Schop, even if a wonderful feast was put in front of you, you would still have to put your fork in it and actually use motion to get the food to your mouth (otherwise you would wither and starve.) Talk about oppression. We should all just kill ourselves to protest against this horrible reality.

Work sucks! That's why they have to pay people to do it.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau

Why is that?

Most men are wage slaves. Karl Marx

We are entirely dependent on working for a wage to gain the ability to live. The terms of labor are often highly unsatisfactory.

So... not only are we born without consent, but we are born into a world where we will be forced to work if we want to live.

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to gain.

:smirk:

Yep. The OP is just another stalking horse for antinatalism.

Non sequitur. Stop trying to score points, schop1. You're position is already toast. :meh:

True. I'm not deriving an ought from is, juat disagreeing with you that the human predicament of laboring to survive is a "political agenda".

But to put more people into the situation of [having to work] would be wrong until that problem is solved. — schopenhauer1

You see any other alternative?

So... not only are we born without consent, but we are born into a world where we will be forced to work if we want to live. — Bitter Crank

This is it in a nutshell. You get it.

I'm not deriving an ought from is, juat disagreeing with you that the human predicament of laboring to survive is a "political agenda". — 180 Proof

It is when creating more workers. Nothing is done in a vacuum. Clearly something is enacted by being born (workers working.. "flourshing" you say).

You see any other alternative? — dimosthenis9

Don't put more workers (people who have to work) into the world in the first place.

Thus,

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to gain. — Bitter Crank

The chains are the existential situation itself though.

Don't put more workers (people who have to work) into the world in the first place. — schopenhauer1

So we are going back to the Antinatalist thread. You seem to have an obsession with that issue, since I have noticed every thread you open has its root to antinatalism.I don't see the reason to open a new thread for same things.

Oh, you want to opt out? You see te irony right?

Oh, you want to opt out? You see te irony right? — schopenhauer1

Well no. Not really.

Well no. Not really. — dimosthenis9

My whole point is that work is an injustice because it is an inescapable [set of challenges] you are putting someone else in that can't be opted out without completely dire consequences. The very call to not participate in something anymore is the very right taken away by the DE FACTO situation of the game itself. That is to say, sure, you can opt out of work but the consequences will eventually be starvation, homelessness, hacking it in the wilderness and dying a slow death, MAYBE free riding (making it other people's problem), or outright suicide. Of course everyone cannot free ride otherwise even more dire consequences for the whole system of (used) workers. You don't have to worry about any of those dire consequences by not participating in this thread. However, a worker who decides they are done working cannot afford such luxury.

What's funny is the very fact that this is an obvious truth makes people think it is still okay to enact on others :rofl:. Just more political agenda.

You're forced by necessity to work, not by other people. Other people simply give you more opportunities to work.

You need food to live, and so some way or another must put in some work, whether that work be hunting animals and foraging for plants or employment in exchange for money to purchase food. Unless you can expect welfare and/or charity.

You're forced by necessity to work, not by other people. Other people simply give you more opportunities to work. — Michael

I already predicted this kind of response previously in this thread.

I think it's rather narrow-minded and self-servingly convenient to make the distinction between a forced situation at the hands of a person, and a forced situation by the hands of circumstances of the life game. — schopenhauer1

You need food to live, and so some way or another must put in some work, whether that work be hunting animals and foraging for plants or employment in exchange for money to purchase food. Unless you can expect welfare and/or charity. — Michael

Yes, that is repeating essentially what I said here:

The very call to not participate in something anymore is the very right taken away by the DE FACTO situation of the game itself. That is to say, sure, you can opt out of work but the consequences will eventually be starvation, homelessness, hacking it in the wilderness and dying a slow death, MAYBE free riding (making it other people's problem), or outright suicide. Of course everyone cannot free ride otherwise even more dire consequences for the whole system of (used) workers. You don't have to worry about any of those dire consequences by not participating in this thread. However, a worker who decides they are done working cannot afford such luxury. — schopenhauer1

The game of life itself (or call it whatever you want..set of challenges of life, etc. (pace 180's complaint of the term "game), DE FACTO creates the situation of an no opt out scenario without dire consequences. Your next move is what I predicted here:

What's funny is the very fact that this is an obvious truth makes people think it is still okay to enact on others :rofl:. Just more political agenda. — schopenhauer1

And hence, yeah it is a well known fact. Yet more injustice is enacted. More no-opt out situations of injustice are created, etc.

But then your next move will be about people being happy working, in which I predicted:

However entering the economic system itself was a forced game. Yes it has to be played to survive but the fact that we are forced to play it at all lest we die an agonizing slow death by starvation or scary prospect of outright suicide makes it a legitimate injustice to be philosophically and personally against. Any forced, inescapable game is a legitimate target for moral scrutiny and criticism. This is quite independent to post facto subjective evaluations of liking the game. Like the happy slave, the laborer has no other choice. Peace. — schopenhauer1

Don't worry about debating, I already have answered the predictable moves in this debate for you. That is, unless you want to surprise me with something interesting and not a typical answer that I have already addressed.

