What is the solution to our present work situation?
We need goods and services. This causes people to focus on things which produce necessary goods and services. This causes a loss of individual freedom to think about other things. Post hoc justifications are then put in place from social promptings- "work hard, play hard", the novelty of a "new" career move, a slight "raise", "group think", "team meetings", etc. This is the best we can do?
Comments (100)
All the empty rhetoric of the work place come into play when managers have nothing better to do with their time. When factories, offices, mines, mills, hospitals, etc. are working well, and the managers have actual work to do, you don't hear this stuff a lot.
See C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, 1951. It's a classic sociology text. In one chapter he described how academics, feeling trapped and under-paid in their liberal arts college offices, sometimes set up consultancies to advise corporations on how to achieve greater productivity in the work force. Sixty some years later managers are still looking for advice, though there are now whole bookstores full of it. And now there are a lot of less-than-professors out hawking industrial nostrums to spur apathetic workers (and cure them of their insensitive racist, sexist, transphobic, tendencies).
Granted, but I am not proposing that we make everything ourselves either.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, but I also think it is self-driven too. We "take on" these slogans so as to justify why we need to get involved with work we might otherwise not get involved with.. For example, "This task right now will prepare me for a possible future job with more money that I will tolerate more because of the higher pay". Or, perhaps the work itself is not what one would chose, but one gets caught up in the minutia because you get paid for it. Or maybe people just think about the weekends and vacations as their release and this is enough.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Interesting, managerial interactions is a fascinating beast.
But the question still remains, is there something better than our current economic and social relations in regards to work?
What is the solution? Get a different job? Start a business? go back to college and get a different degree? Read more science fiction? Take the fucking job more seriously? Get more sex?
Don't ask me; it's a problem I did not solve, except to find whatever justifications for endurance that worked in the short run. Very short run.
Were you the sort of person who could read a motivational psychology book, take it seriously, apply it assiduously, consult with successful people for coaching on how to be a middle class success, you could solve this problem. And if you had wings, you could fly like a bird up in the sky.
What's funny is communism tried to solve the problem of work by changing society itself. It is a very American idea that it is YOU who has to change, not society's social relations. Business as usual for the last 150 years (with some changes to labor laws to make sure the plebeians don't change too much) is an interesting idea. We really can't fathom a different lifestyle. The only hints of this are the technophiles who that robots will solve the problem. I'm weary of that too, and that is about the only ideas that people float around.
This is hilarious.
Right. We internalize social messages which may or may not be in our best long-term interests. In the short run, it's just easier to be agreeable.
We can at least get clarity. The truth is that a lot of work is not intended to benefit the worker at all, and the kind of jobs where workers find direct benefit employ a smaller part of the workforce and are hotly sought after. Capitalism, and the command economy of the soviet socialist system, are not ground-up systems where workers establish priorities and methods. They are both top-down systems where powerful apparatchiks decide what is going to be done, and the individual worker can get with the program or go fuck himself.
This is true. I still see the problem of work is more related to what Durkheim might call anomie, or perhaps more pointedly, what Marx called alienation. But does Marx solution really solve alienation? Whether or not plans are made by you and your coworkers through committees or what not, can't this be just as alienating as committees handed down from corporate bureaucracies or government institutions? Most work is inherently not that interesting I would presume. Life is not meant to be a wonder playground apparently. Not that I ever thought it was or will be.
Also, this all just speaks to the absurd futility of things. I just think of how happy Ford and the Dodge brothers were and other early car makers, and just the assembly line full of cars rolling out.. technology is somehow a replacement for meaning. As long as we keep working on making more things, we don't have to stop and ask why.
It's to make us "live better" so we can enjoy the stuff right? That's what most of the self-assured pragmatic types would say right?
Absolutely.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Whether there is, in fact, a solution to anomie and alienation in Marx, or anyone else, is an unanswered` question. Uncle Karl was a prophet, preaching salvation through a revolution which would, he thought, replace the previously dominant bourgeoisie with the bearers and beneficiaries of salvation, the proletariat. We honor prophets for good reason: they perceptively judge the present times and eloquently point to a future which does not exist yet in which a much better, more just society will be (could be, can be, might be) built.
Marx didn't provide the blueprint for the better, juster society he imagined. Prophets rarely do. Isaiah says that justice will roll down like waters --but he doesn't specify what, exactly, the judicial procedures should be. Micah says to love mercy and do justice; he doesn't specify what or how, exactly, we should do. Jesus provided more specifics, but details become problems too. If the Kingdom doesn't arrive pretty quick, then what? Marx and Jesus don't say.
The fall back position is that the kingdom is within you. You may not be able to find a decent job that you feel good about and that pays you a decent wage, but you can be a rebel in your heart and resist The Corporation however you can - putting bad paper in the photocopier, making personal calls on the company dime, entering bad data, selling the company secrets to their competitor, syphoning off any excess merchandise you can get your hands on... There are satisfactions in dropping the symbolic wooden shoe into the gears, but these days, the machine tends to have sabot detectors which prevent that approach from working.
I don't know, Schopenhauer. The least we can do is keep bitching and carping about how fucked things are. Bitching is 1/2 of the prophetic task. The other half is imagining a better world. Of course, you will receive no honor in your homeland -- it's a scriptural situation. Consider yourself in good company. "For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country." JOHN 4:44
As for our culture, circumstances are obviously different, but our DNA and human needs remain little changed. Though it is difficult sometimes to feel a connection with the person down the street, let alone across the country. We are atomized and isolated, interpersonally speaking. Intra-personally, we are equally splintered. Our Ego fights with our Id which resents the Superego. Left brain intellect vs. right brain feelings. Capitalism (of course) capitalizes on all this division and strife. But this mindset seems centuries, even millennia older than capitalism (as in the biblical examples BC gave).
Some say technology will save us (eventually). Some say there is no way to change flawed, sinful human nature. There is another view that says if the future is to be different, it will come not from machines or powerful computers, but from people with changed minds.
I really like how you framed the problem there.
Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? Some posters on here seem to place technology as the be all and end all it seems. Our very brains are said to work similar to specific kinds of computer- connectionist programming networks with neurons acting like transistors or circuits of sorts. What's funny is that if robots became fully sentient, I don't think it would end up like a Terminator scenario, but more like a Douglas Adams book. That is to say, the computers would have existential angst like us humans, and not be able to compute the systemic futility of existence. That would be truly horrifying for the poor little machine bastard.
Yes indeed, but what does that require from us? What would we have to do to end the despair of the modern work life? Right. Now.
In that sense, condoms and other forms of birth control are symbols of liberation. No political philosophy will ever be satisfactory, and a contributing reason why this is so is because it just is not possible to get along with as many people as there are. Less people = less potential for conflict.
At this point I’d settle for 25million in my bank account for sitting on my arse all year round. If Prince Charles deserves it, I don’t see why I wouldn’t.
Well, you bring up the problem of large populations- this adds to alienation. Think about how many people made the goods and services, the complicated technology you use. What did you have to do with it besides consuming it? All the processes to make all our goods are so complex, that we can never in a lifetime understand it all. The processes and those who get the "privilege" of making the complex technology lives in large labs in corporations and universities. The rest get to run the cogs.. I don't mean computer programmers- they are modern bricklayers.. It's the Intels, Apples, IBMs, Ciscos, etc. etc. and the Harvards, and Oxfords, and MITs, etc.etc. Sure, some might get to be a part of it, but most will be simply the ones who get the final products in consumption form or nicely printed "How things work" books to ease the mind enough to not "really" want to know the complexities and minutia. Essentially there are those who make the cogs, and those who run the cogs. Probably 98% run the cogs.
Thanks for your posts here. Good stuff as usual. In fact, you could probably just go through your post history, collect the best of them, and have a dern good book to publish. Call it “Philosophy in the Age of Assault Rifle Porn” and you’ll have a bestseller! :sweat:
Hahaha, this is somewhat ironic in my case since I just recently switched majors from engineering to computer science. One thing I realized in my experience with engineering is how janky things tend to be. It actually sort of lowered my confidence in many pieces of technology that I regularly use. When the only thing that keeps something running is a single resistor, and the rate of failure of this resistor is relatively high, suddenly the whole thing looks as if it's already broken.
Just as there are only a few that actually design the products we use and consume, there are also a very, very small amount of researchers and explorers who actually get to take the pictures you see in Nat Geo. The hope is to be one of these few, but the chances are small. But it's better than working as a desk-slave, designing products that will be replicated ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
That's funny actually.. any product types in particular? I've had TVs with shitty speakers and hard drives that break real easily, but I'm not sure if that is much resistors as other technology.. hard drives that aren't solid state can break easily due to their physical movement of parts.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes, most technology is foreign to us. I guess I'll pose the question to you that I posed to BC:
Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? Some posters on here seem to place technology as the be all and end all it seems. Our very brains are said to work similar to specific kinds of computer- connectionist programming networks with neurons acting like transistors or circuits of sorts. What's funny is that if robots became fully sentient, I don't think it would end up like a Terminator scenario, but more like a Douglas Adams book. That is to say, the computers would have existential angst like us humans, and not be able to compute the systemic futility of existence. That would be truly horrifying for the poor little machine bastard.
Ahh... well that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? The devil hides in the details. I’d imagine that there would have to be many different approaches, coming not just from experts and scientists, but from anyone who has something useful to add. For example... perhaps if a significant percentage (not even a majority, just a spark so to speak) really were convinced that humans are more than just a bowlful of isolated marbles barely touching, never intersecting, merely bouncing off each other either painfully or pleasurably ad Infinitum (I am a rock... I am an iiiii-aaa-land. And a rock can feel no pain. And an island never cries)... Then just maybe, life and work on this third rock from the sun, this blue-green space marble might actually be quite enjoyable.
For inspiration of this sort, i usually turn to the Tao Te Ching, and the writings of Daniel Quinn, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber, and some others.
Is it a change in how products and services are distributed? Is it a change in what we value? Is it a change in relations? Is it a change in how we think? And then how would it all come together? Yep too much for my mind. As we've seen, any "attempt" at some kind of change led to violence and domination of one class or group over another. Better to just accept no?
New products tend to break because they were rushed, always wait for future versions. With a little bit of technical background you can fix a lot of things on your own. My point was more about the "phenomenology" of technology. For many people, myself included at times, learning how something works is cool. Oftentimes, however, I find myself struck by how kludge-like things are. The documentation isn't always great, sometimes non-existent. When you ask professional engineers for help with some device and they tell you "I don't know", that doesn't always instill confidence. It's also scary how many people are desperate to get through error checking, testing, etc.
What's super sketchy are unregulated products. Literally, use at your own risk. A lot of things aren't regulated, and even if they are, the standards aren't always satisfactory.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I've always been amused by the niche cult surrounding artificial intelligence, because as much as it's "transhumanist" and "futurist", the hype fundamentally is related to our own insecurities. Those touting A.I. do so because they seem to think A.I. will do everything we don't want to. They will work - we won't have to. But what will we do instead? We'll still have the existential angst, and even more so when we realize that the A.I. is, in that respect, superior to us by being able to work without burden. Artificial intelligence might make some people question the value of human existence qua human existence, as A.I. presumably would do most of the work while we sit around idly, twiddling our fingers.
If the creation is "better" than the creator ... what will motivate people to reproduce? Why make humans, when artificial intelligence is even better? But without humans, what's the point of artificial intelligence? Hold on, back up a moment - what's the point of humanity in general?
Perhaps this is one manifestation of Heidegger's fear of technology - eventually we won't need humans, and if humans lack the understanding of Being, they won't see the value of being dasein. Or something.
Sure. Homo faber -- man the tool maker. The industrial revolution centralized and fragmented work in such a way that workers didn't make or own tools. He used tools and machines in a manner specified and for purposes chosen by the factory owner. Skilled craftsmen and craftswomen have always used tools or made tools to their own liking. Carpenters, for instance, have their own tools and perform work mostly on a contract basis for individuals (as opposed to construction workers...)
