Final Report Blog Post- Section 11 Ramey Keopf
My point of this post is not to inform, but to ask you a question.
I don’t know the answer for myself, but this is a question I ask
myself frequently. Does work define us? We go to school from
around the age 5 until 18 and all through it, the teachers say
you’ll need this in middle school, you’ll need this in high school,
you’ll need this in college. Now in college we are working towards
our major which is teaching us how to work our future job.
After college, we get a job and we work for money until we are too
old to do so anymore. From age 5, we are putting in the majority of
our hours awake working towards our future. So why do we work?
We work for money. We work to build a comfortable future for
ourselves and family. My question is this; is working for all these
hours just a distraction from the fact that this life will end? Are we just
trying to fill the silence of life with hours on hours of work? Is it a hobby
to take our minds off the fact that we are dying? Parents leave their
children in daycare while they go to work all day, then pick them up
completely exhausted. By the end of the day, the only time they have
spent with their kids is the car ride to and from daycare. I believe this
can be one of the biggest mistakes we are making today. I believe
because our time here is limited, we should make an effort to spend
as much time as possible with the people we love and doing things
we love. Work is defining who we are. When we first meet a person,
one of the first questions we ask is “What do you do for a living?”.
In college, a common question is “What is your major?”. I would say
it does define us, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe man
is created to work. I believe work can be a passion and a source of
happiness for some people. I think you can impact the world through
your work, but also I believe it’s important to get a good balance
between work and relaxation. If what you do for work is your passion,
then I believe we have achieved a major goal in life. If you can spend
your life doing what you love everyday, I believe you have succeeded.
I don’t know the answer for myself, but this is a question I ask
myself frequently. Does work define us? We go to school from
around the age 5 until 18 and all through it, the teachers say
you’ll need this in middle school, you’ll need this in high school,
you’ll need this in college. Now in college we are working towards
our major which is teaching us how to work our future job.
After college, we get a job and we work for money until we are too
old to do so anymore. From age 5, we are putting in the majority of
our hours awake working towards our future. So why do we work?
We work for money. We work to build a comfortable future for
ourselves and family. My question is this; is working for all these
hours just a distraction from the fact that this life will end? Are we just
trying to fill the silence of life with hours on hours of work? Is it a hobby
to take our minds off the fact that we are dying? Parents leave their
children in daycare while they go to work all day, then pick them up
completely exhausted. By the end of the day, the only time they have
spent with their kids is the car ride to and from daycare. I believe this
can be one of the biggest mistakes we are making today. I believe
because our time here is limited, we should make an effort to spend
as much time as possible with the people we love and doing things
we love. Work is defining who we are. When we first meet a person,
one of the first questions we ask is “What do you do for a living?”.
In college, a common question is “What is your major?”. I would say
it does define us, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe man
is created to work. I believe work can be a passion and a source of
happiness for some people. I think you can impact the world through
your work, but also I believe it’s important to get a good balance
between work and relaxation. If what you do for work is your passion,
then I believe we have achieved a major goal in life. If you can spend
your life doing what you love everyday, I believe you have succeeded.
Discussion Questions:
1) Do you think you're working as a distraction?
2) Do you see people who hate their job?
3) Do you think your work is a passion?
Section 11
ReplyDeleteDiscussion Question 2: Do you see people who hate their job?
I see people who hate their job often! As a manager at Forever 21, I see people come and go often. I see people who work for a week and they don't talk to anyone and they never smile. Those people usually quit. I can tell how much they hate their job. However, I also see people who come in with loud personalities and talk a lot. Those people usually stay. A personal experience of mine is when I worked at Pizza Hut when I was 16. I would wake up instantly dreading going to work at 4pm in the afternoon. I cried in the bathroom every hour. I didn't talk to anyone. I quit 4 months later.
As you said, you believe man is created to work. I believe that we have to work to live. Finding a job that you enjoy is very important. We always work so why not enjoy your job while you are at it. I personally love my job right now.
Section 13
ReplyDeleteDiscussion Question 3: Do you think your work is a passion?
I have ambivalent feelings on this question, but I think I can sum up the black and white of it rather quickly. I do feel that work can be a passion, but think that it is a rare occurrence. Many people in our time find that they are interested in something, but that it will not give them the standard of living that they desire. Essentially, they pursue something they like less to ensure the financial future they feel most comfortable with for their family. Others, however, have the option to pursue their dreams regardless of the financial aspect. This typically only happens with people that are smart enough to sacrifice things early to pursue a passion AND are gifted, or people who have family or spouse backing to ensure they do not become homeless in the process.
You don't have to be a Marxist utopian to think that a better world would be one in which many fewer hours of life would be devoted to work that was not intrinsically rewarding. Recall "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell. John Adams said he and his fellow American revolutionaries waged war so that their descendants eventually would be free to pursue the arts and culture. We should continue to dream of a time when nothing "defines" a person except their passions and ideals, and work toward that. If we're smart in how we deploy technology, we can someday hope to automate workaday drudgery (until the robots rebel, at least). In the meantime, we must not concede any more of our lives to uninspired work than is absolutely necessary. You know the old cliche: if you love what you do you'll never have to "work"... It's almost true.
ReplyDeleteI really like this post because this is drawing people to ask themselves a deeper question and to think deeper than they usually would about working and why we do it.
ReplyDeleteCameron Ghalami
ReplyDeleteSection 012
Final Report
Known for vastly popularizing Eastern philosophy among a Western audience; today I am going to talk about English philosopher: Alan Watts. Born in London 1915, Watts led a fulfilling and impactful life until 1973, touching millions with countless works of literature and compelling lectures. Watts grew up in a Christian family and actually studied to become a priest until he became fascinated with asian religious culture and later shifting his focus towards Buddhism. He began implementing buddishist practices into his psychotherapeutic work without saying that anyone had to be a die hard Buddhist, which allowed people to accept the good parts and refute the not-so-fun stuff. By being open to, and studying such different ideas, Watts was able to provide a sigh of relief to people in the “Age of Anxiety” and show them how to feel a sense of inner-connectedness, which at the time, was very needed!
“The “primary consciousness,” the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and perceives nothing more than whatis at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., “everyone will die”) that the future assumes a high degree of reality — so high that the present loses its value.
But the future is still not here, and cannot become a part of experienced reality until it is present. Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abstract and logical elements — inferences, guesses, deductions — it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a constantly retreating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead. This is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys what he has, and is forever seeking more and more. Happiness, then, will consist, not of solid and substantial realities, but of such abstract and superficial things as promises, hopes, and assurances.
https://youtu.be/mMRrCYPxD0I
Lastly, I wanted to share this short, motivational snippet of an Alan Watts lecture on enlightenment. We seem to get so preoccupied in work and materialism, but Watts challenges us to take a step back and reevaluate who and what you really are.
Thank you for reading, feel free to comment with some feedback or talk to me in person if you also found some of these veiw-points interesting!
2 Links:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/12/anderson-howie-schubert-section-13.html?showComment=1575654545912#c7387618885783870221
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/12/no-mistakes-only-happy-accidents.html#comment-form
You didn't do an author post for your final report? This is it?
DeleteJust to clarify: you (& Alan Watts) are saying that real happiness WOULD consist of solid and substantial realities, but that our busy and rushed "civilized" life seeks sham happiness (so-called) in "such abstract and superficial things as promises" etc.?
I agree, we do need to take a step back and re-evaluate who and what we are. In other words, the unexamined life etc.