Preach brother. I could not agree more on your observations. I'm in my mid 50's and I wish I had this kind of wisdom in my 20's. It's never too late before we're 10 feet under, so I have long since adapted a different way of life/work relations. If I don't like what I do - I simply walk away. To most people (including my very own coworkers) this attitude is terrifying to them, some see it as horrendeously arrogant, others sees is as frightening, and most can't afford it because of their lifestyle or families. In the end we all have made our choices. To those who read this and think the same traditional everyday people (like most) do, I will do some explaining how I achieved this and what the results are. The results are better than one could imagine. I know for a fact that a lot of people over 40 are scared of the prospects of going against their bosses, of taking total control over their own lives. But imagine this - you're in your own video that is the book written about your life. It's not done yet, it's not even written yet, all the pages from the middle and up are blank pages. What they contain - is up to you. So what I do - is that I simply think to myself, I can get fired from my job and I will easily get another, and I'll pick what I like. How? A lot of people over 40+ thinks that they're lucky to have ANY job at that age, basically they blame ageism. But I got news for you - ageism is a thing, yes, but it's got nothing to do with you because YOU are IN control of your life, or you give that control away to others. You need to enjoy the very existence of your life in order to do this, you start by writing down the things you want to do, then a masterplan how to achieve this, then a plan-b. You compromise on nothing, you take on only the jobs you want - don't wait for them to write back to you, call, contact them, and then go on checking up on them until you got the dream job of your life, most applicants don't do this, and most companies will be surprised on just how tenacious you are - and you'll most likely land the job. It doesn't stop there, once you got the job - be ambitious about your dreams, listen a lot, be a problem solver, dare to break all rules, and move forward like an unstoppable truck - but be prepared to deliver on your promises. If you found a job you REALLY LIKE - then this won't even be an issue, because you're living the fun that is your life, to achieve things, to make a difference. Also, some side-tip. Stop consuming the latest and greatest, buy a high-end phone that is 1-2 years old, they're still amazing, you still get way better stuff than a low-end phone from today, and you save about 2/3's of the cost + you don't take up a payment plan for it, go vimla, hallon or similar and be free. Also - purchase second-hand furniture, get rid of all silly subscriptions you don't need. Always bargain when you buy something. Be frugal without being frugal on your life. People will start wondering why you got so much, and money to spare all the time. In-between jobs - you fix and repair stuff, on your house, your stuff, anything. Because that's money (and control) directly into your life. They can't tax that! Once you figure out that you're actually in total control of your life - you won't look back.
Great points, thank you for sharing! Having the psychological and practical ability to quit your job if you need to is extremely powerful. That ability can start shiifting various power balances around.
So not to shit on your points or something but how much do you need to worry about housing? The lifestyle you describe is possible for me but only when I have low cost housing available
Thank you for that. I recently have had a 180 change in my life and I feel lost but this comment helped. I appreciate you and you are truly a wonderful soul
I live in Brazil and although I haven't read it in any academic source it seems obvious that we are in a transition from the Catholic(I don't know if we are still the country with the largest absolute number of Catholics) to the Protestant work ethic. It is noticeable how people are more exhausted by working more, feeling embarrassed if they are not super productive and even children are developing psychiatric illnesses earlier. Currently, schools are already starting to pressure 8-year-old students to prepare for university selection tests. For example when I was a child in the 80s, it was normal for my parents to have time to interact and making good friends with neighbors (we moved around a lot because of my father's work) that lasted a lifetime. Today I don't have the time or energy for that to the point where I don't remember their faces. I could mention other changes, but in short, there is now an atmosphere of competition rather than collaboration, we are more anxious and society is less and less a source of support. It seems to me dangerous for a biologically extremely sociable species that work has become in practice the only concern.
You can decide to not work but the realities of life will punish you for it. If we want to eat, live in a house etc. we are spending resources. There is no way around that. If you don't provide resources but continue to use them, it's obvious that someone else has provided them for you by working in your place. That's not right either.
@@6kle82 The problem with your reasoning is that it assumes that everyone needs to work in order to have those things, but that couldn't be further from the truth, as mechanization/automation has drastically changed the amount of work that we need to do in order to survive, or even thrive. "If you don't provide resources but continue to use them, it's obvious that someone else has provided them for you by working in your place. That's not right either." Why not? If they're awarded more resources than you for their trouble, why would that be a problem?
My friend, the protestant work ethic has never worked for the majority of people, it was always there to benefit those who wield the most control over society. Be it politicians or business owners or clerics. To be a good protestant is to be a good, willing slave.
"Protestant work ethics" is just an excuse for godless capitalists to exploit the good, obedient people. Pretty ironic that most (if not all) of CEOs are never a religious person themselves.
Are you familiar with the idea that we are not saved by works but by faith?. Thats a protestant idea. Working hard does not get you to heaven for protestants.
Every day when my alarm clock goes off at 5am and I get up to begin my routine, I remind myself, "only be enduring the tedium of a scheduled life can you alleviate the worry for you economy and status".
I'm so glad I only have to work for 8 months a year to obtain what I want in life. Sometimes people try to guilt me into working more, and I usually give them consideration for all of five seconds before thinking of all the free time I would be missing out on. I quite literally do what you describe in this video, working until I don't have to anymore, then I quit for a time, usually to travel, then get started working all over again. I have a 150 day work season (July-November) and a 90 day work season (January-March), and both are really easy to get through because they are so short.
The entire spectrum of political parties keep saying "jobs" because they know they're speaking to people who are underemployed, underpaid, and have no safety net for healthcare, retirement, end of life care. The voters are lead to believe that "jobs" is somehow a salvation, in a era of escalating automation, and overseas bids. Instead of promising a safety net, and universal abundance in a post-work world; in a post- scarcity world.
Another factor that effects the modern day work ethic emerged from the Factory School Model, induced in 19th century. It was initially designed to produce a large scale of obedient factory workers to reach demand for the industrial revolution but has since become a foundation for current education systems.
Another great video and topic. As a buiness owner and my own boss I can really relate. The protestant work etich is something that is schooled into our system by society from a childs age. But for What and for Who? The question is if We are the slaves? I wish you a merry christmas
One thing I don't understand in people is how some people sneer at people who don't want to work 10 hours a day plus 2 hours commuting per day. Personally I'd probably work better with 4-6 hours per day and then rest.
Another very important and correct video. In this context, it is worth looking for videos on the topic “Human Brain and Default Network / DFN”. The DFN becomes active when we are doing nothing and we are only just learning that it is immensely important, also for our mental health, but not only.
As salaried worker I earned 1,6k€/month and worked 40h/week. As self employed, I work about 60h/week and I gain about 600€/month. But I could never go back to work as salaried worker. I earned more money and worked less hours, but those 40h each week were tedious and lifeless. Now, my 60h of "work" each week feel amazing, as I am doing what I really love. I had never felt happier, even if some months I struggle filling my fridge.
I dreamed of a perfect society when I was 10-12 and it was something similar to this. You would live in a comunity and basically get everything for free provided that you work for a few hours every day to make it possible to keep things as they are. You could work for more in order to get money and do other things but it would not be required. It is more complex but people said I did not want that and that it sounded like prisson. I later was in prisson for a few months and I swear that it was the best months in my life. I often say that if I didn't need to do crime to get to prisson I would like to live there for the rest of my life.
One of my ex pupils gave me a book, "How to be Lazy", and it delves into the history of how people used to live, and how we've been conned into working too much. Scientists looked at hunter gatherer societies and discovered that they worked far less than most modern people do.
You've communicated this concept so well. I have debated with a friend about the purpose of work a few times and they are strong believers in the Protestant work ethic. I am going to send this to them and maybe it'll help them think outside of that norm a little more, because what I've said never gets through lol.
It’s horses for courses. Some people (actually most people) need work. They need something to put their effort and energy into. I find these people usually don’t have any other passions or interests that they can throw themselves into. So work is good for them.