I mistakenly quoted the wrong thing, that first quote should read:

I think it's rather narrow-minded and self-servingly convenient to make the distinction between a forced situation at the hands of a person, and a forced situation by the hands of circumstances of the life game. — schopenhauer1

This was a reply to @Michael. I have updated the post to reflect that quote.

What's funny is the very fact that this is an obvious truth makes people think it is still okay to enact on others :rofl:. Just more political agenda — schopenhauer1

So again your point is antinatalism. You just choose different routes every time as to end up to the same conclusion.
I find forced work also wrong.At the level that humanity has reached basic things to survive should be provided to everyone. But that has nothing to do with antinatalism as you try to imply.
Plus I don't understand what political agenda has to do with that issue.

Things you work for, that you earn, are more valuable to you. Your dad was right about that.

Gifts are things you don't earn, and maybe that's why so many people reach for the word "gift" when talking about life: you could not possibly have earned it.

What makes a gift valuable to you, is the giver's estimation that you deserve it. There's an opening there --- you could have earned that estimation --- for receiving the gift to be "getting what you deserve" in that sense, but in many cases such a view strikes us as too transactional, ungrateful, too ego-centric. It's not your judgment, as the receiver, that is gratifying and imbues the gift with value, but theirs.

One effect a gift can have is to instill in the receiver a wish to deserve it, to be worthy of a gift they would not have thought they deserve. (This is another of @Banno's direction-of-fit cases.) And this is indeed the attitude many take toward life: it is a gift I could not have earned, but that I can make an effort to deserve. To do otherwise is to be ungrateful.

In which case the work incumbent on living is welcome, because it is how you can earn the gift, become deserving of life. (This might be a cousin of Keats's view, expressed in a famous letter, that we are not born with souls but acquire a soul through suffering, the world as a "vale of soul-making".) It is true that, to quote another poet, "some are born to endless night"; we understand if they do not feel life is a gift, but if that's not your life, you have even more reason to feel grateful for having the life you do have, through no action of yours.

There is first the gift of life itself, which you can work to be worthy of; but then there is luck, that the life you were given is not one "endless night". It is, as you have noted many times before, an odd thing that the people giving you the gift of life cannot know what sort of gift they are giving you. They too will count it as luck (or grace, if they lean that way) that the life they gave not turn out to be "endless night".

Can you deserve luck? Can you put in any amount of work to be worthy of being lucky? It does not seem so. But you can, and should, be grateful that you were lucky.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight. — T Clark

This sentiment encapsulates the Enlightenment: if poets and philosophers become professors and Nobel-laureats, then their vocation and avocation become one. Then poets don’t have to run about blind and poor, like Homer, singing their epics, and Socrates doesn’t have to hang around in the agora questioning whoever chances along while neglecting his family.

But it is all too neat and perfect. The truth is that your vocation, ie your job, takes you away from your avocation, ie, what you really love to do. You can take a job doing what you love to do, but the demands of the job will make you hate it—or you will pervert what you love in order that it conform to your job.

There is no free lunch. Some problems are simply unsolvable—but must be dealt with.

I've always though Russell had it right in his In Praise of Idleness.

You can take a job doing what you love to do, but the demands of the job will make you hate it—or you will pervert what you love in order that it conform to your job. — Leghorn

I find this to be extremely accurate to my experience. I think it's kind of a psychological quirk that's inside of many people, not all. It's very curious.

but the demands of the job will make you hate it—or you will pervert what you love in order that it conform to your job. — Leghorn

Amen...But don't worry an anecdote is coming to try to correct you displaying the "exception that proves the rule" of course :roll:

Plus I don't understand what political agenda has to do with that issue. — dimosthenis9

The political agenda is one of seeing enacted someone "dealing with" the challenges of life [game of life]. This game is inescapable, and one cannot opt out with dire consequences (degradation or death). A political agenda is one where one has a goal of seeing carried out a certain "way of life". Other people should be doing X, in other words because YOU want to see this happen.

a) This is a large part of life that cannot be ignored. To ignore that someone who is born will experience it, is to be extremely careless.

b) If the person is not careless, then they certainly are taking into account that the person born will work.

c) If a and b then, at the least, some consideration that the person will have to be born to deal with the challenges of life (work, game of life), will ensue if that person is born.

d) Ergo, someone wants to see enacted X from someone else and as a society (work). Thus

e) The injustice of forcing this no opt out, inescapable (except degradation and suicide) situation is an agenda that is enacted.

The want of the procreator to see the "way of life" carried out by others outweighs the injustice of putting that person in a no opt out situation. They are literally "forced" to play the game (and preferably try to get good at it and like it damn it!!) or die.