One of the reasons we all are dissatisfied with life is that we don't have our own tools to perform our own work for our own customers. You might like to make cloth from flax and wool by yourself, and you could. People do it. But up against the fabrics industries, an individual isn't likely to make a living doing that.
I know that one first hand.. tables upon tables.. all work together intricately.. you never know how one table might affect another with a bit of change to the code.. I'm not talking coffee tables obviously :).
Quoting darthbarracuda
Bingo.. what ARE we doing. What is humanity's point? The error written in our code is that self-awareness leads to understanding of systemic futility. If projects work with functions, the fully self-aware human has to trick himself into constantly being "driven" by these programs.. Every once in a while the baseline futility seeps in; the eternal WHY creeps in and haunts us. It's as if the software has run out of programs to execute.
Mein Gott im Himmel -- that is an inspired title.
Some tools are good for shit.
Again, another inspired post, thank you.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So is this good or bad? Does new mean better? Your implication is no. Why not? New technologies were created through the process. Isn't this ENOUGH to proclaim it GOOD in and of itself? (to be read sarcastically).
Quoting Bitter Crank
So creating something by oneself rather than relying on others is the answer? What if that is not satisfying either? It's just the whole day filled up with making stuff rather than inventing new stuff. What is the trade off? Besides that it fits the model of Marx' idea that somehow not being alienated from the sources of production is better for the individual, what makes this inherently better/good/satisfying? What makes this any better than what we have now?
:grin: I’ll even write a blurb for the book, if you’d like: “I laughed, I cried, and my chair needs to be dried. Couldn’t stop myself, though I really tried.”
Depends how you use or not use them.
Then there's your answer: disconnect self-awareness and you're fine again.
Well, animals seem to not have this problem of self-awareness. Either do machines. Another problem would be that people would rather not be either of those, now that we've experienced our Promethean situation.
And no beat, if you strive to be a drummer.
Settling is for homesteaders.
I enjoy using new technology. But the fact is, the act of creative destruction which brought us the current crop of gadgets was a extremely huge waste of resources--duplicating what already existed. Land lines vs. cell phones? There are apps on my cell phone that I find worth the cost -- for instance, the MetroTransit app which provides me with the bus schedule for any one of thousands of bus stops I might want to catch a bus at. Or the taxi app that shows me where my taxi is, as I wait for it. On the other hand, voice quality of cell phones is usually crappy, and everyone using the world as their private phone booth is annoying, if not fatal.
If the A.I. really is intelligent, when you tell the A.I. robot to do something no warm blooded animal would want to do, what you are going to hear is "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I am going to sit there and sort all that crap out."
Then you haven't been at the elephants' funeral.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I give you that. Machines do not know the concept of futility. They know utility, functionality, and redundancy.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, yes. And we wouldn't want to be in a stupor or in a coma either.
Yes, violence unfortunately often accompanies revolution. This is something to be avoided as much as humanly possible. If one can see one’s opponent as a sister or brother, or even as one’s own self, then lasting change is possible. The movie “I :heart: Huckabees” has a great scene where the idealistic tree-hugging crusader finally sees his “stuffed suit” opponent as himself, and it changes everything. Great metaphysical movie.
Acceptance is usually a good thing, even if one tries then to change what is accepted. Patience is wonderful and rare is our insta-google world. Don’t know how it would all come together, but eventually we all have to come together. We might be all huddled together on the mountain tops when the oceans rise and the levee breaks!
This is a tepid condemnation- I was hoping for fire and fury. If we go all Hegelian- development and synthesis of old into new, seem to be the point of humans. The march of history and all that. Technology self-generating more things.. But to stop and wonder why do anything, that seems to not fit into the scheme.
Yes, like many workers who don't stop to think about their position or how their day is taken up. How much are we missing with our current model of the modern workday?
That is a good one.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Acceptance just means lack of imagination, no? Isn't it a self-sustaining system if you don't try to change aspects of it that you don't like? The hope is powers are big enough to make you conform or you have extreme options of suicide or living a desperate life as an outlier of society.
Why don't you ask the Federal Bureau of Futility?
They must know something.
The work situation is an organic thing. Humans do want responsibilities. They want to be tied to an organization.
You mean most federal bureaucracies?
Quoting Caldwell
Ah I see, it has to be this way because it is this way. By adding the word "organic" does that give more import to your statement? Do you think the modern relations were "organic" or rather the result of a number of factors that may or may not have lead to ideal conditions as it is now. Even if it is organic, does that mean it is good? Some people have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources.
Yes.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I say that in the most sincerest of the truth.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No. I said nothing of that sort. When I say organic, I mean it in a descriptive way, not normative.
Quoting schopenhauer1
While it appears we have now digressed from your topic, I'll indulge you. People who have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources should go get a heart from inorganic sources. We haven't grown inorganic hearts in the lab yet. But certainly, we now have body parts that are inorganic. Like hip, knee, and heart pacer.
You are taking that a wee bit too literally or you are using really really dry humor. Either way, I don't think it is organic in how you are using it. People don't, in my opinion, have a natural tendency to like office spaces, corporate culture, hierarchies and the like. These came about through contingent forces of history, too complex to lay out here. If by organic you mean that it came about through an array of sources, well yeah I agree but as you stated, that has no normative value and is pretty self-evident.
Sorry, guilty as charged. I truly thought that was what you were asking. Explain the line again, "People who have hearts that don't work very well...."
Quoting schopenhauer1
And do you think that sea turtles enjoy the barnacles growing on their backs and legs? That's organic. That's natural tendency. The work situation as an organic growth is how it is. And I don't mean having tall buildings and a million offices. Work can be at a farm, or a forest, or at the sea, or underground. I don't think pilots call their cockpits offices.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, not just an array of sources. By organic I mean we are an active participant in its growth.
Wait just a minute... I also said Quoting Bitter Crank
Wasting the film and camera industry, the hard-wired telephone system, the more ecological typewriter, the already installed base of vinyl (made from petroleum) records, and record players/amps/receivers, etc. was a very bad thing. My liking my cell phone for certain convenient apps is NOTHING in comparison to the waste of 'creative destruction'. Wasting the former transit systems (subways, light rail, volleys, etc.) so that more GM, Firestone, and Standard OIL could make more money on buses, tires, and diesel fuel was an ecological and financial atrocity.