What's crazy about that is that almost every problem modern society faces, like severe inequality in the distribution of wealth, ecological problems and climate change etc. comes down to one thing: the capitalistic mindset we get infused the moment we are born. It's all interconnected. We work too much, produce too much, consume too much, and therefore we need more resources than earth can reproduce. I always found it mind boggling that it is about creating jobs for the sake of it. It's not about how much work has to be done. There is no upper limit. The more the better. And it's paradox because the alleged purpose of people working so much is so they can enjoy life. But for most of us this ends in working too much and living too little. I think the most important thing is realizing that many of those needs we want to satisfy and that motivate us to work more are created by others so they themselves can sell more, therefore work, produce and earn more, just in order for them to satisfy their own needs that again were created by others through marketing and were then reproduced within society. The imagination of what makes a good live needs to shift in order for real change to arise.
So what principle is guiding you now? What are you replacing the Protestant work ethic with? Great topic, would love to see more around work, work ethic and jobs.
im not who youre asking, but ... the traditional work ethic, i suppose? work as much as needed and no more. since thats what was talked about, thats what i kinda assumed anyway. but yeah, would love to see more abt implementing that :)
I studied electrical engineering and saw a lot of companies from the inside over the years and the reason we don't automate most jobs (which we could with some effort) is that labor is too cheap and inequality too high. It might sound kinda weird saying labor is too cheap at first. For average people labor is extremely expensive, but for the big companies often owned by extremely rich individuals labor is actually way cheaper than automating even basic tasks, just because their wealth is so enormous compared to what average people have. So innovation is kinda stuck and only done if it basically comes for free or the competition has innovated. So also here inequality is the main cause of the problem. It does go much deeper than this short explanation, but I guess youtube comments do have a character limit for a reason ; )
As someone whose day-to-day is basically completely oriented around automating stuff, I think this theory is somewhat correct but also not the entire picture. On the contrary, we simply have too many complex systems to automate -- nothing could change in the business I work for and I'd have 2~3 years of projects in my backlog for things to automate, and yet in reality as the business evolves and other parts of it get modernized and automated, even more things get put into the backlog and what was modern yesterday is tomorrow's technical debt. Pick any industry, and as a consumer one might take for granted that stuff "just works" - orders get fulfilled, shelves get stocked, services get activated, stuff gets shipped, appointments get kept, etc - but actually there are often thousands of background processes at play, often each with their own myriad of edge cases and sub-processes to handle the fallout of any of those steps going sideways. There is a huge amount of investment into automating all of this stuff, but the technical skillset needed to build automation is in short supply.
@@timothymiron3620 Imagine though wages were 4x as high, there would be a lot more pressure on businesses to find simpler processes. Plus if people had more time to reskill, because they were a lot richer, there could be a lot more people working on automation. Right now we have a large part of the workforce which cannot get into these jobs simply because it is not worth it to educate them, just because they come from poorer backgrounds (it is absolutely not efficient, that in germany for example most people at universities have academics as parents).
@@timothymiron3620 And I somewhat disagree that automation skillsets are in short supply, they are right were the market demand is. Otherwise big tech companies would never have done massive layoffs.
@@pericvlor I don't think big tech layoffs say much about the availability of automation skills in the overall economy. Big Tech is one place where there is _not_ a scarcity of this type of skillset. If anything, big tech layoffs are more related to misallocation / over concentration, than serving as any proof of abundance in the economy writ large. I also don't think its realistic to assume that some large portion of the population would take up automation-related vocations if given the choice. It is already the case that the free market sees engineering type roles of all sorts command relatively higher compensation than many other aspects of the economy. There's also the problem of much of the work needed requiring not only engineering skills but also deep and often boutique domain knowledge, and the nature of many types of projects being not conductive to being finished any faster by simply throwing more people at them. The book 'the mythical man month' comes to mind here. Anyways, I think its a relatively nuanced problem. I do agree with you that to some degree low wages disincentivize the type of step-change investment in automation that would otherwise be pursued, but I work at a company that has at least one single identifiable area of the business that costs over $2 billion/year to operate and has for the past 5+ years thrown similar amounts of money at automating as much of it as possible, but as mentioned the level of complexity that shows up when we try to have 'systems' interface with the messy 'real world' means that much of it remains (for now) needing humans in the loop at the fringes. Artificial Intelligence will unlock huge swaths of this backlog, and to that end the next 3~5 years are going to be crazy, but that's a separate rant.
Part of the problem is our expectations about what we "need" to live a comfortable life. Think about it: our ancestors didn't need to earn money to buy a TV or pay the electric bill. They only bought the absolute basics. If we were prepared to live at the same standard of living our ancestors did it would cost far less.
"pay the electric bill" I pay ~30 EUR per month for the electric bill that is ~2h of work; that is much less time than I would need to collect wood, build fires, clean out the ash etc. to cook for a full month only an example - but in that regards it is easier and less work to pay for the electric bill than to accept the living standard of our ancesters
They had community and stable housing though, and more free time, which are prohibitively expensive now. TV and similar lixuries are not the reason why we work extra as much as cheqp fixes tot hw.more expensivw things we have lost
I was struck by a chronic illness 5 years ago which rendered me unable to work. I am fortunate enough that my husband earns enough to support our family. We aren’t rich but perfectly comfortable. We have all we need. However, the level of guilt I have about not being able to work has is huge. I’m in my 50s and spend a lot of time beating myself up for acquiring something completely beyond my control. This seems to be reinforced by the question “what do you do?” when I meet someone new. I stumble for words trying to justify why I am unable to work. I inadvertently feed myself into the “deserving poor” narrative. I believe in the idea of working to gain what you need to survive and the rest of your time is your own. Applying it to myself however seems trickier.
What you invest in these productions is truly amazing and as a 60 yo life-long student of History, Politics a.o. I've yet to find one I don't agree with. Thx.
I'm all for working and fulfilling a personal calling. However, work isn't just what one does for money. Work is caring for yourself, your family, friends, and your community. Praying, listening, contemplating, studying, exercising, and being present all take energy and, therefore, are a form of work. Meaningful work. I love that you mentioned Erich Fromm. One of my favorite books is "To Have or to Be." We need to go from a having culture to a being culture.
Protestant here. I think there is a massive difference between the work ethic that Luther an Calvin espoused and the post-industrial scheduled tedium that we have in the modern secular world. The protestant work ethic is right, in that we each have a calling, and we are placed in this world to serve God and other people. We are not here for ourselves. However "serving God and other people" is so much wider than just working for money. It is about taking responsibility for what you have been given, and using that to glorify God to the best of your ability. This includes non-paid material things, like taking care of your living space, and also non-material things like spending time with family and friends. Even enjoying the fruit of your labor is a very protestant thing to do. Also, the idea of working hard is way older than Protestantism. In fact, I would argue that Protestantism was a fundamentalist movement, trying to get back to what Christianity was originally supposed to mean, and trying to be as close to the Bible as possible. The Bible is full of the importance of hard work. I mean look at the 4th commandment (Work for 6 days, rest for 1) and look at how much hard work is praised by the book of Proverbs.
It is a difference if you work on your own field /own vinyard or as a wage slave for someone else. We use/Bible uses the same word "work" but actually we should have 2 different words for that.
@sheridansherr8974 On the other hand, the New Testament encourages Christian slaves to work heartily. So even as a wage slave, you should work hard. However, this needs to also be seen in the larger context of the New Testament, where love is set as the driving factor for human relationships. So being a hard working wage slave is a way for a Christian worker to love their boss. However, the Christian worker needs to take care to not neglect his love towards his family and other people and things that God gave him.
The error many people also make is that their spending is going up when getting raises or better paying jobs. Why spend so much on things you dont need? Almost anything can be bought except time, Id rather just work less and spend more time with my family and hobbies. So I definitely did my best to get a decently payed job, but only to work as little as I need.
@@koyha5266 Do you work long shifts? What country? I also worked at a warehouse once, much of the time we had nothing to do so I spent most of my work days reading books and drinking tea to keep warm in the cold warehouse.
Eudaimonia is having a good character and setting a good example. It's not some sort of general self-accomplishment, that's part of the Protestant belief and it only deals with externals while eudaimonia is mainly about internals.
