Philosophy of Production
So with my Pessimist philosophy, I have distilled the idea that Comply or Die is a feature of the human condition. Basically, this means that we either comply with the conditions we are situated in (socioeconomic in particular) or we will die a slow death due to not playing the game correctly or simply outright suicide (outright rejection of the game).
At the end of the day, things "have to get done" (lest death). Someone has to make the donuts. Someone has to update the spreadsheets, teach the class, assemble the product, design the system, plan the X, Y, Z, etc. etc. infinitum. Even in a stratified society as our own, where there are some who can sit on massive wealth, someone down the line has to "get things done" to move the economy around. Even wealth takes some steps to maintain it and grow, so I'll just consider that "something" even if it is basically investment management.
Holding off on what other animals can do (because people get caught up in the red herrings of animal psychology rather than my essential point at hand), individuals of our species must continually self-impose the regiment to do work, over and over to "get things done". This is interesting to note because it puts us squarely in the existential situation of doing something we might not want to do otherwise, but for survival purposes. It is not simply "doing" the job, but self-imposing ways to motivate ourselves to do the job and understanding things like consequences if we don't do the job.
With this said, what I am trying to get at is there's a callousness in having to produce at all. Even if we were a 10 person society, it would be the same. Someone not pulling their "weight" means the group will suffer. Our needs and wants (of survival and comfort and the like) ensure our enmeshed reliance on each other's work. It's intractable. The fact of it doesn't make it just, right, or moral. Just because it is a feature, doesn't mean it's a good feature.
At the end of the day, things "have to get done" (lest death). Someone has to make the donuts. Someone has to update the spreadsheets, teach the class, assemble the product, design the system, plan the X, Y, Z, etc. etc. infinitum. Even in a stratified society as our own, where there are some who can sit on massive wealth, someone down the line has to "get things done" to move the economy around. Even wealth takes some steps to maintain it and grow, so I'll just consider that "something" even if it is basically investment management.
Holding off on what other animals can do (because people get caught up in the red herrings of animal psychology rather than my essential point at hand), individuals of our species must continually self-impose the regiment to do work, over and over to "get things done". This is interesting to note because it puts us squarely in the existential situation of doing something we might not want to do otherwise, but for survival purposes. It is not simply "doing" the job, but self-imposing ways to motivate ourselves to do the job and understanding things like consequences if we don't do the job.
With this said, what I am trying to get at is there's a callousness in having to produce at all. Even if we were a 10 person society, it would be the same. Someone not pulling their "weight" means the group will suffer. Our needs and wants (of survival and comfort and the like) ensure our enmeshed reliance on each other's work. It's intractable. The fact of it doesn't make it just, right, or moral. Just because it is a feature, doesn't mean it's a good feature.
Comments (77)
The institution of philosophical discourse.
It is interesting how you classified the suicide as outright rejection of the game. Sorry, but I am disagree with you in this specific point. You express it as a failure, a defeat, an act of giving up by someone. It looks like a scape from the rules they are forced to play in the game. I think you are not appreciating suicide in his most beautiful aspect: freedom.
In my humble opinion, I would describe suicide as an act of freedom where an individual decides to end his life. Inside this context is important to understand what has been occurring until the last the day. But... I don't see it could be for lack of production inside a community. A suicidal does not have the aim to live grouped. They prefer to live in loneliness because they understand that it is better to live off from society. We can be agree here and say they are not producers because they don't take part in this issue since the beginning.
I personally see suicide as very personal ending, very respectful and even aesthetic depending on the context (I can put some Japanese writers as examples: Kawabata, Dazai, Mishima, Akutagawa...)
Conclusion: I can't connect a suicidal/loneliness individual on your philosophy of production.
It doesn’t follow either that we must all suffer because of one person not ‘pulling their weight’ as you put it. Such individuals are often just cast out of the group.
As for the use of the term ‘produce’ and ‘production’ here I am not quite sure what you getting at? Clearly we do not sit and wallow in our own filth whilst nature peels grapes and feeds them to us. Having to partake in activities (alone or within a group of people) seems to be how you are framing ‘production’ as if ‘doing something’ is some kind of horrendous torture.
