We live wasted lives

hell yeah brother, 30 hours a week, 4 weeks paid vacation, guaranteed and paid for further education courses, protection from being fired while pregnant/ at home with newborn, minimum wage, privacy laws and employee protection laws, unionization, multiple paid federal holidays. I fuckin love Europe.

So funny enough, as an American, I have the majority of that while being in the military. We even currently have three months of maternity and paternity leave, which can be used as the member sees fit through the first year after birth.
All except the privacy laws and employee protection laws, though it can often be exceptionally difficult to fire people for reasons that don't involve the politics of the people in charge. And even then, lawsuits usually get those people backpay.
I'd be advocating for the US Coast Guard with this right now, but the current administration is shifting our focus from being a life-saving/preserving service to another border control agency, so... not a great time to be joining if it's for moral reasons. sigh

I mean we have it pretty good compared to most of history

We probably have it pretty great compared to most of the rest of the world currently.
- Absolutely. Really, if you're reading this, you are probably pretty high up on the scale.
- Best of the best of the best, sir. With honors
I think most reasonable people would agree that there are many objectively good things about the modern world, but progress isn't a strict good/bad binary. Often, progress results in both good and bad circumstances.
For instance, I think most reasonable people would agree that modern medicine is a very good thing. Vaccines and antibiotics have saved countless lives. Also, more advanced agricultural technology has allowed us to grow more food and feed more people. However, progress has also resulted in significant ecological damage, depletion of natural, nonrenewable resources and a significant loss of biodiversity. I think most reasonable people would agree that these are very bad things.
I don't think the point is to ignore the very real, important positives about the modern world, but to point out that there are still things that need to improve, and unintended negative effects of progress that need to be dealt with.
I appreciate that for you the modern world is overall good, but that's not necessarily everyone's experience. Some people do feel purposeless, depressed and worn down, despite being relatively wealthy and comfortable, especially compared to humans of past eras.
- Problem is, instead of someone actively leading for something better for all, we are stomped under a boot, gaslighted, then told the problem is resources/poor people
- I meant good in comparison to other times. And I don't mean me personally but people in general.
Found the berry picker
- Picking berries can be relaxing but cleaning them sucks

If yOu aRe nOt uNdEr cApItAlIsM It's yOuR OwN FaUlT

it’s hard for people so used to the comforts of capitalism to realise this is actually luxury
being inside, seated comfortably, doing non-manual work, educated, can read, listening to music, this is a job better than 99% of people who have ever lived have had
Slaves who existed before capitalism was even imagined would dream of this WaSTeD LiFe 🤪
- I am not a slave or a starving medieval peasant, therefore I should be happy to waste my life in an office generating shareholder value. Got it.
- Friend, I take it you're joking ... but I've done warehouse, construction, assembly line, and other hard labor. The only other country I've been to is Mexico, which is a nice place to leave. Believe me, it is entirely possible for a privileged American to know how well they have it.
- it’s hard for people so used to the comforts of capitalism to realise this is actually luxury
  being inside, seated comfortably, doing non-manual work, educated, can read, listening to music, this is a job better than 99% of people who have ever lived have had
  Hell, if you're in this situation you have immediate and convenient access to potable water in your living space. This is a level of privilege beyond almost every other human that has lived in all of history.
- it's good that you think this way, after all, happier slaves are more productive.
- That's still capitalism, genius

I think we are wasting our lives to a certain degree. As kids, we expected more from life than sitting in front of a computer to feed the family. And sitting at a computer is seen as one of the "good" jobs.

One of the things we often forget is that a large part of our happiness is simply autonomy and self direction. I still remember working a “dreary office job” that I absolutely loved because we were given self direction and the managers were simply there to support us.

This sounds great!
However, I also had a job like this and hated it. The things I hated about it were:
Circumstances beyond my control made taking this job my best option, when I had really wanted to do something else.
The ultimate product of my work wasn't emotionally resonant with me. I felt like I was doing nothing but working to maintain a system I didn't believe in.
I felt like if I was going to have a job like this, I should be getting paid better and should be working on something more interesting. I thought the job was beneath me.
Seriously, aesthetics matter. Commuting through heavy traffic to reach a suburban office park, where I walk through the door and smell filtered air, looking at grey cubicals under florescent lighting... is pretty miserable. Much better if the office was in a walkable, nice-to-look-at neighborhood where I would want to spend my time outside of work, and if the office had hired an interior designer who could make it.... just better in any way.

Once everything has been optimized and runs smoothly, there are no surprises anymore, nothing interesting, you just do a routine that you've specialized in and have gotten bored at 10 years ago. Our quality of life is unparalleled. Our quality of work less so. It's safe and all, but so so boring

I've heard this described as a velvet rut.
i dunno. I mean, the same could be said about the medieval ages. Everything had been figured out. How to grow wheat, how to feed chickens, the people knew everything. It was all just daily routine.
Yet i don't see these people living dull lives. I smell the air and it smells good.

Imagine this! Before you was adventure, exploration, and danger. Then there was slavery, then there was our period (where there are still millions of actual slaves btw).

