If the theory of Plato is wrong, why does it influence so much in Western Philosophy? — nguyen dung

Whether one thinks that Plato was right or wrong about goodness or government or anything else isn't the same as whether or not Plato was influential. Plato was very influential, and his views were substantive, meaning they were weighty and not easily dismissed.

the Bible and Buddha are also highly influential; either might not be right or wrong about a good many things.

I was going to congratulate you on being the first to use "colonoscopy" in TPF discussions. But no, it has been used before. Then I thought maybe you meant "colostomy" bag. Unfortunately, that has already been used too -- several times, in unflattering ways.

Ah! the problem again. What IS the problem? — god must be atheist

Philosophers playing with their feces.

The article said, "Kaepernick’s concern over the shoe’s “Betsy Ross Flag” designs connection to an era of slavery resonated with investors"

That may be. And from listening to many years of reports on stocks going up and down (like a hooker's drawers) one can conclude that "investors" are a rather flighty bunch, scattering and flocking together at the slightest hint of negativity or positivity (however interpreted). "Oil stocks are down amid investor fears that Santa Claus may again use reindeer to power his sleigh."

the US has put its cultural footprint on the world — god must be atheist

This is true, but what vigorous culture hasn't stamped its footprint on the world? Going back to the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Chinese, the French, the Russians, the British, the Spanish, the Japanese ... everybody that could has done that.

The American footprint is as unique as the Roman footprint, but the business of foot printing isn't unique at all. The current footprinters are pervasive because of technology. Chicklets are in vogue in Bulga-Torogov because communication and transportation can put Chicklets there. Capitalism, which isn't uniquely American, will put Chicklets on Mars, as soon as there is a market there.

Capitalism doesn't try to wipe out local cultural features or traditions, it wipes out local culture as a consequence of its urge to dominate all markets.

Yes, the loss of local cultures is lamentable -- as long as the locals are doing the lamenting. Is there any virtue in first world people lamenting the loss of tradition among third world people? (I think there is virtue in lamenting the loss of other people's cultural traditions, but only so far. If the people of Bulga-Torogov decide that electricity beats yak fat lamps, or that Mayans in Central America decide that Spanish is a more useful language than their local tongue, well... that's up to them.

As for Islamic fundamentalism, the sooner it disappears the better -- along with Christian fundamentalism and Hindu fundamentalism.

The steps from 1620 [Mayflower at Plymouth Rock] to 1776 [the DOC] to 1861 [Civil War] to 1954 [Brown vs. Board of Education] to the present have been dogged by moral contradictions all the way. The United States is not unique in this way. Morally contradictory behavior is endemic to the species. We can write and celebrate the Declaration of Independence while contradicting it in our personal life, as Thomas Jefferson, and all of the slave-holding Founding Fathers did, and generations of ordinary Americans have since right up to July 4, 2019.

The Civil War was not a black and white conflict, so to speak. There were pro- and anti-slavery people in the north and the south alike. Abolitionists were against slavery -- and many of them did not intend to grant equality to freed slaves. The Great Emancipator, Abe. Lincoln, did not envisage black and white people living together on equal footing. Part of the Southern Cause was states rights, part of it was slavery. Jim Crow laws were the norm in the south after the Civil War; in the north a different system of segregation was practiced. The power centers of the United States were determined to prevent significant black advancement and equality, backed by the force of law, up until the 1960s, when court rulings and civil rights legislation struck down old laws.

Reform in the 1960s - 1970s was lukewarm to begin with, and was too little too late. By the time segregationist rules, lending practices, and so forth had been broken down, it was too late for most blacks. They were not able in 1980 to duplicate the enormous wealth accumulation that occurred for white people from the 1930s forward, and which they were legislated out of.

The long term post Civil War policy towards former slaves and their descendants was officially exclusion and suppression. It worked. It was successful. By and large blacks have have been excluded, impoverished, and. suppressed. There was, of course, resistance. A host of excellent leaders from

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ...
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

confronted corporate, municipal, state, and federal officials with demands for civil rights equality backed up by strikes and marches. They achieved some, certainly not complete, success.

