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- cross-posted to:
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hell yeah brother, 30 hours a week, 4 weeks paid vacation, guaranteed and paid for further education courses, protection from being fired while pregnant/ at home with newborn, minimum wage, privacy laws and employee protection laws, unionization, multiple paid federal holidays. I fuckin love Europe.
So funny enough, as an American, I have the majority of that while being in the military. We even currently have three months of maternity and paternity leave, which can be used as the member sees fit through the first year after birth.
All except the privacy laws and employee protection laws, though it can often be exceptionally difficult to fire people for reasons that don’t involve the politics of the people in charge. And even then, lawsuits usually get those people backpay.
I’d be advocating for the US Coast Guard with this right now, but the current administration is shifting our focus from being a life-saving/preserving service to another border control agency, so… not a great time to be joining if it’s for moral reasons. sigh
I mean we have it pretty good compared to most of history
We probably have it pretty great compared to most of the rest of the world currently.
Absolutely. Really, if you’re reading this, you are probably pretty high up on the scale.
Yeah I’ve said this a few times, but honestly anybody who can interact with Lemmy is in the upper tiers of the scale compared with the vast majority of humans who have ever lived.
Obviously that does not mean that individuals cannot have terrible luck and circumstances.
one fact I found shocking is that currently only about 30% of humans use toilet paper. And yes I am aware of bidets, but that’s not the remaining 70%, is it?
shitpost
I have a personal welding machine, Raspberries growing in my backyard, and I am in relatively good therms with my parents. I buy a new device almost every pay.
Best of the best of the best, sir. With honors
I think most reasonable people would agree that there are many objectively good things about the modern world, but progress isn’t a strict good/bad binary. Often, progress results in both good and bad circumstances.
For instance, I think most reasonable people would agree that modern medicine is a very good thing. Vaccines and antibiotics have saved countless lives. Also, more advanced agricultural technology has allowed us to grow more food and feed more people. However, progress has also resulted in significant ecological damage, depletion of natural, nonrenewable resources and a significant loss of biodiversity. I think most reasonable people would agree that these are very bad things.
I don’t think the point is to ignore the very real, important positives about the modern world, but to point out that there are still things that need to improve, and unintended negative effects of progress that need to be dealt with.
I appreciate that for you the modern world is overall good, but that’s not necessarily everyone’s experience. Some people do feel purposeless, depressed and worn down, despite being relatively wealthy and comfortable, especially compared to humans of past eras.
Problem is, instead of someone actively leading for something better for all, we are stomped under a boot, gaslighted, then told the problem is resources/poor people
Same as it ever was
And that makes it ok? Why are we doing nothing?
If you were able to answer that question, I think you would solve one of the eternal mysteries of humanity. We seem unable to escape the patterns that we keep repeating millennia after millennia.
It is multi-faceted, significantly genetic, and dependent on, well, those in-charge teaching new humans pro-social ethics, which is not happening.
I meant good in comparison to other times. And I don’t mean me personally but people in general.
Found the berry picker
Picking berries can be relaxing but cleaning them sucks
or the opposite… :)
If yOu aRe nOt uNdEr cApItAlIsM It’s yOuR OwN FaUlT
it’s hard for people so used to the comforts of capitalism to realise this is actually luxury
being inside, seated comfortably, doing non-manual work, educated, can read, listening to music, this is a job better than 99% of people who have ever lived have had
Slaves who existed before capitalism was even imagined would dream of this WaSTeD LiFe 🤪
I am not a slave or a starving medieval peasant, therefore I should be happy to waste my life in an office generating shareholder value. Got it.
Go and work for a company that gives more about other stakeholders, you see that often with smaller companies.
Oh I’m actually quite happy with my own job in the public sector. It’s varied and at times challenging work that benefits society as a whole. The pay isn’t all that much, but we’re talking about fulfillment here not salaries. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I posess empathy and the knowledge that most aren’t as lucky. Companies either grow or die, so massive faceless corporations provide a large and growing share of all employment. And it doesn’t even need to be a big corp for the job to be a bs job.
If you work in the public sector you often don’t have shareholders breathing down your neck for more profit (but it can happen). And yes smaller companies can have bullshit bosses as well, especially when they are the type that either already had decently sized companies or just wants to be the next millionaire.
Save some straw for the animals, geez
How is that a strawman? Sure life could be worse as you said, but life could also be a lot better. The meme takes no shots at the former claim, instead making fun of people who fail to imagine the latter. Talking about how we already live in relative luxury is also a very common deflection from arguments for why we should improve society, without actually countering said arguments.
It’s a straw man because nobody said you should be happy wasting your life away in an office generating shareholder value. It’s possible to appreciate the good things we have whilst still being critical of the system we are in. I personally disagree with the other commenters implication that capitalism is to thank for these things but that’s a whole other discussion.
Usually when people call anything a luxury, the implication is that it’s something to be happy about. Given that the meme is about wasting ones life away in an office generating shareholder value, I would say that that’s the it here.