Great work; The practicality of these views can vary based on individual perspectives and cultural contexts. Weber’s emphasis on the Protestant work ethic has been associated with the rise of capitalism and economic success in certain regions. However, Aristotle’s focus on eudaimonia may resonate more with those who prioritize overall well being and virtue. We must ask ourselves, when contemplating either perspective what constitutes a sense of happiness? Is it practical? In the end, My personal perspective is we are luring to be productive, in turn, this provides us fulfillment. By being productive, we benefit someone else, even if a selfish motive lies between the action and duty. On the behalf of our production, we in turn provide utility to someone else; such as this lovely video. Therefore, utilitarianism may be at the root of the people you mentioned, but then again what do I know, just speculating. Thanks for the video and this thought, Merry Christmas! 🎁
Thanks for interesting thoughts! I agree with you that all of us want to feel useful. There is a risk that we in today's labour society, mainly value our "usefulness" in the labour market (what we do as employees or entrepreneurs) while the usefulness we have in our extended families, in our neighborhood, in our churches, in our sports organizations etc. aren't viewed as "valuable" in quite the same way. Merry Christmas my friend!
A DC area apartment is 50k today, on the higher end For 2 bed bath 25k per person 5k for groceries and an unlimited bus pass yearly 30k Just 100k in tqqq etf would have been enough capital gains for retirement over the last decade Most Americans can get 100k within a year or two, between hard work and some gifts received from older relatives. That we work beyond these 2 years or so, is obviously representative of cultural pressures ❤😢❤😢❤
Just as we were getting out of the tyranny of Religion (up to and including Thomas Paine), the tyranny of the work ethic was promoted. The common factor is slavery. Chattel slavery to wage slavery to debt slavery. Religion is always about Power, with Money as its tool.
There's a difference in working as a sole operator in that the output and results are for your benefit (and clients if you are providing a service) and the work you put in comes with a potential direct benefit.
Of course we should work and keep our body's moving for the mind and body but this working a dead end job so someone else makes all the money is horseshit and I think that's one of the main reasons why people aren't working today
Working to live has been replaced by living to work because of the convergence of several considerations, and the resulting intersection between a few social and moral metrics. Firstly, we attach our own self worth, and our perception of our worth in other people's minds, by how much we produce. However, individual work output and its actual worth is not measured the same way from one person to the next, nor the same way individually and collectively. Working only enough to meet our individual living needs is often deemed as selfish or parasitical because our own worth in society is measured by how much more we each contribute to it, in excess of our own personal needs, while conveniently white-washing over the fact that the very society we're part of, and seek acceptance from, also all too readily allows a small portion of it to unfairly gain a grossly disproportionate portion of the wealth that's generated by the resulting collective production surplus. The other factor that shapes our society, its welfare and its attitude towards work, is that the same wealthy minority is also benefiting from a disproportionately large amount of power and control it has over the rest of our society, to maintain its separation from the same hardships faced by the rest of us, as well as maintain its ability to exert that same large amount of power and control. This particular aspect is also why our society doesn't allow individual work output to be measured more equitably, or for that matter, for the resulting wealth to be distributed more equitably.
I wish I could make enough in 2 hours of work to survive the rest of the week. I would retire right now if I could and just ponder my place in the universe.
I've been living the Aristotle style for the last 3 years ever since I quit my job as a software engineer. I live with my parents now. They pay for everything. I have 100% free time. I do in fact spent most of my time contemplating my existence, the Universe, the spiritual dimension, the sublime, the abstract, the arts, the intellectual, etc.
A great book to read is ‘ the good life’ by Helen and Scott nearing.. a good way of finding a balance between modern life and human creative tendencies
Exercise, grow a garden, write a book, create a song, build a house, mow your lawn, volunteer, clean something, build something, invent something, throw a party, go learn a new skill, play chess, learn an instrument, learn to sing, make a tool, improve something better, redesign things better, teach kids, teach people, help old people, help someone, save abandoned pets, hike, start a business, sell something, sleep, rest, binge watch whatever you like, go gamble, listen to lectures, help a friend, be a friend, talk to your neighbor, talk to your parents and siblings, cook, hunt, breed livestock, lick a lollipop... I have an infinite list of things for you to do.
This "Protestant Work-ethic" unfortunately also entered schools decades ago, where teachers and caregivers give you a hard time, publicly shame you, psychologically blackmail or humiliate you, if you are happy with doing the bare minimum for a 6/10, because you're not interested in a subject. I worked so hard to please my surroundings (incl. family) and get high marks all the time, that it gave me a burn-out right at the start of my working life age 30 :S I was told over and over again "why are you doing nothing, don't you have work to do?!" (when I was resting, taking a break, drawing, taking a nap etc. even though my school results were fine). It made me feel like I every form of resting or doing something fun for myself is "LAZY!!!" and that I was a bad person for it, even though my results were more than ok, but they zeroed in on the act of "resting" like it was a huge trigger for them or something. I graduated long ago, but I don't have the idea that it has improved since in schools :S
I think it’s worth considering that the market and logic of capital Accumulation demands this by force of material conditions, and then reinforces it culturally.
I was very much resonating with this line of thinking about 10-15 years ago when I started my career. I immediately figured out that if I can save 50%+ of my income and do that consistently, I wouldn't have to work in 15 years. Now I'm here almost at that point, but I think I'll continue working. I just love building things, when I can decide what to build. The reason I felt like that 15 years ago when just starting out was because I wasn't truly enjoying working for others. Andres, you are working for yourself, but are you actually enjoying the work, and believe in the necessity of it? Maybe you actually enjoy the work of doing RUclips videos more than lawyering. If so, that doesn't really go against the "find your calling" advice. That said, if you don't have a calling, or think you'll never find one, then for sure you shouldn't make work your identity.
Interestingly, I see creatives working according to the older ethics. They tend to set up projects, some of them for income, others for their own desires
I really feel like people are no longer cultivated in appropriate ways, rather we are forced onto procrustean beds for companies to profit off of, but everything just winds up artificially inflating asset prices in a bubble because productivity is stalling for a lot of varied reasons. I think we perfected maximizing outputs but we’ve only started scratching the surface of figuring out how to manage inputs. The idea that if enough is good than more would be awesome seems to not work out the majority of the time.
Most of us are not classed as slaves but we are in a system of servitude. Peoples money can be spent on pointless consumerism but most goes to basic living requirements of rent/morgage. Taxes, utility bills. A car so that we can get to and from our place servitude to make money so we can pay pur bills and taxes with just enough food so we can stay alive to keep doing this cycle of siht.
To say that everyone has a calling is one thing -- saying that we all should work 40hr weeks and overconsume IS ruining our societies. What if my calling is to take care of street cats, or put on musicals with my neighbours? The problem is that we have automated away the need for everyone to work so much, but somewhere along the way it was decided that the only valuable worl - the only valid calling - was to be PRODUCTIVE, and productivity is measures in dollars. More dollars = more moral. Somehow.
The problem with exiting this work ethic is that this isn't a choice you can make as an individual - it would work only if we were to make the choice together as one society. Otherwise you would soon be left behind in a society where we are all competing for the power to take whatever we want from each other.
I agree, partly. It's not impossible as an individual, but you have to be extremely privileged/lucky to find yourself in a position where you're able to. We need to change this collectively, few things are more consequential.
@@samaelauneor depends. 100% independence from society doesn't exist. Depending on what "out" means to you, you may still need to pay rent, or food, or need medicine or doctors, or any other kind of help. You may be able to afford that now, but what about in 30 years? You may say that you just need to stock up on money before getting out, but then the whole premise falls: most people cannot get out, not because of societal pressure, but because they just don't have the means.
As a self-employed person I get to choose when I work and who I want to work for. However the consequence of refusing available work is less money. But if I'm prepared to accept that consequence then it's no problem.
Thank you, Andrés. Very interesting what you're doing. Amazing videos you make. Greetings from Canada. Have you ever thought that your videos could start a good ethics movement, even a revolution if they reach the right people at the right moment and place?
Make educational similar to Finland, where we teach children to think and find their passion. Universal Income for all the basics to have a life, then people can decide if they want to work for extra income. Which we all more or less wants to do, what we don't want to do, is work hard and barely surviving. ANd working hard can be long hours.
