
| lepus wrote:
| Their only reference point is other tech workers. Maybe they
| should get out of their social bubble and make some blue collar
| friends to figure this out.
| CalRobert wrote:
| And most tech workers are doing classic "bullshit jobs" aka
| "dumb shit that doesn't matter". Too many of the others are
| doing work that is a net negative to the world. I'd be more
| passionate about collecting garbage bins than making kids
| depressed.
| lepus wrote:
| My blue collar friends aren't passionate about their jobs
| at all - it's long hours, physically unhealthy, and bad
| conditions/pay. But at least what they do is real and
| meaningful without having to craft a weird narrative for
| themselves about how passionate their life is making better
| buttons and faster queries.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I get your point here, but here's mine.
|
| When push comes to shove, a bit more pay won't motivate someone
| as much as having a feeling about the work will.
|
| I feel guilty because I have a passion for software development
| but once pushed it away because I felt it was causing me social
| ostracization I couldn't afford (this was long before the Web
| exploded and "legitimized" the software developer). While doing
| things that were not-software, I kept getting dropped "hints"
| that I was on the wrong path (there is no rational way to
| explain this unfortunately), so I decided to hop back in
| (conveniently, right when the Web was starting to take off).
| I've been there ever since.
|
| My S.O. is artistic but found no way to monetize that so she
| now does what amounts to "admin and logistical planning work
| for highly-paid traders", and she hates it. She complains about
| it all the time, especially after every business day, and she
| brings much stress into our relationship as a result. I spent a
| while trying to encourage her to push back into creative work
| but it just wasn't sticking- turns out that she had an evil
| woman manager once who kept completely shooting down her work
| and I think she resolved then to never let her feelings get
| near work ever again. My attitude towards that situation, was I
| in those shoes (having grown up ostracized for what I believed
| in and cared about, and then later vindicated) would have been
| to tell that woman to EABOD and I would have tried creative
| work elsewhere.
|
| I have to wonder how many people out there are just going
| through the motions at their jobs because of something like
| this. And you're absolutely right- I AM privileged... but if it
| was possible for this to be more common, I wouldn't be. I
| really wish that something like my experience would happen to
| everyone. Would something like UBI enable more people to find
| "their life's work" before they get stuck in a rut that just
| happens to pay the bills, I wonder? How much potential economic
| growth are we actually missing out on, here?
|
| You know how when you shake a bunch of different shapes on a
| sieve with similarly-shaped holes, you get more falling through
| the sieve (i.e. finding their happier job)? And when you stop
| shaking, whatever shape happens to be over whatever hole is the
| one they rest in? What do we need to do to add more
| "shakeability" to the market so that more people can try more
| things relatively safely (financially)?
|
| My life DOES have a lot of other drawbacks that I won't get
| into (which probably serve to level the overall privilege I'm
| experiencing), but this is not one of them.
|
| I really do wish it on everyone.
| D13Fd wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. Does the convenience store clerk have to
| love her job? The garbage person? The bus boy, dishwasher, or
| line cook? The assembly line worker?
|
| There are aspects of all of our jobs that we all love and hate
| to varying degrees, but there is nothing weird or wrong about
| taking a job just because you need the money.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Does being able to do what you love, or being passionate about
| your work, come from a place of privilege? I'm not convinced. I
| know people who envy me at times, and often I think, why don't
| or didn't they follow a similar path? I think loving what you
| do comes mostly after feeling fulfilled from doing serious
| studying, a lot of working and quite some discipline. This love
| does not appear by itself. Just as in relationships, it takes
| continuous investment.
| timeagain wrote:
| In less well paying jobs it is usually easier to have emotional
| integration. Less of your identity is at stake, your
| responsibility is small enough that you don't have to
| reorganize your values to work the job.
|
| This is my experience working in factories vs offices anyway.
| No one is fake in the factory because we don't need to be.
| Office people play so many little games and politic around and
| pretend to be happy even when they're not.
| glimshe wrote:
| This one never _had_ to work on payroll software for a living,
| have they?
