Social production of goods and services actually yields a good deal more time and energy to spend on optional activities. IF we had to produce our own goods and services, (food, clothing, shelter, fuel for heat, water, etc.) we would have to work exceedingly hard and for very long hours every day, and even then we wouldn't have everything we needed. — Bitter Crank
All the empty rhetoric of the work place come into play when managers have nothing better to do with their time. When factories, offices, mines, mills, hospitals, etc. are working well, and the managers have actual work to do, you don't hear this stuff a lot. — Bitter Crank
See C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, 1951. It's a classic sociology text. In one chapter he described how academics, feeling trapped and under-paid in their liberal arts college offices, sometimes set up consultancies to advise corporations on how to achieve greater productivity in the work force. Sixty some years later managers are still looking for advice, though there are now whole bookstores full of it. And now there are a lot of less-than-professors out hawking industrial nostrums to spur apathetic workers (and cure them of their insensitive racist, sexist, transphobic, tendencies). — Bitter Crank
Were you the sort of person who could read a motivational psychology book, take it seriously, apply it assiduously, consult with successful people for coaching on how to be a middle class success, you could solve this problem. And if you had wings, you could fly like a bird up in the sky. — Bitter Crank
We "take on" these slogans so as to justify why we need to get involved with work we might otherwise not get involved with.. — schopenhauer1
We can at least get clarity. The truth is that a lot of work is not intended to benefit the worker at all, and the kind of jobs where workers find direct benefit employ a smaller part of the workforce and are hotly sought after. Capitalism, and the command economy of the soviet socialist system, are not ground-up systems where workers establish priorities and methods. They are both top-down systems where powerful apparatchiks decide what is going to be done, and the individual worker can get with the program or go fuck himself. — Bitter Crank
anomie — schopenhauer1
alienation — schopenhauer1
Some say technology will save us (eventually). Some say there is no way to change flawed, sinful human nature. There is another view that says if the future is to be different, it will come not from machines or powerful computers, but from people with changed minds. — 0 thru 9
At this point I'd settle for the 20 hour work week without reduction in pay. It's not the sort of goal I dream of, but it's good. — Moliere
In that sense, condoms and other forms of birth control are symbols of liberation. No political philosophy will ever be satisfactory, and a contributing reason why this is so is because it just is not possible to get along with as many people as there are. Less people = less potential for conflict. — darthbarracuda
The processes and those who get the "privilege" of making the complex technology lives in large labs in corporations and universities. The rest get to run the cogs.. I don't mean computer programmers- they are modern bricklayers.. It's the Intels, Apples, IBMs, Ciscos, etc. etc. and the Harvards, and Oxfords, and MITs, etc.etc . Sure, some might get to be a part of it, but most will be simply the ones who get the final products in consumption form or nicely printed "How things work" books to ease the mind enough to not "really" want to know the complexities and minutia. Essentially there are those who make the cogs, and those who run the cogs. Probably 98% run the cogs. — schopenhauer1
Hahaha, this is somewhat ironic in my case since I just recently switched majors from engineering to computer science. One thing I realized in my experience with engineering is how janky things tend to be. It actually sort of lowered my confidence in many pieces of technology that I regularly use. When the only thing that keeps something running is a single resistor, and the rate of failure of this resistor is relatively high, suddenly the whole thing looks as if it's already broken. — darthbarracuda
Just as there are only a few that actually design the products we use and consume, there are also a very, very small amount of researchers and explorers who actually get to take the pictures you see in Nat Geo. The hope is to be one of these few, but the chances are small. But it's better than working as a desk-slave, designing products that will be replicated ad infinitum and ad nauseum. — darthbarracuda
Yes indeed, but what does that require from us? What would we have to do to end the despair of the modern work life? Right. Now. — schopenhauer1
Ahh... well that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? The devil hides in the details. I’d imagine that there would have to be many different approaches, coming not just from experts and scientists, but from anyone who has something useful to add. For example... perhaps if a significant percentage (not even a majority, just a spark so to speak) really were convinced that humans are more than just a bowlful of isolated marbles barely touching, never intersecting, merely bouncing off each other either painfully or pleasurably ad Infinitum (I am a rock... I am an iiiii-aaa-land. And a rock can feel no pain. And an island never cries)... Then just maybe, life and work on this third rock from the sun, this blue-green space marble might actually be quite enjoyable.
For inspiration of this sort, i usually turn to the Tao Te Ching, and the writings of Daniel Quinn, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber, and some others. — 0 thru 9
That's funny actually.. any product types in particular? I've had TVs with shitty speakers and hard drives that break real easily, but I'm not sure if that is much resistors as other technology.. hard drives that aren't solid state can break easily due to their physical movement of parts. — schopenhauer1
Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? Some posters on here seem to place technology as the be all and end all it seems. Our very brains are said to work similar to specific kinds of computer- connectionist programming networks with neurons acting like transistors or circuits of sorts. What's funny is that if robots became fully sentient, I don't think it would end up like a Terminator scenario, but more like a Douglas Adams book. That is to say, the computers would have existential angst like us humans, and not be able to compute the systemic futility of existence. That would be truly horrifying for the poor little machine bastard. — schopenhauer1
Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? — schopenhauer1
Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? — schopenhauer1
When you ask professional engineers for help with some device and they tell you "I don't know", that doesn't always instill confidence. It's also scary how many people are desperate to get through error checking, testing, etc. — darthbarracuda
Artificial intelligence might make some people question the value of human existence qua human existence, as A.I. presumably would do most of the work while we sit around idly, twiddling our fingers.
If the creation is "better" than the creator ... what will motivate people to reproduce? Why make humans, when artificial intelligence is even better? But without humans, what's the point of artificial intelligence? Hold on, back up a moment - what's the point of humanity in general? — darthbarracuda
If new investment, manufacturing, and retail opportunities were to exist, acts of creative destruction were required to wreck big old markets and create huge new markets. — Bitter Crank
Skilled craftsmen and craftswomen have always used tools or made tools to their own liking. Carpenters, for instance, have their own tools and perform work mostly on a contract basis for individuals (as opposed to construction workers...)
One of the reasons we all are dissatisfied with life is that we don't have our own tools to perform our own work for our own customers. You might like to make cloth from flax and wool by yourself, and you could. People do it. But up against the fabrics industries, an individual isn't likely to make a living doing that. — Bitter Crank
Mein Gott im Himmel -- that is an inspired title. — Bitter Crank
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