I don’t quite equate being mentally stimulated as some kind of horrific burden. The constant quest for more stimulation is actually a base instinct we have. We are born to explore and imagine the impossible, to dream up what does not currently exist. I do not see this as ‘compliance’ at all because we are not mindless drones fighting for some queen or delivering food to her doorstep. We are able to question the situation and reimagine how we attend to the world because that is what we do.
How about this for ‘production’. Beethoven produced some amazing awe inspiring music. Did he toil and stress for this? Most likely. Did he imagine his music was the best or was he driven by the magnificence of another? I imagine he preferred other’s music to his own. The point being untold joy can be ‘produced’ by some person’s lack of self perspective. Their production is not something that anyone but themselves finds inadequate … so if everyone is inspired by others then everyone’s toil and production likely touches more than one person in some way. The net effect being ‘production’ produces something for many to admire rather than just one.
We can feel sorry for those that produce what we consider the best in some ways because they are usually blind to their own talents. They can never hear the symphony in completion the first time or view the completed portrait the first time. All they see is imperfection, mistakes and think ‘I can do better’ whilst multiple others look on in wonder at what them deem near perfection.
Behind the pessimistic toil of work are multiple enlivened and inspired people. Perhaps one day people will read something you write and it will inspire a revolution that leads to a world and society where ‘pessimism’ is realised as a great way forward … but you yourself will likely never really think much of your own thoughts and have more admiration for the ideas and thoughts of others.
Life is not a game. All games are representations of life. They are our imagined dreams of what life can be in the face of the eternal failure to meet ‘perfection’ yet we can glimpse it through others (or in nature) and that guides our course if embraced with optimistic pessimism … they are the same thing after all.
At bottom, it's not a social or economic issue. If you were alone on an island you would have to comply or die.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But we are animals. The constraints you're talking about are the constraints all animals face. You're just making them seem more highfalutin by giving them an existential twist. Metaphorically, you're complaining about gravity. It's not fair that it hurts when we fall down.
I see your point in terms of conflict between objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity forces us to a lot of unwanted things. Subjectivity is when we are able to freely express ourselves, like artists do. We can use creativity to change some objectivity aspects into positive resources working in favour of subjectivity, like artists do.
Fair point. I didn't mean to imply that it is a failure, simply not wanting to play the game. Though, most times it is about being disappointed in or suffering from some aspect of the game rather than about not wanting to play the game as a whole.
Paradigm shifts and revolutions don't really change the game.
because as you state:
Quoting I like sushi
Quoting I like sushi
Schopenhauer would say that this is equivalent to some dissatisfaction. It's not an instinct as much as a de facto of being born at all with a consciousness, and a self-reflective one at that.
Quoting I like sushi
So you are not grasping here the moral problem.. If I create for you a situation where you are forced into a game (lest suicide), that is callous at best. Whatever outcomes produced from it don't matter to the moral problem. We all have a proverbial gun to our head.. so yay Beethoven but all points related to magnificent productions are besides the point.
So I brought up the idea of other animals because truly at least some other animals really can be isolated and live in the present. We do neither. We have selves that are created through social interaction, and though there is the occasional "Robinson Crusoe" scenario that is always in relation to the normal mode of human production which is to work as some sort of social group (usually hunting and gathering before agriculture and pastoralism). Robinson Crusoe dude had to have a social group to even know how to live alone or have the cognitive processes to figure it out. So that would be a straw man you are presenting to say we don't have to live in such a manner.. We are indeed social animals.
Quoting T Clark
I already saw this objection and even said here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
It isn't trying to be "high falutin" but rather, it is describing our situation in opposition to other animals who live more in the present and have inbuilt instinctual mechanisms.. Whatever the case with other animals, WE don't operate like that. Rather, we operate via self-imposed plans, goals, and expectations.. We choose to work. We don't "survive" in the manner animals just "survive".
Maybe... Rather if everyone didn't "pull their weight" with production, what would happen? Indeed there are strong social pressures and internal pressures to produce.
It seems clear to me that we are considering here the bad side of the question. From a very radical philosophical point of view, we could even say that the tiniest evil, or suffering, in existence is enough to make existence philosophically problematic, let’s say unacceptable, just because it is not entirely positive. The passion of philosophy is trying to understand, to explain, and I think the hardest thing to understand and explain is the presence of evil, suffering, in life. I think we need to abandon the way of trying to understand and explain, because it doesn’t work. So, it seems to me the only philosophical alternative is the subjective perspective.
