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I'm gobsmacked. (Philosophy ahead)
14 years ago
Have you ever had a personal epiphany that was so against what you thought you knew that you had to stop completely in your tracks? Yeah, that just happened to me.
For two or three years, I've been looking for a way to escape the "rat race". I didn't like the feel of obligation and lack of control that came with a job. I was looking for ways around it. Self-employment, business ownership, iPhone app development, stock trading, investment... I looked at every option I could think of. I actually spent a good chunk of change on it too. I didn't recoup it either.
Now before we continue, you need to watch what started this whole thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdHg6_pDbSI
Bill Maher commented that scientists had found that exercise was as good as prescription medical drugs used to treat depression. Hey, that's low risk and high payoff. I'll call that.
So I started exercising. It was just a 3-5 minute jog. And it worked. My disposition improved dramatically when I exercised. Points gained. Achievement unlocked. Hurray!
Now, some of you may know that I have been on unpaid leave for the last month. You know how the government couldn't pass a budget? Yeah, that made things tough for contractors who worked for the government. So I've spent the last month at home doing the things I would do if I didn't have to work. This primarily involved playing a lot of games and chatting in chat rooms.
It didn't make me happy.
Three to five minutes of exercise was far, FAR more effective than eight hours of not working, and I would have to eat a big pill of unhappiness to get there.
Um... Yeah.
So I just found out that one of the most important pursuits of my life for the last two or three years... and actually a decade on and off... is wrong. Not bad... Not unhealthy... Not immoral... just factually wrong. It won't get me the results I want. I need to drop it and find something better.
I thought this was so important that I erased what was on my dry erase board (Yes, I have a dry erase board in my room.) and wrote a reminder on it so I wouldn't forget when I sleep. I wrote:
"No work does not make me happy."
Now I am a logical guy. This is a factually correct statement, but it has poor form. You see, there is a double negative in this statement. When you make a logical statement, you should remove those. What you have is better form and still factually correct.
"No work does not make me happy."
"Work does make me happy."
"Work makes me happy."
And this is where I truly become gobsmacked.
You see, most of the lessons I learned from my upbringing were that work sucked. Sure, my dad TRIED to teach me "protestant work ethic", but I was just too smart. I could see he had an ulterior motive in making me work. He wanted help dealing with the consequences of being a packrat and having an insecurity-fueled alpha male complex. I got nothing out of the hard labor I gave him, and only rendered my labor under threat of violence. Later on, I looked around and found that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EXAMPLE of "work ethic" involved exploitation. Either the person who worked for work's sake was taken advantage of, or the person who spouted such drivel was benefiting from exploitive relationships. It wasn't hard to see the writing on the wall.
On the other hand, I've seen evidence of "work makes me happy" over the years and just didn't recognize it. I enjoy a clean apartment, and feel crappy when I let it get dirty. I enjoy cooking my own food more than going to restaurant. The DnD campaign I enjoyed the most was my first, which I also worked the hardest on.
Also, one of the primary reasons I didn't want to work was that I didn't like the feeling of being under obligation. Specifically, I didn't like falling behind on my obligations. What do you know, work can help fix that too.
So, now I just need to think about how to integrate this new idea into my life without all that nasty exploitation crap that usually follows people with work ethic. I guess you can't plant a garden with sprouting some weeds. Fortunately, you can just pull the weeds out by the roots...
For two or three years, I've been looking for a way to escape the "rat race". I didn't like the feel of obligation and lack of control that came with a job. I was looking for ways around it. Self-employment, business ownership, iPhone app development, stock trading, investment... I looked at every option I could think of. I actually spent a good chunk of change on it too. I didn't recoup it either.
Now before we continue, you need to watch what started this whole thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdHg6_pDbSI
Bill Maher commented that scientists had found that exercise was as good as prescription medical drugs used to treat depression. Hey, that's low risk and high payoff. I'll call that.
So I started exercising. It was just a 3-5 minute jog. And it worked. My disposition improved dramatically when I exercised. Points gained. Achievement unlocked. Hurray!
Now, some of you may know that I have been on unpaid leave for the last month. You know how the government couldn't pass a budget? Yeah, that made things tough for contractors who worked for the government. So I've spent the last month at home doing the things I would do if I didn't have to work. This primarily involved playing a lot of games and chatting in chat rooms.
It didn't make me happy.
Three to five minutes of exercise was far, FAR more effective than eight hours of not working, and I would have to eat a big pill of unhappiness to get there.
Um... Yeah.
So I just found out that one of the most important pursuits of my life for the last two or three years... and actually a decade on and off... is wrong. Not bad... Not unhealthy... Not immoral... just factually wrong. It won't get me the results I want. I need to drop it and find something better.
I thought this was so important that I erased what was on my dry erase board (Yes, I have a dry erase board in my room.) and wrote a reminder on it so I wouldn't forget when I sleep. I wrote:
"No work does not make me happy."
Now I am a logical guy. This is a factually correct statement, but it has poor form. You see, there is a double negative in this statement. When you make a logical statement, you should remove those. What you have is better form and still factually correct.
"
"Work does make me happy."
"Work makes me happy."
