10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job.

[Vaiyen]

is his self-worth, the meaning to his life, all about driving a car very very fast?
i doubt so. nevertheless, does he take pride in what he does? yes. does he do his job well? yes. is there any negative effect on the f1 industry? no.

if your self-worth and your meaning to life is all tied to your occupation, then should you fall into crippling depression and find existence meaningless in the event of retrenchment?

Exactly.
(10 chars)

 

[growlingsoulpup]

lovelovelovelove work, lovelovelovelove getting a job. Just join a rock and roll band man.

 

[hifi_killer]

i love music. i listen to it, i read about it, i think about it, and i play it. however, i don't earn a cent from all this, and in fact i pay for it. i also don't feel that my self-worth is linked to how many artistes i know or how well i can play an instrument. that would be ridiculous.

yes, i'm sure you would agree that music adds value to your life perhaps in the intangible form of happiness or enjoyment. If thats the case, isnt your self-worth, the sense of how much value your life is worth is somehow linked to music?

is his self-worth, the meaning to his life, all about driving a car very very fast?
i doubt so. nevertheless, does he take pride in what he does? yes. does he do his job well? yes. is there any negative effect on the f1 industry? no.

if your self-worth and your meaning to life is all tied to your occupation, then should you fall into crippling depression and find existence meaningless in the event of retrenchment?

the keyword here is ALL, yes i do agree that one's self-esteem should not revolve completely or heavily around only ONE aspect of their life, be it job, family or friends. It is unhealthy.

On the other extreme. If you're doing a job , you attach very little self-worth and meaning of life to what you do, there is no way you can be proud of what you do.

 

[Vaiyen]

on the contrary Hifi_killer, i think that self-worth and meaning in life comes BEFORE doing a job, not the other way round.
When we have good self-esteem, naturally, we'll want to do the best in everything we do.

 

[senn_liu]

hifi, regarding the music thing, it was in response to your idea that if local musicians didn't attach their self-worth/the meaning to their lives to their work, then they wouldn't produce good stuff.

i'm curious why you don't seem to understand that self-worth and meaning to life can be completely separated from work without somehow decreasing the quality of the work.

let's say i'm an accountant. i can do my best in my work without thinking that i am defined by it. if i make a mistake, it doesn't lower my self-worth, nor does it make my life meaningless.

anyway, all i can say is, i hope you always have a job, or you may feel worthless.

 

[hifi_killer]

my self esteem is defined by the many aspects of life. So i will be able to maintain my self-worth even if i'm jobless , but well i'm still studying.

i'm curious why you don't seem to understand that self-worth and meaning to life can be completely separated from work without somehow decreasing the quality of the work.

like wise i cannot understand how you will be able to do your job well without having any feeling for it.

If it works for you fine. Unfortunately i don't think it will work for me. Nevertheless, i respect your opinion.

on the contrary Hifi_killer, i think that self-worth and meaning in life comes BEFORE doing a job, not the other way round.
When we have good self-esteem, naturally, we'll want to do the best in everything we do.

there many many arguments on both sides of the case. Nevertheless whichever comes 1st, i do agree that self worth and meaning in life are 2 very important things when it comes to doing our best in whatever we do.

 

[evident]

evident :
Just because some stuff are programmed into our genes it doesnt mean that it will happen for sure, there is a genes vs environment interaction. Some genes will not be activated unless an environmental event triggers it.

I would like to maintain the point that there is some biological basis for work. Gathering food for young has always been a natural instinct for men and mammals. It is thus from that it evolved into the present 'jobs'

and wow, thats a rather vivid child-like imagination you have.

why do some senior citizens continue working past their retirement age even though they're well supported by their family? Well i would say it keeps them alive - longer.

Jobs should seen as a double edge sword it can be good and it can be bad.



so say.. if the people in the local music scene detach their self-worth and meaning of life from their professional lives
will they take pride in what they do?
will they do a good job?
what will happen to our music scene?

is this the kind of attitude we want to encourage in our society?

if that's what you mean "biological" then fair enough. but i still don't agree with it.


the point of my VERY first post was to show that, there is no reason to do what we don't want to do. if the world has sufficient food, water and energy to go around. no one has to work for all these and therefore no one has to do what they do not want to do. that doesn't mean everyone will want to sit at home all day and do nothing. there may be few who would be like that. but people being people would still go and find "self-worth" in other areas instead of having a 9-5 job and raising a family. therefore if you're talking about music. there would actually be MORE people who will be doing music "professionally" or take it more seriously than a hobby. because they will have more time since they're not working and instead of concentrating on doing what they hate doing, they can actually start playing music all the time.