New capitalists (or old firms looking for new opportunities) love "creative destruction", "disruption of existing markets," and that wrecking ball approach. Is Uber or Lyft better than the older taxi companies? No, they perform the exact same function. Is AirB&B better than a hotel? I don't think so.
The Internet is new, but the internet has also resulted in changes that are not good -- like the destruction of the advertising base of the daily newspaper businesses, causing the papers to shrink up their content and value, or fail.
There are things I like about Amazon and Google, but viewing these two companies as our friends is almost certainly a mistake.
Continual product development and perpetually expanding economies is a a mirage, a fool's dream, a mistake, and an altogether total dead end.
Is that better?
Yes, there's the fire and fury! :grin:
But, well, let me "loop you in" to @Caldwell's comments as I think this question can pertain to both. Do you think the modern business dynamic is just a natural outgrowth of what humans really want out of life? If not, what is it that we want? You seemed to hint at making things ourselves. What if that doesn't really do much for people? Like if the furniture was rearranged and people made their own clothes and food, this really didn't change much to their satisfaction? Is there something else we are discounting?
More than "making everything we use ourselves", what people yearn for is having control over their work. From experience, conversation, and theory I know that it is possible for individuals to have control over their work, and even if is tedious, they like it much better that way. It isn't that they want to make everything themselves; they want a certain amount of autonomy and executive agency in their work. they don't want to be a slave to an arbitrary work schedule, or rigid rules which have little practical value. for instance. If they have to be 15 minutes late, they want to be able to be 15 minutes late without having to defend against a federal case about being late.
Certain levels of employees (like executives, professors, top apparatchiks) have that kind of control, agency, and flexibility, and they find it makes life easier and more peasant. We should all have those prerogatives.
A friend of mine used to work in the kitchen at college. He scrubbed pots and pans for 4 years in a work-study job. He liked it because his work station was quiet, unbothered, and straightforward. He scrubbed until the pots were clean and then he was done. Nobody was standing there with a stop watch saying he wasn't working fast enough. He didn't have to ask anybody to go to the toilet. He didn't have to dress up. If he didn't work faster, he just had to be there longer. An ideal job, in many ways.
Some jobs are really boring, but boring is made intolerable when there is oppressive supervision on top of it. "No talking." "You're not working fast enough." "Stop looking around." (orders addressed to adults working In a university bulk-mailing operation).
Here's a good example: I worked 3 months on a temporary job at First Trust in St. Paul -- a big operation. Their storage room of old trust files had leaked and a lot of files a file boxes had been damaged. The bank decided to re-box everything, pull out the microfiche records in the files, and them label the contents and ship the boxes off to a dead storage warehouse.
It was really, really tedious work, but simple. It was great. The supervisor told us we could all talk, snack, joke, and laugh or whatever, as long as there was a steady stream of boxes moving through the process. So, we did -- talk, laugh, joke, and so on, and we sorted and re boxed thousands of boxes of files. It was good, because we had control over our time and over our style of interacting. 3 months was plenty of that activity, but it demonstrates the point.
"A World Made By Hand" is a 4 volume dystopian novel by James Howard Kunstler; the dystopian event is the demise of oil and electricity. Without cheap power, the people have to make everything by hand. It's a wonderful series. I very much enjoyed reading it. It's more upbeat than downbeat, but there is plenty downbeat about it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences here. Good point. Maybe kinda like not wanting to see sausage being made. And it’s probably better not to think about airline cost-cutting affecting safety as one is about to get on a flight.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes, the A.I. hype is in full swing, and full funding mode. Lots of promises here, more than a presidential campaign, which is hard to top. Even daring to critique a specific “technology” is a tricky position for one to take because it is at the risk of appearing to be a fud-dud or an eco-extremist or something. However, i must concede that the advances in driverless vehicle tech is impressive imho, despite some recent tragic accidents.
But as a best case scenario, perhaps the alternate currencies can provide some lubrication, for lack of a better way to put it. The economic situation seems to be like a car trying to run with very little oil. Despite gov’t money being created non-stop, practically everyone i know is struggling and is hesitant to spend money. It is like we are wandering in a financial desert, and the chiefs are hogging the oasis. Not looking to them to change anything.
If the entire cryptocurrency market doesn’t collapse or get bogged down in scams and greed, could it possibly eventually ease the pressure and work load on the average citizen? At least just a little?Or have some other positive effect on our work/financial lives? Is it all a pipe dream? Or just too early to tell?
I think, for me at least, it's like going through disillusionment about technology. When I was a child I thought technology was magic and that scientists and engineers were basically gods for knowing all they know. I wanted to become one of the people who "knows things".
Well, now I know some things and I can tell you now that technology is by no means magic, nor are scientists and engineers gods. I have become more and more attracted to instrumentalist and anti-realist philosophies of science. The attitude I've sort of come to adopt to all of this is that a piece of tech will fail one day, because it is made by humans. People will die, devices will be recalled, updated versions with hastily-added patches will be made available ... rinse and repeat.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Artificial intelligence is being over-hyped, in my opinion. The science behind it is still developing. The paradigms still seem to be overly-reductionistic and materialistic. The same old metaphor of the brain as a computer, the mind as the software, is just wrong but it keeps on being presented in the media as though it were fact.
I'm hoping to go into research and development after my undergrad, perhaps in artificial intelligence. I've been trying to see if we can't integrate philosophy of mind into some of the upper level courses at my university but I haven't had much success. The current paradigm is still in full swing, it seems.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The logic here seems to be that, in order to do everything we humans don't want to do, the A.I. needs to be as intelligent or as self-conscious as humans. If that were the case, A.I. wouldn't even be needed - we'd just make more babies, like the capitalists want us to.