We are still contradicting ourselves. Many may talk about complete racial equality, color blindness, and so forth, but opportunity is still hoarded by those who already have substantially greater resources and advantages, and not just the famous 1%.

It seems like progress has been made all along, but it has been achieved through very small increments. Some gains have been lost, others have been capitalized upon. But progress in achieving full, racially transparent integration has been very, very, limited.

Democrats, considered too liberal and left-wing, run on a platform that in any other country in the world is considered ultra-right wing — god must be atheist

Hyperbole, but I get what you mean. Democrats and republicans are the only two peas in the short pod of the established Party. The actual very liberal Democrats are distinct from the actual very conservative Republicans. Their policy objectives are somewhat different. But neither party is anti-capitalist; both parties believe in a well funded military (which is a critical half of the military industrial economy). Both parties believe in global dominance. Both parties have gay and lesbian members. The Republicans have the Log Cabin gay group, the Democrats have the Stonewall gay group.

But on to something else... Russia too has a very diverse demographic, a history of turmoil which has mixed its cultures; a long period of autocratic Tzars, a shorter period of soviet authoritarian government. I suspect that the ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire works somewhat differently than the settler colonialism (so called) of European emigration to the United States.

- kids here are popular in class with their mates if they are good in athletics or can beat others up. At home, the kids are popular if they are smart, get good grades, and are funny. — god must be atheist

This is a watershed issue in the United States: In a minority of school districts, high level academic success is expected/demanded and delivered by the students. (Not all, of course, but as many as can manage.) In another minority of schools, academic achievement is not respected--it's maligned by the students.

In most schools there is a distribution of performance from very good to very poor, and as you observed, being on the poor performance end of the distribution doesn't make one a diseased pariah. Status is enhanced, as you suggest, if you have something going for you--comic ability, sport ability, good looks, fighting ability, and the like.

everyone is a bit cranky around here — god must be atheist

This is true.

broad American culture — god must be atheist

Ok, ok, I get the pun.

But there is a wider American culture, and more narrow ones. The doings of the KKK below to one of the narrow cultures. Gay liberation, Planned Parenthood, Unitarianism, Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas Day, weekending in cabins "up north on the lake", etc. are all parts of narrow American cultures. Voting in November is part of the wider culture; so is eating turkey for Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and so on.

Moon Unit Nine denies any connection with American Culture.

You aren't going to deny that there is such a thing as "American", "French", or "Russian" culture, are you? If you were randomly moved from one location on earth to another, how would you tell that you were in a different (or the same) country?

Is that logic, or emotion, or intuition? — Brett

Assessing how we thought about something after the fact is a fun game but I am not sure that it is reliable. First, there are mental processes going on out of sight of the conscious mind. Whether those processes are governed by logic or emotion or low blood sugar is very difficult if not impossible to determine.

To make one of those ugly computer and brain comparisons, we have all sorts of drivers and sub-routines running in the background of which we are not aware or in control of. As Freud said, "We are not masters of our own houses."

It may be less of a question of whether we use logic or emotion, and more a matter of how we initiate a decision making sequence. My guess is that emotional drivers initiate most of our decisions; logical thinking tests the possibilities. Actions begin with motivations (simple model), not with logic. The emotions involved in our consumer decisions can certainly be primed and shaped by outsiders using devilish logic applied to the problem of stimulating our emotions to achieve satisfactory retail results for the quarter.

Logic was employed, but yes, after the fact.

Most of our personal decisions are not made using logic, and a lot of our business or professional decisions are made without logic, too. For instance: Hiring new employees for professional jobs is supposed to be a rational process where logic has a strong role. In fact, many hiring decisions (and good ones, at that, are actually made in the first minute or so of the interview--positively and negatively.

Should hiring decisions be under the rationalizing control of the "human resource departments", or is it better if hiring is decentralized and decisions made on much more intuitive bases? I've seen it done both ways, and in combo, and in the end I don't think logic helps us much in hiring people.

