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[Chaoswizkid]

The Occupy movement has spread to many other cities. http://www.occupytogether.org/

I think the core of the movement isn't anarchism or wanting more jobs, it's about getting people to shed their ignorance and to actually speak up, to realize that we, as a democracy, and beyond that, as a people, have a voice with power. Even people in countries that do not have democracy have toppled their governments, not for the sake of anarchy, but to, as a people, choose a governing body that they are content being governed by. From what I've seen about the movement, it's not about the one group hosting the protests that decide what the group stands for, but rather it stands for whatever the people who compose that group collectively stand for.

I'm far more impressed with the fact that there's a social movement by my generation. Never thought I'd see the day.



As for what LordBucket brought up, I have to say that it makes a lot of sense. Not a "DOWN WITH SOCIETY" sort of sense, but if the concept were boiled down to basic parts, they could be viewed with that mindset. I also believe it's very important to understand that limiting oneself to a single mindset should not be desirable. That sort of thing breeds a lot of ignorance, and while you might disagree with other points of view, you shouldn't disregard them. Being exposed to multiple points of view breeds innovation, so being exposed to multiple societal ideologies, even more idealistic ones that don't yet (or may never) exist, could potentially lead to societal innovation.

If you think about it, we're experiencing societal innovation right now. Our lives are dominated by immediate mass communication. I believe that hundreds of years ago if someone tried to pose a world in which information was passed across the entire world almost instantly, they'd scoff at you. Go further back and they might call you a witch and unknowingly cite one of Clarke's Laws. Although this society currently exists, trying to describe it in full in one sitting is most likely impossible. Think about when you don't even have the vocabulary or analogical equivalents to reference.

The point shouldn't be to spontaneously invent a different form of society complete with a transitional phase from the current society and try to persuade others to go for it. The point should be to always acknowledge that there are other points of view than your own and try to take away what you can from them.

[Africa]

LordBucket doesn't seem to grasp that a lot of people enjoy work for the sake of accomplishing/creating something and not because they're getting paid for it.

[Vector]

I enjoy the sense of community work creates.

[SalmonGod]

Don't have time to read everything right now, but I can tell it needs to be clarified that I at least do not advocate the abolition of work.  I don't think LordBucket does, either.  I just believe it needs to be more voluntary and self-guided.  Work IS fulfilling, and I have worked very hard to bust the myth that human beings are inherently lazy where ever I see it... but forced work in an authoritarian environment is NOT fulfilling and destroys any sense of community, besides maybe the community of an 'us and them' mentality that inevitably arises between workers and managers/employers.

Edit:

Above all, it needs to not be a matter of life & death.

[Vector]

Hmm... SalmonGod, I'm starting to suspect more and more that our perceptions of reality are essentially the same.  Yup.

[Jackrabbit]

Whilst I know this sounds like a cop-out, I really can't be bothered arguing the point since it's pretty much meaningless. I'm sure others will continue to do so. Maybe I'll come round to your side if I stop enjoying my work.

But there is one thing I'm curious about. Where do you work? Or do you work at all? And do you have any plans to try and get a job that you enjoy, are proud of, ect., deo you already have on or are you just not going to try?

[Bauglir]

LordBucket doesn't seem to grasp that a lot of people enjoy work for the sake of accomplishing/creating something and not because they're getting paid for it.

What SalmonGod said, basically. Working for a sense of fulfillment, or because you enjoy the task, or because you enjoy the result, isn't working for the sake of work; all of those have a goal that the work accomplishes. What's being called ridiculous is the idolization of work as something to be pursued for its own sake, which I actually think is far less prevalent than LordBucket appears to.

[SalmonGod]

If you think about it, we're experiencing societal innovation right now. Our lives are dominated by immediate mass communication. I believe that hundreds of years ago if someone tried to pose a world in which information was passed across the entire world almost instantly, they'd scoff at you.

This is just for fun.  Never underestimate human imagination.  This is, in fact, just over 100 years old... and very, very prophetic.

I think the core of the movement isn't anarchism or wanting more jobs, it's about getting people to shed their ignorance and to actually speak up, to realize that we, as a democracy, and beyond that, as a people, have a voice with power. Even people in countries that do not have democracy have toppled their governments, not for the sake of anarchy, but to, as a people, choose a governing body that they are content being governed by.

Well said, and I chose the song I posted earlier with exactly this in mind.  I promote the concept of anarchy just to get people thinking about it, not because I think I'm going to spark some sweeping social movement that will turn the world upside down in the near future... or even in my lifetime.  Before there can even be proper discussion or working out details, there needs to be a deconstruction of the preconceptions and taboo that causes ideological panic and revulsion in most people at mere mention of the word.

And for people to even be willing to think about it in the meantime, the general population desperately needs some breathing room...

Hmm... SalmonGod, I'm starting to suspect more and more that our perceptions of reality are essentially the same.  Yup.