An alternative look on this is that the A.I. needs to be just smart enough to get the job done, nothing more. There is no need to make the A.I. a "person", or give them the burden of self-reflection. This is all assuming strong A.I. is more than just a fantasy.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. Holocaust survivor Jean Amery, in his book On Suicide, wrote about what he called the "logic of life". The logic of life is what makes living "make sense" - everything we do "makes sense" because it's "part of life", it's what people do and what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have projects, we're supposed to have jobs, relationships, progeny, etc. "Edge of life" issues, like suicide, are swept under the carpet because they are outside of the logic of life. Suicide does not make sense, from that perspective.
I don't like to use the brain-computer, mind-software metaphor too much, but it does seem to be as you say - the software ("us") is fundamentally an infinite loop that only breaks when it is interrupted by some priority. When there is no queue, we are simply idly looping, waiting for something to happen.
Of course. In fact, a lot of what we want computers to do doesn't require any "intelligence" at all -- it just requires a good implementation of an algorithm and application capable of managing the task. Which is, of course, what computers are doing right now. And that alone is significant, because they displace workers who once carried out the tasks which computers now do. Lost jobs for humans or not, there are a lot of jobs I would prefer a computer to do because the job is so gawd-awful boring, detailed, and tedious.
The technological revolution we have all witnessed over the last 60 years ought to have freed us all to have more leisure. Sadly the good old Protestant work ethnic has meant the contrary, has happened.
Inequality is up; we are more dependant on work, yet we have less work security; we have more labour saving devices, yet we we seem to work more, longer hours with fewer rights and lower guarantees.
This travesty of the possible has been brought to you by Neoliberal Ideology which has made the rich richer, the poor poorer, and continues to restrict democratic rights and freedoms.
This is not the world predicted in the 1970s.
So why would working for the monarch be better? Seems arbitrary or just a joke.
So hierarchies and the culture that comes with it is your biggest complaint against the current system it seems.
Well, that is an interesting part of our human experience that no other animal seems to share- a perpetual ability to understand itself qua itself. We live but we don't know why. This question entails not just our own personal lives but bringing forth new life. We can be what Sartre might call "authentic" and do things in "good faith", that is in knowing what we are doing in full awareness of the stark futility, or we can simply bury our heads in ongoing projects that we don't know how or why we took on, or perhaps were just kind of "foisted" on the person by circumstances. What is it we are trying to get at as individuals, as a species? This is something only we (or the proverbial self-aware aliens) must contend with. Suicide I see as an ideation coping technique. The thought of it is more relief than the actual action. As Schopenhauer stated, [quote=Schopenhauer- On Suicide]Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.[/quote]
But indeed suicide, like existential angst, extreme boredom, questioning of life, absurdity of life, and the like are on the edges of things. It needs to be pushed out for more projects to be put through. Projects good, questioning bad. Navel-gazing and self-indulgence will be the main accusations.
Quoting darthbarracuda
And what is this idly looping? What is the nature behind all the looping? What does this tell us about what it means to be human, about life, about humanity as whole? Are the projects/programs something to quickly queue up in memory so to execute post haste or does the idling have any merit?
Also, I know you don't like the idea of a mind as a computer- but what is your best analogy if there is one? If not neural networks, what would you use? Is there any appropriate analogy or is the brain's mechanism of a category original and ontologically different?
But what of the distribution of resources? What would make people, en masse, NOT do the 8 hour work day?
So what would radically change our situation, en masse? I am hoping the answer won't be the same old REVOLUTION. Besides which, the slow yawning anguish of a "just feasible" life in middle class mediocrity, doesn't seem to engender people to act much with any haste.
Julio Cabrera sees this idle behavior as ultimately negative - the authentic decision to commit to projects and whatnot is an onerous reaction of disgust. Every sequences of positive instance that comes from our own initiative is preceded by this gathering-of-oneself:
[quote="Emil Cioran, "The Trouble with Being Born""] "In the slaughterhouse that morning, I watched the cattle being led to their death. Almost every animal, at the last moment, refused to move forward. To make them do so, a man hit them on the hind legs. This scene often comes to mind when, ejected from sleep, I lack the strength to confront the daily torture of Time." [/quote]
Quoting schopenhauer1
A window would be a better analogy, in my opinion. Dasein is the "opening" from which Being is understood, including its value.
During the Nixon Administration (probably before you were born) Milton Friedman and other conservative economists floated the idea of the guaranteed minimum income. The GMI would establish an income floor below which adults would not be allowed to sink. If you did, the GMI would bring you back up to the minimum.
This idea has been reworked and is sometimes called the "universal minimum income" or UBI. In this version, everyone would receive a fixed sum from the government each month. It would be fairly small, and if one had no other income, it would allow one to take minimal care of one's self. Most people would earn an income, and would keep the UBI. They could use it In whatever way they wished.
Some form of this solution has been put forward as the solution to mass job elimination by automation, computers, robotics, and the like. Just give people a basic income as an entitlement. There won't be enough jobs to go around, and there isn't any other solution.
Too expensive? No. For one thing the UBI or GBI would replace other welfare programs. For present day single welfare recipients without children, UBI would represent an increase in their standard of living. The UBI or GBI, like welfare payments, would flow back into the economy almost immediately. Buying food, clothing, and shelter would use up most of the payment. Government spending of this sort stimulates the economy (or helps support the economy) because it buys goods and services.
It isn't necessary now for many people to work an 8 hour day. 8 hours has become, in many cases, a convention. Managers figure that a worker will spend 8 hours per day at their task. Workers figure that if they do their job In 6 hours, they'll just get more work, or they'll be dropped down to part-time. But a lot of jobs can actually be dome in less time than is spent.
Of course some jobs don't work that way. A waiter In a restaurant can't serve customers until they arrive. Actors in a play can't say their limes all at once and leave early. (Hmmm, perhaps an interesting play could be written where characters come on stage one at a time, say all their limes, then depart--leaving the audience to surmise who was telling the truth.) A lot of jobs do space out work on an unpredictable basis. But production workers (whether it's paper production or widget production) can be done at variable speeds.
Oh, that is an interesting way to frame the situation. Do you want to elaborate a little about authentic decisions to commit to projects being reactions of disgust? It's as if the projects come out of spite with knowing our baseline futile situation. Nice Cioran quote too.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Interesting, can you explain more about your window analogy and Dasein?
