Finally, an essay that's more my speed. This book has been annoying me. Way too much, "we need purpose and meaning from work, what will we ever do without it?" Um...literally...anything else.
This essay talks about NEETs, and hikkomori's...and...gaming. And how many NEET types find fulfillment from video games. Andrew Yang talked about this somewhat, but mostly from a negative sense. He was like "oh my god, these people are withdrawing from society, they aren't getting jobs, they're not engaging with their communities, they're spending all of their time online", and I'm just here like, "so"?
I know Yang kinda mentioned how later in life these guys regret it, but here's why. Because our society doesn't allow us to really live this way and enjoy it. We arent allowed to be as we are and have girlfriends, and fulfilling lives, and money, and blah blah blah. Because the ideal model for life in our society revolves around work, and those other positive benefits can only be really had...from work.
And this essay looks at how some people just withdraw from work and jobs, mainly because of how stressful that way of life is, how we can't hack it, and to go back to yang's point, how unfulfilling it is, and how it is one possible solution to finding purpose in one's life post work.
Yeah, no. crap. Imagine children. Do they long for the mines? no, they wanna play. And then they wanna play some more. And then they wanna play some more. And then they wanna eat sweets, which makes them hyper and play some more, then they wanna sleep. Maybe. Idk, half the time they hate bed times and wanna play even more. Being a kid in modern society is great. Being an adult, not so much. And look at kids, they might talk about what they wanna do when they grow up, but they mostly wanna play. They love toys, and games, and pretend, and messing around. There's no grand divine purpose to this, it's just how they are.
And then we make them go to school, and learn. And many of them hate school and those institutions. We lecture them about how they have to go to school to learn and how it has to be that way. And then as adults, they need to get jobs,s o when they leave school most of them get jobs, unless you end up as a NEET or something.
That's the life script. From the day people are born, we beat their playful spirit out of them, instill discipline in them, and lecture them about the need for work, and how work isnt fun, but they still have to do it because that's how the way the world is and how it works, and life sucks but they gotta get used to it.
I mean, when I was in my first semester in college, I read the book "The Catcher in the Rye", and it was about this kind of topic. Not wanting to grow up. When anyone grows up, they often have an existential crisis. This idea that oh god, this work crap is gonna be the rest of my life. This isnt it, is it? This can't really be it, can it? But we just accept it, and tell each other that life sucks and has to be this way, because if it wasnt this way everything would fall apart, and people accept it. And if anything, anyone who tries to avoid their solemn duty to spend their lives working, either by living off welfare, or being hikko, or being a bum, is met with severe social stigma. Because it just isnt FAIR. What do I have to suffer, but THEY don't? And if life actually HAD to be that way, I would get the point. I mean, I was there when I was young, I actually used to be a Reagan conservative waaaaay back in the day of the mid 2000s. And I thought like that.
What really changed me into where I am now is the fact that recession kind of broke the system to a point that I could see past it. I started wondering, gee if work is really that important, why arent employers just begging us to work for them? Why are we instead begging to work for them? Why are people being paid crap wages? Why arent they creating more jobs when they give tax cuts? Why are we glorifying these guys as job creators? And then I dug deeper, looking for that key solution to fix the economy. I mean, I was young, out of college/grad school, I studied political science and sociology, and I was like, okay, I can do this. Why are things the way they are? And what I found was...less than inspiring.
I mean, you guys know how I think, but out society is screwed up. We really dont have to be working as hard as we do. I mean, the fact that i dont wanna work and no one wants to hire me should be enough. Why force these economic interactions to take place? Why do we need to 'create jobs?" Holy crap. The very idea of "creating jobs" is dystopian. Like, "please master, give me a job!" I mean, like wtf is this sick society? And then I research UBI, and it actually would fix most of the flaws with capitalism, and it would liberate people from this cycle of work and consumption, and it's like...no no no, we can't have that. What we need are more jobs. People want to work, people want the purpose that goes along with work. Its in our DNA?
Uh...rich butthole politician says what now? Like most of the people who I see saying this crap are democrats and lefties. The right are honest that work sucks, but life is that way so deal with it. The left is like, work has dignity, work is important for purpose, yada yada yada, and all of this seems like nonsense to me.