I've suspected it for a long time.  You have exactly the same kind of intellectual energy and drive that I did before working several years at a soul-destroying data entry job.  I have been the Aqizzar/Vector character combo of all social circles I've participated in up until I found this place, which is just incredibly high class.  It's raised the bar for me.

Could be. But what's wrong with laziness? If my survivals needs are met and I decide to sit on a couch and contemplate my navel, why is that any less desirable a choice than busying myself with productivity? If I want cookies, it makes sense to go make cookies. If I don't want cookies, making cookies to "busy myself" seems silly.

I do believe there is something wrong with laziness, but the problem is that most people don't recognize that disinterest in the modern rat race is not the same as laziness.

Are you truly so incapable of coming up with something of your own choosing to do that you need to live in a social environment that requires you to fill up your time with meaningless work to keep from going crazy?

So very much this.  Boredom is a mysterious thing to me.  Even when I was an 8-12 year old kid with poor parents and no friends out in a completely uninteresting backwoods town in central Indiana... I was NEVER bored.  I was always doing something.  In fact, I have never been bored in my entire life at any time that I was in control of my own actions (which as an adult is at most 3-4 hours a day).  I've had problems with sleep ever since I was a toddler, because I couldn't stand the halting of activity.  My parents couldn't get me to take naps.  I would go full speed until they would finally discover me passed out face first in whatever I was doing.  After I could read, I would get sent to bed and then just read for hours in the dark. 

These days, I get overwhelmed when I have free time.  I often end up wasting time doing nothing, because I'm too aware of how limited my time is and I spend too much of it trying to filter my options.

My best guess at what boredom is (besides wasted opportunity) is a mental illness of modern society.  It's a product of our enforced routines and values robbing people of their sense of value for their own time and agency, because these things most often belong to others instead of ourselves.

But there is one thing I'm curious about. Where do you work? Or do you work at all? And do you have any plans to try and get a job that you enjoy, are proud of, ect., deo you already have on or are you just not going to try?

It always comes around to a defense of my own character as some kind of necessary support for my ideals.  I'm working on typing up a little relevant self-history, but I'm also doing some actual work right now that's fairly important and getting way too distracted... so it will come a little bit later.

[Jackrabbit]

I was actually talking to LordBucket because he's the most heavily opinionated but if you want to share I'm sure that'd be interesting as well.

[scriver]

My best guess at what boredom is (besides wasted opportunity) is a mental illness of modern society.  It's a product of our enforced routines and values robbing people of their sense of value for their own time and agency, because these things most often belong to others instead of ourselves.

Boredom is (apart from the "doing something tedious and unforwilling you'd rather do something else than" thing) what you feel when you want to do *something* (a variant of restlessness) but have nothing you want to do at hand, or just don't know what you want to do.

It's feeling I'm well aquainted with.

[Haschel]

I won't claim to really understand what this discussion is trying to say, and I think most of what I would of wanted to say has already been said. I just don't quite seem to understand the purpose of this "job liberation" thing. What is the alternative, and what is the goal? Everyone works at the job they want, when they want? I can't seem to picture humanity developing in any meaningful ways if that were to happen. People need incentive, a reason, to progress. If not money then what?

[Vector]

Studying is often seen as an end in itself, as is intellectual discovery.

You think any of the academics and teachers you see working do it because they think they're being well-paid?  Trust me, they could get other jobs.

[SalmonGod]

When I was 17, I convinced my parents to take in a friend who was severely traumatized (which is the part they didn't know and I underestimated) and about to be homeless.  I spent pretty much all of two years or so just managing her day to day, protecting her from herself, holding her as she relived moments of her past in waking nightmares, etc... while hiding the extent of her damage from my parents and exiting high school/entering college both as gracefully as I could.  These were crucial years where I lost a ton of opportunity.  Before this gets questioned at all, I'm just going to say that I'm sworn to secrecy on many details on this subject, and I am absolutely under no delusions that everything I did was the smartest or most responsible way I could have done things.  At the same time, I'm proud of myself for pulling us both through that period and if I had done things significantly differently, I probably wouldn't have a positive opinion of myself today.

The next couple years were pretty decent, and I made a lot of progress with my life.  Then, when I was 21, we had a kid.  Need I really say anymore?  Well, I will.

I got a job at Fedex Express as a checker.  I scanned packages and loaded them into giant containers (like a real life game of tetris) to be put on planes.  I actually really enjoyed it.  The environment was mostly friendly, I was lucky enough to get managers who valued and looked out for me, and I loved the opportunity to keep in shape and physical labor generally helps me feel alive.  Unfortunately/fortunately it was part-time.  It allowed me enough time to put forth serious learning efforts in school, but it just wasn't enough pay to support my family as my kid got older, my wife and I grew more adult, and support from my family decreased.

Then I heard an opportunity from a friend of my brother who had just been hired by another branch of the company that was still looking for tons of people for full-time entry level positions doing basically data entry (there's a lot more technical baggage and responsibility than typical data entry, but that is functionally what it is).  The work was supposedly super easy, and the transfer would be seamless and allow me to keep all my tenure, increase my benefits, and get full-time pay that we could actually live off of.

