Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Well said and perfectly worded. I couldn't agree more with the statement "for every step forward in material well-being we have taken one down into the pits of psychological hell." It was only after deleting social media, after removing frivolous distractions, and after ignoring FOMO culture that I truly began to feel a sense of peace and happiness :)
Ah funnily enough I have that on my shelf on a friend's recommendation but haven't yet got around to reading it. Just jumped many steps up the list thanks for that
Well said all of it ! We are gonna have to get away from the instrumentalized everything for the entire planet and all its creatures sake very soon and it's gonna be good. We will be so much happier with about 1/8th of the "economic activity" we engage in now. Our lives our just a giant senseless churn and burn operation at present.
Maybe it is like in Plato's allegory of the cave again. We as materialists, see on a swallow level that we are "happy". Yet it is only an illusion.
By freeing ourselves from the instrumentalisation of everything and going up the cave and into the sun, we might see the joy and deeper meaning of life.
But as you already mentioned, that is unimaginable for many today.
This has been something on my mind for quite some time. I remember reading a history of Poland that mentioned peasants there worked around 50 days of a year for their lord at one stage, and the black death missed Poland completely. We're not robots and I think we're being over worked to gain material luxuries that don't satisfy us deeply and at the same time our communities have been destroyed and people are isolated individuals without much support or meaning in their lives. It's a hard puzzle to solve. Have you heard of Leisure the basis of culture by Josef pieper? It's about this same topic.
I really enjoyed this post and was hoping it would never end!
On a related notes, I have been trying a personal experiment of not using Amazon this year as a way to practice temperance. I choose to do this because I realized having ability to buy anything and get it in 2 days has not made my life any better from a inner subjective being.
I think you make a lot of good points in this piece and I hope you choose to continue to opine on this topic.
Thank you for this clear analysis. I remember reading something that stated our modern working hours were not much different to those of previous centuries but, as usual, these statements are far too broad to be meaningful so it is really helpful to have this more detailed perspective.
I have often thought that our materialism was largely owing to the development of the capitalist economy in the 20th C which thrives on the production of 'things' and persuading us that we need them. This process has a built in accelerator as new 'things' are supplanted by newer 'things' with ever more rapidity and it is already apparent that much stock is abandoned before it can be sold as what they call progress renders it less desirable if not obsolete (in the manufacturer's terms). While I cannot deny that a possible outcome is collapse with all the attendant chaos and hoarding I firmly believe that within our own sphere of influence we should do everything possible to walk with others towards a more balanced sense sand practice of both the intrinsic and the instrumental.
Two choices to either live life waiting for something is wrong here or life is perfect, and I only have to change my thinking to see it. We began in life as perfect and have been taught life sucks. It doesn't unless you say so.
Great question Peter. I guess I have in mind the Metamodern movement and the emergence of a new sensibility that might be able to transcend and include what we've learned so far. The monolithic modernity has been sensitised by the Postmodern sensibility to the margins the lower edges and the outsiders. This is very much an ongoing digestive process.
I also see the emergence of fields like cognitive science and the concern for the mental health crisis and the meaning crisis. I think of these as bugs rather than features — that is to say I don't think there is a nefarious plot to keep us in a state of scarcity I just think this is the way things have emerged. And so as the fraying edges of capitalistic modernity have emerged I have some hope that these will be taken on as problems to solve and real solutions might emerge. It has happened in the past (decrease in hours worked thanks to the leftist movements and Keynesian economics of the 19th and 20th centuries). And so I hope the same could happen again. I don't know if I'd bet on it but I can see something possible in it
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Well said and perfectly worded. I couldn't agree more with the statement "for every step forward in material well-being we have taken one down into the pits of psychological hell." It was only after deleting social media, after removing frivolous distractions, and after ignoring FOMO culture that I truly began to feel a sense of peace and happiness :)
For further reading, check out “How to be idle: A loafers manifesto” by Tom Hodgkinson. He’s written a lot about the subject!
Great article!
Ah funnily enough I have that on my shelf on a friend's recommendation but haven't yet got around to reading it. Just jumped many steps up the list thanks for that
Well said all of it ! We are gonna have to get away from the instrumentalized everything for the entire planet and all its creatures sake very soon and it's gonna be good. We will be so much happier with about 1/8th of the "economic activity" we engage in now. Our lives our just a giant senseless churn and burn operation at present.
We are indeed in a psychological hell.
Maybe it is like in Plato's allegory of the cave again. We as materialists, see on a swallow level that we are "happy". Yet it is only an illusion.
By freeing ourselves from the instrumentalisation of everything and going up the cave and into the sun, we might see the joy and deeper meaning of life.
But as you already mentioned, that is unimaginable for many today.
This has been something on my mind for quite some time. I remember reading a history of Poland that mentioned peasants there worked around 50 days of a year for their lord at one stage, and the black death missed Poland completely. We're not robots and I think we're being over worked to gain material luxuries that don't satisfy us deeply and at the same time our communities have been destroyed and people are isolated individuals without much support or meaning in their lives. It's a hard puzzle to solve. Have you heard of Leisure the basis of culture by Josef pieper? It's about this same topic.
I really enjoyed this post and was hoping it would never end!
On a related notes, I have been trying a personal experiment of not using Amazon this year as a way to practice temperance. I choose to do this because I realized having ability to buy anything and get it in 2 days has not made my life any better from a inner subjective being.
I think you make a lot of good points in this piece and I hope you choose to continue to opine on this topic.
Thank you for this clear analysis. I remember reading something that stated our modern working hours were not much different to those of previous centuries but, as usual, these statements are far too broad to be meaningful so it is really helpful to have this more detailed perspective.
I have often thought that our materialism was largely owing to the development of the capitalist economy in the 20th C which thrives on the production of 'things' and persuading us that we need them. This process has a built in accelerator as new 'things' are supplanted by newer 'things' with ever more rapidity and it is already apparent that much stock is abandoned before it can be sold as what they call progress renders it less desirable if not obsolete (in the manufacturer's terms). While I cannot deny that a possible outcome is collapse with all the attendant chaos and hoarding I firmly believe that within our own sphere of influence we should do everything possible to walk with others towards a more balanced sense sand practice of both the intrinsic and the instrumental.
Two choices to either live life waiting for something is wrong here or life is perfect, and I only have to change my thinking to see it. We began in life as perfect and have been taught life sucks. It doesn't unless you say so.
The conclusion brings in an optimism that isn't discussed in the main part. Can you give some depth to the reasons for your optimism?
Great question Peter. I guess I have in mind the Metamodern movement and the emergence of a new sensibility that might be able to transcend and include what we've learned so far. The monolithic modernity has been sensitised by the Postmodern sensibility to the margins the lower edges and the outsiders. This is very much an ongoing digestive process.
I also see the emergence of fields like cognitive science and the concern for the mental health crisis and the meaning crisis. I think of these as bugs rather than features — that is to say I don't think there is a nefarious plot to keep us in a state of scarcity I just think this is the way things have emerged. And so as the fraying edges of capitalistic modernity have emerged I have some hope that these will be taken on as problems to solve and real solutions might emerge. It has happened in the past (decrease in hours worked thanks to the leftist movements and Keynesian economics of the 19th and 20th centuries). And so I hope the same could happen again. I don't know if I'd bet on it but I can see something possible in it