I have heard of the UBI. Would that be the only main way to change the current system? Even that would never get off the ground, but it's something.
Which unfortunately is why it won’t be even considered, one fears. Too much riding on the (united) status quo. Why have an educated, content, clear-thinking people when a nation of PTSD and poverty is so much controllable... and marketable?
#1, we spend quite a bit of money now on unemployment, retraining, and welfare benefits. Most people recognize that these benefits are necessary and do not constitute a significant drain on national resources -- because the benefits are recycled back into the economy almost immediately, to the profit of landlords, Target, Walmart, etc.
#2, in the interests of social stability, it is a reasonable cost to support people whose livelihoods have been eliminated and alternatives are In very short supply.
#3, "entitlements" as opposed to "welfare" are more popular ideas because everybody gets them. If only the poor received social security, it would have been dome away with.
#4, don't worry, the UBI won't be that large. It will probably be larger than the welfare payment for single childless adults (currently somewhere around $225 a month) and probably smaller than the minimum current SSI benefit, which is somewhere around $625. Nobody is going to get very far on say, $500 a month. But it will enable those who are partially employed, underemployed, or never-been employed to live. Live on $500? Are you crazy?
#5, UBI can't replace some of the other benefits unless it were set at something like... $1200 a month (currently close to the poverty level for 1 person). A single person would't live very well on $1200 a month, unless they paired up or went together for a group house, where 4 people brought in $4800 a month together. I used to be able to live on modest unemployment benefits, live alone, and enjoy life pretty well, but that meant living In very inexpensive housing (cockroaches, dusty halls, not very good neighborhoods). That housing is still there but has gotten too expensive to pull that off. One has to pair up now.
Public housing charges 33% of one's income, whatever that is. Of course, there are long waiting lists for public housing and able, single, childless adults are at the bottom of the list.
If all other benefit programs were to be eliminated (public housing, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, public housing, food subsidies--everything except Social Security) then the UBI would have to be more than $1200 a month -- probably closer to $1800 to $2000 a month currently, based on costs outside of New York City or San Francisco, and the like, and would probably be reduced for those who were working.
Paying out $2000 a month to millions of people is economically feasible ($24,000 a year is not a large income for one person) because most of it would still be spent on goods and services immediately, but it becomes a steeper political challenge. Legislators would probably feel that $24,000 a year for nothing just would not entail enough suffering on the part of recipients.
But let me remind you again, this proposal came from conservative economists, not closet communists. They understood that money spent by the government on individuals across the board would come back to the government by way of greater income for companies supplying basic needs, and then the taxes on their profits.
But then you have to ask yourself the question, "Is it really a good idea to convert the workplace to a jobs program where incredibly tedious work that should be done by robots is done again by people? It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, factory jobs (for instance) are always referred to as "good jobs" but people who don't have to do factory work generally don't.
Is heavy factory work good for males? Men? Industrial employers have often found men to be a nuisance because they don't like being bossed around and forced to stay in one place, all day, doing the same fucking task--welding those 4 spots on a car frame, for instance. In the early days of the industrial revolution industries preferred women and children because they were more easily controlled and would be less resentful of being paid less than they were actually worth.
There are "Good Jobs" that many people would rather not do, even if that means living in a box under a bridge.
How about the relation to work itself? I guess here's my problem. The assumption is that everyone has some instrumental value in "contributing" their work into some sort of organization that needs people's labor and expertise. Well, I am asking to question this assumption. What would humans do with themselves without these relations that are roughly following this model below:
:up: Excellent points all, thank you for detailing a feasible scenario where UBI could come to pass and help many people. Logically and circumstantially, the time seems about right. I’m sold on the idea. It would tend to raise the standard of living, and hopefully ease the despair that fuels violence and drug abuse.
But (to be skeptical, not of the plan, but of other factors) unless the “conservative leadership” really approved and pushed it, a large sector of voters would probably not support it because they heard on talk radio that immigrants will be stealing our tax dollars, or some such mush. Even if they would benefit from a UBI themselves, they still might cut off their nose to spite their face. There might even be a rebellion against any conservative leader who supported it, as being a socialist traitor. But perhaps not.
To burrow even deeper into our underlying belief system... One could perhaps metaphorically say that the underlying “software” on which our western civilization operates, is “A Capital Idea OS 10.7”, so to speak. Governments are apps running within that operating system. Encoded within this OS, are the twin objectives which supercede everything else, even human life, a livable environment, sustainable growth, logic, etc. These twin objectives are, predictably, “winning” and “profits”. They are the two legs are forever running toward the endless goal of dominance/success. It is the basic “drive to survive” present in all living beings, but taken to the Nth degree, to the point of imbalance, and of absurdity.
It is absurd because it is based on faulty logic: if some is good, more must be better, and having it all must be heaven. And it’s also based on the illogical premise that there must be winners and losers in all situations. If you lose, therefore i win, since there is a limited amount of “happiness” to go around. And it is firmly based on the premise that I referred to earlier: that everyone ultimately is an absolute individual, locked in their own isolated reality. Now and forever, on heaven and earth, amen.
The guardians of the status quo may tweak the code a bit to make it more “efficient”, but they didn’t write the software since it is very old. And it is based on an even older software called DAGR (for Delusion, Aversion, and Greed Repetition) which was criticized by many sages of the Axial Age, notably Guatama Buddha, who was a proponent of an ancient software called 4TMW (pronounced “for tomorrow”) which was based on the idea of “the 4 noble truths” and “the middle way”, which in part proposed taking what one needed and leaving the rest alone. This would produce contentment for the present, and ensure optimal conditions for future generations.
Human nature itself (flawed as it may be) is not responsible for this peril, one could say, for humans lived for an almost inconceivable amount of time in the occasionally difficult but mostly quiet routine of living. We are not condemned to live this way by our nature. But the code which controls much of our current lives for better or worse is in fact “open source”. It was written by humans and can be changed by humans. But only when we are collectively ready, willing, and able to do so. It may be time for an update.
