It's kind of strange that our existence has come down to working in an often unfulfilling job almost all of our waking time, and only finding fulfillment when you're out of a job.
EDIT: in fact these days, people make fun of me because I sought fulfilment in my career as a whole, and it’s my fault now that I’m depressed that it’s gone. I’ve come across this snarky comment more than a couple times on this forum.
But often 6 of one, half a dozen of the other eh?
Notably, I’ve found the worse abuse happens if you still keep contact with folks like this after you find a way through. Talk about murderous jealousy!
Anamanaguchi - "Buckwild"
This has been the miserable meaningless life for billions of people over the centuries
Few become an artist or painter or musician or whatever other thing they'd like to do but can't pay the bills
Ignoring art with patrons which is a tiny percent of all art made, people just did things at home quietly. They painted, drew, told stories, knit, crocheted, etc. Even patron-led artists just made what their patrons wanted, namely all the famous religious art, which I imagine felt like unfulfilling work anyway.
What we like, that is to say gets things like our dopamine flowing, tends to tie in well with the idea of not being compelled to do it. Someone writing copy at work to further enrich the capital owning class and to pay their bills is very different than someone writing short stories in the evening after work.
Now my days largely consist of navigating a “game of thrones” political landscape where work means less than it ever has. The sense of agency I once coveted now feels like a distant memory in some ways.
But to be fair this is probably something that people experienced in many different ages of humanity.
This is because you were already meeting the base of your pyramid of needs. If you were building shelter because you had none, or hunting for subsistence, it’s considerably less enjoyable. Success means you live another day, failure means suffering. Self actualization is not a concern in those scenarios.
> Isnt this the human condition and fundamental to our species and everything about us? People in the past weren't fulfilled doing back-breaking farm labor or out hunting all day hoping to catch a meal and knowing if you don't catch a meal a few days in a row you'll be too weak to catch anymore.
No. I think if you go far enough into the past, the "jobs" were fun and enjoyable. As technology has progressed, many jobs have gotten farther and farther from what we were meant to do.
And AI isn't going to help. The best case scenario is it replaces work with purposeless entertainments and ennui. The more likely case it that it removes fulfilling work from human hands, leaving more space for unfulfilling work and poverty (because capitalist logic CANNOT be questioned, or you're a heretic who should be burned at the stake).
Which jobs specifically were fun and enjoyable and during which period? What is the evidence for that?
If you go back to hunter-gather times, I'm sure human physiology and motivation was much better suited to the kinds of jobs people had to do to survive. A lot of those things (hunting, gathering (e.g. mushrooms), gardening) are still things people do for fun now.
And it just makes logical sense to evolve to like to do the things you need to do to survive, and we had evolutionary-long timescales to do that (unlike things like code-reviewing LLM PRs).
For my part, there is a huge price I’m willing to pay to be able to drink water out of my tap. I didn’t have this always and I really value it.
Nah, couldn't be. You can't have running water without also having Elon Musk ruin Twitter, that's just a crazy fantasy.
Yeah. Things people do as hobbies tend to be things they enjoy.
There are a lot of people out there right now spending their free time prompting LLMs to write more code, because they find it fun.
Many jobs also improved your fitness unless you were injured. Anything manual required more aerobic capacity and strength hence making you more fit.
Modern people are sleep deprived, weak, and aerobically deficient unless they spend time outside of work focusing on these things. We simply aren’t meant to sit around all day staring at a screen only to then sit and drive a car.
I’d argue modern life is much more comfortable but counterintuitively there is a constant discomfort that is chronic because of it.
Another way to think about this is that humans are meant to suffer everyday. If you are not forcing it through physical exertion it slowly leaks and if it is not exhausted it is constant.
Rose colored glasses. “We won’t starve today” is not spiritually fulfilling. It’s survival.
People romanticize the past. Modern life is more comfortable specifically because everyone isn’t struggling to survive. (Obviously some still are.)
> Many jobs also improved your fitness unless you were injured.
That’s a real big “if”. You can go get a construction job right now. It will get you more fit. But it will probably also get you injured, especially over the long term.
Obviously I don't know the answers, and there were obviously tons of day-to-day stressors that sucked, but I'm not so sure it's a given that people of the past did not find life fulfilling/meaningful.