Farmers deciding what, and how much, to plant in the coming year can not afford to use much intuition. For one thing, banks won't let them. Everyone is looking at current crop prices, futures markets, weather, disease, insects, international trade, etc. So... it looks like 30% beans, 40% corn, and try to get as much acreage as possible into a set-aside program [for example].

Logic is the only way to go when planning the nuts and bolts aspects of a moon shot. PR is important for funding, but public relations can't steer the rocket.

I just made a decision--I bought a pair of New Balance shoes on line. 1 hour prior to the decision and act I did not intend to buy anything. But I read 2 articles about New Balance in the Guardian US edition. It confirmed several positive impressions I have of New Balance shoes (I've worn several pair). I Googled NB 990 and in a click was at the NB web site. Ah ha, 990s (normally $175) were on sale for $129. A deal -- only they are a light gray-green. Is this tolerable? Period of dithering about color. Logic only tells me the color will not affect wear. They could be purple with pink dots, and wear as well as gray. IF they were purple with pink dots, I wouldn't wear them if they were free, however.

So far, the only thing that logic has helped with is recognizing that a $48 savings on line is a better deal than full price at a store and that the subtle light green shading will not affect wear. Logic did nothing for the slight unease I felt (feel) about the coloring. I suppose I can send them back if they are ugly.

The decision to first look (which is often about the same as the decision to buy) was driven by some consumerist arousal in my brain which led me to FEEL a need to buy these shoes.

I am generally successful in avoiding frequent or large stupid purchases -- purchases that are immediately regretted, are embarrassing, and/or unaffordable. But a lot of the purchases I make, if not stupid, are also not driven by any logic. They are driven by desire, eye-catching novelty, status-needs, imagined benefits, and so forth.

4 years ago I intended to buy a black leather jacket for everyday wear in the winter. I shopped carefully and watched for sales, and finally a fairly expensive jacket was put on clearance, and I bought it. Good deal, great jacket, warm, never regretted it. On another day I was at a different store and found a brown leather jacket for $75 and hastily bought it. It was a very good deal, but it is very heavy and is actually not very warm. It looks nice, but I did not, and do not, need it. Why did I buy it? Again, that consumer itch in the brain which has nothing to do with logic. I felt it was sexy looking.

But sexy clothing doesn't do me any good any more, because (LOGIC SAYS) I am not out and about, dating, bar hopping, and so forth where sexy attractive clothing is an advantage. Nobody at Target cares whether I look like a hot number or look like an old troll. So why don't I follow logic on these matters?

But when you focus on people who hate their job and earn just enough money to pay for rent and food, and have a poor health because they're constantly stressed because of the job they hate that they have to go to every day, and 40 years later they're still not owning a house and they live in poor health or die because of it, I think these people would have liked to have the opportunity to work on building decent housing for themselves and grow some of their food and take care of their health, making use of what they would have learnt in an education that taught them to take care of themselves. — leo

Good housing, good food, good health care, good education, good jobs (that people actually like)--all good and desirable things. No one will argue with you that these are not good. The issue that is arguable is, "How?"

Well, start by radical changes like getting rid of the capitalist economy which drives a lot of what is you are identifying as bad. People will then have to organize their lives along different lines: cooperatives, community based food production/management, very locally controlled schools, focus on public health promotion more than terminal disease treatment, and so forth. Work will have to be organized quite differently than it is now, and so on.

All this might produce a simpler society where people were much happier. Or maybe not.

Large populations either maintain complex systems or they crash and burn. Nowhere can hundreds of millions, billions, of people be fed, housed, and cared for without extensive networks of technology and trade. "A simple good life" of the sort you are suggesting can be had only in very protected environments for a small portion of the population--not only the rich, but of course being rich helps.

Even at a time when the world's population was much smaller, when aspirations for goods and services were much more modest (say, the average person in the mid-18th century) having "a good life" was still complicated--involving trade, imports, exports, a complicated supply chain of food, goods, and services.

