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Sure, doing something you like is very rewarding. "Flow" experiences are incredibly cool things to have. Both my partner and I do "creative" type work, and have experienced that state where you look at the metaphorical block of marble and know exactly which parts don't look like a statue and how you're going to get it done. Now, that's not to say that the things that our current society defines as "work" are the only things that qualify for that. You can get a flow experience playing video games/e-sports at a high competitive level too, but unlike real-life sports no one is going to write a check to pay an e-athlete a livable salary. If you spend your life kicking a football in a meaningless game you're one of our society's heros, if you're sitting in front of a TV/computer playing a meaningless game you're just a loser. Chess players probably fall somewhere in between I guess. And some jobs just suck period. For example sanitation work isn't really fun for the vast majority of people. And again, our society has totally skewed reward systems. Fun, rewarding creative work is really highly paid, and menial and filthy jobs tend to be very low-paid and filled with additional bullshit on top of being unrewarding. In an ideal world those jobs should be made as pleasant as possible (excellent compensation and lots of time off). Even if I won the lotto, I would keep doing that work (or something else I enjoy), I would just have a lot more freedom to pick my ideal work environment and balance my work and home life. Some of the rewarding things that I can't make a living at would probably gain greater prominence in my life. Stuff like traveling, photography, flying, or scuba diving. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 17:58
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ThirdPartyView posted:South Korea does, though (with Starcraft tournaments, etc)? True, but most of us don't live in South Korea and our societies tend not to regard videogames as a socially significant pasttime on the level of say, football. If you ask an average person if a person who spends all day training to play football is doing "work" they'll say yes, if you ask them if a someone who spends all day practicing video games is doing "work" they'll probably say no. My point there is our definitions of what constitutes "work" are socially constructed, not universal constants. Kicking a ball around a field or producing artworks aren't really necessary for society to function, yet they can be considered work, and in fact can be some of the most highly-compensated forms of work. CEOs do very little work (30 hours per week) and yet are at the apex of society. Similarly the absolutely necessary social functions tend to be the shittiest work environments with the worst pay. An ideal society would correct that. I think the reason it's like that tends to be just-worldism. If you're working a lovely job it's because you're a bad, lazy person who needs a whip cracked constantly in the form of social pressure, hostile work environments, financial strain, etc, with the underlying idea being that work is a social good and you're failing society. The less charitable view is that it's just straight up taking advantage of disadvantaged people because it's cheaper than training or properly compensating them. Or nowadays, cheaper than automating their job. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 18:26
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Helsing posted:Also when we're discussing why some people really enjoy working I don't think we can separate that enjoyment from the way society at large views work. People want to do something that think is prestigious and dignified. So when society makes 'work' an important value and ascribes great respect to people in important jobs who work long hours this is going to increase the attraction of work, regardless of how enjoyable or tedious the underlying 'labour' involved is. That banking exec who works 70 hour weeks and doesn't spend much time with his family might be working overtime because he loves the sense of validation he gets rather than because he actually enjoys spending all that time in the office rather than with his kids. One interesting thesis I've heard is that time is a good with increasing marginal utility. It takes a minimum amount of involvement in your work, day after day, to be really good at it. The more you work, the better your "social output per hour". If you're a pilot, the more you fly the better you are at it, the safer you are. If you fly less, you're rusty and at elevated risk for making a dumb mistake. If you're an engineer on a project, you need constant exposure to the project to understand how all the parts fit together and so on. If you don't have that constant exposure, you're at an increased risk for making some change that will have unintended consequences. 40 people doing 1 hour each do not have equivalent output to 1 person doing 40 hours a week in many, many fields. Now that said, executives are actually some of the people that work the least in our society. For example here's an average of CEO schedules from 2009:  There's 30 hours of "real" work there in a week. The rest is personal stuff that they're billing to the company: lunches, personal errands and appointments, workouts, commute time, etc. And in fact I think that generally holds true, the "better" your job the less actual work you're doing. Landscaping is way more draining than being a programmer, and there's very few breaks. If a programmer needs to take a break and bounce around their company's ballpit, go for it! And at the CEO level, you can go right ahead and bill your commute, your errands, and your doctor appointment. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 19:03
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