One of these days, the issue of "no one willing to work" will end and "no one can work". As soon as there will be a finite number of jobs, and customers to fuel those jobs. But not enough for everyone to work. Even for minimum wage. Meanwhile still having that work ethic mindset that "if you're not working, then you deserve nothing." We either need to restore jobs, or change how we do work and live.
Imo the basic work ethic returns to us when we play games: No one keeps grinding in a game once they have what they want. I‘d be interested to know how a 40 hr work week affects health both mentally & physically
Jaw dropping again. You are phenomenol Andres. Would you mind sharing which pack of SFX do you use in these masterpieces? Would love to get those. Thanks brother and keep up the great work.
Thanks my friend. Your generosity always amazez me. Please think about creating a course on how to edit these bangers. I know many editors including me who are dying to learn from you.
Thought-provoking as ever. Funny how incomes are always just enough for the necessities, so you have to work full time. Now my mortgage is paid, I work three days a week. Capitalism doesn't want the bottom 90% slacking so high land prices keep us time poor. When it wasn't like this (UK 1945-75), food prices and electricity were high, and wages related to the fact. The Smithsonian equilibrium has some value in this observation.
I beg to differ. Weber’s theory is considered outdated and biased today. More recent scholars have traced back the modern work ethic to the Benedictine “ora et labora” (“pray and work”). For example, Lombardy (where I live) and Bavaria are both deeply Catholic, but they both are two of the richest and most industrious regions in Europe (and, not coincidentally, they both were Benedictine hubs in the Middle Ages). If you’d like to explore a broader and deeper perspective, I suggest you read Joseph Heinrich’s “The Weirdest People in the World. How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”.
I read years ago Max Weber's The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and I have become convinced it hit the bull's eye. And yet, through my adult life I have explained it to many Protestants. All wave it away as, "That's just your opinion," or, "That's just his opinion." I'm Catholic and I've never convinced any Protestants of anything. I can't reason with them. Historical explanations mean nothing to them. Bible quotes, logic, all bounces off them - and they all can't agree with other Protestants. Each denomination believes it is the true church. I have always been frustrated living in the World Headquarters of Protestantism, the United States. Materially we've had it good, but intellectually we are a mess.
I have thought since my school days despite it being a "Catholic Grammar school That the term The "Reformation" was in fact a spelling mistake. There was an "R" where there should have been a "D". Now 72 years old I am totally convinced and there seem to be others who are coming round to the idea. P.S. I also think the term "The Enlightenment " is an Oxymoron.
I think this work ethic is more to do with industrialisation and in the UK giving public land to private owners (enclosure acts) so we have no choice but to work for other peoples financial gain just to survive. This entrapment is further extended by the inflated price of housing, a result of inequality and greed.
This is actually a very interesting and actual topic. Unfortunately you don't say much about the much more controversial period between 17th and early 20th century, which is the creation the global "free workers" market, which actually as been an enslavement process or the modernization of slavery. Particularly in the west this history of horror has totaly been forgotten. For more on this topic, you may find interesting the "Manifesto against Labour" written by the german Krisis-Group. Cheers.
As a Greek i was born Anarchist and i hate contracts job schedules 8 hours shifts and especially bosses .....i work about 5 -6 hours for 6 days and sometimes less and i dont care about a thing ...life is for living
So, what should we replace it with exactly? Working less would be fine indeed, some are experimenting with less hours/week but it needs more in the heads of the people - politicians, employers.. and maybe young people, who will become once one or the other.
I think that AI is going to show that work is a distraction from the abyss. This idea can be seen currently if you take a moment to see the countless and glaring inconsistencies and inefficienceies in everything. Work is not a calling, but work is something you can call out loudly when confronted with silence or questions
@sheridansherr8974 people who have nothing to do create a lot of problems to keep occupied. Ai offers the potential to make working for food not necessary.
It is an interesting question. Although, at first, I didn't like your logic here I came to the conclusion that it is not that simple and it all makes sense. Well, yes, the goal is eudaimonia. You are trying to get yourself in a position where you do what you want to do and get enough to survive. It is also quite boring if you are doing nothing, even if you have enough to survive. I think the way that you call "traditional" never existed. If you were a hunter, and you just got enough food for a few days what would you do? If you are tired, you probably will eat and sleep first. But after that, you will start preparing yourself for the next hunt. You will train yourself, you will make more arrows for your bow, etc. Only a slave would have a traditional work schedule. Because you will do the bare minimum that will not get you in trouble and then you will take all the time that you would be given for rest to rest. Most likely you will not have extra time for practicing hobbies. If you are a free man you always will have the protestant ethics :). And well, yes, if you have your own business you will think every time about what you can do to improve it. Even if it could be reading a book that helps you to understand something. You go to college because you don't want a boring job and you want a job that is a hobby to some degree. But even if you have enough money to never work again, you still want to do something and be good at it. Even if you are painting a picture or creating a piece of music for your own entertainment. You want it to be good and you work on it hard. Actually the better you are the harder you work, because you see what you can create.
Hey, good points! Maybe it's not as black or white, but I do think there is a difference in how we today (compared to in the past) have organized our society and lives around accumulating surpluses that go far beyond what we actually need (or can even ever use).
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Every time you post I’m blown away by the conciseness of your message and the quality of your production - KEEP THESE VIDEOS UP!!!
Thanks! :)
Thank god you didn’t end up was a typical lawyer:))
„There are people, and there are laywers“
Preach brother. I could not agree more on your observations. I'm in my mid 50's and I wish I had this kind of wisdom in my 20's. It's never too late before we're 10 feet under, so I have long since adapted a different way of life/work relations. If I don't like what I do - I simply walk away. To most people (including my very own coworkers) this attitude is terrifying to them, some see it as horrendeously arrogant, others sees is as frightening, and most can't afford it because of their lifestyle or families. In the end we all have made our choices.
To those who read this and think the same traditional everyday people (like most) do, I will do some explaining how I achieved this and what the results are. The results are better than one could imagine. I know for a fact that a lot of people over 40 are scared of the prospects of going against their bosses, of taking total control over their own lives. But imagine this - you're in your own video that is the book written about your life. It's not done yet, it's not even written yet, all the pages from the middle and up are blank pages. What they contain - is up to you.
So what I do - is that I simply think to myself, I can get fired from my job and I will easily get another, and I'll pick what I like. How? A lot of people over 40+ thinks that they're lucky to have ANY job at that age, basically they blame ageism. But I got news for you - ageism is a thing, yes, but it's got nothing to do with you because YOU are IN control of your life, or you give that control away to others. You need to enjoy the very existence of your life in order to do this, you start by writing down the things you want to do, then a masterplan how to achieve this, then a plan-b. You compromise on nothing, you take on only the jobs you want - don't wait for them to write back to you, call, contact them, and then go on checking up on them until you got the dream job of your life, most applicants don't do this, and most companies will be surprised on just how tenacious you are - and you'll most likely land the job.
It doesn't stop there, once you got the job - be ambitious about your dreams, listen a lot, be a problem solver, dare to break all rules, and move forward like an unstoppable truck - but be prepared to deliver on your promises. If you found a job you REALLY LIKE - then this won't even be an issue, because you're living the fun that is your life, to achieve things, to make a difference.
Also, some side-tip. Stop consuming the latest and greatest, buy a high-end phone that is 1-2 years old, they're still amazing, you still get way better stuff than a low-end phone from today, and you save about 2/3's of the cost + you don't take up a payment plan for it, go vimla, hallon or similar and be free. Also - purchase second-hand furniture, get rid of all silly subscriptions you don't need. Always bargain when you buy something. Be frugal without being frugal on your life. People will start wondering why you got so much, and money to spare all the time.
In-between jobs - you fix and repair stuff, on your house, your stuff, anything. Because that's money (and control) directly into your life. They can't tax that!
Once you figure out that you're actually in total control of your life - you won't look back.
Great points, thank you for sharing!
Having the psychological and practical ability to quit your job if you need to is extremely powerful. That ability can start shiifting various power balances around.
So not to shit on your points or something but how much do you need to worry about housing? The lifestyle you describe is possible for me but only when I have low cost housing available
Wise words my friend. Thanks for that.
100% agree!