Our highly constructive age (buildings, cities, pyramids) isn't very old in relationship to our species age. If we've been around for tens of thousands of years, the first mud brick town is only about 9,000 years old, and that was a fairly modest affair. In between bursts of bigness (several ancient civilizations) life quieted down again. After the western Roman Empire fizzled out (about 500 A.D.) there were about 900 years of European peasants and very minor lords living quietly. Then things started heating up again, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and here we are.
Cultural code is an important driver, along with our genetic code. When the resources are aligned just right, we are driven to start building again, and after all that ends up in ruin, we give up angel food cake and go back to black bread and turnips for a few centuries.
We learn again and again about taking what we need and leaving the rest, but we keep forgetting it. Unfortunately our cultural codes over-ride humble truths and we decide to take everything if at all possible, or at least as much as we can cart away.
IF, and it's a huge 400 ft high IF, we could take just what we needed and leave the rest, we could all live a simpler life, but we could all live. 21st Century "post-industrial" civilization is doomed (planet wide) and the survivors of the doom will be forced to live a much simpler, harder life. But that's another thread.
The thing about the UBI, or an advanced economy anywhere, is that if one lives simply one wouldn't have to work so much. But living simply is hard -- the cultural code doesn't encourage it. Even simpler living is viewed as something of a pathology. There are barriers put I'm the way.
You run into problems like in the health care field which requires complex biochemical solutions, technology, and the like. Eat some turnips and the like, but once you need medical help, you're going to want that complex economy which provides the complex technology to keep you alive.
Work itself is where our tender, warm blooded personhood hits the gravel road of industrialism. Some people have found accommodating jobs where their personal aspirations and styles are well served. Some people thought they had found nice places to work, but over time it was degraded by administrators cutting costs, increasing profits, and maximizing control. A lot of people have worked at jobs which were never accommodating and never served their personal aspirations and styles but they put up with it because it was that or live in poverty.
Extracting a living from the environment has never been easy. Hunter gatherers, for instance, had to work at it all the time, and if things didn't go well, it could be really bad. As life became more complex, some parts of making a living became easier, and some parts became harder--but one has always had to put quite a bit of time and energy into surviving. Except those who are born into great wealth, and those who are able to happily live In a box under a bridge (a rather small number, actually).
It might be the case that if you can't stand working in jobs for other people ("hell is other people, per J. P. Sartre), you might have to take lessons from Agustino and start your own business of some sort. You know, there are people who do that who aren't gung ho capitalists -- they just can't stand working in close quarters for somebody else.
Maybe I should have done that myself, but I was too stupid to think of anything that would work as a bitter crank-sustaining operation. Plus, I don't seem to have an entrepreneurial bone in my body.
Just for example... someone started a business of installing and maintaining large bird cages in nursing homes. The cages are about 8 feet long, 8 feet high, and 2 feet deep. They have maybe a dozen canaries and finches in them, plus branches, and a kind of grass mat wall on the back which the birds seem to like. The residents of the nursing homes like to sit and watch the birds. Alternatively, a large aquarium can be had (smaller than the bird cage).
Maybe you live in an area where bird cages haven't been installed in nursing homes yet? Maybe a snake pit would be an alternative? Lizards and hissing snakes instead of chirping birds or silent fish. A rat colony? All sorts of possibilities. Termite mounds? Ant farms?
EDIT: I realize that's a whole book. But chapter 1 suffices.
Whoa--a whole book? What do you think we are, Moliere, intellectuals or something that actually reads whole pages, let alone whole books? We have busy lives, what with hauling in beer, drugs, pizza, and bitches. Just summarize whatever that was in 25 short words or less. Geez.
tldr: It's reasonable to look at hunter-gatherer societies as affluent, rather than simply eking out a mediocre existence because as noted in this thread there are two sides to the problem of scarcity -- there's production, but there is also desire. There are still limitations, but the characterization of hunter-gatherer economies as purely limited to physical existence is too far a stretch largely rooted in our own theories of economy developed with our own particular social expectations.
The Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel is a prehistoric ivory sculpture that was discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave in 1939. The German name, Löwenmensch meaning "lion-human", is used most frequently because it was discovered and is exhibited in Germany.
The lion-headed figurine is the oldest-known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world, and the oldest-known uncontested example of figurative art. It has been determined to be between 35,000 and 40,000 years old by carbon dating of material from the layer in which it was found, and thus, is associated with the archaeological Aurignacian culture.[1] It was carved out of woolly mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. Seven parallel, transverse, carved gouges are on the left arm. Wikipedia
Animal art from Chauvet Cave in France, c. 25,000 BCE. It isn't just that the art work they did is appealing, it contains readily interpretable information from a person's 25,000 year old expression. We know what he means (we at least know what it was he was representing).
People in an area with lots of Osage Orange trees might have traded pieces of their wood to make bows for obsidian, for instance. Osage orange wood is fairly hard and extremely springy. (These days the inedible fruit is sold as a spider repellant for basements. I've tried it; I can't tell whether it works.)
I guess like most things I write about, this is more an existential and social questioning exercise. Let's look at two issues.
1) Existential- the seeming human need to get caught up in projects and past times for work and entertainment.
2) Social- with the complexity of a post-industrial economy, we work to make sure the "gears are moving". We work for the maintenance of the technology complex. Have the tools taken over to the extent that we are just the conveyor of current and new technologies? It's like the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.. just maintaining the ship. I think you are getting at this notion of getting away from "complex of technology conveyors" by trimming it down to a mere minimum.
Not so straightforward as "what humans really want out of life". There is some structure that humans want. It's in the background. It just happens that the result is what we now have -- jobs, goods, recreation, buildings, material possessions. If you want to change human habits, you need to change that "structure", whatever that may be. (And now we are speaking about humans as if we're not of the same composition!)
Yes, actually that is what I'm getting at. What do we humans have to do en masse to change the structure and thus change the habits?
:up: Ah yes, “the original affluent society”. Good stuff, thanks for sharing! Beginning over two million years ago with homo habilis, humans have done very well, especially when it comes to eating. If they hadn’t, we would not be here! In accounts of North America soon after European settlers arrived, rivers were described as overflowing with fish, and there would be so many that they would just wash up on shore. Food was everywhere with nary an empty calorie for omnivorous humans: the original Paleo diet.
