Finding meaning at work beats family and kindness as the top ambition of today’s young people....
Without work, including nonsalaried labor like raising a child, most people tend to feel miserable. Some evidence suggests that long-term unemployment is even more wrenching than losing a loved one, since the absence of an engaging distraction removes the very thing that tends to provide solace to mourners in the first place.
There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout...
But our desks were never meant to be our altars. The modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists, not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office...
On a deeper level, Americans have forgotten an old-fashioned goal of working: It’s about buying free time. The vast majority of workers are happier when they spend more hours with family, friends, and partners, according to research conducted by Ashley Whillans, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.
Excerpts from long article here which provides some social commentary I thought some would find interesting.
i’m “retired”, but i still “work” ... i enjoy working, contributing my skills to help others, keeping my knowledge and skills up to date, maintaining sociability, keeping mind and body active, and picking up a small amount of extra money (compared to my former corporate salaries) ...
Work is part of our purpose, whether that work is taking care of our children or doing ‘office duty.’ I’m happy to trade off with my wife when her salary exceeds mine (i’m a cis male in a heterosexual relationship for those DU people reading - actually it is called ‘matrimony’ in our particular case.)
We have traded off ‘careers’ several times. Once a person reaches 30 it is fairly unlikely one can become ‘successful.’ Since I am unlikely to ever be ‘successful’(I’m too ‘old’)) I’d rather spend my efforts taking care of my children so they may become reverent and ‘successful.’
“The Green New Deal will require the “rich” to support those unwilling to live as slaves (workism)
and I’m the boss”
AOC
As workers become more productive, they can either maintain their old standard of living with less hours, or a higher standard of living by keeping hours the same. Most people choose the latter.
We also have the phenomenon of private sector’s increased productivity being stolen by government through taxes, to support an ever increasing community of non-workers.