And this point above is key to understand Comply in our context. We choose to work, but we might not have wanted to otherwise.. We really can't do otherwise, but we also know this. It thus becomes a moral problem of whether it is okay to create this kind of compliance in others. If no one decided to pull their weight nothing would get done and you would be done.. If it was 10 people and several of them did nothing, not only are they jeopardizing themselves but the others.. To be "moral" you would pull your weight to not allow others to perish with you.. But then the meta-position from this is whether it was even good to put people in the position that they needed to pull their weight.
Not pulling their weight equates to self-imposed death and group demise. This epiphenomenon is wrong to impose, period.
Not sure what this means. Philosophy is about trying to figure out what is the case. Is it the case that forcing people to produce (or die) is callous? If so, is it moral?
Calling ‘life’ ‘the game’ is where I disagree. I guess you think the term ‘life’ is different to ‘the game’. If so what is the difference?
I do not see any moral problem or any gun to head? What situation is anyone creating? Are we actually ‘creating’ said ‘situation’ if there is some overseer with a ‘gun to our head’? I don’t believe this it what you are saying just showing it is rather nebulous.
I don’t see a clear thought expressed in what you have said. It is a mishmash and I think you could use more literal terms to help clarify whatever it is.
This is the gist of the OP. However we choose to call it -- division of labor, sharing, team-work, pitching-in -- your question is whether it is even moral to require everyone to pull their weight. And my answer to this is no. If people don't want to share with the work, they have every right not to. But the fruit of one's labor should commensurate with their contribution of time and effort.
And I agree, often in capitalist society, one's time and effort do not commensurate with the prize they get. You can dig ditch 24/7 and still not able to enjoy life as others can. I mean when bonuses in hundreds of thousands dollars are easily given to some in the organization, even during the pandemic and lay-offs, there's absolutely something wrong with this society.
You've recognised the nature of your existence. Welcome to adulthood. Get over it and keep buggering on.
On the way, you might manage to make things a bit more comfortable for yourself and others. That'd be more worthwhile than what you do here, which is just incessant complaining.
Quoting Banno
:rofl: :up:
Quoting T Clark
:lol: :clap:
Not a straw man. People have lived as hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers for as long as there have been people. The need to eat is not a burden society placed on our shoulders, it is our existence as living organisms that does.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is just what I was talking about when I said "highfalutin." You're trying to turn our simple, straightforward, fundamental biological nature into an existential crisis. It's not fair! It's not fair! It's not fair! (stomps feet)
So I'm going to follow the logic where it leads and not where I want it to go, unlike you all. The Pessimism lens finds the intractable negative/immoral conundrums about life. Because its intractable, does not redeem it in any way..
It is intractable that by being born we are forced into complying into a situation lest death. That is a moral problem, not a "get out of jail free cause we can't help it". It is callous to make others choose between X, Y, Z activities or death by de facto the very fact that X, Y, Z leads to non-death.
So Angelo inadvertently (or advertantly?) hit the nail on the head.. That is to say forcing people do anything is bad or immoral".
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Life de facto has forced productive events to live.
I said earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
You put someone in the boat and tell them to paddle or things will drag.. So you paddle.
The morality of paddling to help pull weight doesn't negate the meta-situation of putting people in the boat to paddle being callous to do to someone.
I prefer to imagine Sisyphus happy...
What I stated was a fact:
We don't just "do" we must buy into doing. That is an existential thing. That is not just biology (if you mean by this purely instinctual mechanisms of survival).
So you are camp Comply or Die is a-ok, what a surprise. And more worthwhile is surely about something in the Complying department. The loving options Wonka has set out to give us ways to "pull our weight" :roll:.
... "buggering on" with that old philosopher's stone. :smirk:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Mainländer didn't "find life" so "intractable" ... For fuck's sake, man, stop whinging and get on with it! :point:
Yep.
Yes, the world is callous. Sentienceless matter is callous. No surprise.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Logic says: either kill yourself or try to make yourself less unhappy. Have you followed this logic where it leads or where you want it to go ("instead of killing myself, I should incessantly complain")?
In other words, have you seen a therapist? Have you read a self-help book? What steps have you taken to make yourself less unhappy?* It is, after all, possible to be less unhappy than you are. It seems it should have happened by now considering it's a fiat of logic.
