you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]radicalcentristNational Centrism 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

While these all sound pleasant, you'll note that none are particularly useful to broader society. The question that must be answered is how to get average people (a moving target) to contribute something that moves civilization forward, even if any one individual's contribution is infinitesimal. I will be the first to say that many jobs today do not really fit that description, and that the people in them would be happier (temporarily, at least) if their lives were filled by leisure. Technological progress requires that at least some people must work. Yes, there are people who will do advanced things as leisure, but they depend on a supply chain that eventually ends with manual labor. The scientist needs lab equipment, which needs microchips, which need rare-earth metals, which need to be extracted from the ground. I would want the miners to see their work as having meaning in the context of the scientist's work.

In an automated society, robots are new the labor class. Digging for minerals, or assembling new computers can all be done more efficiently with machines that never require sleep.

In fact, to bring humans contributions into the equation actually looks utterly pointless. Humans grow old and eventually die. A robot can theoretically live forever, or be repaired. Nobody alive today can compete against something that is literally immortal.

It's a mistake to blame this on a lack of spare time. How much spare time would a "career-oriented" woman need to have before she decides to stop being "career-oriented" and have a family? Unfortunately, the situation is one of chicken-and-egg because women and men in the same labor force puts downward pressure on wages, making it harder for one person to support another plus kids at the accustomed standard of living. Our movement's goal should be to get white people to reframe their priorities so that "spare time" is not a consideration when it comes to having children. You don't look for time to do it - you make time for it.

If you stop working in a Capitalist society, someone else with a bigger motivational drive will surpass you. So spare time cannot exist unless you're willing to sacrifice personal wealth for raising kids.

Does it really? I think you conflate "temporary pleasure" with "meaningfulness". I also think you see "being a cog" and "having a meaningful life" as mutually exclusive which they are not.

Being a cog only exists to enrich the 1%. The same 1% who are more than happy to open the borders and replace their workers with third world immigrants who will never have dreams that go beyond the assembly line floor.

So yeah, even being a gamer and trying to beat the high score is still more meaningful than making generic shoes #171586 that every factory in the world is also producing and there's no shortage of footwear to be found.