I know that Danaher in this essay didn't want to go the route of saying that people were brainwashed and didnt wanna discount the experiences of people in society, but as someone who has had a much different experience, as one of these jobless NEET types who does support a society based around play rather than work, I will actually say that.
The fact is, I never 'grew up", in retrospect. Some might call me a manchild. But you know what? In the context of this debate, I dont see the problem. Because I can honestly say I've never allowed myself to be brainwashed into the indoctrination of work. Most people who like work and see it as their purpose and blah blah blah, yeah, they do buy into a lot of society's propaganda. They are brainwashed. yes. They are. Because people arent born to think this way. We have a society that churns out wage slaves and structures life to only be fulfilling if one puts in their due time to work, and anyone who doesnt do that is punished in their own way. We dont force people to work outright, but we try to make life miserable for those who dont, through the loss of social prestege and opportunities, and honestly, i think the people who do believe in the work thing are mostly brainwashed. Not saying that some opportunities cant be enjoyable. They certainly can. And admittedly, im likely autistic, and i honestly have been noting that autistic people might have different ideas about life than NTs. Some people are these weird go getter types and I never was. I just wanted to sit back and enjoy life and play games. I always hated the idea of work. I hated the discipline that came along with the culture. And understanding this crap sociologically, I do think I have a valid opinion when I say that this stuff is toxic and brainwashing.
If we didnt work as much, we could be doing other things. Some passions that some people do would be rewarded. I have several college friends who have passions that have to be supported by side jobs. One of my friends is a model who likes to cosplay a lot. Another one is an actor who does theater performances and has to do uber or something on the side. One of my friends told me they regret going to college and wish they went to trade school instead. Not sure how they feel about work in general but they seem intrigued when I post anti work stuff on social media.
But yeah, jobs aren't it mostly. Im not saying some cant find fulfillment from them, but most who do, arent doing traditional 9-5 stuff as their main passion in life. Sorry footlocker, but almost no one applying to your job actually has a passion for selling shoes (throwing this out there because i remember a footlocker job opening back in the day that was really creepy over the top with their desire for someone with that passion). Most jobs in the economy today are just jobs. They suck, they're unpleasant. Most people who are there dont really wanna be there they're just there because they're passionate about affording to live, and yeah other than that, they dont care. Can we stop this freaking gaslighting in this society about how most of us actually wanna work crap jobs?Just because we take crap jobs doesnt mean we like them. Even if we take them with a UBI it's because most of us just want more money on top of the UBI, the passion isn't there. It's the money we want. And it's the money that gives people dignity too.
But yeah, imagine if we didn't work, we all played games all the time. People would put hours into certain games to be the best that ever was. Heck, to go into the best that ever was, just look at anime, so many stories about NEETs being reborn in other worlds that operate like video game RPGs. I mean, people just want love and acceptance and to occupy their time doing something they LIKE. Imagine if the world was like pokemon, and pokemon trainers were real things. People would spend their lives doing THAT. They would train pokemon and battle each other and blah blah blah.I mean, it could happen.
Instead...we have...jobs.
Imagine if jobs were video games. They would be the worst video games in existence. They would require insane amounts of dedication to them, they would be grindy, mundane, pay poorly, you would hurt when you were done, and your clan leaders would be abusive fricks who just force you to keep grinding to make them money. Honestly, at the end of the day, how many people do you think would be playing this if these were games? I dont deny people play stuff like farming or trucking simulator, but most people wouldnt tolerate it. They would check out and play something more fun. And then those who remain would be screaming about how no one wants to play any more when they're the 1% of people who are whales and actually had the pay to win experience. And because no one would be working to support their life style any more, they would probably quit too because you cant expect these people to soil their hands doing the work they gaslight others to do. Ya know?
I mean, I cant say no one would play it, if there's anything Ive learned about gaming, it's that never underestimate the propensity of some players to play horribly grindy games with toxic communities and then crap on anyone who dares badmouth the game, but yeah. Let's just say it's an "acquired taste", which tells me "you kinda needed to force stockholm syndrome on yourself to force yourself to like it."