Consider the possibility that your weltanschauung is precisely - following the logic where you want it to go. You clearly want to complain incessantly.
*In short: have you taken responsibility for your unhappiness? Or are you going to continue to blame sentienceless matter? Is it logical to blame sentienceless matter for - anything?
Edit: Nevermind. I see you're just on about antinatalism again: a philosophical position effete in the face of instinct. A blowing of smoke.
Although it is a common theme for you, I had not entered this discussion from the point of view of anti-natalism. Certainly I knew it was in the background. We've been through that before. No, I don't think it is a moral problem.
I think you’re right. The technological growth of human history and “progress” could be the evolving effects of our attempts to mitigate this burden.
Um, isn't this exactly what I am speaking against? Comply...or die.. Is that wrong to put someone into that bind? It is intractable, but is it wrong.
Do you think because something is intractable that makes it impervious to moral judgement? If so, why?
Hey, we actually agree on this. What is it about this self-imposition? Can you elaborate your thoughts on the fact that we don't just "do", but we have to continually buy into doing?
But did the punishment fit the crime? Was the punishment just?
The most insidious kind of thing is to make the person believe that it is their fault for not falling in line enough. Sisyphus was duped.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Let's say: sure, it's wrong. I never wanted to bring children into this mess so I didn't. But you don't see me making a soapbox out of it. Because it's...
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
I understand why you choose to ignore my question. But I'll try it a second time:
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Since you haven't killed yourself, you yourself are also of the...
Quoting schopenhauer1
...camp. So tell me: Is it cowardice? Is it a secret hope? That "life might be slightly less horrible a little further on..."?
Samuel Beckett
If we cannot do otherwise then we cannot do otherwise. Yet you say we ‘choose to work’ … that is contrary. We literally must do something (work) to live … be this to gather food or hunt.
We can live or cease to live. We are most certainly compelled to live in almost every circumstance.
This is not a moral problem as all because it just is as it is. Like someone else jokingly mentioned we cannot rationally call ‘gravity’ immoral and think it will be accepted by others.
Humans judge other humans in some moral/ethical capacity. There is literally no judgement to be had beyond the realm of conscious beings.
I would still like to understand what difference you see between ‘life’ and ‘the game’ if any? I assume you must see a difference or your reasoning falls flat.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I prefer my T-Shirt - "Sisyphus was a patsy!"
I wouldn't describe it as an imposition, myself, because no one is imposing this activity on me. I just think it is a burden and its fine to be pessimistic about it. It's tough. It's not easy. In such a life optimism leads to disappointment, pessimism to pleasant surprises.
Okay, it's wrong. It (i.e. natura naturans —> conatus) will continue to be wrong, at least, until the next global extinction event. So given it's both "wrong and intractable", you can either adapt, maladapt, or die – choose bravely, schop1 (just stop fucking whining!) :brow:
What? That doesn't follow.
You can make anything a moral problem by having bizarre morals, its not interesting other than to a curator of the bizarre.
If I had a moral rule that it is immoral to wear hats on a Thursday then it would become a 'moral problem' that people did so, but I can't see why that would make it in the least bit interesting for anyone not of that view.
The overwhelming majority of people are of the opinion that it's morally fine to impose on someone for the greater good, especially if you've done everything you can to minimise the burden of that imposition. We simply assume others are moral beings too and so would want to help.
Life is the broader category. Human life represents a socioeconomic game. Not a particular kind but a game nonetheless (hunting-gathering, industrialized, etc.).
Quoting I like sushi
So the problem is thus:
"You can paddle the boat to help yourself and society (to survive), or you can jump off the boat". That is the comply.. You can comply with the following the game (of rowing the boat) or you can kill yourself. Is putting someone in that position itself wrong? Of course I say yes.
Quoting I like sushi
No, any way (civilized or not) would be a game we need to survive. Is putting someone in that situation wrong? Yes. Having choices on which game to play, doesn't negate having to play a game in the first place. Why "limited choices" somehow unjust but "forced to comply with playing some game (lest death) is not seen as unjust, I don't understand.
Quoting Tom Storm
Either way works.