 

[deadwing]

good article. talks abit too much about himself and his business though, which blurs the important bits. I guess the point he's trying to make isn't about passive income from a website, it's about the absurdity of aiming for a job when you ARE your job. too bad for us that social conditioning is SO powerful especially in SG. I honestly believe humans are born creative and capable of great things, it's education that grows them out of it; starts from the waist up, then the brain, and then to one side.

the goal here in singapore is to achieve no unemployment, yes... but what it ensures in it's place is mediocrity. mass, legislated, uninspiring, and uninspired mediocrity. the education system we use dates back to the industrial era where semi-skilled labour was in demand, now it's just outdated. sure the gahmen can try their best to promote 'creativity' but you don't change what goes into the system, you change the system itself to get results.

 

[empihsrow]

singapore's education system is spoonfeeding our young kids and resulting in no room for creativity. Singapore "so-called" top schools are top schools only because they have the best teachers at teaching the students how to get good results in exams, not caring whether these kids actually understand what the textbooks says.

Dude, I have to disagree with you here. Coming for a top-school and having seen other students faring from other schools(no offense here), there is a huge gulf of difference. Yes, we might have better teachers but without abilities, we wouldn't have even made it there.

However, I still think the education system's stupid focus on meritocracy is disappointing and lesser-abled students aren't given enough opportunities.

We're born and bred according to social pressures and expectations, thus we are just mere shadows of this evil institution. It's not a problem found only in Singapore, but everywhere in the world, especially when theocracy is present.

 

[Vaiyen]

Let me illustrate further the point of social conditioning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo

in their society, the females are the head of household and breadwinners. This way of life is as normal to them as our capitalistic/consumerist culture is to us.

So who's right? the Mosuos or us?
No one.
It's all social conditioning. Their conditioning tells them that the males are the supporting cast while our conditioning tells us that the males are the providers.
And the best part is this: Conditioning is all manmade, not part of Nature, passed down from generation to generation, and unfortunately taken for the gospel truth.


Break free of this conditioning, and live like how you are meant to.

 

[hifi_killer]

i believe the 1st few generations of man and women that lived on earth had adopted roles then were somewhat gender specific even before any social-cultural notions existed. Surely they didnt do so because they were socially conditioned? perhaps its because men and women realise they have different abilities and therefore some roles are better suited than others. These roles are created because of biological differences between men and women ,not so much of a social conditioning.

nevertheless social conditioning is not all bad. There are some good social norms like putting on a mask if you're sick like in Japan, unfortunately this is not the norm here in Singapore. And without social conditioning, all our innate desires for aggression, lust, gluttony would easily find outlets.
on to creativity..
I strongly believe that if creativity have to come from the school or some government-led campaigns.. then its really not creative at all.
Creativity is more of an individual effort than responsiblity of the educators

in theory meritocracy is a fair system , it enables upward social mobility for the less affluent.
but the problem with Singapore is that, perhaps exams is not the best way to judge who has the best ability, and the student's family background is a huge confounding factor in the meritocractic system. Family social-economic background do to a significant extent affect the student's ability. So in essence the system is not as fair as it is suppose to be.


and , i just discovered PJC used one of steve pavlina articles for their prelim gp comprehension passage.

 

[visa]

Interesting discussion.

I think the fatal error that nobody has pointed out yet is that the divergence between a job and a purpose (whether real or perceived).

Hifi_killer: You say that "for most of us, a job more just money to us.. Its our pride, self-esteem, social life, meaning in life."

That may be true in your case or for a large number of specified cases, but that doesn't mean you can equate one to the other. You can work a meaningless, unimportant job and feel absolutely no sense of fulfillment whatsoever. You can also be jobless, but be happy and contented with life if you have a sense of purpose.

you then ask, "would there be a meaning to life if everything in life can be easily acquired without doing any work for it?"

That is a hypothetical question that is rather impossible to answer, because we live in a world plagued with scarcity. You know this. So long as mankind has unlimited wants, there will always be things in life that cannot be easily acquired.

 

[visa]

Hifi_killer: i believe the 1st few generations of man and women that lived on earth had adopted roles then were somewhat gender specific even before any social-cultural notions existed. perhaps its because men and women realise they have different abilities and therefore some roles are better suited than others. These roles are created because of biological differences between men and women, not so much of a social conditioning.

You cannot separate social conditioning and biological differences. They are both intrinsic to the foundation of any intelligent community (not just humans!), and develop together simultaneously. Biological differences between males and females developed in the first place BECAUSE we live in social groups. Social groups benefit economically when specialized roles develop (it's called the law of comparative advantage). Natural selection ensured that the men and women most fit for these roles survived to pass on their genes, and THIS is what created biological biological differences between male and females over thousands of thousands of years.

By the way, rational thinking only developed in the past 10,000 years or so. Men and women never "realized" that they had different abilities or that some roles are better suited than others. You think too highly of men, and too lowly of nature. People who were weaker at fulfilling the important roles in social communities had their genes unapologetically weeded out of existence.