Then after you, if anyone survives, and we don't all get put into an I have no mouth and I must scream scenario by our overlords, the youth after us will never know work. They will be far more functional than us, and will simply not understand working to survive. They will look down on us, senile outcasts, who get to watch "heaven" from afar.

Personally, I sometimes ponder if this is a part of The Great Filter. We have evolved to survive under constant threats in harsh environments, so when those dangers and threats are removed we don't know how to handle it. We start to perceive minor things as bigger problems. I wonder if this is part of what we need to learn to deal with before we can live peacefully with our neighbours and nature.
- Interesting take on the situation. I like it.
where your children are gonna grow up depends a lot on your choices on whether you support Mars settlement or not. if you do, and you go there, i think your children will have a high chance of having to do a lot of work. construction, farming, construction again, taking care of new immigrants and children, construction again, expanding the city ... seems like a lot of work to me.

I just wanna be one of those old timey blacksmiths hitting things on an anvil and getting paid for it. Nowadays though it's all like "Throw the glowy thing into the bang bang thing and it does all the work for you!". What if I wanna hit things with a hammer, huh?! What if I like the catharsis that comes with hitting something?!

damn that image bangs

Anytime some says the economy or wall street are doing great i instantly know they are either rich or tarded or both

I sure do love being a wage slave in the good ol US of A.

🥲

What I love most about this is he works in health care insurance. His boss tells him he's not denying enough claims. Very American indeed.

https://youtu.be/QhfFoM1FfYc

Id like to help the brown people trump is looking to purge from the country but look at this. I cant give all this up.

The truth is people choose to live wasted lives. They could choose to do something fulfilling but don't. Even cavemen probably wasted their lives being scared something was going to eat them.

I started out choosing work that wasn't all that fulfilling as a toolmaker/engineer. I didn't find a lot of satisfaction in needing to hit impossible deadlines. So I ditched that career and became an EMT and finally a medic with a side helping of firefighter/rescue in several small and very rural communities that have shortages of trained responders. And just before I retired I taught some math in my tiny rural school because teachers are hard to get there. I never got rich with money or fame but that wasn't what mattered.

I feel like my life was not wasted for the most part. That I made a difference for the people and the world around me. In the small handful of years left to me, I can go satisfied I did what I could. You could too if only you would choose.

Yeah, honestly knowing what I know now, this is the way to do it. Do whatever you want for most of your life and screw the consequences. Die at 35 without health insurance.

What? I love spending my day going to meetings where I’m quizzed about things that won’t matter next week and writing Jira tickets.

we can have all the "good" things we claim to want from other economic systems within capitalism. It just requires voting for politicians that do their job to progress laws forward instead of dragging their feet.

Whoever you vote for will be ~~bribed~~ lobbied until they don't represent you anymore, assuming they weren't already compromised before even entering office.
- If I accepted that to be true, then no one can lead the country and its cooked. There are plenty of capitalist economies with low corruption.

Yeah, poor Chinese!

People here seem pretty happy. I guess thd government should do something about the youth unemployment rate, but the average chinese I see on the street seems to be leading a more fulfilling life than the average american. People can afford rent, to go out and eat every day, and save a little, I dont know anyone back home like that.

The fulfilling part is using that income to buy a telescope and admire the beauty of the cosmos

Or internet porn. Both of these are things our ancestorsnl couldn't have even dreamed of, and would kill to have access to

I'm glad 1 hour of porn and telescope each day keeps you going. For most of us, it's not enough.
It would be nice to not be alienated at work. It would also be nice to have some kind of say in what we do 80% of the time we're awake. A more democratized workplace would do a lot.
- I 100% agree, I'm just saying that life today is much more fulfilling for the average person than it was for, like, the average 13th century French peasant. The fact that we have access to this feeling of ennui in the first place is thanks to our safe and comfortable lifestyle.
  Shit could be better, and we should fight to make it so. I just think we should also appreciate that our quality of life is nearly unrivaled throughout history, and even the modern world.

Yeah, but now the monitors are thinner.

I guess you don't work under communism.

Yeah, people didn't. They didn't give a shit about the "collective" farms. They worked because they were forced to and fucked it up for everyone because there was no difference between giving it your all and slacking off. Hundreds of microfarms worked better than one large collective one because they didn't think it was "ours" they thought it was "nobodys".
- I've read George Orwell's account of life in Catalonia during the civil war when the nation was communist, and that's not the picture he painted at all. He talked about music and art in the streets. People excited about the new economy. People who wanted to work, or to enlist as soldiers and fight the marxist-leninists
- The same is true for capitalism too, though.
  If you work in your own little company or if you are self-employed, then the "mission" of your work might be important to you and a source of motivation.
  But if you work in a huge corporation, hardly anything you do actually matters. If don't perform at 100% and instead slack off, there are other people doing the same work. And if everyone slacks off, then they just hire more people. And even if the whole department underperforms, there are other departments that rake in the money.
  And whether the company thrives or goes under, your input as a lowly grunt wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Even as a mid-level manager your input wouldn't have made a difference.
  Years of my work at my job can be wiped out with one email from the CEO.
  Literally the only difference between capitalism and communism when it comes to that is whether the CEO wipes out my work or the state.