Comment by bryanrasmussen
1 day ago
the studies are set in a society in which the main way of existing in society and contributing to it is via employment.
Some generations ago females in this society were regularly without jobs but were "homemakers", in that time if one were not a homemaker and a female how was the person's feeling of well-being?
Reports conflict about that, but in that time of course females were often kept from employment by being homemakers and thus relegated to secondary status.
Perhaps the studies you look for would be related to feelings of social well-being among hunter-gatherer societies, however maybe those studies are not actually needed? Because probably now that the possibility has come up you will realize hunter-gather societies do not have traditional jobs or employment and that people were evidently able to feel happy in those societies.
Now you may respond with examples of how maintaining hunter-gatherer societies would mean death of much of population etc. because the best kind of goalpost moving is the kind that is true. Nonetheless the point should be clear that people can be happy without typical modern jobs and employment.
Whether or not a modern lifestyle and world can be constructed that does not need jobs and still keep people happy is a different question. And there we are back with something for which there are no relevant studies.
> the studies are set in a society in which the main way of existing in society and contributing to it is via employment.
That's the one we live in though, so I guess that seems fair
the statement is that there are studies showing that one needs a job to be happy, and asks for studies showing the opposite, implying that the lack of such studies demonstrates that one cannot be happy without jobs. That is to say arguing the need for jobs is universal.
This was in reply to a statement that argued one did not absolutely need jobs to be happy and that this seeming need in our society was in fact an argument for a problem in the society.
In such a case it seems the use of the studies set in the society is less fair than considering if there may be easily considered conditions in other societies that show the need for a job is not a universal need but actually only a local, currently defined need in our society.
My comment merely showed that if one were to try to think of any examples showing happiness requires employment some should easily spring to mind and counter studies were not needed to prove it was not a universal requirement.