Social Main purpose of humans is to work

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If you want to a part of the todays society,
you have to be employed and leave majority of your lifetime to some employer.
Why ? Is there another way to live ? Can we just have some small modest house and have everything in our own yard, like fruits , vegetables, etc ?
Are banks, taxes, credits, law, politics, profit, etc, necesary for us to survive and progress as society , whats the alternative `?
 
If you want to live in Antarctica sure, you can do that. Or I'm sure you could probably find some remote spot in the wilderness to accomplish that. But I highly doubt you have what it takes to build a house on your own. Are you a carpenter? Are you willing to give up the privileges of the Internet, phone service, hospitals, grocery stores, Amazon, sherdog, etc.? There are ways to live a hermit lifestyle, but is it worth it?
 
Procreation is biologically our main purpose, I’d say


As for everything else you said.. you can live off grid or some very ‘Spartan’ existence if that’s your thing. Not sure what you’re on about tbh
 
It would probably take contact with aliens or the emergence of a higher power for anything to change.

Jim Morrison gave an interesting take on this. He said that if you were at a baseball game, and in the middle of the game, you jump up and say "hey, stop the game, this is a bunch of bullshit," you will get booed and then thrown out.

That said, people have it better now than they have ever had it. Something to think about.
 
Don't forget the local wildlife. Living in a city protects you from having to deal with predators. Essentially you are getting safety, shelter, access to services, and a decent quality of life, and in exchange you have to earn a living and pay taxes. You can leave this environment but I doubt it would be a positive experience. Think about what being independent actually means. I don't think there has been any better time to be alive than in the past 20 years.
 
I think even within something vaguely akin to our society what's questionable is the idea that work is good for its own sake NOT that its good for what it achieves.

The idea that basically someone spending 40+ hours a week working is innately better for them and society even if it doesn't really result in anymore net gain than them working for say 20 hours a week.

The old protestant mindset of "The devil finds work for idle hands" I think runs very strongly in society and honestly I think a big part of that is really "idle hands" are much more likely to be politically active and seek to undermine the interests of the wealthy and powerful, keep them overworked and tired and this is a less of a threat even if there jobs often accomplish very little.
 
ObsoleteSoul said:
You can wonder off and try it on your own. You just don’t get anything that someone else had to work to create, for nothing. No free lunches besides the one you wholly create on your own.
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And anyone who comes across him can just take it from him. In modern society if that happens you can file a report, get insurance money back, and hopefully the perps get arrested.
 
moreorless87 said:
I think even within something vaguely akin to our society what's questionable is the idea that work is good for its own sake NOT that its good for what it achieves.

The idea that basically someone spending 40+ hours a week working is innately better for them and society even if it doesn't really result in anymore net gain than them working for say 20 hours a week.

The old protestant mindset of "The devil finds work for idle hands" I think runs very strongly in society and honestly I think a big part of that is really "idle hands" are much more likely to be politically active and seek to undermine the interests of the wealthy and powerful, keep them overworked and tired and this is a less of a threat even if there jobs often accomplish very little.
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The thing is if you want to survive on your own you probably have to spend at least 8 hours a day to make that happen. And you would be giving up the privileges of modern society. No health care. No transportation. No easy access to food or goods. No police. No social services. No community. That's a net negative. Plus anyone can come by and just take your shit with no repercussions. I have my own complaints about modern day society but going off the grid doesn't seem like a rational alternative.
 
I just read a book written by a distant relative about that in a way. He wrote about growing up in the 1910s and later. His family moved to a mountain town in Oregon. In Oregon they got all their food and needs from their fruit orchard, cows to milk, fish from the nearby steam, chickens they raised, etc.

Later on the family moved into town. It was thought that it would be an easier life being in town, doing various jobs. It turned out to not be the case. After making a go of it in the 3000 population city for a number of years, they moved back out into the country side and survived on what they could grow and catch.

Many in that family lived long lives when they resided high up on the mountains. I think a downside was they had no money and few people to socialize with. They enjoyed being around more people while in town.
 
We've got to a point where the work is easier and we have access to many things people in the past didn't. People in the ancient past would have one plot of land they worked on and farmed all their life and that was it. We live greater today more than many different Kings and Emperors everywhere in the past.
 
blaseblase said:
Living in a city protects you from having to deal with predators.
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Yeah, maybe some 4-legged predators. Not so much in blue cities like NY, unless you are always prepared to carry (and use) a weapon to to help society by putting down the many scumbag predators with 2 legs.
blaseblase said:
I don't think there has been any better time to be alive than in the past 20 years.
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bb, that statement says you probably weren't in your teens in the US in the 1970's. The 80's Rocked, way before POS "men" were NEVER identified as women !
 
We (the US) produce enough to feed and clothe everyone in the US.

But we allow the wealthy to write legislation and tax law so that most of the result of that production gets funneled to them.

However, part of why we produce so much is the very system, capitalism, that allows that to happen. Because people are incentivized to produce that much by the prospect of getting rich.

But I think we could probably find a happy medium between pure capitalism and communism in which everyone’s most basic needs are met, regardless of whether or not they have a job, but you can still get rich if you work hard and are lucky (right now luck plays the largest role). And one in which politicians can’t be openly bribed by wealthy people.

That way, people could work less. They would make less, but still have enough to survive. And if they wanted to work more to make more money, and buy more things, they could do that too.
 
blaseblase said:
The thing is if you want to survive on your own you probably have to spend at least 8 hours a day to make that happen. And you would be giving up the privileges of modern society. No health care. No transportation. No easy access to food or goods. No police. No social services. No community. That's a net negative. Plus anyone can come by and just take your shit with no repercussions. I have my own complaints about modern day society but going off the grid doesn't seem like a rational alternative.
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Its not really the idea of work that I'm speaking against their but rather the idea that we end up actually doing much more work than we need to for little material gain, basically David Graebers "Bullshit Jobs".

We've seen massive increases in working efficacy over the last 200 years yet were still working full time. The argument against that tends to be that we chose to carry on working to earn more but I think that is questionable, really a lot of the time people spend working ends up being on useless busy tasks which create little or nothing.

A big issue with primitivism I'd say is simply that our population has expanded well beyond the capacity for the earth to sustain it. There are actually arguments for example that hunter gathers led quite pleasant lives in some respects compared to latter generations, worked less and were better fed than the arable communities which replaced them. The difference being that arable farming and the more advanced society which comes with it can sustain much larger populations and indeed can wage war on hunter gathers much better.
 
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