Spurred from this post about The Office where I saw some back-and-forth about potential occupation-shaming(?), like why are people getting heated over being able to work?

I understand there's mental health, physical disability, learning disability, or just general lack of opportunity for some people or situations, but shouldn't everyone's drive be to contribute to society as a byproduct of participating in it?

Yeah, capitalism is fucked up, but at the end of the day, shouldn't everyone be motivated to contribute something back to earn their keep? Or can we just say "fuck it" and get mad at people who shame us for choosing not to submit to the 9 to 5?

  • OllieMendes [he/him,any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I think about this a lot. You'd probably want to cultivate a culture around wanting to work and contribute to society, but I don't think a healthy human being would just not work, I think one would have to be suffering from some kind of mental health problems to not want to do anything with their life. But I'm wondering if you don't risk creating a culture of people just not working if they know they don't have to at all, especially in a society were all your needs are met that's less conserned with material goods. But then again maybe that's me being stuck in a capitalist mindset about "human nature". It reminds me of a part in Blackshirts and the Reds by Michael Parenti where he's talking about in the DDR how the way they had set their industry up it kind of de-incentivized innovation and hard work because if they did a good job they'd just get bigger quotas without much more compensation.

    • OllieMendes [he/him,any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Like, in the USSR didn't they have a saying something like "He who doesn't work, shall not eat"? I think that made pragmatic sense for Russia at that point in history but I also have to imagine a lot of people who just had mental health problems no one cared to understand got fucked over.