r/antiwork • u/FearlessJuan • 1d ago
Work does not necessarily give purpose
https://youtu.be/lnLDjXy2kRA?si=yXUDspbhFb77MBNEI was watching an interview by Jon Stewart regarding the dangers of AI and they were discussing the universal basic income. Jon said at some point that people retire and then die because "they lose their purpose".
Unless you're an artist or are working in what you think is a fascinating field or are researching the cure of a terrible disease, work doesn't necessarily mean purpose. It's sad that people make their job their identity and they get lost once they retire. I bet most people would take on hobbies that their current jobs prevent them from enjoying. Or do nothing if they feel like it. This work = purpose crap is infuriating.
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u/Glattsnacker 1d ago
here in germany about a third of the population does voluntarily unpaid work called "ehrenamt" which is stuff like helping in a homeless shelter and they do it on top of their 9 to 5, absolutely delusional to think that people would just not do anything, also it’s not like the work people do now has any purpose but to make the capitalist profits
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u/The_amazing_T 22h ago
Yep. That's America for you. Your identity is your work. Your value is your wealth. Poor people deserve their lot in life because if they were better people, they would rise out of poverty. Rich pastors must be close to God for all that he gives them, and if you give to the church, you'll be rewarded in this life and the next. And now that Billionaires are siphoning off all the financial gains our society has made in decades, they must be important. Even revered.
The people are angry that they can't get ahead. That they have no future. That the upward mobility they were promised isn't real, no matter how much harder they work. Some blame politicians. Some blame the wealthy companies and individuals that pay them off. But it's heading off a cliff. That part is for sure.
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u/evilweirdo 19h ago
The reason I don't volunteer for things I care about anymore is that I'm too drained from work. Also the chronic pain... from work
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u/Conflictingview 14h ago
"So they'll make systems to create food, then give us money and then we'll give them the money. That money they'll then give back to us. It's basically just a circle jerk..."
Jon is just describing (and defending) capitalism in a post-scarcity world - you know, the world we live in now, except we have to trade our time and labor to get that money. But, somehow, getting that same system without "work" is dystopian?
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u/LazySpaceToast 1d ago
I can't fathom the idea of not being able to derive meaning and purpose outside of my job, but I guess that is the case for some people. It is really difficult to pursue interests and hobbies when you're completely mentally drained at the end of the day/week, though, so it makes sense that many people only have that sense of fulfillment from their job. But if we were to eliminate at least some of the need to work, maybe just reducing the amount of hours, that might open people up to having the energy to do more outside of work. But, I'm not at all suggesting that AI is the means to and end for this. People aren't going to be provided for, and this "utopia" that keeps being promised is not actually what's planned.
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u/FearlessJuan 1d ago
It's not like they have hobbies they can't enjoy because they're too tired. It's that their job is the be all end all for them. They think about work in their time off. They talk about work when having lunch with their colleagues in the cafeteria. They can't turn it off. It's their identity.
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u/Wildernaess 1d ago
It's interesting because I know people that do seem to get a lot out of work but I'm not one of them so this was a rare moment where I hotly disagreed with Jon's take
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u/FearlessJuan 1d ago
What I find interesting is how subjective it can be. Let's say an artist creating art or a scientist solving a problem or a researcher looking for a cure or discovering something new. To me those are worthy endeavors, but most people work because they have to, not because they particularly enjoy what they do. A job doesn't necessarily imply purpose.
There was a commercial once about regular people being asked on the street what they would really like to do and all of them said something other than their day job. It would bring them joy but they couldn't make a living out of it.
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u/erikleorgav2 10h ago
August 2025 I took some extended unpaid time off from work. My dad and I are working to renovate and improve the family home (built in 1908 and in need of extensive repair).
We built an addition on the front, and since it was only the 2 of us it took a while.
Having that time off to focus on that was fantastic. I was able to do anything I wanted while I also spent extra time up there helping him.
Can't do that now. But that was a great bit of time off to do something I was enjoying.
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u/prenderg SocDem 23h ago
I think this guy is super intelligent, aware of the conflicts, and optimistic. What all can we ask for?
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u/Rei_Jin 22h ago
The end point of capitalism is not socialism.
Yet that is what the young man being interviewed functionally said it was.
At what point will people see that for the lie it is?
The tech-bros behind all this are not doing it for the benefit of humanity, but for their own egos and their own wealth.
They will just as soon give out the benefits of their theft and grift to everyone freely as they will pay for the information they stole to build their models.
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u/EngRookie 1d ago edited 1d ago
you missed the entire fucking point of that interview. Jon was pointing out that it should not be up to half a dozen crazy billionaires to dictate how society works. Yeah work for a lot of people sucks but for a lot of other people you get to help people or help improve how things are done in our society. That gives a lot of people purpose. And for this young engineer to kinda just be like "well there are a lot of poor people Jon" is missing the point just like you.
