Simply the reward of future money can't be enough either. You have to buy into the belief that money is the reason you do something you normally would not want to. — schopenhauer1
Did you try asking people why they worked before asking this question? — Sir2u
A bird cannot reflect on how much he is tired of gathering seeds and berries. — schopenhauer1
A human can, but still trudges on. — schopenhauer1
While I cannot prove this to be false, there is not much information about it being true either. The truth is we don't know whether they are capable of reflecting upon their own lives. Have you seen the black birds that figure out how to solve problems so that they can get food. They are very inventive and appear to contemplate problems and use trial and error to solve them. Is it possible that they prefer to solve problems over just finding food out of boredom or dissatisfaction with their usual job? — Sir2u
So they tell themselves that things could be worse and that they are happy for what they have. — Sir2u
But from another point of view, just how many truly satisfying jobs are there? Would it be even possible for everyone to be able to do the job that made them happiest? — Sir2u
We don't need to manipulate or trick ourselves into thinking of it as something other than what it is, — Joshs
One minute we can decide that we cant do this job because it is so distasteful. The next minute we can change our mind because maybe its not so bad. The next minute we can think that yes it is so bad but we need the money so that makes it tolerable. These arent just mental tricks. They go directly to the core of the changing meaning of the badness or goodness of the job. Badness or goodness is never one simple thing, it is relative to a whole host of contextual considerations. We're not lying to or tricking ourselves when reflectiion reveals to us new considerations. — Joshs
Are people giving up their authenticity by buying into a narrative that overrides their dislike for the work at hand? — schopenhauer1
How many do you think are actually aware that they are doing it? — Sir2u
So immersion may be the key. Either immersion in one's own substantive imagination, immersion in the job, or even immersion in a zen-like state of nothingness where one performs in an altered state.
Some of these are habits, some are deceptions, but the most effective are also the most difficult, involving real use of creativity to transport oneself either more deeply into the work or deeply into another realm while working at the same time(kind of like how one can drive while not remembering driving.because one is immersed in an interesting podcast). Notice how the first day of work after a vacation often doesnt seem as bad because your head is still in that other place. What a person does when they're not working can have an effect on how the job feels to them, how trapped they feel they are, how much hope they have for escape from it, where else they can allow their mind to wander to. IF all one has is the one job that is distasteful to them ,and they have no hobbies, interests, social life outside of that work, it will be particularly hellish. IF , on the other hand, they are take classes after or before work, or involved in a challenging, growth promoting and rewarding activity of some kind, this will almost certainly make its way into their thinking during work and make that work seem less onerous.
20 minutes ago — Joshs
Can other animals deliberately use mental strategies? Yes, in a rudimentary way. For instance, dogs can display compulsive or ritualized behaviour that serves the function of mental soothing, even though it doesnt represent a pragmatic action directed at an object in the world. A trained dog will wait patiently for its master even though it is becoming anxious, and may use techniques such as whining to sooth itself and in order to 'do a distasteful job'. does it know its choices? Do we? What does it mean for us to know our choices and is this something we assess all at once, in advance, as surveyors of the realm? Or do we find ourselves discovering what constitutes our choices as our circumstances unfold for us, just as other mammals do? — Joshs
I think a lot of people at work just focus on the future, like what they are going to do after work, at the week end, on their future holidays......they might enjoy thinking what they would do if they won the lottery as well....then also they might focus on what they do enjoy about their work situation, like interacting with other people; looking forward to their breaks...little perks like going for a cigarette.
I have found that the feeling of coming off a shift can be a real pleasure in itself...a sudden feeling of freedom. — wax
one reason that some animals might not reflect on their situations is that they just feel compelled to fulfil certain actions. — wax
When they see and hear their chicks, they may feel compelled to look after them, they fear something bad might happen to them, like being killed by predators, or dying from lack of food.. They might not have the ability to wonder why they feel compelled like this....a bird probably isn't aware of the theory of evolution, and so not realise how it came to be compelled to do certain things.
When it comes to looking just after itself, a bird might not be able to imagine another way of life...in the way humans can....I suppose in a lot of cases there isn't much to reflect on. — wax
Even without the use of formal language , animals do symbolize their experieince in that they interpret their world to themselves. This is how dolphins and certain primates can achieve all the steps you just mentioned in a rudimentary way without linguistic conceptualization. — Joshs
In sum, I see Sartre's animal-human dichotomy as between automatic , instinctive causal mechanism on the one hand and human capacity for self-knowing on the other(sounds very Cartesian to me).