| upupupandaway wrote:
| I call your payroll software and raise you working on device
| drivers for Nokia's Symbian OS phones.
| Dachande663 wrote:
| I used to be the same. Until I started a family. You suddenly
| realise how... unimportant coding is when you have people who
| depend on you and you them. I'm a different developer now than I
| was back then, but I think better for it.
| mettamage wrote:
| How are you better for it?
| Geisterde wrote:
| Id also be interested, I see learning computer skills as a
| way to eventually make my families life better by creating
| solutions for things around the house. Have you reoriented
| your efforts to something similar?
| elteto wrote:
| Me, personally, I'm better on the soft skills. Things like
| better organizing my work and strongly separating work and
| personal life.
|
| My work day is 8-5 and that's the time I have to get
| everything done. That's it. I don't take work home so I
| better make the best of the day.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I've never found the job to be all that important; especially
| once I saw how quickly my work was discarded for some new,
| fashionably different way of doing things. Honestly it's scary
| to imagine that some child's health insurance would depend on
| me staying on the treadmill of ever-changing tech nonsense. I
| doubt my ability to keep pace for a couple decades.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Until I started a family.
|
| I'm 51 and I've got a family too (9 years old kid) and my love
| for coding and tinkering with computers never went away. For
| example yesterday evening when they were asleep I spent hours
| playing with a (used) NUC I just bought. I did hack on some
| scripts too.
|
| My hobbies are my cars and computing and I love that, since
| forever. And I still love these even though I've got a family.
|
| I'd argue that something that you love and that you suddenly
| don't love anymore once you have kids is something you didn't
| really love that much.
|
| A family and a love for the craft are definitely not mutually
| exclusive things.
| elteto wrote:
| Let's not pass judgement on what other people love or not.
| You simply have no idea.
|
| There are many things I love but since I got a family I just
| don't have time for them. Or if I have the time I realize
| there's a million other things I can be doing with my family.
|
| You have cars and coding. You spend time on those hobbies and
| presumably not with your family. OP just realized he'd rather
| spend it with his family.
| scruple wrote:
| I love my family and I love programming but I'm only showing
| up to daily standup because they pay me to.
| dottjt wrote:
| It's possible to love something for a period of time, and
| then no longer love it as you find other substitutes for it.
| makeitshine wrote:
| I'd say that applies across the board. For most, that kid is
| more important than anything else.
| mettamage wrote:
| > Firstly, let's make clear that it's unlikely that you're good
| at something you don't love. If you managed to do that, you've
| probably dedicated the hours to something that does not fulfill
| you. The goal is not happiness. It's about fulfillment. After
| all, you have to do what you love. You are that, how can you be
| doing anything else?
|
| The author is not considering loving meta-skills. I don't love
| programming, I do love intellectual challenge. I also love
| learning things as fast as possible.
|
| If I'd be a cleaner as a job, I'd teach myself how to be mindful
| while doing it. I'd teach myself how to be okay with the
| boring/mundane and utilize the job as a tech detox. If I'd be a
| bus driver, I'd utilize the job as a way to make my social skills
| better (I've seen bus drivers do that in NL) or I'd utilize the
| job as a way to reflect on life as I wouldn't need all the brain
| space for driving the bus. If I'd be a blue collar worker, I'd
| flip homes since my network would allow for it. I'd also do a lot
| of crafting on my own.
|
| When one loves a meta-skill, many things become their passion.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| That's a great way to think about it, love the meta skill
| concept.
|
| I had the same realisation but never expressed it as well. I
| used to want to be an artist for my living. Eveventually I
| realised that what I really wanted was to be creative in some
| way. Didn't have to be art or music to earn money.
| mettamage wrote:
| Ha! That's a fun one. When it comes to music, I compulsively
| think of musical melodies. That's not passion though but just
| compulsion :')
|
| I recognize the creativity part, well put!
| gspanos wrote:
| That's an interesting take!
| theusus wrote:
| It's a powerplay imo. You can show your emotions if you are in
| the power. I've found repeatedly getting penalized for being
| emotional at work. That's one of the reasons I want to move out
| of a job.