I empathize strongly with people who are dissatisfied with their work lives. I'm retired now, but much of my time working involved unsatisfactory work experiences. I put up with it, like everybody else does, in order to continue getting paid. There isn't any solution to the problem of unsatisfactory work, poor housing, poor education, poor health care, poor food procurement systems, and so forth WITHOUT radical changes. A thoroughly organized, unionized work-force would be one necessary step. A very strong progressive political party would be another minimal step towards extensive change. Involve the mass of people in demanding and forcing change, and you can get big changes.

Let me know as soon as you figure out how to organize and unionize the people. It's an uphill struggle, not because people are stupid and uninterested in something better, but because there are power forces interested in keeping things the way they are. You have heard that 1% of the people own more wealth than 90% of everybody else? Well, they are very focused on keeping things that way, and they own the means to do it.

Political correctness is one of the most foolish things that have ever been tried. — Ilya B Shambat

I agree that political correctness is foolish, but it probably isn't up there with the most foolish things that have ever been tried.

You want to try and straighten out American women? Good luck with that!

The Russians also stand to improve American cultural output. — Ilya B Shambat

Actually they already have improved American culture... Russian cultural émigrés have added a lot! As for postmodernism, it's not just American culture that has been infected -- it's all over the place. Avant garde culture becomes just 'culture' over time, or it fades away. All music was once new, and took some getting used to.

Cultured Wusses? Where?

Donald Trump has the taste of a second rate real estate agent.

As I recollect, it wasn't very long ago that Russia's population was in decline as a result of rampant alcoholism. It was a world-class public health disaster!

I too worry about the state of the American family. Too many divorces; too many children born to single people who can not provide the stability of the standard two-adult household; too much chaos in families; etc. However, some of this is a result of economic chaos. Does Russia have a workable solution for that?

How familiar are you with the broad American culture???

He has commissioned some of America's most beautiful buildings — Ilya B Shambat

He has not!

the political state exists as the ideology, which is gone because we do not support it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I may not support it, and you may not support it, but who all is in this WE you are talking about?

Are you sure your wife didn't sneak in some new plants? Or maybe birds dropped some good seeds there.

Now wait a minute. I learned how to garden from my dad. He had a shovel (a spade), a pitchfork, 2 heavy garden rakes, and a hoe (the implement, not the other kind). He also used a hand-pushed cultivator. I'm still using his pitchfork. That's it. He did all his work himself by hand after work and on weekends. Never used artificial fertilizer (he used leaves). On this ground he grew beets, carrots, onions, Swiss chard, leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, pole beans, and corn. The beets, tomatoes, pole beans, and corn were canned in a pressure cooker or big kettle of boiling water (depending). Cucumbers were made into pickles and canned. Apples were bought from orchards and canned.

So, these tools were made once and have lasted many years. Very simple metal working, wood turning for the handles.

I suppose packaging seeds was a boring job. And somebody had to drive around the countryside stocking seed displays in hardware stores. Hey, you could do that. It would be fun. Out on your own; going into small town hardware stores, selling seeds and preaching the anti-natalist gospel.

If you want to know what was boring, it was canning hundreds of jars of food every summer and fall. It was tedious and hard work at the same time.

not everyone can be a Jack Kerouac watching the world progress away in tedium — schopenhauer1

Is that what he did?

The world is an incredibly complex place; it takes a tremendous amount of work to keep all the necessary and complex systems running. A lot of that work is, inevitably, going to be boring -- especially when you get into the tertiary level of jobs.

Just take, for example, all the focused attention it takes to get a box of strawberries from a farm to your table. It's very complex, and that includes produce grown within 100 miles. Picking strawberries, for instance, isn't a mindless job. Pickers have to identify which berries are ripe enough but not too ripe -- it's not a "grab everything that is vaguely red" type job.

I've grown strawberries in my garden--they weren't worth the trouble. Raspberries -- much easier, because they just take over and rule. The soil on my lot is either poor or way too shady. I know how to grow vegetables and corn, but one needs a large garden, decent soil, and little shade to grow a significant amount of food for a family. Plus, I'm getting a little old to undertake urban agriculture.

take a sec and think of the most profound thing you could do and imagine doing it. — Franklin Crook

Some of us have not only thought about some of the profound things we might do -- we did it. I spent 2 years in VISTA (now Americorps) working with children at a mental hospital in Boston. Later I volunteered much time and some money for a socialist organization. I worked very hard for 4 years doing street-level safer sex education in the early days of AIDS. In the 1970s I volunteered lots of time for the then-new 'gay liberation' movement.

