Comment by pmg101
21 hours ago
What if what we call "white collar work", for the most part sitting at a desk, interacting with a computer, isn't really the sort of work suitable for human flourishing at all?
When you think about it humans were never really well suited to such a lifestyle. Of course the transition may be bumpy but maybe the end point, of machines doing these machine-like tasks, isn't so bad for us.
What work does suit humans? Anything involving interaction with the world or other humans, perhaps.
But working is a necessity of life, how can one find meaning without being stuck in an office doing useless stuff for money?! /s
That's the take many have been educated against: maybe one day a category of bullshit jobs will be gone and it's fine.
Is roofing a useless task? I think not, we all need roofs. Have you ever personally replaced a roof in the middle of summer? I have. After that, I never thought of a climate controlled office as a place I was "stuck".
Ah but I'd take roofing in the summer over septic tank cleaning any day. The existence of even shittier jobs does not make any particular job not-shitty.
This is the old comfort/friction/happiness dichotomy isn't it.
Each incremental reduction in friction and improvement in comfort feels good. But is the net effect happiness? I think it's anomie, in the limit.
We've made money a necessity of life and working the only way billions of people can get money. If we think a big chunk of jobs can be automated away, how are those people going to fulfill their needs?
You make it sound like we invented work. When was work ever not necessary? All we invented was division of labor, and money as a way to translate between different kinds of labor. I think that's an improvement?
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