Thank you for that. I recently have had a 180 change in my life and I feel lost but this comment helped. I appreciate you and you are truly a wonderful soul
I live in Brazil and although I haven't read it in any academic source it seems obvious that we are in a transition from the Catholic(I don't know if we are still the country with the largest absolute number of Catholics) to the Protestant work ethic. It is noticeable how people are more exhausted by working more, feeling embarrassed if they are not super productive and even children are developing psychiatric illnesses earlier. Currently, schools are already starting to pressure 8-year-old students to prepare for university selection tests. For example when I was a child in the 80s, it was normal for my parents to have time to interact and making good friends with neighbors (we moved around a lot because of my father's work) that lasted a lifetime. Today I don't have the time or energy for that to the point where I don't remember their faces. I could mention other changes, but in short, there is now an atmosphere of competition rather than collaboration, we are more anxious and society is less and less a source of support. It seems to me dangerous for a biologically extremely sociable species that work has become in practice the only concern.
You are so right. I'm tired of shaming for not being productive and efficient non stop. People are not created for work.
@sheridansherr8974 We are human before we are workers and this condition has demands that must be met. I wish you the best.
True freedom means having the choice to work or not. In the current "reality", few people have that choice.
True that!
Your mind controls and creates your reality. Most people have weak minds. 😮.
You can decide to not work but the realities of life will punish you for it. If we want to eat, live in a house etc. we are spending resources. There is no way around that. If you don't provide resources but continue to use them, it's obvious that someone else has provided them for you by working in your place. That's not right either.
@@6kle82 The problem with your reasoning is that it assumes that everyone needs to work in order to have those things, but that couldn't be further from the truth, as mechanization/automation has drastically changed the amount of work that we need to do in order to survive, or even thrive.
"If you don't provide resources but continue to use them, it's obvious that someone else has provided them for you by working in your place. That's not right either."
Why not? If they're awarded more resources than you for their trouble, why would that be a problem?
@@PistonAvatarGuy the extra working people are provided those extra resources from your part .
Tack, Andreas! Mer av detta! God jul på dig!
Merry late Christmas to you, too!
My friend, the protestant work ethic has never worked for the majority of people, it was always there to benefit those who wield the most control over society. Be it politicians or business owners or clerics. To be a good protestant is to be a good, willing slave.
Interesting take!
@Synochra_true
David Graeber discussed this in Bullshit Jobs as well!
"Protestant work ethics" is just an excuse for godless capitalists to exploit the good, obedient people. Pretty ironic that most (if not all) of CEOs are never a religious person themselves.
Are you familiar with the idea that we are not saved by works but by faith?. Thats a protestant idea. Working hard does not get you to heaven for protestants.
Every day when my alarm clock goes off at 5am and I get up to begin my routine, I remind myself, "only be enduring the tedium of a scheduled life can you alleviate the worry for you economy and status".
At 5? How lazy!
Doesnt sound healthy to me, maybe you should stop caring about those things.
this is what the wage slave must tell himself to keep going...and going and going....
You can't though. They just tell you so you get up at 5am. It's just modern slavery through manipulation, rather than direct physical force.
Even if they are sad, I will carry your words for life.
I'm 41 and have felt this way most of my adult life (maybe even as a teenager). It's been a lonely existence.
I appreciate what you're doing here, brother. Solidarity from the dystopian United States.
Perfect topic selection and storytelling.
I'm so glad I only have to work for 8 months a year to obtain what I want in life. Sometimes people try to guilt me into working more, and I usually give them consideration for all of five seconds before thinking of all the free time I would be missing out on. I quite literally do what you describe in this video, working until I don't have to anymore, then I quit for a time, usually to travel, then get started working all over again. I have a 150 day work season (July-November) and a 90 day work season (January-March), and both are really easy to get through because they are so short.
What do you do ?
@@bigpuppyshoes5033 I carry mail for USPS. They have no hiring standards. If there is a position open, you'll get hired if you can walk.
Within the mass of trash and foolishness in social media, I appreciate your work and the content that you publish. Thank you for caring and giving.
The entire spectrum of political parties keep saying "jobs" because they know they're speaking to people who are underemployed, underpaid, and have no safety net for healthcare, retirement, end of life care. The voters are lead to believe that "jobs" is somehow a salvation, in a era of escalating automation, and overseas bids. Instead of promising a safety net, and universal abundance in a post-work world; in a post- scarcity world.
Hear hear
Another factor that effects the modern day work ethic emerged from the Factory School Model, induced in 19th century. It was initially designed to produce a large scale of obedient factory workers to reach demand for the industrial revolution but has since become a foundation for current education systems.
Another great video and topic. As a buiness owner and my own boss I can really relate.
The protestant work etich is something that is schooled into our system by society from a childs age. But for What and for Who? The question is if We are the slaves?
I wish you a merry christmas
I knew exactly what my calling was when I was young. It was not to work my life away. I was forced into it.
One thing I don't understand in people is how some people sneer at people who don't want to work 10 hours a day plus 2 hours commuting per day.
Personally I'd probably work better with 4-6 hours per day and then rest.
4-6 h sounds more reasonable to me than 10 h!
Another very important and correct video. In this context, it is worth looking for videos on the topic “Human Brain and Default Network / DFN”. The DFN becomes active when we are doing nothing and we are only just learning that it is immensely important, also for our mental health, but not only.
As salaried worker I earned 1,6k€/month and worked 40h/week.
As self employed, I work about 60h/week and I gain about 600€/month.
But I could never go back to work as salaried worker. I earned more money and worked less hours, but those 40h each week were tedious and lifeless. Now, my 60h of "work" each week feel amazing, as I am doing what I really love. I had never felt happier, even if some months I struggle filling my fridge.
Indeed. Glad you found your true calling. For me it's agriculture. I'm a trained mathematician and now I just want to farm.
@@ZaraThustra-w2n That's great. Agriculture is one of the most important and vital human profession.
I dreamed of a perfect society when I was 10-12 and it was something similar to this. You would live in a comunity and basically get everything for free provided that you work for a few hours every day to make it possible to keep things as they are. You could work for more in order to get money and do other things but it would not be required. It is more complex but people said I did not want that and that it sounded like prisson. I later was in prisson for a few months and I swear that it was the best months in my life. I often say that if I didn't need to do crime to get to prisson I would like to live there for the rest of my life.
Really interesting comment!
May i ask why you went to prison?
@@tonyp.bahama9368 how much detail do you want? assault is the short answer.
It exists, It is called Comunism
You're aware prisons cost a lot of money right?
One of my ex pupils gave me a book, "How to be Lazy", and it delves into the history of how people used to live, and how we've been conned into working too much.
Scientists looked at hunter gatherer societies and discovered that they worked far less than most modern people do.
You've communicated this concept so well. I have debated with a friend about the purpose of work a few times and they are strong believers in the Protestant work ethic. I am going to send this to them and maybe it'll help them think outside of that norm a little more, because what I've said never gets through lol.
It’s horses for courses. Some people (actually most people) need work. They need something to put their effort and energy into. I find these people usually don’t have any other passions or interests that they can throw themselves into. So work is good for them.
What's crazy about that is that almost every problem modern society faces, like severe inequality in the distribution of wealth, ecological problems and climate change etc. comes down to one thing: the capitalistic mindset we get infused the moment we are born. It's all interconnected. We work too much, produce too much, consume too much, and therefore we need more resources than earth can reproduce.
I always found it mind boggling that it is about creating jobs for the sake of it. It's not about how much work has to be done. There is no upper limit. The more the better. And it's paradox because the alleged purpose of people working so much is so they can enjoy life. But for most of us this ends in working too much and living too little.
I think the most important thing is realizing that many of those needs we want to satisfy and that motivate us to work more are created by others so they themselves can sell more, therefore work, produce and earn more, just in order for them to satisfy their own needs that again were created by others through marketing and were then reproduced within society.
The imagination of what makes a good live needs to shift in order for real change to arise.
BTW I really enjoy your channel. Keep up the great work.
Hear hear
So what principle is guiding you now? What are you replacing the Protestant work ethic with? Great topic, would love to see more around work, work ethic and jobs.
im not who youre asking, but ... the traditional work ethic, i suppose? work as much as needed and no more. since thats what was talked about, thats what i kinda assumed anyway. but yeah, would love to see more abt implementing that :)
Fantastic work on content. Thanks!
