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i actually enjoy purposeful work, as long as i’m fairly-compensated for it. i think most people do.
i believe most people would work, at least most of the time, if they could find a job they liked and were paid fairly.
Honestly, I’d imagine there’d be a line of people for washing dishes if it paid 80k with benefits. Check in, clean some stuff, go home?
I dont think cleaning dishes would be very fulfilling. I can see something like building things people need would be a much more satisfying work.
Fortunately, not everyone has the same interests. I don’t really like cooking, but plenty of people love it enough to make it their life’s work.
Similarly, I know plenty of people who genuinely enjoy cleaning. I don’t know if they’d want to make it their life ambition, but with a solid paycheck and plenty of time to think, I doubt you’d have a hard time filling the position.
I’d do it in a heartbeat if I was unemployed.
I think for conversations like this its important to talk about what words like job, work and labor mean for each of us.
I would prefer not having a job. A job to me is a when sell my time to someone and perform tasks they give me. I dont like that.
I would prefer not having to work. To me working means performing at a job.
I want to do labor, but preferably in a way that benefits my community, the world and me. I want to do labor based on my abilitiy and I want it to be organized by me and my peers. I also want to witness the direct impact of doing my labor instead of abstract things like “company profits go up”.
Other people use the words job, work an labor differently. That is okay, but it can lead to misunderstandings.
Still, in your vision, you would probably rather dream of the benefit your labour brings for yourself and the community. You wouldn’t dream of the labour itself, would you?
I would. Some things are really enjoyable to do, and can earn you money. Whether or not the things you enjoy doing pay enough to cover rent is another problem entirely.
I feel like those things would be connected. The act of doing genuine helpful acts of labor feels very rewarding to me and many people I met felt the same. Especially when these acts enable me to show my “humanity” and/or my inner self.
What you call a “job”, I call slavery.
If I’m painting a mural for fun, its still a job.
But if you " have" to do a job that you dont want to do, you’re a slave.
People naturally find fulfillment in work. The goal of your life should be to find work that is enjoyable and meaningful. The goal of not working is unfulfilling at best.
Yea, work in and of itself is great. You have to do SOMETHING with your time every day, and doing something productive is extremely satisfying. Filling out spreadsheets for 8 hours with a 2 hour commute then going home to eat instant ramen in a noisy shoebox is slightly less satisfying.
I used to be an engineer for a mega corp, and it was soul crushing. I would walk out of my cube and pace the hall in a kind of existentialist crisis wondering if this is really what life was all about.
My life doesn’t have any single goal. I’m an animal, not a machine. I’ve got a great job but there’s literally nothing better than hanging out with my kids.
Fuck this. I get fulfillment through work.
What I want is for my labor to be helpful to humanity, not some corporation.
As a lil’ heads up, this post is from an antiwork community. That aside, which kind of work are you getting fulfillment from? Another comment here makes a good point that these terms are sort of loaded with different meanings for each of us.
Personally I don’t find much of my work satisfying because I find it difficult to keep it from helping big businesses in some way.
I love gardening and doing home improvement work. I love contributing software to open source projects. All of this is work.
I follow ya. I feel like busywork is probably one of the better words to describe what many in antiwork communities are getting at. Unfulfilling, often for someone else and to their greater profit/benefit over yours and others’ own with seemingly no other purpose than that.
In a lot of ways it’s a more familiar way of talking about alienated labor without putting people off.
Graber called it Bullshit Jobs