| tgv wrote:
| Motivation takes many forms. Emotion, and not even every one, is
| only one.
| bambax wrote:
| > _If you don't know what you love, try playing with a couple of
| things._
|
| I have a theory that what you love is what you can experience bad
| versions of. If you're picky about something, you don't really
| like it. Connoisseurs and fanatics aren't picky, they're
| voracious.
|
| If you can only drink the very best wines, you don't like wine. I
| can eat very very bad, even stinky Chinese food, because I love
| all versions of it.
|
| I can tolerate bad books much more than bad movies. I can't stand
| a bad movie, it makes me upset and impatient: I don't really like
| movies. People who do, watch everything they can, the good and
| the bad alike. Etc.
|
| If you truly don't know what you love, see if you can get
| interested in bad instances of things; if you like something when
| it's bad, you'll love the good version of it.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| I would qualify this. If you like movies, you like _all sorts_
| of movies. You can enjoy well-done schlock horror as much as
| experimental Thai drama. But you still have a sense of good and
| bad, and you don 't want to sit through something done badly
| _in terms of what it 's trying to achieve_. Same with food: if
| you like Chinese food you maybe like all sorts of tastes, and
| high-end to low-end, but you don't need to like it when it's
| bad. Someone who likes all movies or Chinese food that they
| encounter doesn't actually like that thing - they just don't
| care enough about it.
| bambax wrote:
| I'm not saying to love something is to be devoid of taste or
| incapable of sorting the bad from the good. I'm saying it
| means being able to suffer the bad, to sit through a bad
| movie until the end, in the hunt for any passable scene.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Not really. Having taste doesn't mean you don't like it. You
| can really like subsets of things that suit your taste. "You
| don't like interior design unless you get lit by prison cell
| decor"
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > I can eat very very bad, even stinky Chinese food
|
| Hi, I'm a Chinese person. WTF do you mean by this? Are you
| seriously saying you love Chinese food (also what do you mean,
| Chinese food? What provinces? What regions?) when it's shit?
| You'll happily eat stale bao, rotten meat dumplings, moldy
| rice? What is "stinky": durian? Something else?
| bambax wrote:
| Sorry if this came out as insensitive. I've never been to
| China. By Chinese food I mean food that is available in
| Chinese restaurants in Europe where I live. By bad Chinese
| food I mean food that isn't fresh, that's dry, that has
| obviously been reheated more than once. I don't mean rotten
| exactly (although it can happen).
| makeitshine wrote:
| While I can understand the irritation, the tone of your
| response seems excessive for someone talking about food.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Definitely "love" in its casual usage, is very fickle. You can
| turn something you love into something you hate by over-doing
| it.
|
| Maybe the best way to kill something you love is to make it
| into work in the first place. There's a good argument for
| keeping the things you really savour a little at arms-length.
|
| One psychological idea I found immensely helpful but hard to
| digest is the relation between love and hate; Love and hate are
| not opposites, but proximate. Love can easily flip to hate and
| vice versa. They're from a vector of two circuits, arousal and
| pleasure/displeasure. The opposite of love (and hate) is
| _indifference_. Socially, we worry about "hate speech" when a
| much more dangerous state of mind is blank faced indifference.
| ( Most of what I'm saying is just Erich Fromm [0]).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Loving
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Socially I'm more worried about targeted harassment, legal
| threats to safety, and murder than indifference to my
| existence.
| dudul wrote:
| Makes no sense to me. It seems totally possible to me to love
| movies without enjoying wasting 2h watching a poorly made film.
| pelasaco wrote:
| You are what you love, but until you don't have a family
| (specially kids) you don t know what love is, and its definitely
| not work. So I am what I love, but I'm not my work neither my
| job. You neither. So don't judge people based by what they
| demonstrate at work. Most majority of people are there for the
| money.
|
| Fun fact that I became a much better developer when I started to
| think like that. I dont slack around. I work 10 hours day, happy
| and concentrated. I see the results of my work impacting my
| personal life in a positive way. And the problems that I have at
| work, are not my problem, but companies problem. I am there to
| solve them, but after day is over, I just keep them at work.