That is the billion dollar (and billion person) question. Well, whatever the answer might be, it would take some time to implement and take effect. We didn’t get in this predicament over night. But we have the accumulated knowledge of countless generations. We have the technology. Do we have the will to make adjustments? There is a quote somewhere about the earth having the ability to provide for the need of 8 billion people, but not their greed.
The way the system is now, people are encouraged to take everything possible. Anything not used personally can be used for leverage and power. I would not say no to a million dollars, but why do practically all millionaires act like they need more? Why do we all, rich and poor alike, feel so powerless and empty? What are the human needs that our culture is not meeting on a consistent basis? We can reduce, re-use, and recycle to be more efficient. But there needs to be something to fill the social, spiritual, emotional needs in each of us. In that respect, I would say that most of us are starving or sick from that which we tried to fill the emptiness with. Short of a world-wide group hug :victory: :heart:, I don’t have many specific suggestions. What will it take to reach a general consensus? We are like addicts waiting to hit rock bottom. Is it an emergency yet? In an emergency, a good place to start is to stop looking for people to blame, and start looking for solutions and ways to stop the bleeding.
Time is not far off, when all man needs can be manufactured or provided by AI and robots, moot question is if man's left with personal freedom to choose what he wants to do, it will be a sure cause for depression and boredom. Man needs not just freedom but also needs social recognition, competition, rivalry, one upmanship, politics, laws, restriction its breaking laws and restriction that gives men a sense if previlage, not Removal of laws curtailing freedom.
I can acknowledge you may be different. But I'll gladly forgo that need and suffer the horrible bondage that comes from not having to clock in -- were it consequence free, at least.
I heartily concur.
These are exactly the social relations and values that I am questioning. Perhaps @Bitter Crank can add some force to this. BC, do you think these purported values of work are necessary or a notion we picked up and just accept. Do we humans have no more imagination than "recognition, competition, rivalry, one upmanship" and the like that supposedly comes from work.
A) Should we strive for these values?
B) Are these values simply manufactured by those who want to see these values manifest?
C) Doesn't the very fact that we would be "bored" without these things, as you claim, provide some insight into existence itself?
But great economists like Friedman and Hayek -- who both proposed this unoriginal idea, but in different forms -- to me seem too naive. They forget about the political and ideological aspect of the debate. Even if we can create a macrosocio-economic system that contains UBI as envisioned by these two gentlemen -- and I think we can, don't get me wrong -- it will be inevitable that the political pressure from the left side will lead to an unsustainable high UBI, as the mere socialist rhetoric of social rights (read entitlements) will dominate the elections. Right of have food, right to housing, right to have clothes, right to have an smart phone, right to a car, right to all have a tesla car of $100k, etcetera.
It is a tug-of-war where the feel-good emotional "arguments" will prevail and the wise informed economic arguments will land like a dry fart. A war left wingers will win, easily -- because while facts > feelings, in politics feelings > facts.
Quoting Moliere
Homo Faber (man the maker) needs "work", work being purposeful activity to obtain the satisfactions of needs (food, shelter, reproduction, clothing if needed for climate) and the fulfillment of wants -- aesthetic creation, love, companionship, exploration, and so on. In this technological age, crowded world, governed and policed societies, the most we can hope for are societies structured and operating loosely enough that individuals and groups can find the necessary 'space' to live the kind of life they desire to live.
Certainly many people do not find the restrictions and conformity of the work place troublesome, (clocking in on down to clocking out). A loose society has room for regimented factories and hippie colonies.
The problem for those who exploit the nooks and crannies of a loose society is when things are tightened up, screwed down, brightly lit all night and surveilled remotely, policed 24/7, and very thoroughly managed.
By my definition, the looser and healthier society is one which does not seek to track every social movement and every political action, does not compile databases of social deviants, does not strive to restrict personal freedom, across the board for political, social, sexual, literary... expression, and so on. It doesn't matter in some ways whether it's the CIA or Facebook & Google that are doing the tracking and compiling.
Societies in which the dominant classes (the richest, most powerful, the classes who feel they have quite a lot to lose) feel insecure are the societies where the screws will be tightened the most.
Some inflation seems to be thought essential In a capitalist economy, provided the volume of economic activity is solid. While the UBI would increase government spending, at the same time other government spending would be eliminated: The various state welfare and unemployment programs, food security programs, and so forth might amount to 1 trillion dollars a year. Were a UBI to be instituted, most of these welfare and unemployment programs would disappear (because they would be redundant).
Does this pass your muster as amusing pseudo-economics?
Quoting Kitty
The left yammers about social rights a lot, true enough (it's dirty work but somebody has to do it) but not since the Johnson Administration has a major new program been instituted (Johnson instituted Medicare In the 1960s) and welfare payments are niggardly*** despite all the socialists complaints, even in northern liberal states. I'm not counting Obama care as a significant new program--it's still not clear it will exist very long or in what form.
*** Note to politically correct persons: 'Niggardly' is neither derived from nor is the source of the word 'nigger'. So just relax. You all have hereby been headed off at the pass.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. More and more, i am tending to think that the problems concerning jobs and the problems we have concerning the abuse/misuse of the planet/environment are intimately related, linked together by the economy. I would say that is possible (at least in theory) to have a large, technology-based society that operates “sustainably” with a high quality of life for its citizens. But not having seen evidence of such, it remains theoretical imho.
As for the causes and remedies of this “life out of balance”, i can only guess. The existential malaise that Sartré described seems to be growing, if possible. We envy animals and rocks because they seem to know their place in the world. There is such an order, balance, and symmetry to the natural world that human culture can seem like a rash or a blemish. All this from the pinnacle of creation, humanity. Maybe it is the Peter Principle; we’ve risen to the height of our incompetence. How can we be as authentic and balanced as animals and rocks, and still be fully human? Time and mistakes will teach us, if we can’t answer the question now.
To the sociologists, 'chaos'. This is a courageous thing to say coming from them, of all people. They said this before the 2007-2008 collapse.