Comment by Draiken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Draiken | Hacker News Reader

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I often get surprised how deep we got hooked into the system. We tell ourselves unless we're doing something (no matter how useless that is) we're worthless. Everything becomes a different kind of procrastination.

We feel productive creating yet another CRUD app, idle game or advertisement optimization tool that ultimately does nothing for anyone but the capitalists on the top of the chain. Only to feel bad about doing anything that doesn't generate profit to someone.

It saddens me that I don't see a way out of this hole. The system has won and everyone either follows it willingly or is forced to by society.

If only I could be like the OP who seems to live happily in this productivity cycle without gazing into the abyss that is the meaninglessness of it all.

I'm very glad you have raised this point. This concept of productivity is quite new. Unfortunately, it has not remained flexible enough to offer the same kind of meaning today, that it did for workers at it's inception.

Fortunately, many engineers, among others in technology-centric roles, have co-opted this definition to mean their intellectual output.

Depending on whether or not an individual's intellectual currency is manifested via productive output, this hyper-productivity needn't be unhealthy in itself.

It is when this desire overtakes those who don't derive value from the "hobby" of productivity that it becomes dangerous.

There are places where you can find well-paid work that isn’t for ‘capitalists at the top of the chain’. Well, at least not directly. Do you think you’d find the public sector equally meaningless?

Unfortunately I live in a corrupt country where public work would possibly be even more harmful than private work.

The incredible amount of wasted potential from human beings spent in the endless race for profits makes me sick.

The irony of it all is that we're always trying to find ways to find meaning in life and ended up caught up in the most useless quests possible...

To answer my own question, I’m not sure I find a great deal of meaning in most of my work, but I like doing the work and I like the people I work with, and I don’t resent the people I work for, because it’s ultimately the British public.

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