Contemporary cognitive science argues that behavior of intelligent animals is characterized primarily by intentionally directed, affectively organized cognition just as is human thought. The strength of human thinking lies not in the pure awareness of a self, but on the contrary, in the variability of the ways, moment to moment, humans adaptively change this contingent self. Both humans and and other animals are basically evolutionarily adaptive self-transformation machines. We simply outperfom other creatures in our speed of self-modification. But we can hardly give ourselves credit for this without first recognizing that this 'self' that we want to champion doesnt survive the modifications of thinking intact. Self is more of a temporary byproduct than commander. — Joshs
A plumber might say, ‘I don’t like the smell I experience when I’m hosing out the inside of a septic tank.’ Who would? But he might like many of the other aspects of his job - whether it’s being able to maintain clean equipment, providing a quality service to customers, a sense of pride in having a unique skill set that contributes to the community and puts food on the table. — Possibility
It’s the weight he personally places on each of these ‘feelings’ towards his job and surrounding that particular task that may outweigh what he dislikes about it. He’s not fooling himself - he’s made choices in life (based on sense, feeling and reasoning) that have led him here, and while he’s aware of choices that may lead him away from a specific task he doesn’t like, he’s not willing to give up what he does like (and if you’re wondering where this example came from, watch the Australian mockumentary film ‘Kenny’ with Shane Jacobson). — Possibility
I don’t think it’s ever as simple as bypassing a dislike by ‘fooling ourselves’ into doing it anyway. I think we make decisions in life conscious of the complex interconnectedness of those decisions with other aspects of our life. What we articulate as our reasoning often barely scratches the surface of what went on in our minds to reach that point. And a large proportion of it was based not on reasoning but on ‘feeling’, which doesn’t always translate into words. — Possibility
Perhaps some people don't self-reflect that much. I guess this is for the people who know they don't like doing the work they are doing. I refuse to believe some people don't reflect on whether they like the work they are doing. They may not communicate it perhaps. Or they are buying into a narrative, deception, or habit of mind. But that is my exact premise. — schopenhauer1
Values are not something we 'take on' as a purely free choice, and are inseparable from understanding. Value comes from evaluation which implies interpretation which is fundamental to any cognizing organism. — Joshs
In fact your use of the word 'value' comes from Nietzsche's notion of value system, which he recognized as common to all organisms. — Joshs
Every account of the world organizes itself as a value system. Since all animals cognize, they all have values just as we do, and ambivalence, wavering , anxiety are shown by intelligent animals in situations of value conflicts. A dog's ambivalence and anxiety can be triggered by such conflicts due to the particulars of his socialization within the culture of his pack(human or dog). — Joshs
Maybe what youre trying to get at by your claim that values are 'fooling ourselves' is something like the idea of cognitive dissonance or Freudian repression. These are forms of self-deception in that one part of the mind knows something that it hides from the other for adaptive reasons. — Joshs
Of course not all psychologists accept the model of repression, instead arguing that we dont have to assume self-decepetion in order to explain how we slog through something unpleasant. One doesn't misrepresent their values to themselves, they explicitly construe themselves as the kind of person who is tolerating unplesantness because the world is the kind of place where unpleasant situation arise often, and more importantly, I am the kind of person who is willing to tolerate the unpleasant.. Built into this valuative framework may be a kind of admittance of failure, disappointment and frustration, but that is not a self-deception, it is a kind of question mark. — Joshs
We construct value systems all the time which express our puzzlement at why and how we ended up in such apparently unresolvable situations when according to our previous self-valuation we thought of ourselves as the kind of person who would not tolerate such things. Our finding ourselves persevering through distasteful experience can then be thought of as a kind of crisis in our self-construal, a recognition that the template by which we measured ourselves , and our role with respect to others(I'm the kind of person who does not settle, who has too much pride and dignity,etc), has proved to be unworkable. If we have no way of 'repairing' , that is, of reconstruing our sense of ourselves through a more robust value system that explains to ourselves our failure to live up to our expectations, then we will slog though our miserable job feeling like a confused failure. — Joshs
There is no internal dishonesty involved in such constructions of our world. The fact that they are accurate representations of the way we are attempting to understand our plight is evidenced by the possibility that we can , through further reflection and reconstrual, come to some resolution of our confusion, ambivalence and frustration. Not by pretending we suddenly like what we;re doing, but by, for example, coming to understand why we compromised our initial values, why we failed to uphold those values. Its also important to break down precisely what it is in a job that produces the sensation of unpleasantness. It may not be the job 'as a whole' but certain of parts of it, Do we then have to fool ourselves to get through those moments? How does an animal gnaw its paw off to escape from a trap? — Joshs
How does it slog through this unpleasantness? By pretending gnawing its appendage off doesnt hurt so much? Obviously not. The animal's perception shifts back and forth between the pain of extricating itself and the pain of and fear of being trapped. At one moment one perception wins out and the animal stops trying to free itself,and the next moment the fear overwhelms the pain and it recommences its attempt to escape. This oscillation between anticipation of pain and reward explains many human behaviors in situations of ambivalence and unpleasantness, such as addiction. No account of self-deception is needed to explain perseverance through the unpleasant via oscillation between perception of reward and punishment, only a long memory. IF we remain at a lousy job, we know which perception has won out, but not likely completely, as I mentioned above. Reward may have just barely overcome punishment to allow for our perseverance, but often the price we pay is a crisis of personal identity that sometimes leads to explosive violence, which is ever more common these days. — Joshs
I think most people have some part of their job that don't like, so they focus on the benefits they get from it. It is not that they are buying into a narrative or performing some sort of self deception but simple that they realize that there is little most of them can do about it so they don't sweat it.
I have had many jobs starting at 17 working as a garbageman for the local council. It paid my educational expenses and because we did the job well we were respected and got lots of tips. I had nice clothes and cash to go out at weekends and party. But I really was not happy about the job, it was hard and could be messy. I left after I had a non-work related accident and sourly missed the money in my next job, sitting on a mowing machine cut miles of grass all day did not get you tips. — Sir2u
We don't do the business of surviving like other animals might. — schopenhauer1
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