I studied electrical engineering and saw a lot of companies from the inside over the years and the reason we don't automate most jobs (which we could with some effort) is that labor is too cheap and inequality too high. It might sound kinda weird saying labor is too cheap at first. For average people labor is extremely expensive, but for the big companies often owned by extremely rich individuals labor is actually way cheaper than automating even basic tasks, just because their wealth is so enormous compared to what average people have. So innovation is kinda stuck and only done if it basically comes for free or the competition has innovated.
So also here inequality is the main cause of the problem. It does go much deeper than this short explanation, but I guess youtube comments do have a character limit for a reason ; )
Hey, thanks! Do you have any books or articles you suggest I read if I want to understand your point better?
As someone whose day-to-day is basically completely oriented around automating stuff, I think this theory is somewhat correct but also not the entire picture. On the contrary, we simply have too many complex systems to automate -- nothing could change in the business I work for and I'd have 2~3 years of projects in my backlog for things to automate, and yet in reality as the business evolves and other parts of it get modernized and automated, even more things get put into the backlog and what was modern yesterday is tomorrow's technical debt. Pick any industry, and as a consumer one might take for granted that stuff "just works" - orders get fulfilled, shelves get stocked, services get activated, stuff gets shipped, appointments get kept, etc - but actually there are often thousands of background processes at play, often each with their own myriad of edge cases and sub-processes to handle the fallout of any of those steps going sideways. There is a huge amount of investment into automating all of this stuff, but the technical skillset needed to build automation is in short supply.
@@timothymiron3620 Imagine though wages were 4x as high, there would be a lot more pressure on businesses to find simpler processes. Plus if people had more time to reskill, because they were a lot richer, there could be a lot more people working on automation. Right now we have a large part of the workforce which cannot get into these jobs simply because it is not worth it to educate them, just because they come from poorer backgrounds (it is absolutely not efficient, that in germany for example most people at universities have academics as parents).
@@timothymiron3620 And I somewhat disagree that automation skillsets are in short supply, they are right were the market demand is. Otherwise big tech companies would never have done massive layoffs.
@@pericvlor I don't think big tech layoffs say much about the availability of automation skills in the overall economy. Big Tech is one place where there is _not_ a scarcity of this type of skillset. If anything, big tech layoffs are more related to misallocation / over concentration, than serving as any proof of abundance in the economy writ large.
I also don't think its realistic to assume that some large portion of the population would take up automation-related vocations if given the choice. It is already the case that the free market sees engineering type roles of all sorts command relatively higher compensation than many other aspects of the economy.
There's also the problem of much of the work needed requiring not only engineering skills but also deep and often boutique domain knowledge, and the nature of many types of projects being not conductive to being finished any faster by simply throwing more people at them. The book 'the mythical man month' comes to mind here.
Anyways, I think its a relatively nuanced problem.
I do agree with you that to some degree low wages disincentivize the type of step-change investment in automation that would otherwise be pursued, but I work at a company that has at least one single identifiable area of the business that costs over $2 billion/year to operate and has for the past 5+ years thrown similar amounts of money at automating as much of it as possible, but as mentioned the level of complexity that shows up when we try to have 'systems' interface with the messy 'real world' means that much of it remains (for now) needing humans in the loop at the fringes. Artificial Intelligence will unlock huge swaths of this backlog, and to that end the next 3~5 years are going to be crazy, but that's a separate rant.
Part of the problem is our expectations about what we "need" to live a comfortable life. Think about it: our ancestors didn't need to earn money to buy a TV or pay the electric bill. They only bought the absolute basics. If we were prepared to live at the same standard of living our ancestors did it would cost far less.
"pay the electric bill" I pay ~30 EUR per month for the electric bill
that is ~2h of work; that is much less time than I would need to collect wood, build fires, clean out the ash etc. to cook for a full month
only an example - but in that regards it is easier and less work to pay for the electric bill than to accept the living standard of our ancesters
Unfortunately, housing, which is one of our core basic needs, costs a significant percentage of our incomes now - sometimes over 50% of our incomes.
Rent is the biggest issue
They had community and stable housing though, and more free time, which are prohibitively expensive now. TV and similar lixuries are not the reason why we work extra as much as cheqp fixes tot hw.more expensivw things we have lost
I was struck by a chronic illness 5 years ago which rendered me unable to work. I am fortunate enough that my husband earns enough to support our family. We aren’t rich but perfectly comfortable. We have all we need. However, the level of guilt I have about not being able to work has is huge. I’m in my 50s and spend a lot of time beating myself up for acquiring something completely beyond my control. This seems to be reinforced by the question “what do you do?” when I meet someone new. I stumble for words trying to justify why I am unable to work. I inadvertently feed myself into the “deserving poor” narrative. I believe in the idea of working to gain what you need to survive and the rest of your time is your own. Applying it to myself however seems trickier.
What you invest in these productions is truly amazing and as a 60 yo life-long student of History, Politics a.o. I've yet to find one I don't agree with. Thx.
I'm all for working and fulfilling a personal calling. However, work isn't just what one does for money. Work is caring for yourself, your family, friends, and your community. Praying, listening, contemplating, studying, exercising, and being present all take energy and, therefore, are a form of work. Meaningful work. I love that you mentioned Erich Fromm. One of my favorite books is "To Have or to Be." We need to go from a having culture to a being culture.
Thanks
Köszönöm :)
this is such a great channel, when i saw the amount of views i was in disbelief. keep up the good work, hope the algorithm notices you man!
I hope so too! ;) thank you!
Got to confess.... I retired at 32, been playing with the concept for the last 38 years, it's still working (sic) for me
How
haha, I want to retire right now too, how did you retire so early?
Protestant here. I think there is a massive difference between the work ethic that Luther an Calvin espoused and the post-industrial scheduled tedium that we have in the modern secular world.
The protestant work ethic is right, in that we each have a calling, and we are placed in this world to serve God and other people. We are not here for ourselves. However "serving God and other people" is so much wider than just working for money. It is about taking responsibility for what you have been given, and using that to glorify God to the best of your ability. This includes non-paid material things, like taking care of your living space, and also non-material things like spending time with family and friends. Even enjoying the fruit of your labor is a very protestant thing to do.
Also, the idea of working hard is way older than Protestantism. In fact, I would argue that Protestantism was a fundamentalist movement, trying to get back to what Christianity was originally supposed to mean, and trying to be as close to the Bible as possible. The Bible is full of the importance of hard work. I mean look at the 4th commandment (Work for 6 days, rest for 1) and look at how much hard work is praised by the book of Proverbs.
It is a difference if you work on your own field /own vinyard or as a wage slave for someone else. We use/Bible uses the same word "work" but actually we should have 2 different words for that.
@sheridansherr8974 On the other hand, the New Testament encourages Christian slaves to work heartily. So even as a wage slave, you should work hard. However, this needs to also be seen in the larger context of the New Testament, where love is set as the driving factor for human relationships. So being a hard working wage slave is a way for a Christian worker to love their boss. However, the Christian worker needs to take care to not neglect his love towards his family and other people and things that God gave him.
The error many people also make is that their spending is going up when getting raises or better paying jobs. Why spend so much on things you dont need? Almost anything can be bought except time, Id rather just work less and spend more time with my family and hobbies. So I definitely did my best to get a decently payed job, but only to work as little as I need.
Once again impeccable video from you, dear sir! I worked my ass off the last week up to the point by back hurt and my left big toe went nearly numb.
Thank you! What do you do for work?
Warehouse work - and I guess that combined with a tight work ethic can be a bit.. Devastating, hehe!@@TheMarketExit
@@koyha5266 Do you work long shifts? What country? I also worked at a warehouse once, much of the time we had nothing to do so I spent most of my work days reading books and drinking tea to keep warm in the cold warehouse.
Your videos are a piece of art. The quality and the message are mind blowing. U deserve millions of subscribers fr
Thank you :)
Eudaimonia is having a good character and setting a good example.
It's not some sort of general self-accomplishment, that's part of the Protestant belief and it only deals with externals while eudaimonia is mainly about internals.