And Jon reiterates that shouldn't we try to fix our government to provide better social services and wouldn't that be a better use of our time and resources? to which the engineer is basically like "yeah that would be nice"
which is just him tacitly admitting to his own apathy that he thinks it is easier to build a fucking god and try to control it and control the billionaires(future trillionaires) that own it instead of fixing the systemic issues of our society.
That was the fucking point of the interview dude, that no one has the right to take our agency from us and that a better use of resources would be to actually fix things instead of building a god that might probably kill us all just so some asshole can add a few zeros to their net worth. DON'T BUILD THE FUCKING TORMENT NEXUS
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u/FearlessJuan 1d ago
Oh no, I got that just fine. But as part of his argument he said "people retire and they lose purpose". That's with or without this AI driven utopia. That was the reason I posted this. The bs of conflating a mundane job with one's identity.
If you travel a bit you'll notice that in the US most people live to work and in other places they work to live and find purpose in non-job related activities, among other things because they work a reasonable amount of hours and their Healthcare is not tied to their employment.
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u/EngRookie 1d ago
Unless you're an artist or are working in what you think is a fascinating field or are researching the cure of a terrible disease, work doesn't necessarily mean purpose. It's sad that people make their job their identity and they get lost once they retire. I bet most people would take on hobbies that their current jobs prevent them from enjoying. Or do nothing if they feel like it. This work = purpose crap is infuriating.
dude most of my job is working in excel and reading procedural documents all day. It is painfully boring but at the same time extremely vital to the safety of hundreds of millions of people and the work needs to get done. Knowing that me putting in 10hrs of slog a day to keep 100s of millions of people safe does in fact give me purpose and i still have hobbies that i engage in in my free time and do volunteer work.
I am not an artist, I am not working in an interesting field, and I am not searching to cure diseases. I am simply making sure our safety mechanisms perform as intended 100% of the time.
Not everything is a black and white as you are trying to paint it when it comes to working in the US.
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u/FearlessJuan 1d ago edited 23h ago
I won't get into what I do, but you could say it has important ramifications and it has to be done. However, you're validating my point that a job does not imply purpose or the only purpose. Should you retire tomorrow, you'd still have things to do if you so choose. His point is that some people lose their purpose altogether because their job is all they have.
My examples of purpose-driven activities is what I imagine I wouldn't want to stop doing even after retirement. Things have changed for the worse overseas as there's a trend to copy the US on everything, but 37.5 hours per week and a month off in the summer are still a thing. Taking more than 2 weeks at a time in the US is frowned upon.
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u/TheDividendReport 14h ago
Please do not worry. In the holodeck, we will simulate your office environment and excel sheets. You'll just have to believe that the hundreds of millions of people are still on your shoulders.
I genuinely don't get what you're trying to say here. I should continue to be chronically depressed in my dead end, pointless job because you can't find value in life outside of, supposedly, being a critical part of the machine?
For thousands of years humanity's only purpose was to farm, tend to land and family, and die with a small amount of close people next to them. Their scope was extremely limited.
People have never really had a chance to be remembered for what they do for "humanity" but rather what they do for a small group of people they know and love. I'm glad you can somehow still have a life outside of your slog, but I am functionally unable to, and it's driving me depressed.
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u/EngRookie 7h ago
again another fucking idiot that doesn't get the point. Go ahead build your god and suck off your future trillionaires. I am sure the "universal high income" will be real and totally worth giving up your agency. I am sure we totally won't end up as 21st century serfs. but hey apparently that is the only thing that matters to you right? just working the land until we die so we can "feed our families" while redirecting most of the food (money) upwards.
i referenced my mundane job bc OP literally insulted 99.9% of people in STEM by claiming only the 0.1% of jobs have any true meaning.
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u/goldrunout 15h ago
Yeah, but OP is also correct that in the middle of these good points there was also a quite asinine take that people need "a story" to "overcome circumstances". These tech bros ain't gonna save us, and all their utopia talk is pure marketing BS, but the reason is not that people need obstacles to overcome. The reasons are those that Jon points out in the rest of the video.
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u/rushmc1 1d ago
Yes, Stewart was exuding a lot of shit in this one.
This strangely modern assumption that a human being who isn't economically productive must therefore be psychologically adrift...
For most of human history, people certainly worked hard, but “work” wasn't synonymous with the modern full-time wage job, and human life wasn't organized into the stark categories of productive employment vs. meaningless leisure.
People have always:
- watched animals,
- told stories,
- made music,
- played games,
- socialized,
- explored,
- made things because they wanted to,
- sat around talking,
- contemplated,
- observed the natural world,
- cared for one another,
- and sometimes simply sat around doing very little.
Some of those activities produced things of enormous importance. Some produced nothing whatsoever.