My reading of the comment was that the luxury being referred to was the fact that it’s indoors, access to clean water, music etc. Nobody said slaving away for shareholder value is a luxury. My point is these are important non black and white issues and to have a proper conversation about them we need to engage with what people actually say. Otherwise what’s the point of even commenting here?
deleted by creator
Friend, I take it you’re joking … but I’ve done warehouse, construction, assembly line, and other hard labor. The only other country I’ve been to is Mexico, which is a nice place to leave. Believe me, it is entirely possible for a privileged American to know how well they have it.
I wish some people around here had half the experience you do
it’s hard for people so used to the comforts of capitalism to realise this is actually luxury
being inside, seated comfortably, doing non-manual work, educated, can read, listening to music, this is a job better than 99% of people who have ever lived have had
Hell, if you’re in this situation you have immediate and convenient access to potable water in your living space. This is a level of privilege beyond almost every other human that has lived in all of history.
Man I already hate it when I can’t drink water out of the tap when I am travelling abroad.
Ya, totally. You make an obvious point.
The only problem with that is that almost all of the humans that have ever existed … exist right now. Until we mastered this planet, there were very very few of us. We are now the most numerous mammal on the planet, and that’s by a far degree. There’s more of us than there are rats.almost all of the humans that have ever existed … exist right now
This is wildly untrue. The recent estimation of how many humans have existed is around 100 billion. Half of the total population of humans ever to exist was before the year 0, with the other half since then.
ok
Yeah but most humans didn’t have to live around cars. I’d give up running water to get rid of cars. Cars are worse than running water is good. Sign me up for carrying barrels from the river if I don’t need to worry about being run over.
How much experience do you have with third world conditions? I would tend to assume from what you are saying that you’ve never seen what a lack of sanitation does to a society.
But you might be well familiar with all of this … and just like it?Not the person who you replied to, but if you could trade all the cars in the world to go back to using rainwater to shower/flush toilets and buy drink water I think we should take that deal.
It has already been proven countless times that having walkable/bikeable cities with the adition of public transport is better for our health and the environment. Most countries don’t even have drinkable water out of the tap anyway.
The only issue is that it doesn’t rain enough in a lot of countries to keep up with our water usage for showering/flushing toilets, but infrastructure to move water is as old as the Roman’s, so we would find a way again.
My friend, we have a way. Many ways. We don’t need to find one. But we keep doing that too.
You are proposing civil engineering projects to deliver water to the people. Yes, that is how we do it.
The other fine contributor to this discussion posited dragging barrels of water from the river as if that would be a good thing. This is a perspective that I cannot support.Yes I know we have plenty of ways to get water from A to B, but that isn’t my point.
I am just saying that this hypothetical depends on what we would be giving up. If we can still live our lives, but we have to get water from the store instead of from the tap, I would be fine with it.
Car’s are a necessary evil at the moment, and we need to change that, sadly there are a lot of people in countries like the US or Canada who actively work against biking, walking and public infrastructure.
“We need to remove the bike lanes because the fire engine can’t get to point C quickly enough” meanwhile in NL they just drive over the bike lanes to get to D even quicker …
It’s not just the convenience of running water, it’s all of the infrastructure around making sure that water is clean and safe, which involves government regulation and audits, massive engineering projects, a lot of maintenance effort and a considerable amount of tax dollars.
Just as an example, leptospirosis is a common bacterial contaminant in untreated water:
Signs and symptoms can range from none to mild (headaches, muscle pains, and fevers) to severe (bleeding in the lungs or meningitis). Weil’s disease (/ˈvaɪlz/ VILES), the acute, severe form of leptospirosis, causes the infected individual to become jaundiced (skin and eyes become yellow), develop kidney failure, and bleed. Bleeding from the lungs associated with leptospirosis is known as severe pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome.
If you go hiking in places like Hawaii (where the government gives a shit about public health) you’ll see warning signs about lepto around pools and streams because people have this delusional fantasy about tropical paradises with clean flowing streams. If you go hiking in other places the lepto will still be there but the warning sign won’t. Untreated, uncontrolled water is a hazard.
Everyone can’t be an expert on water sanitation. Employing some experts to provide that service for thousands or millions of people is a fantastic solution. It’s probably impossible to overstate how much benefit water infrastructure provides for society.
So I disagree with you. “Running water” (centrally managed water sanitation and delivery) is one of the best things human society has ever done. The benefit to public health is incalculable.
The only reason you might discount how much benefit you gain from this system is that you’ve grown up with it as normal. You’ve never had to worry about groundwater contamination, about boiling every cup of water before you drink it, about filtration or desalinization or testing for lead. Which is why I describe having access to this as a privilege - because we take it for granted.
But I have had to worry about cars cooking the atmosphere with their pollution and ending the entire human species. And I think that’s worse than leptospirosis.
Oooh. You went there. Well done.
it’s good that you think this way, after all, happier slaves are more productive.
please stop using the word slave like this, i live an incredible life, you are diluting the word
sorry
deleted by creator
That’s still capitalism, genius
adjusted for people who cannot see the difference between free market wage labour in a western economy and literal slavery
Problems like infant mortality, disease, manual labour, the human species evolved to deal with those. That’s why exercise releases endorphins. Your body is rewarding you for doing what you need to survive. It has strategies to soften those blows and keep you going. Because you have to.