To work only just enough sounds great!
Great work; The practicality of these views can vary based on individual perspectives and cultural contexts. Weber’s emphasis on the Protestant work ethic has been associated with the rise of capitalism and economic success in certain regions. However, Aristotle’s focus on eudaimonia may resonate more with those who prioritize overall well being and virtue. We must ask ourselves, when contemplating either perspective what constitutes a sense of happiness? Is it practical? In the end, My personal perspective is we are luring to be productive, in turn, this provides us fulfillment. By being productive, we benefit someone else, even if a selfish motive lies between the action and duty. On the behalf of our production, we in turn provide utility to someone else; such as this lovely video. Therefore, utilitarianism may be at the root of the people you mentioned, but then again what do I know, just speculating. Thanks for the video and this thought, Merry Christmas! 🎁
Thanks for interesting thoughts! I agree with you that all of us want to feel useful. There is a risk that we in today's labour society, mainly value our "usefulness" in the labour market (what we do as employees or entrepreneurs) while the usefulness we have in our extended families, in our neighborhood, in our churches, in our sports organizations etc. aren't viewed as "valuable" in quite the same way. Merry Christmas my friend!
A DC area apartment is 50k today, on the higher end
For 2 bed bath
25k per person
5k for groceries and an unlimited bus pass yearly
30k
Just 100k in tqqq etf would have been enough capital gains for retirement over the last decade
Most Americans can get 100k within a year or two, between hard work and some gifts received from older relatives.
That we work beyond these 2 years or so, is obviously representative of cultural pressures ❤😢❤😢❤
Just as we were getting out of the tyranny of Religion (up to and including Thomas Paine), the tyranny of the work ethic was promoted.
The common factor is slavery.
Chattel slavery to wage slavery to debt slavery.
Religion is always about Power, with Money as its tool.
There's a difference in working as a sole operator in that the output and results are for your benefit (and clients if you are providing a service) and the work you put in comes with a potential direct benefit.
That's a great point!
I love the topic, i love the montage, keep up the good work!
Thanks, will do!
Of course we should work and keep our body's moving for the mind and body but this working a dead end job so someone else makes all the money is horseshit and I think that's one of the main reasons why people aren't working today
Spot on.
Working to live has been replaced by living to work because of the convergence of several considerations, and the resulting intersection between a few social and moral metrics.
Firstly, we attach our own self worth, and our perception of our worth in other people's minds, by how much we produce. However, individual work output and its actual worth is not measured the same way from one person to the next, nor the same way individually and collectively. Working only enough to meet our individual living needs is often deemed as selfish or parasitical because our own worth in society is measured by how much more we each contribute to it, in excess of our own personal needs, while conveniently white-washing over the fact that the very society we're part of, and seek acceptance from, also all too readily allows a small portion of it to unfairly gain a grossly disproportionate portion of the wealth that's generated by the resulting collective production surplus. The other factor that shapes our society, its welfare and its attitude towards work, is that the same wealthy minority is also benefiting from a disproportionately large amount of power and control it has over the rest of our society, to maintain its separation from the same hardships faced by the rest of us, as well as maintain its ability to exert that same large amount of power and control.
This particular aspect is also why our society doesn't allow individual work output to be measured more equitably, or for that matter, for the resulting wealth to be distributed more equitably.
I wish I could make enough in 2 hours of work to survive the rest of the week. I would retire right now if I could and just ponder my place in the universe.
All your videos are amazing and super dense in information that is explained in an understandable way. Keep going. Cant wait to see more.
best channel existing.
All these videos should also be published as podcasts
Great video. Been thinking about this a lot the past years. Thanks for the insights!
I've been living the Aristotle style for the last 3 years ever since I quit my job as a software engineer. I live with my parents now. They pay for everything. I have 100% free time. I do in fact spent most of my time contemplating my existence, the Universe, the spiritual dimension, the sublime, the abstract, the arts, the intellectual, etc.
Can your parents adopt me.
A great book to read is ‘ the good life’ by Helen and Scott nearing.. a good way of finding a balance between modern life and human creative tendencies
I started crying when I realized that without a job my life is meaningless to me.
Urgz, that’s hard mate, maybe get a hobby and rethink your existence *obi-wan meme*
Exercise, grow a garden, write a book, create a song, build a house, mow your lawn, volunteer, clean something, build something, invent something, throw a party, go learn a new skill, play chess, learn an instrument, learn to sing, make a tool, improve something better, redesign things better, teach kids, teach people, help old people, help someone, save abandoned pets, hike, start a business, sell something, sleep, rest, binge watch whatever you like, go gamble, listen to lectures, help a friend, be a friend, talk to your neighbor, talk to your parents and siblings, cook, hunt, breed livestock, lick a lollipop...
I have an infinite list of things for you to do.
@@lestrike2707 I might get a hobby and rethink my existence.
@@A.I.- Thanks :)
This "Protestant Work-ethic" unfortunately also entered schools decades ago, where teachers and caregivers give you a hard time, publicly shame you, psychologically blackmail or humiliate you, if you are happy with doing the bare minimum for a 6/10, because you're not interested in a subject. I worked so hard to please my surroundings (incl. family) and get high marks all the time, that it gave me a burn-out right at the start of my working life age 30 :S I was told over and over again "why are you doing nothing, don't you have work to do?!" (when I was resting, taking a break, drawing, taking a nap etc. even though my school results were fine). It made me feel like I every form of resting or doing something fun for myself is "LAZY!!!" and that I was a bad person for it, even though my results were more than ok, but they zeroed in on the act of "resting" like it was a huge trigger for them or something. I graduated long ago, but I don't have the idea that it has improved since in schools :S
This is exactly how I will henceforth refer to my persistent habit of excessive online videogame indulgence: "spiritual contemplation".
I like it!
Anthropologists estimate that hunter gatherer groups spend about 20hrs per person per week on survival activities.
With their family and biddies, work/hunting/whatever was a social activity
Very interesting indeed, thanks!
I think it’s worth considering that the market and logic of capital
Accumulation demands this by force of material conditions, and then reinforces it culturally.
I was very much resonating with this line of thinking about 10-15 years ago when I started my career. I immediately figured out that if I can save 50%+ of my income and do that consistently, I wouldn't have to work in 15 years. Now I'm here almost at that point, but I think I'll continue working. I just love building things, when I can decide what to build. The reason I felt like that 15 years ago when just starting out was because I wasn't truly enjoying working for others. Andres, you are working for yourself, but are you actually enjoying the work, and believe in the necessity of it? Maybe you actually enjoy the work of doing RUclips videos more than lawyering. If so, that doesn't really go against the "find your calling" advice. That said, if you don't have a calling, or think you'll never find one, then for sure you shouldn't make work your identity.
Interestingly, I see creatives working according to the older ethics. They tend to set up projects, some of them for income, others for their own desires
A key is Universal Basic Income and the “Left” had better get there before the “Right” does.
For UBI can be a great force for good or ill.
I really feel like people are no longer cultivated in appropriate ways, rather we are forced onto procrustean beds for companies to profit off of, but everything just winds up artificially inflating asset prices in a bubble because productivity is stalling for a lot of varied reasons. I think we perfected maximizing outputs but we’ve only started scratching the surface of figuring out how to manage inputs. The idea that if enough is good than more would be awesome seems to not work out the majority of the time.
Man how do you not have more subscribers, keep at it and I’m sure you will. Great video !
Thank you for your recommendations! I think you would love the book James Suzman wrote, "Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time".
Most of us are not classed as slaves but we are in a system of servitude.
Peoples money can be spent on pointless consumerism but most goes to basic living requirements of rent/morgage. Taxes, utility bills.
A car so that we can get to and from our place servitude to make money so we can pay pur bills and taxes with just enough food so we can stay alive to keep doing this cycle of siht.
To say that everyone has a calling is one thing -- saying that we all should work 40hr weeks and overconsume IS ruining our societies. What if my calling is to take care of street cats, or put on musicals with my neighbours? The problem is that we have automated away the need for everyone to work so much, but somewhere along the way it was decided that the only valuable worl - the only valid calling - was to be PRODUCTIVE, and productivity is measures in dollars. More dollars = more moral. Somehow.