| eimrine wrote:
| Family converts men into money printers.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I get why someone would believe this, but it's so disconnected
| from reality for the majority of people. It comes from a place
| where you haven't been concerned about needing to live. About
| feeding yourself or your family, having stability, getting out of
| debt.
|
| I'm lucky enough to be doing what I love, but I got here by being
| good enough at doing what I don't love.
| clot27 wrote:
| reminds me of "people become whatever they want to be"
| tock wrote:
| Great advice provided all jobs and fields pay the same. They do
| not.
| biscuits1 wrote:
| Consider love as a half-measure, therefore:
|
| You are what you create
| boredemployee wrote:
| Well. The paragraph below really comes at a good time,
|
| >> Emotion cannot be separate from work. It has to be a part of
| it. When working, you're expressing yourself. You express
| beliefs, opinions, and strategies, world views. You cannot detach
| yourself completely from work. I doubt that you ever should.
|
| because 2 days ago I had a discussion with the owner of the
| company I work for (and, therefore, my boss), where I told him
| that we are going through a bizarre moment and that one of our
| colleagues was in pieces when talking to me.
|
| He asked if that affected me, and I said that obviously it does,
| it's a person suffering, a person I like and who delivers a lot
| of value to the company.
|
| He replied saying: "Well, it shouldn't, only our family should
| affect us in that aspect."
|
| Then, finally, I understood what these people really think. They
| use us just to achieve their goals, the whole idea of team/squad
| is, in the end, a big fallacy.
| skydhash wrote:
| Enjoying your work does not means rooting for your employer.
| You can establish meaningful relationships with your coworkers,
| especially if you're spending 8 hours together.
| deebosong wrote:
| Your boss sounds like they have an extremely rigid view of what
| emotions are and aren't "correct" in any given setting. Sounds
| controlling, and lacking a fundamental understanding of
| reality, people, and basic empathy.
|
| I don't think all bosses are like this, but the ones who
| express these views in critical junctures that reveal their
| character and world views as such, I think it's safe to say
| that they indeed are intellectually and developmentally blunted
| (of the emotional intelligence, interpersonal relationship, and
| leadership dynamics variety) in a manner that can cause
| legitimate harm to anyone under their authority and has to take
| orders from them.
| badpun wrote:
| Most people don't love anything particularly strongly IMO. They
| have interests and they exhaust them over time (sometimes, over a
| long time, if they're too busy to spend too much time on an
| interest). People who actually love something, i.e. spend a lot
| of time on it over decades, are rare.
| dakiol wrote:
| Work != career.
|
| I love programming and computer science and everything around it.
| I love learning about it in my free time and creating programs
| that serve no other purpose than entertainment (for myself).
|
| I couldn't care less about the e-commerce software my boss pays
| me to maintain/fix/add features. I do it because it pays the
| bills. God, I hate daily stand ups.
| bitwize wrote:
| Some of us didn't choose the right parents when we were born, and
| don't have a nice cushy trust fund to fall back on when doing
| what we love doesn't pan out in compensation. Some of us have to
| take webshit jobs -- or worse -- to keep food and a roof. Or we
| could starve, which I'm sure would suit libertarian techbros just
| fine.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I freelance over 9 years on field that was my hobby and love.
| While I still love my work, I wouldn't say its a hobby anymore.
| Passion is gone, now I improve my skills with everyday working in
| field of mine previously a passionate hobby.
|
| I consider hobby as unconditional needs for creativity, while job
| is condition for make a living.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| To quote an Austrian philosopher
|
| "Love the reps" - Arnold Schwarzenegger
| StopTheTechies wrote:
| > I find it really challenging to talk with people who have
| completely separated their work from their emotional being.
|
| Is this not everyone? Who the fuck brings their emotions to work?
| I thought the whole trope of "you should love what you do" was
| just capitalist tripe to get people excited about the work most
| people were required to do to avoid homelessness (notice--society
| offers no right to shelter or any other meaningful protection
| from harm).
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