I did these and other activities because I think life can be made actually meaningful by the better kinds of work we do, voluntary as well as paid. Like most people I have spent a lot of time working jobs that were tedious and dull. They were socially useful but personally not very meaningful. That's just life.

Other members of TPF have also made significant personal contributions to the life of their communities, more than I have.

So, what would be a significant personal contribution that you would like to make to your community?

By the way, there is only one Chair allotted to anti-natal philosophy, and it is already occupied. What would your "next best option" be?

One possible reason is that they just don't think of it as "a hell which is full of suffering"

It's one thing to acknowledge that there is suffering in the world (that is hard to deny) but it is a sweeping generalization to conclude that life is a hell which is full of suffering. Billions of people are born, live, and die without enduring a lifetime of hellish agony. They might break an arm, or have a heart attack but neither of those things amount to a living nightmare. Even a death from cancer lasts a limited period of time.

they will one day die
cause grief to those they left behind
Life is full of suffering
Leaders are full of greed and aggression an
There are diseases, parasites, germs, blood-sucking insects
animals that bite and kill and eat each other.
Even humans are usually selfish and indifferent to the suffering of others
Every second is a second closer to death

Are you having a bad day, or what?

Some of your statements are true (we will all die) and some of them are just glittering generalities like "Leaders are full of greed and aggression". There are many people who are leaders at various levels of society and even you can probably think of some minor leader who wasn't full of greed and aggression.

Choosing to be "against life" is certainly an option, but it seems like one should come up with something a bit more profound and compelling than tape worms and blood-sucking insects. At the very least one could howl at the meaningless universe, for example.

You are here. Get used to it.

I think this may be what you are looking for.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6202/work-should-be-based-on-quantity-of-boredom-involved/p1

But, we are looking from two different angles. You are talking about ecological disaster, which very well might be inevitable. What about the idea about "progress" to begin with? ... This creates really boring jobs, that create outputs so people can pay for them and use them in their spare time. — schopenhauer1

minutia-mongerers and boredom-braggadocios — schopenhauer1

Whatever turns you off! Whatever makes one wish for the death of the last human... Ecological collapse, progress on a stick, extruded ennui, minutia mongers, boredom braggadocios, or titan of tedium...

If we're doomed anyway (many think we are) we might as well enjoy the show. Throwing in the towel, leaning back against a tree, and just observing might actually have some salvific power. Ceasing to strive, is, after all, the opposite of what has gotten us to our sad state of ourselves being bored to tears by technological production even as we breed our way to a more complex destruction.

this just means more boring — schopenhauer1

More boring is not just... more boring, it became unsustainable at least 4.5 billion people ago. Capitalism is predicated on expansion: expanding extraction and production, expanding markets, expanding volume of business activity, expanding profits, expansion expansion expansion. The regime of constant growth has been in place for quite a long time, now--several centuries--and the climate crisis, plastic in the oceans, too much population, and so forth are all a consequence.

The recognition that the world is unsustainable is profoundly alienating. We are stuck with the world in this unsustainable situation until natural forces intervene (which will be ghastly). It makes everything that is done a pointless nightmarish treadmill.

Were I to be as pessimistic as you, my route would be through contemplation of the unsustainable future. I just don't see a way of our species, and quite a few other species as well, making it through to the other side. "It was good while it lasted" is one response. A less sanguine response is that if it is not good in the future, then it wasn't good in the past either. What looked like great progress was actually a great disaster.

Of course, we don't do things (like who we fall in love with) on the basis of the diminishing law of utility. Sometimes we can apply such reasoning when the decision at hand is not too emotionally freighted. Like, "Is it worth spending another $300 to fix the large and very old refrigerator in the church basement." One can argue that it's throwing good money after bad. Just go ahead and apply the repair cost to the new fridge.