There is no free lunch. Some problems are simply unsolvable—but must be dealt with. — Leghorn

How?

Work is for the poor. Period.

The truth is that your vocation, ie your job, takes you away from your avocation, ie, what you really love to do. — Leghorn

Maybe that's true for you, but it's not true for everyone. It doesn't seem to have been true for Frost. But that's beyond the point. "Only when love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever really done, for heaven or the futures sakes," is a fact. It's not just an ideal, a fantasy, of a perfect life. It's the truth. Plain and simple.

As to the OP, being anti-work isn't wrong if all you mean is you gripe about work. Hearing people gripe is annoying and I"d rather see you figure a way to a better job so I don't have to hear it, but being a complainer by itself isn't immoral.

But if you mean you are capable of contributing to your own care and even perhaps contributing some amount to others, but choose to be more a burden than need be, yeah, you suck and are therefore immoral.

If you're the guy who waits for others to clean his dishes, and we all do have dirty dishes, you're not the roommate any of us want, especially if you try to justify your sloth philosophically.

Oh boy, I can predict the usual peanut gallery on this forum so well...

Insert trivialization of the issue as.. right... here:

As to the OP, being anti-work isn't wrong if all you mean is you gripe about work. — Hanover

Insert red herring of irrelevant point...right...here:

But if you mean you are capable of contributing to your own care and even perhaps contributing some amount to others, but choose to be more a burden than need be, yeah, you suck and are therefore immoral. — Hanover

End by inserting repartee...like.. right...here:

If you're the guy who waits for others to clean his dishes, and we all do have dirty dishes, you're not the roommate any of us want, especially if you try to justify your sloth philosophically. — Hanover

Anyways, no this isn't about me not cleaning the dishes or wanting to do "my fair share.." The whole point is that it is unjust to be put in a situation where you cannot opt out unless you die of depredation or suicide.. Hence I said (predicting your free rider snark):

My whole point is that work is an injustice because it is an inescapable [set of challenges] you are putting someone else in that can't be opted out without completely dire consequences. The very call to not participate in something anymore is the very right taken away by the DE FACTO situation of the game itself. That is to say, sure, you can opt out of work but the consequences will eventually be starvation, homelessness, hacking it in the wilderness and dying a slow death, MAYBE free riding (making it other people's problem), or outright suicide. Of course everyone cannot free ride otherwise even more dire consequences for the whole system of (used) workers. You don't have to worry about any of those dire consequences by not participating in this thread. However, a worker who decides they are done working cannot afford such luxury. — schopenhauer1

If you're the guy who waits for others to clean his dishes, and we all do have dirty dishes, you're not the roommate any of us want, especially if you try to justify your sloth philosophically. — Hanover

You're missing his point. His gripe is with those who made him, who made him exist (and more generally, with people making other people exist, and thus, suffer).

A hava nagila kind of person takes for granted that life is a blessing and worth living. But clearly, not everyone is like that. More importantly, whether a person will have a fundamentally positive outlook on life or not appears to be beyond a person's immediate control. It appears to be something that one must be born or raised with, but isn't something that can be learned later on in life.

justify your sloth philosophically.

Are you slothful by nature, but have managed to overcome your sloth philosophically?

Anyways, no this isn't about me not cleaning the dishes or wanting to do "my fair share.." The whole point is that it is unjust to be put in a situation where you cannot opt out unless you die of /degradation/ or suicide.. — schopenhauer1

As noted above, some people do believe, by default, that life is a blessing and worth living. Such people cannot relate to your concern.

You could perhaps specify your point and instead of making a wholesale indictment against humanity for procreating at all, focus on pointing at the fault of producing children while failing to instill in them the belief that life is a blessing and worth living.

I think this is the point that people fail at the most: Showing and teaching others that life is a blessing and worth living.

While many people will eagerly criticize anyone who is in any way pessimistic about life as such, they are quite unable (or just unwilling?) to persuade them otherwise. They'll even go so far as to claim that something is genetically or otherwise physiologically wrong with the pessmist and dismiss them.

Anyways, no this isn't about me not cleaning the dishes or wanting to do "my fair share.." The whole point is that it is unjust to be put in a situation where you cannot opt out unless you die of depredation or suicide.. Hence I said (predicting your free rider snark): — schopenhauer1

Your point is that life isn't fair?

More importantly, whether a person will have a fundamentally positive outlook on life or not appears to be beyond a person's immediate control. It appears to be something that one must be born or raised with, but isn't something that can be learned later on in life. — baker

So he must be he and I must be me? Why seek to move the immovable with this thread then?

Your point is that life isn't fair? — Hanover

To be anti-work is to acknowledge that you are in a no opt out game, which is indeed an injustice. Not playing along with the de facto forced situation...