There are no biological coping mechanisms for cars, city noise, pollution, and financial anxiety. These problems didn’t exist in the ancestral environment. Evolution hasn’t had time to protect us from them. They might not hit as hard in the moment, but we can’t heal from the losses they cause us. That’s why chronic stress, suicide, depression and anxiety are so common nowadays. This is worse. Maybe not in objective germs, but it’s worse for a human being. It hits us in our weak points.
wat?
Capitalism is an outside context problem.
Ok.
I think we are wasting our lives to a certain degree. As kids, we expected more from life than sitting in front of a computer to feed the family. And sitting at a computer is seen as one of the “good” jobs.
One of the things we often forget is that a large part of our happiness is simply autonomy and self direction. I still remember working a “dreary office job” that I absolutely loved because we were given self direction and the managers were simply there to support us.
This sounds great!
However, I also had a job like this and hated it. The things I hated about it were:
- Circumstances beyond my control made taking this job my best option, when I had really wanted to do something else.
- The ultimate product of my work wasn’t emotionally resonant with me. I felt like I was doing nothing but working to maintain a system I didn’t believe in.
- I felt like if I was going to have a job like this, I should be getting paid better and should be working on something more interesting. I thought the job was beneath me.
- Seriously, aesthetics matter. Commuting through heavy traffic to reach a suburban office park, where I walk through the door and smell filtered air, looking at grey cubicals under florescent lighting… is pretty miserable. Much better if the office was in a walkable, nice-to-look-at neighborhood where I would want to spend my time outside of work, and if the office had hired an interior designer who could make it… just better in any way.
Once everything has been optimized and runs smoothly, there are no surprises anymore, nothing interesting, you just do a routine that you’ve specialized in and have gotten bored at 10 years ago. Our quality of life is unparalleled. Our quality of work less so. It’s safe and all, but so so boring
I’ve heard this described as a velvet rut.
i dunno. I mean, the same could be said about the medieval ages. Everything had been figured out. How to grow wheat, how to feed chickens, the people knew everything. It was all just daily routine.
Yet i don’t see these people living dull lives. I smell the air and it smells good.
Imagine this! Before you was adventure, exploration, and danger. Then there was slavery, then there was our period (where there are still millions of actual slaves btw).
Then after you, if anyone survives, and we don’t all get put into an I have no mouth and I must scream scenario by our overlords, the youth after us will never know work. They will be far more functional than us, and will simply not understand working to survive. They will look down on us, senile outcasts, who get to watch “heaven” from afar.
Personally, I sometimes ponder if this is a part of The Great Filter. We have evolved to survive under constant threats in harsh environments, so when those dangers and threats are removed we don’t know how to handle it. We start to perceive minor things as bigger problems. I wonder if this is part of what we need to learn to deal with before we can live peacefully with our neighbours and nature.
Interesting take on the situation. I like it.
where your children are gonna grow up depends a lot on your choices on whether you support Mars settlement or not. if you do, and you go there, i think your children will have a high chance of having to do a lot of work. construction, farming, construction again, taking care of new immigrants and children, construction again, expanding the city … seems like a lot of work to me.
I just wanna be one of those old timey blacksmiths hitting things on an anvil and getting paid for it. Nowadays though it’s all like “Throw the glowy thing into the bang bang thing and it does all the work for you!”. What if I wanna hit things with a hammer, huh?! What if I like the catharsis that comes with hitting something?!
damn that image bangs
I sure do love being a wage slave in the good ol US of A.
🥲
Anytime some says the economy or wall street are doing great i instantly know they are either rich or tarded or both
What I love most about this is he works in health care insurance. His boss tells him he’s not denying enough claims. Very American indeed.
Id like to help the brown people trump is looking to purge from the country but look at this. I cant give all this up.
The truth is people choose to live wasted lives. They could choose to do something fulfilling but don’t. Even cavemen probably wasted their lives being scared something was going to eat them.
I started out choosing work that wasn’t all that fulfilling as a toolmaker/engineer. I didn’t find a lot of satisfaction in needing to hit impossible deadlines. So I ditched that career and became an EMT and finally a medic with a side helping of firefighter/rescue in several small and very rural communities that have shortages of trained responders. And just before I retired I taught some math in my tiny rural school because teachers are hard to get there. I never got rich with money or fame but that wasn’t what mattered.
I feel like my life was not wasted for the most part. That I made a difference for the people and the world around me. In the small handful of years left to me, I can go satisfied I did what I could. You could too if only you would choose.
Yeah, honestly knowing what I know now, this is the way to do it. Do whatever you want for most of your life and screw the consequences. Die at 35 without health insurance.
What? I love spending my day going to meetings where I’m quizzed about things that won’t matter next week and writing Jira tickets.
we can have all the “good” things we claim to want from other economic systems within capitalism. It just requires voting for politicians that do their job to progress laws forward instead of dragging their feet.
Whoever you vote for will be
bribedlobbied until they don’t represent you anymore, assuming they weren’t already compromised before even entering office.If I accepted that to be true, then no one can lead the country and its cooked. There are plenty of capitalist economies with low corruption.