And this is where I truly become gobsmacked.
You see, most of the lessons I learned from my upbringing were that work sucked. Sure, my dad TRIED to teach me "protestant work ethic", but I was just too smart. I could see he had an ulterior motive in making me work. He wanted help dealing with the consequences of being a packrat and having an insecurity-fueled alpha male complex. I got nothing out of the hard labor I gave him, and only rendered my labor under threat of violence. Later on, I looked around and found that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING EXAMPLE of "work ethic" involved exploitation. Either the person who worked for work's sake was taken advantage of, or the person who spouted such drivel was benefiting from exploitive relationships. It wasn't hard to see the writing on the wall.
On the other hand, I've seen evidence of "work makes me happy" over the years and just didn't recognize it. I enjoy a clean apartment, and feel crappy when I let it get dirty. I enjoy cooking my own food more than going to restaurant. The DnD campaign I enjoyed the most was my first, which I also worked the hardest on.
Also, one of the primary reasons I didn't want to work was that I didn't like the feeling of being under obligation. Specifically, I didn't like falling behind on my obligations. What do you know, work can help fix that too.
So, now I just need to think about how to integrate this new idea into my life without all that nasty exploitation crap that usually follows people with work ethic. I guess you can't plant a garden with sprouting some weeds. Fortunately, you can just pull the weeds out by the roots...
With caveats, of course. Personally feeling that I've done something of worth, or being in the process of doing so-- awesome. Doing work where I'm not confident that what I'm doing is right, or I don't personally feel I've really done something of merit or value-- not so much.
But I hope that your own self-discovery continues. I can only imagine how great it'd be to have all these internal motivations figured out!
I'm no fan of work for work's sake. Fortunately, you can cut a lot of that out by not using possessions as penis extension. I am forever thankful to my dad for (unintentionally) teaching me that. My first goal is to write a new DnD campaign with which to treat my friends. Then I'll just put it online (for free) and see if anything cool happens from that.
If you want to know more about internal motivation, there is some things you can learn from science. A book called "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" is a book about motivation that has something that most books on motivation completely lack... information from peer-reviewed science journals. And... it was just interesting.
having a job will mean I can afford to do the things I want, and even if its a crappy job, the end result will make me happy...and honestly, the people at a job can make a boring job fun--- my last job, I loved going to work every day... It made me feel important, and I felt respected by my peers (although not my boss...but we all felt like he was useless...so hey---)
I know what you mean, work for work sake is bleh, but when you work hard on something, and you accomplish it, even if its for your JOB you can feel amazing accomplishment :)
It's you finding enjoyment in what you do when you work that causes that happiness to multiply.
Example:
Having been in the military, I will give two difference circumstances of what would have been called 'work' for me.
-Filing and sorting office supplies and signing them out.
-Playing music for big crowds.
The situation varies for the second one there, but yeah, that's pretty much what I did at my first base. I got by on the first part, but when I could really enjoy what I did was when I was playing music, something I've always loved doing.
If you're lucky enough to find a job where you can do what you love, even better. But there's nothing stopping us from finding that which helps enable our enjoyment of what we do in life.
Just thought I'd share. Might not be relevant or very pointed, but it was what came to mind.
Obviously, I want more of the former and less of the latter. Although, "filler" work that DOES improve my surroundings doesn't seem to feel like filler. The work itself is kinda blah, but the results feel good. I think this, "I like my clean room." may be part of what keeps Work Ethic people in exploitive relationships. However, working on something I enjoy is fun AND gives me the "I like what I wrote" feeling as well. Very murr.
Then again one must go into what is work and what isn't.
If you enjoy it is it work?
If it's something you can put down at will is it work?
I've noticed the exercise thing too. Lately I've been doing a lot of walking in preparation for a weeklong visit to a friend who has no car. I've come to find that I enjoy it just for its own sake. Especially when I have my headphones on and some good music to get into.
I also really like your point about the differences between work, busywork and hard labor. One of those is enjoyable and fulfilling. The other two are what other people cram down your throat. I think George Carlin said that hard work is anything you'd rather not be doing; the physical difficulty of it is irrelevant.
Here's a handy way of telling the difference: if you can imagine yourself volunteering to do it for free or not.
I used to be a very hardline preppy/yuppie type; the kind that loved being in honor math and looked at university and careers with reverence. Then, due to... well, "complicated stuff," after high school I was enrolled in a two-year community technical college.
In the years I've been going there, every ounce of ambition has been ground out of my soul by an uncaring, underpaid, only-here-to-pad-my-resumé-for-a-real-teaching-job system. I can't see myself as wanting to have any job. I've failed and failed the most basic courses so many times that I can't help but fear obligations. I know it sounds pathetic, but I just want to live with my friends and have fun.
Back to the essay at hand, I've noticed that "laziness" is extremely rare. People just have different priorities; wife says husband is lazy because he just flops in front of the couch, husband says wife is lazy because she stays at home all day, father says son is lazy for wasting life in art school, son says father is lazy for wasting life in corporation... Like many things, there's no real "cookie cutter" way of applying the same standard to everyone.
If you have any tips on what I could do to escape the rat race too, I need all the help I can get.