jamesbond wrote: ↑June 13th, 2022, 4:05 pm
You see work as noble because you (presumably) subscribe to the Protestant Work Ethic. I myself on the other hand subscribe to the classical view which holds that common drudgery is nothing more than a necessary evil which should be reduced to the absolute minimum and is certainly nothing to glorify. The classical view which is aristocratic in nature sees a lifestyle of common drudgery as the condition of slaves and therefore incompatible with eudaimonia. We have very different ideas of what is good and noble because we subscribe to vastly divergent worldviews. You are a Christian (presumably Protestant) man (actually a MrMan) and I am a Pagan soul who looks to the classical world for my values and inspiration.
The idea that work results (eventually, generally) in success and that laziness is a bad trait predates protestantism. It shows up in the Proverbs in the Bible. In the Classical period, Jews might have been hard workers. The ten commandments say, 'Six days shalt thou work....'
But the idea that hard work is inconsistent with a 'classical' worldview doesn't seem right, either. I don't know of any early Greek philosopher that applied the Golden Mean to work. I haven't seen that on any of the lists. I would expect 'diligence' to have been on the middle if one did that. But Roman culture is 'Classical' and one of the Cato's worse regrets, he said, was that he spent a whole day doing nothing at all. I take that as a hint that Romans valued diligence. That, combined with their idea that dominating other was virtuous may have contributed to their conquering their corner of the world.
MrMan wrote: ↑June 12th, 2022, 3:57 pm
But the modern workweek is wholly unnatural. It is only driving droves of people to stress, depression, mental illness and despair.
No one say around counting statistics on how many people are stressed, depressed, or mentally ill until the development of modern work culture with all its microspecializations. Psychologists measure these things. Clinical psychologists have disproportionately high suicide rates, I hear.
For me what clinical psychologists have to say on this issue is superfluous because I can already see with my own eyes that many people are stressed and miserable and sick of working. You'd be surprised how many people talk openly about this nowadays.
Increasingly more people are tired of modern work culture. Many say that they wish they could work less.
One could dislike modern work culture and still subscribe to the Protestant work ethic. That 'ethic' was prominent when people were farmers and small business owners running family businesses. We shouldn't conflate it with the idea of the majority of the population being hired servants. If you run your own cobbler shop you can close up and take a few days off for your daughter's wedding without asking permission. Farmers could go a few days without weeding anything.
The current global elite seems to want to take us into an extremely negative form of socialism with their envisioned "Great Reset". I am opposed to this vision. It strikes me as too totalitarian and dystopian. I predict that the global elite's agenda will end in chaos though due to mass resistance.
And the whole plan could never get off the ground, or something like that could happen way off int eh future. It sounds pretty bad to me, too. I've got a friend whose listening to really conservative Q type videos who believes some new currency is on the way to come out, but it sounds almost like the same thing.
MrMan wrote: ↑June 12th, 2022, 3:57 pm
I never heard of female genital mutilation being part of Judaism.
You obviously have a short memory if you cannot remember your little discussion with @WilliamSmith. I bet he still thinks that you're a good creative writer, by the way!
I don't know what you are talking about. Are you thinking of Muslim cultures rather than Jewish?
Do you think lazy people are more likely to be spiritual and have souls than diligent people?
My view on this is pretty much the same as @Winston's. I believe that spiritual people are more likely to be of a Bohemian disposition, to prefer to pursue their own creative and artistic pursuits regardless of how profitable they are, to desire much free time for spiritual practice (i.e., Yoga, meditation, etc.) for the evolution of the soul, and
to work as little as absolutely necessary in order to have an abundance of free time. I also don't think that such a Bohemian is really lazy either because he is often focused on his own worthy creative and artistic pursuits (they just don't fall under the narrowly utilitarian modern view of diligence).[/quote]
That sounds like another variation of the carnal/nonspiritual type to me.
I also think that only a soulless unspiritual person could happily subject themselves to hours of monotonous drudgery without becoming depressed or going crazy. I actually believe that most people are soulless and have no higher spiritual faculties and that truly spiritual people (i.e., souled humans) are a small minority.
So do you think 'spiritual' people are more prone to mental illness?
What do you think about the ethical issue of freeloaders who think they are 'spiritual' not producing anything but gobbling up the resources. Imagine you are stranded on an island with 20 people. Would you rather be there with tough people who can endure a bit of monotonous drudgery, working on building a structure, making fire, catching fish, digging up edible roots, etc., or a bunch of 'spiritual' artists who lay around all day talking about how spiritual they are, smoking up the last of their weed, and not working? Is it right to gobble up what little food they get together if you aren't helping with the building, fishing, etc.?
If you are in a career you consider to be monotonous and full of drudgery, work hard to get some training to find another job you enjoy more.
This was very well written Lucas88 and I agree with your ideas about work and how society views work. In Anglo countries we have the protestant work ethic on steroids. Some employers will even make you feel guilty for taking vacation time (or even family members might run a guilt trip on you for taking a vacation). It's ridiculous really how things have gotten to this point, where your job is supposed to be the center piece of your life.
I've never experienced a corporation guilt tripping people for taking a vacation. Some people feel that sense of responsibility for their work and wonder how they can leave it, but big corporations sometimes have rules requiring the vacation, and HR types insist on it. But I suppose every company is different. I'm glad I'm not working in the corporate arena. I don't think I'd want to again unless I was a director, or maybe a CEO, but I think I'd prefer to outsource that if I owned a big company.