You think it'd be fulfilling when your children had around a 25% chance to die before the age of five?
nathan fielder has been making rounds recently
I felt he captured the golden shackles paradox of a cozy job here. if we are happy when fired, why don’t we quit?
next time when its uprising, there shall be no mercy whatsoever to the exploiter class
lol
lmao
the reason we have weekends and no child labor is because workers died for it.
the state, the capitalists desire control, obedience and extraction. worker well-being is a low priority. workers advocating for better pay, safe working conditions, etc were routinely killed.
why is it laughable to say that there is a need to resist the injustice and push for better working conditions and rights for all?
Does that happen now? How often? Are you or your friends at risk?
> why is it laughable to say that there is a need to resist the injustice
It is not, it is normal and necessary.
Thing that is laughable is push for violence expecting a good outcome.
it is just for some reason being tolerant of abuse and exploitation is normalized, people are kept on minimum wage that hasnt changed for many decades.
elites get to enjoy the benefits of rich society only because the rest of the people tolerate it, but it doesn't have to be case
and overly extractive systems are unstable over the long term.
are you confident that the current level of extraction is optimal, or sustainable?
if a large part of society decides that it's not optimal or sustainable, where would you stand? prevent change? or seek equitable and stable redistribution?
there are so many examples of the inherent unwillingness for the beneficiaries of extractive systems to resist change: see the laws imposed against serfs following the black death, or the shooting and violent suppression of striking union workers.
that cycle is beginning again: MAGA, widespread rioting in France, Italy and other places.
There is economic and political injustice. Systemic extraction is passing a stable equilibrium.
relax the grip on power and resources, or spend the blood and treasure it will cost to maintain it.
but don't bullshit anyone with this 'life has an inherent cost': that's trivially obvious to everyone.
we are well past the point of collectively paying that cost. it's just not fairly or reasonably distributed.
No, I just don’t think a class war is the answer. Equitable and stable resource distribution doesn’t necessitate retribution towards the current ruling class. An imperfect system beats no system at all.
Starting tradition of violence is easier than stoping it.
What do you think our odds would be?
The extractive institutions are pleased that you believe this.
And then I remember that basic living has always had a cost to be paid. I doubt the first hunter gatherers sat around wondering if they were fulfilled. They just had a more immediate sight-line from their labor to their actual living costs.
Most of us here work well-paid jobs that allow us to pay our requirements and still have disposable income to enjoy our lives. But work we must; homes aren't free and neither is food and much of the entertainment we enjoy.
I don't feel particularly exploited. I fear if you do whatever menacing thing you're insinuating you want to do to the "exploiter class" then my job will go away and much of my lifestyle with it. Not sure that's a good outcome for anyone, really.
Wait a second-- I didn't do that at all.
A little bit of historical knowledge, a little bit of reading statistics of wealth inequality currently being about the same level as France before the French revolution. A little bit of looking around and doing the math for what a schoolteacher, or someone earning the median income has to do to survive right now, and maybe you can develop a bit of empathy.
We are at a historical apex of economic exploitation in the US, where we have a trillionaire preaching about the dangers of empathy while giving billions to politicians to ensure he is never taxed or his companies regulated. We are the sons and daughters with far less security, working harder for longer and for less than our parents. We have more gadgets but far less peace or leisure or time to take care of our neighbors.
My point was that this all feels a bit rich on a forum with mostly well todo software engineers. You are not an exploited victim if you are making a high income working a white collar job in a comfortable glass tower, and the worst thing that ever happens to you is the occasional off-hour page.
the revolutionaries who fought for the poor, were often from the upper class themselves, and all revolutions were basically one subset of elites fighting against the incumbent elites, mounting the accumulated discontent among the poors
A bit self centered take.
Centuries(Millenia) of slaves would probably dispute that.
That's not a good thing. It means we're failing to progress as a species. If we keep repeating history (with now, unfettered access to it), we're devolving, not evolving.
One way to look at glorious olden days is that man with one job could feed his whole family.
Other way to look at same times is that panama canal construction cost tens of thousands of lives and US had did not end systemic racism until 80’s.
I posit that no small part of prosperity of middle class was result of having less fortunate helping out due to lesser bargaining power (somewhere else in the country or the world)
It is good that people die less during construction. And it is ok to cost more.
So this is kind of a pedantic point, but 95% of our history is us doing things exactly as we evolved to do. I don't doubt either that hunting must have been a very engaging activity, especially when done as a clan or tribe.