Quoting NOS4A2
So my point in the OP is that each day, we impose it on ourselves, and that too is negative as we cannot just "be" existing, we have the self-reflection capacity to know we don't have to do anything and yet our fear of death and destruction of the body is a strong compulsion to overcome, if we choose death. So we do things we might otherwise not do.. That is not proof that thus life must be worthwhile, just on how hard it is to overcome our own fears of nonexistence or pain. There are a lot of de factos of life to live in a socioeconomic environment with surviving, getting comfortable, and entertainment. These de factos are in a sense a "force" if you don't want to overcome the fear of death. ALL of this imposition of following the de factos of socioeconomic realities or death, is wrong.
Quoting 180 Proof
Nah, I'll continue thanks.
Quoting Banno
Accepting the reality is not rebelling against it the fundamental problem. Forced to comply or die is a problem to deal with not ignore because its "too late".
Yawn. Accepting the things yo cannot change is not unreasonable.
So what I mean by rebelling here is more about a stance or a framework to see things. Humans always have to self-impose complying, even if tacitly. Not recognizing this is equivalent to a kind of bad faith.
But also, the element of having to pull one's weight is cruel to put onto someone in the first place as if it is just the course of things. There would surely be a point where if everyone opted out (free riding problem, let's say), that things would go to shit, if you will. So surely, not everyone can free ride (there really is no free riding if considering everyone in the the whole group, cause someone else will pay for it).
So this pyramid scheme of production where there is really a "no opt out" option, is not good. We can still recognize this, prevent it and perhaps be less aggressive of expectations knowing that there is no pausing the game, or removing oneself to a Platonic realm of non-production. There has to be something that comes from this self-imposition..
In the industrialized/Western socioeconomic game, a boss-man still exists to manage and coordinate. The owner is going to invest and boss the bossman. The worker is going follow the expectations of the bossman managers and owner(s)/investors. Someone's gotta make the donuts and the spreadsheets, and move the minutia around to "make things work".. But recognizing the fact of self-imposition of motivating ourselves using whatever reasoning possible makes us not just animals that just "do unwanted things".. but knowing it is something we may otherwise not do. This adds that extra layer.
So I ask you, what might a society look like with a rebellious stance towards production? Answer wisely, and not flippantly as you seem to usually do. I'll just ignore any predictable flippant answer.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'd like to know at which non-production point would it be sustainable/livable to be. Because I don't think there is in human history a period when all productions halted. This is equivalent to committing mass suicide. So, my question is, do we want to continue to live? If so, do we want to change the socio-economic power structure so that we're not compelled to work in order to produce? I'll tell you that if all workers stopped producing, that would hurt everybody.
You have gone to your usual position of mangling several distinct issues together.
So I'll go back to my original reply to you on this thread:
Quoting Banno
Imagine Sisyphus happy. Amor fuckin' fati. :strong:
Maladapt it is. :pray:
If everyone stops responding, then he might stop whinging. Or if he continues, then stop paying any attention, and the problem disappears except for him who keeps stoking it.
I agree that work is difficult and is always related to an acceptance of conditions of what is possible or demanded.
The discipline required to make some things is not only a matter of doing enough for other people. The art demands its own harsh necessity.
Good performance requires a lightness of hand and spirit combined with a resolve to deliver the best result.
This isn't to say that such a personal perspective overrules others. But the reverse is also not true. There is a relationship to the cosmos established when one can actually do stuff that is not there when one cannot.
And this is how might makes right. And how people end up shooting people.
Camus didn't live long enough for time to show whether he'd be able to live out his life philosophy to the natural end of his life, so we don't know how viable it actually would be even for its creator.
The other main existentialist, the squinter, ditched his existentialist philosophy, so no credit can be given to him.
You are kindly requested to provide a set of instructions for how to learn to love fate.
And secondly,
Quoting Hanover
said love of fate has to overcome this hurdle.
You're committing another self-imposition: You take for granted that you're certain that there is no way out. (And that the materialistic outlook is the one and only right one).
Arguably, this is the core of your problem (and not the comply or die, or the futility of pursuing sensual pleasures).
Quoting baker
Non sequitur.
Put down the "Existentialism For Dummies", baker, and go read "the squinter's" work.
But why should we get things done for others. For a possessing class? Who have their alibi to tyranny by feeding us with artificial corporate food, housing us in sick building, providing us with occasional entertainment, a chance in the lottery to go to the island, a health insurance corporation to provide us with torture as the cure for our artificially induced sickness and misery, while constantly being bombarded with fake smiles and ideality. So, free yourself and make life happen yourself!