And apparently humanity survived the terrible psychological consequences of having an occasional afternoon with no measurable economic output.
The modern idea that every waking hour ought to be assigned a productive purpose is historically peculiar. And then, having trained people to regard unstructured time as suspicious, we can turn around and say:
“See? People become uncomfortable without work.”
Well... perhaps you've taught them to be uncomfortable without work.
That doesn't mean work is inherently bad. Some work is fascinating, meaningful, sociable, creative, necessary, even joyful. Most isn't, though.
It means we've got to be careful about taking a historically specific economic arrangement and mistaking the psychological adaptations it produces for immutable facts about human nature.the strangely modern assumption that a human being who isn't economically productive must therefore be psychologically adrift.
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u/BiPoLaRadiation 18h ago
He is referring to a real thing. There are people who have basically dedicated all of their waking life to work and so when they retire they can suddenly find themselves without any real purpose for getting up and just waste away. They get fat, lazy, addicted to something, and go down hill fast.
Of course the majority of people do not do that because the majority of people have wants, goals, and hobbies outside of work. They socialize more, they volunteer, they work on their hobbies or get new ones. Many retired folks get part time jobs as well. Even those who start off with no purpose often eventually break out of that sort of rut and find new purposes. It's just that they have been conditioned for so long to only work, sleep, and eat that it takes them a bit to finally find their bearings once that cycle ends.
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u/FearlessJuan 12h ago
I think it's also related to the "Protestant work ethic" prevalent in the US, per which working long hours and never taking off is worn as a badge of honor. Work is all they know. They can't appreciate anything else. It's also their only social outlet. Take it away and you take away their identity.
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u/thehoagieboy 17h ago
The whole discussion of universal basic income is laughable. Wait...so you're telling me that the rich people, the ones that love money, are going to GIVE IT AWAY to us? The same people that they look down on and think the reason we aren't them is because we don't work hard enough? What will happen is, they will have their money and tell us to do the jobs that remain that AI can't do. They will still expect the 40 hours from us because, of course they will. Anyone believing the smoke they are blowing up your butt is sadly mistaken.
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u/KazuyaMishimaPolyglo 14h ago
If you have a good job that you find entertaining, then sure, it gives purpose, but try bagging groceries 40 hrs a week or a fast food job and see how fulfilled you feel. Most jobs suck. Can't wait for AI to take over and make jobs done by humans obsolete.
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u/lakingsfn 6h ago
I partly agree with Jon. Look at Steve Jobs. I had said a long time ago that the day he has to leave Apple because of health issues he wouldn’t live another six months. He left Apple in August 2011 and died a month and a half later. Maybe an extreme example, but still.
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u/FearlessJuan 5h ago
He was already sick with incurable pancreatic cancer, so...
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u/lakingsfn 4h ago
Technically his form of cancer was curable. He just waited too long to get proper treatment for it.
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u/DoctorHellclone 4h ago
Steve Jobs was an arrogant moron who thought he was smarter than cancer
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u/lakingsfn 4h ago
He tried to cure himself using Buddhist methods that were not advisable at the time.
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u/Lord_Meowington 1d ago
There's 2 sides to this though. I know so many people that, if retired, would absolutely vegetate on the sofa and just watch tele, lounge about, eat and practically wait until something happened to take them out of lethargy. I'm so scared that when I retire I don't maintain a level of mental and physical exercise. I have a few hobbies and I'd love to write more, travel more. But so many people don't. Every day is a Saturday when you're retired.
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u/FearlessJuan 1d ago
Which is sad. There has to be something they like (reading, photography, gardening, etc.). Retirement should be a gift of time, time to do with as you please without rushing.
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u/musicbox40-20 18h ago
Even if they wanted to do something like this. So what? It’s their life not yours.
Who are we to say - no that’s not beneficial so you can’t live that way, you have to instead live this way?
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u/TheDividendReport 14h ago
This is a consequence of societies reliance on work, not a part of the human condition. And let's be clear, death after retirement is a specific thing that happens to men. Women do not and it is because they remain social and have lives that are centered around more than just the task they do for work each day. If you've been conditioned to clock in for 60 years, it's no wonder how if that is suddenly removed, there is naught to do but languish.
We need to reintroduce third places into society and community and purpose beyond work. But we should not hit the breaks and never address our reliance on work just because of our addiction to it
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u/DavidisLaughing 1d ago
Everything we do now is based off the fact that our bodies and minds are drained after our 40-50 hour a week job, kids and other responsibilities. So when we hear people say that humans will be lazy and do nothing after UBI, completely forget that we saw what happened when people got furloughed during COVID. Massive uptick in hobbies sales, people learned to bake, woodwork etc.
So this idea humans will be lazy goes off the premise that we haven’t been around for millions of years finding things to do with our time and innovating in the process.