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Comment by ravitation | Hacker News Reader

> Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life.

Would your abilities feel stretched by being a cashier? How about a janitor? Waiter?

These jobs are what "work" actually is for most people. I think most people could go without doing those things.

Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work (and for most people those things and "work" are hardly related at all). Therefore, saying we (as humans) "need" work is generally incorrect (at least for the reasons you stated) since most people don't even get what you say we "need" from work anyway.

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I just went into the hardware store last week. The cashier at the store was talking to someone he knew. He actually took the job there because he had retired, and had nothing to do. So he works there for 20/hrs a week. So for him, he needed work.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all... but I do that kind of interesting. I like to think that if I had unlimited free time, there's no way I'd ever be bored, I have so many things that I love doing... No way I'd give up 20 hours of my week just to go work as a cashier when I don't need to.

That said... things might change when I get older.

I mean... I think there's a couple things here...

First, as I said in my comment, the man in your example is likely not working in order to "stretch [his] abilities" as was the context of my comment...

Second, I'm not sure that doing something out of boredom is equivalent to a "need," regardless of how one might describe it.

Third, it seems to me that many people's only source of purpose is work (partially because they must work exhaustively to survive), so, when the need or ability to work is removed, they have nothing else; the idea that "work" is either a necessity or a noble pursuit in of itself only serves to reinforce this outlook and the resulting behavior (i.e. deriving all purpose from work).

I don't want to push too hard, but it should be somewhat self-evident who might benefit from a culture that perpetuates a myth of work as necessity.

> he had retired, and had nothing to do.

Or: having a public-facing job is something to do that also served as a social outlet for him (especially if it's related to his hobbies) that was free (how many social activities (the kind where you meet people, not the kind where you spend time with folks you already know) are free these days?).

Every time I go to a nursery I think about how much fun it would be to "work" there, if I didn't have to consider the pay, because I love plants and talking about plants and making chit-chat with strangers.

> Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work

Just different definitions of "work". I think the sense meant by those saying people "need work" is "meaningful toil". Something that requires focused effort, and done for some tangible purpose.

So cashier, janitor, waiter would fit that broad definition, even though they are not a focus of intellectual life. But there can be other types of work that also fulfill intellectual needs, that might be more fulfilling for many (most? all?) people.

> Just different definitions of "work".

I'm going to disagree on this simplification. There is a common definition of work, e.g. the definition used in the context of work/life balance (i.e. the context of the original article), that is widely used; redefining it to be as broad as you've described is detrimental to the conversation.

> Something that requires focused effort, and done for some tangible purpose.

Essentially everything can be made to fit this definition, making it, I think, not very useful.

>I think the sense meant by those saying people "need work" is "meaningful toil".

The author literally said "We need food. We need shelter." right after saying we need work.

I meaningfully toiled over a 3D print of a twisted hexagonal mesh over a tube around a 5,4 torus knot yesterday. Guess how much it helped me pay rent.

Thank you for laying this out. Exploring these are the ideas I had in mind when exploring the work-survival substitution. If I may also point out, the conceptualization of work is self-reinforcing too. Jobs are defined from the assumption of the work-fact. This in turn transforms peoples' subjective experience of work into definitions of work as an objective reality.

>Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work

Your reply is entirely reasonable but it seems the gp already covered what you wrote and anticipated it in his disclaimer: ">It needn’t be employment,[...]"

He just happened to use the imprecise label "work" -- which is so tainted and overloaded that one can't re-use that word to also describe "non-employment intellectual activity" because it inadvertently tricks people into talking past each other.

(E.g. Notice that you used "work" as synonym for "employment" but the gp did not.)

You're right. This is clear had I actually noted that disclaimer, and was simply an oversight on my part.

With that in mind, I'll just agree with your analysis, redefining "work" to include "non-employment" is detrimental to the conversation. When people discuss work/life balance (i.e. in the original article), they are (almost universally) not talking about balancing intellectually stimulating hobbies and the rest of life. We are, from the onset, talking about jobs, i.e. employment.

Additionally, I think my original comment is still useful when discussing the more common definition of work.

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