For real world examples, look at the labor movement in the United States under Hoffa, say. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a socialist and even communist approach related to worker's collectivism and revolutionary attitudes toward labor relations.
However, when people like Hoffa got involved in unionizing, they didn't take a socialist approach. They essentially treated labor as a commodity that they could control and that every industrialist needed. They used capitalist principles and gained more for workers than any other labor movement since.
In a real sense, that was a "rebellious stance" towards production that changed its society.
Nevertheless, I think you mean something like how would society look like if work wasn't necessary to possess or rely on a comfortable life. Additionally, address some views on the ethics of our work and production philosophy against the supposition of a "free" society.
Toward the first part, it seems unlikely that there is only one way society could go or present itself if the imposition or requirement to "produce, grow or die" Work was technically "optional" in the communist USSR, East Germany and Red China but the necessities of life still required a major workforce to maintain production (in Eurasia) or agriculture (in China). However, there are democratic, capitalist societies throughout the West that instituted social programs in response to the communist ideals being spread at the time. Some social programs were created in response to the threat of communism and others led by leftists influenced by socialism. This emerged in welfare programs and policies that allowed more people to choose not to work in capitalist societies even more effectively than in nominal communist ones.
On top of that, the real revolutions in work were better conditions and easier jobs that paid more... at least until the "neo-liberal" revolution of people like Reagan and Thatcher. Just as the "New Deal" under FDR had made every president (and congress) from Truman to Nixon a "New Deal" president, Reagan dismantled it and no President since has ever considered undoing the Reagan ideal of America.
This is a bit of a ramble, but it's Saturday night.
Nevertheless, even though it seems like worker rights have eroded, we also have some of the most prosperous living and working conditions in part due to the gradual invisible revolution of these labor policies. However, ironically or paradoxically, much of that is the result of the fact that the United States is not a producing nation in the way that we were before Reagan or even Nixon. Other than extremely destructive and increasingly complicated military equipment and agricultural products, America doesn't produce much in a global industrial sense even though we still have the minds for it.
So, we may be a nation of people living paycheck to paycheck, we are not really workers. We're all consumers. Production is hard work, but people need to work to consume - the essential behavior of the society - so there are any number of unnecessary jobs out there to put money in people's pockets.
Which comes down to my basic controversial thesis - work is a compulsion by the worker in the same way that alcohol or drugs or the television and movies and internet encourage compulsive behavior. Work for an increasing number of people is a distraction they need to avoid severe emotional distress. People work so they feel good about buying crap they don't need.
Jerry Seinfeld does a hilarious acceptance speech for the Clio advertiser's award, but at its kernal is the idea that wanting something provides much greater pleasure than having that thing. The distraction of shopping is the purpose of production. The product provides the fetish or ideal objective for the consumer to want and that is the end - the sublimated objective - not the actual satisfaction of that desire. Desire projects the wanting person into an imagined future state of happiness that is dashed by the actual arrival of the product that leads inevitably to either disappointment or disinterest. Desire is the essence of all distraction.
It is possibly this potentially revolutionary principle that guides the expression of work and production in a modern society far more than rational theories or mathematical and logical concepts emerging from economics.
So, a radical production philosophy that could overturn that would first need to assert those things that cannot be bought - that must be earned and experience - should be available to everyone and not something that can be monetized. However, in our society, what exactly has not been monetized or quantified or used to sell something to fire our desire?
But this is exactly the negative condition and moral problem I'm talking about.. No production suicide.. So we must be producers... Bringing in existentialist ideas of bad faith, we must sublimate this fact as if it is just the way things must be, but our "soul" (metaphorically used here) rebels against it.
And yet you have not justified it, just asserted it. If you had any charitable reading or care then perhaps you would see the distinct issues:
As I said in previous post:
But this (production in socioeconomic sphere or die) is exactly the negative condition and moral problem I'm talking about.. No production suicide.. So we must be producers... Bringing in existentialist ideas of bad faith, we must sublimate this fact as if it is just the way things must be, but our "soul" (metaphorically used here) rebels against it.
How is it we have a relationship with the cosmos?
If you're talking about some sort of asceticism, that is at the extremes that are pretty inaccessible for most people. It's a romanticized version of how humans can live.
Ok, kind of on board...
