I was in a bit of a soft argument (where nobody was insulting another or being cutthroat and illogical) with a friend about something they were venting about. And we got to a part of the discussion where he admitted that he would rather be a ‘robot’ who wakes up, looks in the mirror, goes about their job and is ‘okay’ with it.
Like he didn’t understand why it is that people seek so much escapism to be away from dealing with the bleak, always-gloomy mentality of work. I brought up a point that we’re all essentially working our asses off to make other people’s lives better than ours, those people being managers/CEOs/Executives.
And that we need our escapism to better handle it. Because that’s really the reality of work as it is now and has been for essentially decades and decades. It’s not that we can’t accept the reality, because we already do, it’s when we have to step away from our homes, spend however many hours in places we don’t like being in, exhausting ourselves, stressing ourselves, spending however long in commute back and to. That’s our way of accepting the reality as much as we hate it.
I respect my friend for being one of the few that can just shrug it off and go about business as usual. But, I don’t like it when people look down at others and wonder “why do you play so much video games?” or “why do you just binge so many shows and movies?” .etc
…Why not? What’s the alternative? Just work ourselves like “ohhh boy! I can’t wait to get all of these bills in the mail, both electronically and physically! oh boy!”. As well as just get excited for yet another drawn out workday where some of us fear for our jobs?
That’s not how things should be, to me. It never should’ve been like this.
The thing that really gets me down is the futility of my job. I am a public servant, so i don’t have to worry about being exploited by the rich in the same way. I work decent hours and have good benefits. However, a lot of the work i do seems aimless and poorly thought out. Many of my projects get cancelled after months of work due to changing priorities. When i get home, i tend to ruminate over the pointlessness of it all. If i sit there and really think about how i am spending my life, i get really down. Video games and hobbies occupy my mind to the exclusion of bad thoughts.
It’s kind of sad to me that your alternative to working for the man is just consuming corporate media.
I work to live, I only work at places that I think make the world better. Then I go home, and in my free time I help run a social group, learn new skills, exercise, or do something creative.
But, some people enjoy just being a cog in a machine. There’s nothing wrong with a low stress job like that. Specialization is one of the reasons we’ve been so successful as a species.
People are allowed to enjoy their free time as they wish. Stop being so snobbish.
Yes, and people are allowed to enjoy their work time as they wish, too. There’s no need to be a snob about that, either.
In a different time, under different assumptions, meritocracy can happen. Working and working a lot in that kind of environment, enriches yourself, your company and society, without a downside.
Overtime you put in, may be more work, but it’s temporary, necessary, because you in your job doing the overtime, helps orders of magnitude more, in critical situations, than other people can, or maybe there is actually nobody else to do the job and the job doesn’t get done. E.g. specialized surgeons saving lives. And that effort and overtime would be recognized and rewarded under those assumptions as well.
Somebody who has worked extraordinary amounts, would have put in extraordinary effort. They would be community champions.
It’s important to recognize that clash of assumptions.
seek so much escapism to be away from dealing with the bleak, always-gloomy mentality of work.
His words, or yours?