But when one meets someone and is infatuated with them, like as not no calculation took place anywhere that you had a chance of observing it. One might end up in bed with them before rational thought can come into play.

How about this: People would rather be the highest paid person in a group at $50,000 a year. then making $50,000 more ($100,000 a year) and be the lowest paid person in the group.

What's significant about that is that it isn't only the amount of wage that is paid, but the status one has in the distribution of wages in a group. That sort of thing can affect decision making in an unrecognized way. It's a sort of "better to reign in hell than be a servant in heaven".

Yes, neuroscience. Slip of the fingers.

Believing in Fate wouldn't help, as far as I can tell. I was aiming at the idea that there are forces (like the way our brains work) that we do not have control of. What we can do is recognize that urges, wishes, desires... are affecting our thinking (often in non-obvious ways) and that we [or what we think are our consciously deciding minds] are not entirely in charge.

The upshot is to exercise caution and reflect on decisions for awhile (if at all possible) before we put them into action. This is, of course, easier said than done.

Here's a simple example: hunger (low blood sugar) and fatigue can creep up on us without our noticing. Both can affect our thinking and decision making. An event that is viewed as a threat before lunch might well be viewed as irrelevant after lunch--and we won't necessarily be aware that eating lunch altered our mental functioning, slightly.

Maybe study neurology? Westerners don't believe in Fate anymore but a lot of stuff goes on between our ears that we have no knowledge of nor control over that we might as well believe in Fate -- up to a point, anyway.

Oh, yeah... one other thing: A lot of decision making we do is not made consciously, so it is quite often difficult or impossible to know WHY we decided x, y, or z, and sometimes it is difficult to know WHAT our decision actually was.

For example, I’m interested in studying the philosophy of personal decision-making which is a subject matter that very few philosophers study and write about. I don’t think I could find a single good course on this topic in any university. It’s actually even hard to find a lot of helpful material online about this topic. I usually try to focus on studying psychology, personal finance, persuasion skills, value theory, and do research on various important life decisions. Unfortunately, these are just not things they teach you in school. — TheHedoMinimalist

Whether you pursue education within an institution or pursue it outside of the same, it is mostly a practical matter. Do you need a recognized degree? Can you afford college? Will you be admitted? Do you have the personal characteristics required to do well in college (and at the same time, do well outside of college)?

If you do not need what a college offers, and you can get what you want and or need elsewhere, then fine. But I don't know what your situation is; how old you are, how knowledgeable you are, what your history and long-range plans are.

Researchers do study personal decision making, from various angles. Take risk, for example. Whether you are risk averse or risk tolerant will affect the kind of decisions you will make, and to some extent, how you will make them. Risk averse people are likely to be cautious about how they make decisions (gathering safe, reliable information for example) as well as which decisions they make. Risk tolerant people may also gather reliable information, but treat it different than a risk averse person. People are not always consistent from thing to think. An individual may be risk averse about money, but be risk tolerant when it comes to sex.

I think you are probably correct that no single field of research (wherever it is done--on campus or off campus) treats "personal decision making" as its territory. Too bad, because that is where most of us make our worst mistakes.

One of the most important personal decisions is, "What do I want to accomplish in life?" I have sometimes asked college students to think about the next 5, 10, or 15 years. What do I want my life to be like in 10 years? What kind of home will I live in? Do I picture myself being married, partnered, single, with children, no children, how employed? How much money (in today's dollars) do I think I will need to live, and so on. Paint as detailed picture of your planned future as you can, then working backward from the future, "What do I have to do to make that possible?"

my intention was not to say, "Hey, lets compensate people according to a boredom scale" — schopenhauer1

Why the hell not? Look, there is something that can be done about boredom. Assemblng parts doesn't have to be a factory version of Day of the Living Dead or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The two really horrible jobs here are the circuit board inspectors and the call center workers. The crew laying pipe and the guy doing something with the recycling bins have jobs that would be interesting to the right person. NOBODY likes inspecting circuit boards and NOBODY likes working in call centers. They do these jobs because it beats begging in the streets and living under a bridge.