Quoting Hillary
That's the problem. There is no freeing from the production-system other than romanticized notions of Robinson Crusoe hacking it in wilderness or non-starter communes that themselves need you to produce and still need the greater economy outside it in order to function. Nothing is usually made completely from "scratch" anymore.
Houses/homes, clothes, water, electricity.. and all the things that come out of it.. all the things used to maintain what you then have.. it's a snowball effect. It's too simplistic to say we should stop consuming.. It is all a part-and-parcel of a "way of life". Rather, any mode of living will have this problem. In order to live, you need the systems and networks that sustain it.. And that includes humans themselves as producers working for each other\'s demands. The problem is intractable once someone is born into the world.
Get a grip and take control. When usually misery lies in the heart of control, you can make the opposite happen.
As a builder, working with materials is learning the best way to perform to make the desired thing. In agriculture, growing is act of nature combined with skilled labor. In both cases understanding and discipline are needed for the successful production of what we need to live. I call it a 'relationship to the cosmos' because part of performing well is a kind of attention.
In Zhuangzi, the skill of the Butcher is found by responding to resistance in a way that finds the most effortless path.
That aspect of work does not address all aspects of having to live by the 'sweat of our brows." The dynamic of wanting to have a say in the outcome of those who one supports and loves is preferable to the passivity of eking out existence with minimum effort. Labor feels punitive if not freely chosen as what is pursued. The response of an individual obviously cannot remove the quality of suffering but there can be a conversation.
But one cannot freely choose not to work.. or at least, one cannot expand this maxim universally without collapsing life itself.. So it is life itself that is the problem perhaps. Being born at all is the problem. It is not any particular way but all ways.
Yes, work is necessary. Finding a way to make it worthwhile beyond answering that necessity is a good thing. Don't you experience satisfaction when you overcome a difficult task? Don't you take notice of the relative freedom that becoming skilled imparts?
The idea of living in a world where nothing is required from me sounds like being a zombie.
It's not a hard and fast law, no. That's the point. We have to make it so by motivating ourselves or integrating X, Y, Z ideas about work and accomplishment into our psyche. Then there is the issue if we even should be in the business of integrating this into our psyche..
If I forced you into a game and you learn to play it better cause you have to deal, the force is still there, the issue at hand is not how well you jump to meet my criteria but whether having a set of criteria was a violation of sorts to issue to someone. The byproduct of me foisting criteria being positive or negative for an individual shouldn't factor into that violation.
It's tricky because people think they have best intentions but what of the morality of arrogance to give people a game that is played in real time, lest death to begin with?
Is there something about being in a position that one must do X for their survival that is callous or problematic? Is simply "do good at your job" at the lower level of what is going on not getting at the problem in the first place, "you need to produce because..." and of course because you and everyone else will die if this was followed to the logical end. So thus, we work to not die. It is not wrong to not want to die, but it is wrong to be in a position to not want to die and there makes all the difference. So simply restating the outcome like @Banno does (to just get on with it) is simply failing to analyze the problem. So hence I said that just because something is intractable doesn't mean it's not worth examining.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, questioning it is not problematic, or even putting it that way is not problematic. I mistakenly believed that this thread is about an alternative reality where people are not compelled to produce.
A lot of human conditions are set and no alternatives exist for those who want a different condition.
It would be reasonable for Job to complain about doing a good job of being a person and yet getting a lot of suffering in return. And if he knew it was all because of some bizarre wager upon his response, that, too, would be a fair cause for objection.
The game quality is a form of suffering. That Job can confirm for himself that he is not at fault is outside of the game is important. That doesn't answer your question about justification but is an attempt to talk about the problem.
And here is the problem.. No Marxism or Capitalism or Anarchism or any ISM (except antinatalism) gets rid of this initial injustice which all others cannot fix.
Yes, we do need to talk about it. Perhaps it at least builds empathy in the fact that we all need to run around and produce because, excepting death, there is no other choice and this leaves us with a lot of percentage of forced production in our lives. Just another thing to add to the heap of pessimism. Sugar coat it with, "But you can try to do something you want.." all you want, but that fact remains, whether you're eking out a living in dirt or in a first world country, so the whole category of production makes life itself disqualified from being moral to force into existence.
No, I'm not talking about asceticism.
I'm talking about your certainty. I question its foundation.