Biggest fucking mistake of my life.

It took about 3 months for me to start realizing how wrong the job was for me, and how much of a struggle it was going to be for me to stay there very long.  At that point, we were already dependent on it.  But I only had a couple years of school left, and thought that I could stick it out until after a graduated and got a real job.  I learned very very little in school from that point forward and barely scraped by doing only what was necessary to get good grades. 

About two years before I graduated, my wife got accepted into college and started taking classes.  About a year and a half before I graduated, my wife and I also discussed and agreed on the value of a sibling for our first kid.  We knew it would be tough, but that we couldn't make excuses for not doing what was right for a healthy family and that we couldn't put it off any longer or else our two kids would be too far apart in age to meaningfully grow up together.  So we started trying.  About 10 or 11 months before I graduated, we decided that if she got pregnant at that point, the kid would be due too close to my graduation date and decided that there was too much risk there to continue.  About 9 months before my graduation, she got pregnant.....

My final semester in college I had a very ambitious capstone project that I'd been putting deep thought into for a couple years.  My wife's pregnancy was also a nightmare.  She was constantly weak and ill and we ended up taking a few emergency trips to the hospital.  Through all of this, she was determined to continue taking classes.  I honestly don't know how I succeeded that semester, but I did.  My capstone was a great success.  My second kid was born 4 days after I finished and presented it.

After graduating, I quickly became frustrated with my difficulties finding a job, as the economy was just beginning to fail.  In the meantime, I was growing more and more keenly aware of how my workplace was mentally deteriorating me... changing me in ways I really didn't like... especially without the regular external influence of classes challenging me and keeping me focused.  Plus the added stress of a newborn.  Only a few months after graduation, my first kid was diagnosed Type 1 diabetic.  That set me back a ton.  It took a couple months to really get his condition incorporated into our lives to the point that we could really start doing anything other than existing day to day and trying to make things work.  His condition still presents a major obstacle to a lot of things you'd never realize, even though we're pretty much used to it by now.

After that had somewhat settled and I felt ready, I announced to my friends and family that I was giving up gaming until I found a better job.  Two weeks later, I got the second MRSA infection of my life (serious business, in case you're unaware), which doctors blamed on stress and offered to prescribe me anti-depressants.  I refused the drugs, but it got me to evaluating my own limits.  I especially thought a lot about my grandfather on  my dad's side, who I am named after and never met because he literally worked himself to death in his mid-30's.  Not long after my MRSA infection, my dad suffered a minor stroke at only 46.

So since then, I've been scared to death of working myself too hard.  My workplace continues to grate on me, and it's been putting pressure on my already difficult marriage.  My first son has also started school, which has effected my schedule in ways that piles on extra sleep deprivation.  I work from 4 pm to 1 am.  I get up at 2 pm, get ready, and go to work.  After I get home, I typically pay attention to my family for a couple hours before I get real time to myself that I can do something with.  At that point, it's anywhere from 3-5 am, and I start getting seriously tired around 6 am... but I stay up until 8 am to get my kid on the bus in the morning, which puts me at an average of 6 hours of sleep a night.

I really don't have much to give toward finding a better job these days (I'm a 3d artist, btw).  I still try.  I have a couple modest indy game projects that I'm just starting up with friends that are looking like they might actually happen... but mostly I just try to maintain enough health of mind and body to keep operating day to day.  I could try to find another job with a better schedule that might not be as horrible for me, but there is nothing else out there at entry level that offers the benefits (which is really really important when you have a family) and I would have to give up a tenure that gives me almost guaranteed job security (I have 2nd best tenure on my shift behind my manager) and that's incredibly important in today's job market, especially when I have a kid who is extra dependent on stability.

Everything about modern life feels like a trap to me, and it shouldn't be this way.

[Jackrabbit]

Man, I feel for you and I can understand your position. Things shouldn't have to be like that and people should work to change it.

I'm still not convinced that getting rid of jobs entirely is a good idea, but that's horrible and I hope things work out for you.

[DJ]

I think a lot of people become lazy as a response to an environment that turns work into a shallowly justified, forced obligation, instead of the result of one's own decisions to pursue things that matter to them.

And I think a lot of people are lazy because it's natural to be lazy. Conserving energy was pretty important back when we were hunter gatherers.

A non-negligible part of humanity is just plain lazy, they'd be perfectly content to spend their whole lives on couches.

But why is that a problem? Why is occupying people with pointless busy work preferable to people sitting on a couch because that's what they'd rather do doing? Is it because you believe in the so-called Protestant work ethic? That "hard work" is a sign of virtue? Can you engage in some speculation and imagine where that way of thinking can lead?

Nope, the problem is who provides for them. I'd love to spend my life on a couch, but I doubt many people would love to feed me and clothe me and pay my internet bill without getting anything in return.