I would enjoy using a power shovel to dig holes. What I would not enjoy is getting down in the mud and water on a January day when the temp. was -25F and one had to fix a broken water pipe. Not boring, though. Just horrible.

Not all bad jobs are boring. Many people would rather beg on the street and live under a bridge than drive a mass transit bus (considering what the passengers are like) even though the wages are not that bad. The job (the vehicles condition, the passengers, the regulation, the traffic) SUCKS!!!

Have you ever heard of 'hash numbers'? I once had a temp job adding up hash numbers for Cargill Incorporated, a giant ag. product company. The hash numbers were made up of item numbers, maybe a date, invoice number, tons loaded in the box car, one code for corn, another code for wheat, another for beans, and so on. One went through the shipping form and added up these arbitrary numbers. The total was supposed to agree with a number on another form. If it didn't, it meant that somewhere in the data an error was lurking. We were using 10 key adding machines with a paper tape. I did that 8 hours a day for 3 weeks. I think they decided that I wasn't good enough at this crucial job to keep on paying me. Merciful god, they let me go.

Now that was one meaningless, tedious, dull, fucking boring job! It's probably done by a computer now. As well it should be.

We must find a way to measure this boredom output! — schopenhauer1

Sounds like a colossal bore.

Most work is inevitably tedious, dull, dirty, difficult, and a damned drag. That is why they pay people. Nobody would do any of that crap for free.

Just add up the total hours reported by all the workers in the world. Multiply the total number of hours by .93. That's the boredom output. The remaining 7% of hours might be less than boring because some people like routine, and some people (usually liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels) are downright gleeful as they go about their work of ripping everybody off.

So yes, the total boredom output is soooo huge one can hardly grasp it.

Whereas, there are no consequences to refusing to self-educate. People are usually more motivated by loss than by gain. — TheHedoMinimalist

Yes there are costs to refusing to self-educate. Look, all education is self-education. You are the one that has to pay attention in lectures, read the text book, go the library and do research, write the paper, and so forth. The teacher is educating you only in an indirect way.

If you don't somehow educate yourself in something you will be what is known in the field as "stupid".

Quite a few colleges offer students the option of designing their majors. One could, for instance, combine creative writing, physics, chemistry, and art to prepare for a career in science fiction and sci fi film direction. Better educated writers would avoid sci fi errors like "the spider had 6 legs" or "thorax" when they meant human "larynx". Yes I have seen those errors just recently.

My family would disapprove of me getting a philosophy degree due to concerns about debt and few future job prospects — TheHedoMinimalist

That's why you need a community -- not just your family. My family would have been of limited utility as a support group. My parents were in favor of education but were not themselves educated beyond high school (they were born on farms in 1906 and 1907). By the time I got to college they were in their 60s and glad to see the last of their children finally out of the house.

Well, if you are borrowing money, you should be worried about debt and job prospects majoring in philosophy. English lit, sociology, philosophy, biology, etc. are all perfectly fine liberal arts majors as long as you don't tie your job search strictly to your major. A BA in sociology won't qualify you for many jobs in 'sociology'. But the same degree in sociology proves you have certain basic skills and interests that a corporation or government agency might want -- persistence, broad literacy, ability to meet deadlines (papers due next week), interests, and so on. Philosophy does the same thing. So does English lit and biology.

Radical thinkers have proposed an inverse wage scale with the highest pay for necessary and very unattractive jobs like unclogging big sewer pipes (not your kitchen sink); tedious and difficult work (providing personal care for the elderly or paralyzed -- toileting, bathing, feeding, etc); and crushingly boring work, with lower pay going to jobs with intrinsic interest and status rewards like major league sports, surgery, and so on.

I do not foresee a time when we will actually see sanitation workers getting $15,000,000 a year for clearing those underground sewers, and brain surgeons and NFL players getting $20 an hour. But the principle is sound. I was really very well rewarded in therms of satisfaction for the best jobs I have had, and no amount of money was enough for the drag-ass, boring, tedious, pointless jobs I've had.