Stop. (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, October 25, 2018, 14:39 (2035 days ago) @ Cody Miller

It's not "today"... there have never been systems in place that didn't abuse some people. But that's where I'd point out that the systems we have now are the least abusive systems we've come up with.

I'm aware. Though that may be true I still find us at unacceptable levels.

Fully agree. I hope I'm not making it sound like I think everything is fine.

Of course its your burden to bear... who else's would it be? The vast majority of people across the vast majority of time have hated their jobs, if they were even lucky enough to have one. This idea that you have to "love" your job is just so bizare. It's called "work" for a reason.

Not only do I disagree, but there are people working right now to prove that idea wrong. Humans love to work. Play actually is work. Great read right here.

I'll check that out, thanks :)

I will say that from what I know (and I am SO NOT an expert, so I could be absolutely wrong lol), play and work are fundamentally different things, both developmentally and psychologically speaking.

"Play" is esentially a learning mechanism. When children play, they are building and testing their ability to model the world. If a child is pretending to be a cat, that's their brain trying to figure out and understand what a cat is, and therefore, how to interact with one. When kids play group games together, they are modeling the world of collective goals, social interactions, morals within competition... all that stuff. Now, that is all stuff that applies to the modern "work" environment more often than not. Many jobs are like games. But that is not their primary function. Work. fundamentally, is the price we pay for knowledge of the future. We don't just sit around doing nothing until we're hungry. We know we are going to be hungry in a few hours, and again tomorrow, and the next day, etc. We learned over time to trade rest or other short term pleasures for work that secures resources for the future. It is quite literally a sacrifice. We give up our time and energy now so that we have what we need in the future.

All that said, things are blowing apart in a whole bunch of different directions right now. Society has advanced so quickly, we're actually running out of work that needs doing. Not on a global level, but on an individual level. Most of our fundamental needs are so effeciently taken care of that the average person in western civilization doesn't need to do that much. We still need to make money, obviously. And money is ostensibly traded for things of value. But most people don't actually have much of true value that they are contributing within the workforce. Most of the truly valuble things are already taken care of. So there's this rise of somewhat pointless busywork jobs that many people end up in as a way to pay the bills, all the while knowing that the job they're doing doesn't need to exist. And that, I think, has lead to a sudden need for people to get out of those jobs and instead find a "meaningful career that they love". And I'm not knocking that idea one bit. It's just that in my view, those jobs and the people who can do them are exceedingly rare. And it's a relatively new phenomina because up until very recently, most work was inherently meaningful because the thriving of civilization and even the survival of the species literally depended on it.

There's a book about all this that you might like: https://www.amazon.ca/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X

But reality is the ultimate game…