The problem with exiting this work ethic is that this isn't a choice you can make as an individual - it would work only if we were to make the choice together as one society.
Otherwise you would soon be left behind in a society where we are all competing for the power to take whatever we want from each other.
I agree, partly. It's not impossible as an individual, but you have to be extremely privileged/lucky to find yourself in a position where you're able to. We need to change this collectively, few things are more consequential.
The question is: If you have enough to get out of the rat's wheel, why would you need to compete as well? How exactly would you be left behind?
@@samaelauneor depends. 100% independence from society doesn't exist. Depending on what "out" means to you, you may still need to pay rent, or food, or need medicine or doctors, or any other kind of help. You may be able to afford that now, but what about in 30 years? You may say that you just need to stock up on money before getting out, but then the whole premise falls: most people cannot get out, not because of societal pressure, but because they just don't have the means.
As a self-employed person I get to choose when I work and who I want to work for. However the consequence of refusing available work is less money. But if I'm prepared to accept that consequence then it's no problem.
Thank you, Andrés. Very interesting what you're doing. Amazing videos you make. Greetings from Canada. Have you ever thought that your videos could start a good ethics movement, even a revolution if they reach the right people at the right moment and place?
Make educational similar to Finland, where we teach children to think and find their passion. Universal Income for all the basics to have a life, then people can decide if they want to work for extra income. Which we all more or less wants to do, what we don't want to do, is work hard and barely surviving. ANd working hard can be long hours.
One of these days, the issue of "no one willing to work" will end and "no one can work". As soon as there will be a finite number of jobs, and customers to fuel those jobs. But not enough for everyone to work. Even for minimum wage.
Meanwhile still having that work ethic mindset that "if you're not working, then you deserve nothing."
We either need to restore jobs, or change how we do work and live.
Stellar quality!
And now, in the 21st century, whoever controls the algorithms and laws controls everything.
Brilliant!
You put great effort into these videos, chapeau.
I think the real loss, in "rich" countries if stopping being captive in this system, would be the loss of a health care system at an advanced age.
Imo the basic work ethic returns to us when we play games:
No one keeps grinding in a game once they have what they want.
I‘d be interested to know how a 40 hr work week affects health both mentally & physically
Asians (Japan, Korea and China) seem to have really embraced the Protestant work ethic, if not protestantism.
Jaw dropping again. You are phenomenol Andres.
Would you mind sharing which pack of SFX do you use in these masterpieces? Would love to get those.
Thanks brother and keep up the great work.
Thank you my friend!
I use Boombox
mtmograph.com/en-es/products/boombox
But TBH some of the best SFX sounds I use come from
freesound.org/
Thanks my friend. Your generosity always amazez me.
Please think about creating a course on how to edit these bangers.
I know many editors including me who are dying to learn from you.
Thought-provoking as ever. Funny how incomes are always just enough for the necessities, so you have to work full time. Now my mortgage is paid, I work three days a week.
Capitalism doesn't want the bottom 90% slacking so high land prices keep us time poor. When it wasn't like this (UK 1945-75), food prices and electricity were high, and wages related to the fact. The Smithsonian equilibrium has some value in this observation.
Andres is an Aristotle of his time
I beg to differ. Weber’s theory is considered outdated and biased today. More recent scholars have traced back the modern work ethic to the Benedictine “ora et labora” (“pray and work”). For example, Lombardy (where I live) and Bavaria are both deeply Catholic, but they both are two of the richest and most industrious regions in Europe (and, not coincidentally, they both were Benedictine hubs in the Middle Ages). If you’d like to explore a broader and deeper perspective, I suggest you read Joseph Heinrich’s “The Weirdest People in the World. How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous”.
Interesting
Imagine working two hours and earning as much as to be able to feed yourself for a whole week.
Yes please... Where do I sign up?
Well done.
I read years ago Max Weber's The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and I have become convinced it hit the bull's eye. And yet, through my adult life I have explained it to many Protestants. All wave it away as, "That's just your opinion," or,
"That's just his opinion." I'm Catholic and I've never convinced any Protestants of anything. I can't reason with them. Historical explanations mean nothing to them. Bible quotes, logic, all bounces off them - and they all can't agree with other Protestants. Each denomination believes it is the true church. I have always been frustrated living in the World Headquarters of Protestantism, the United States. Materially we've had it good, but intellectually we are a mess.
Then share your thoughts online. Who has the ears for this will listen. No need to get frustrated. Make a few videos.
You are good in this👍🏻👏
Thanks 🙏
I have thought since my school days despite it being a "Catholic Grammar school That the term The "Reformation" was in fact a spelling mistake. There was an "R" where there should have been a "D". Now 72 years old I am totally convinced and there seem to be others who are coming round to the idea.
P.S. I also think the term "The Enlightenment " is an Oxymoron.
great🙌
I think this work ethic is more to do with industrialisation and in the UK giving public land to private owners (enclosure acts) so we have no choice but to work for other peoples financial gain just to survive. This entrapment is further extended by the inflated price of housing, a result of inequality and greed.
This is actually a very interesting and actual topic. Unfortunately you don't say much about the much more controversial period between 17th and early 20th century, which is the creation the global "free workers" market, which actually as been an enslavement process or the modernization of slavery. Particularly in the west this history of horror has totaly been forgotten. For more on this topic, you may find interesting the "Manifesto against Labour" written by the german Krisis-Group.
Cheers.
As a Greek i was born Anarchist and i hate contracts job schedules 8 hours shifts and especially bosses .....i work about 5 -6 hours for 6 days and sometimes less and i dont care about a thing ...life is for living
you were born as an anarchist what do you mean by that? Do you mean ideologically anarchist or something else?
So, what should we replace it with exactly? Working less would be fine indeed, some are experimenting with less hours/week but it needs more in the heads of the people - politicians, employers.. and maybe young people, who will become once one or the other.
I think that AI is going to show that work is a distraction from the abyss.
This idea can be seen currently if you take a moment to see the countless and glaring inconsistencies and inefficienceies in everything.
Work is not a calling, but work is something you can call out loudly when confronted with silence or questions
I don't have the problem with abyss or the wastnes of the universe. I don't need or want to work. I have to, otherwise how to pay for food and rent?
@sheridansherr8974 people who have nothing to do create a lot of problems to keep occupied. Ai offers the potential to make working for food not necessary.
It is an interesting question. Although, at first, I didn't like your logic here I came to the conclusion that it is not that simple and it all makes sense. Well, yes, the goal is eudaimonia. You are trying to get yourself in a position where you do what you want to do and get enough to survive. It is also quite boring if you are doing nothing, even if you have enough to survive. I think the way that you call "traditional" never existed. If you were a hunter, and you just got enough food for a few days what would you do? If you are tired, you probably will eat and sleep first. But after that, you will start preparing yourself for the next hunt. You will train yourself, you will make more arrows for your bow, etc.
Only a slave would have a traditional work schedule. Because you will do the bare minimum that will not get you in trouble and then you will take all the time that you would be given for rest to rest. Most likely you will not have extra time for practicing hobbies.
If you are a free man you always will have the protestant ethics :). And well, yes, if you have your own business you will think every time about what you can do to improve it. Even if it could be reading a book that helps you to understand something.
You go to college because you don't want a boring job and you want a job that is a hobby to some degree. But even if you have enough money to never work again, you still want to do something and be good at it. Even if you are painting a picture or creating a piece of music for your own entertainment. You want it to be good and you work on it hard. Actually the better you are the harder you work, because you see what you can create.
Hey, good points! Maybe it's not as black or white, but I do think there is a difference in how we today
(compared to in the past) have organized our society and lives around accumulating surpluses that go far beyond what we actually need (or can even ever use).
@@TheMarketExit Agree!
Great video
Thanks!
Just found you, must say you have great videos that get me thinking and really cinematic love it cheers
Awesome, thank you! Stay tuned, more content coming
I somewhat enjoy what I do. But I'd enjoy it a lot more at 20 hours a week rather than 40.
The billions of slaves are humans.
Protestant "Ethics" is an oxymoron.
We should evolve from protestants to protesters! :)