And I know the essay mentioned the possibility of automation taking over enjoyable human tasks. Well that's the thing about games too. We know AI can play them better. They're banned for a reason. Most FPS games out there have aimbots you can buy, but that's cheating. And chess has "progging" where you can use an AI to make moves for you. I mean, it's actually a controversial thing in the community. Didnt magnus carlson, the chess champion, accuse one of his opponents of progging lately? I used to play chess online in high school, so i know a bit about the game and talking to some of my old chess friends, we were getting into conversations involving them putting buzzers you know where to tell them to move pieces certain ways, and yeah. But yeah, cheating is a concern in gaming. But, most people recognize that cheaters have no honor and are banned from tournaments, just because AI CAN play games better than people doesnt mean they should compete in games. People still wanna compete based on non augmented skill, and I can respect that. As such, AI will never truly overtake gaming IMO. The reason we have to worry about this with work is because work really is just about the productivity, not the process, technological unemployment is only a bad thing because of our social structures, and luddites are as old as time. I mean, automating work is good, automating play is not. This is because the purpose of work is to make things, and the purpose of play is personal fulfillment. And when im anti work, im trying to abolish unpleasant tasks to make things, so we can be free to play and do things that are more fulfilling.
If anything, to go back to that recent essay I wrote about gaming and getting older, my problem with games is the fact that there's less focus on actual play and actual experience, and more on grinding, and competitiveness. Sometimes games should just be fun. Sometimes try harding isnt for everyone. And a huge issue with gaming is a high emphasis on competitive try harding and grinding as if games were jobs, rather than gaming for its own sake.
I mean, I really wanna emphasize that. In some ways, a lot of games are becoming like jobs, where to remain relevant you gotta spend hours grinding and practicing, and if you stop, your skills deteriorate, you fall behind, you lack the unlocks that take dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of hours to unlock, etc. Really. We are kinda recreating the job problem in gaming IMO. But it just goes to show that if jobs disappeared and people sought mindless repetition for hours at a time, you could always become a professional gamer. Or at least aspire to be one.
I mean, really, as someone who is an anti work gamer, I think there's something to this. We spend our time playing games and effectively expanding our childhoods into adulthood and the rest of our lives, and we love every minute of it. What's there not to love? And if you get bored with gaming, do something else. What do you think i do when bored with gaming? I research UBI and this crap and blog on here. It's a natural flow in life. As you can tell, sometimes I come on here and post every day, sometimes I stop posting for months or even a few years in some instances before coming back. But yeah, I maintain a somewhat healthy balance between gaming and doing this stuff, which is my "work". And it gives me more purpose than a job does. Sometimes all people need is to be allowed to live on their own terms.
And yes yes, I know, the conservative types will once again lecture me about how "that's now how the world works", but uh....yeah i understand how the world actually works, thanks. I have several social science degrees, I've researched this issue to death, it's the big issue im passionate about, and let me just say, how the world works is a bunch of crap. We really are enslaved. And when we actually have the means to do away with this enslavement people start going all protestant work ethic going on about how if we didnt work we'd all be moral reprobates and how work gives us purpose and blah blah blah.
I mean, just to make a point to those who just dont get it, let me bring this up. What do you think of the phrase "arbeit macht frei"? Horrible phrase, right? I mean, it's what the NAZIS put above the concentration camps. And what does it mean? "Work makes you free". Really some 1984 crap, is it not? Wild. How could people actually believe that?
Okay, what if i told you that phrase didnt originate from the nazis? What if i told you that it actually originated from Weimar era work programs during the depression? What if i told you the nazis only coopted it for their sick purposes? Heck I think i looked it up once and it originated from the 1870s. And it was really intended to have the same kinds of weirdo meanings as other phrases we like, like "the dignity of work"? Funny how when propaganda isnt our propaganda, we love to point it out and go on about how we dont understand how anyone could be that stupid to believe that crap. But...when it's our propaganda, how dare you not believe it, are you stupid?
Yeah.
This is why im doubling down on the whole "um...yeah, you guys are all brainwashed" in discussing this topic. I know the original essay writer didnt wanna go there but yeah, I totally will.
Reject work. Embrace play. Play actually DOES make you free. Especially if its voluntary.
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