I think the central premise (of a disintegrating life) applies to them as well. Although it was not as visible and productized at the time.
They could have very well been compartmentalizing their work and life, but chose stuck it out, simply because tenacity (fear driven or not) was highly prized.
This deserves a follow up: The Great Reintegration
At the risk of sounding it it might be some kind of movement waiting to happen, if it took X amount of time and effort to disintegrate, it will take even more to reintegrate.
Wow, great observation. Definitely something I’ll need to mull over.
Also feels like the incentives are stacked against us to reintegrate. By optimizing and then productizing each of the elements of our lives, companies have created a flywheel for disintegration.
I think it's true - the world tends to "chaos" and fractalizing outwards. Yet at the same time in each civilizational shift forward, it relied upon a great effort to pull everything back into a new configuration, carrying forward the benefits of what was passed on by the predecessor.
An analogy is culture. Once it's "lost", it will be much more difficult for succeeding generations to regain it; until perhaps it is rediscovered due to a necessity or by chance, revealing the underlying utility of that cultural practice once again. Similarly for values, societal configurations, philosophies.
I'm a preservationist and I get nostalgic when good things are fading away. I'm 100% with you on reintegration.
Is the goal to re-align your life into the previous diagram, having different aspects of your life bleeding together, or optimize the current social system to have independent but healthy aspects or your life?
Our relationship with work is fundamentally a complicated mix of give and take. Food, shelter, identity, window on the world, finding competence, dealing with incompetence, people skills, time management, all in the framework of (for most of humanity) working for someone else.
The imposition of efficiency as a stand-alone goal is the bottom-line degradation of our relationship with work. The feeling of being productive is satisfying in itself, but at the upper end of the curve, efficiency as a silo value is inhuman. Nothing causes resentment more than the feeling that within this major life framework, it would make more sense to replace you rather than tolerate you, let alone nurture you. Hence the don’t give a rat’s ass of quiet quitting, dreaming of ‘going postal’ (1980s-1990s reference to gunning down coworkers in anger and resentment, so this is not a new phenomenon) instead of building something that fits with your own idea of your own life.
Change is two directional: at us and from us. Covid, at us, brought more flexibility, less water cooler time. The Industrial Revolution was just the start of technology’s at us. The 19th century version of quiet quitting was just not showing up on Monday, until factory owners came up with half-day Saturdays. The full 2-day weekend came into existence in the 1920s so Ford workers had time to spend on driving, and a desire to become car-buyers.
AI is already coming at us. Articles and discussions like this prompt some healthy consideration of what change could come from us in the adjustment.
From the societal standpoint, it’s not just about great changes for a few, so much as a few changes for greater numbers. How will we build community and connection? How will people pay their bills? Find opportunity?
“We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.” R Buckminster Fuller
Sorry for the long post, it’s just so important and interesting.
You are such a thoughtful person. Thank you for this.
"Change is two directional: at us and from us. Covid, at us, brought more flexibility, less water cooler time."
Its interesting to consider how much of our disintegrated life is our own fault, and the fault of our incentives. I was considering including something along these lines in the piece, but it just felt too tangential and bloated.
The reality is, there is no economic incentive to have a holistic and integrated life. You can charge a lot more for things (once you start breaking them out into tiny sub-niches) that cure one of lifes "inefficiency" (AKA $3000 Peloton).
The last couple of generations have been market-targeted since birth. Mass marketing (pushing their shiny stuff, accessories sold separately!) ramped up with television, exploded with the internet, stripped options with algorithms, shifted what we used to own into subscription-only access, and it’s left us all stranded, longing for that holistic and integrated life.
And yet….the internet shines so brightly with human connection, and that access gives exploratory agency across the planet. Maybe that’s enough to give leverage against the reduction of people to consumer units, and where we can reclaim ourselves.
Gloriously messy, but seriously, always been so, maybe simply our turn to figure out how to push life where we want it. I think that’s what you and a multitude of others are doing. Keep it up. Dissatisfaction is rampant. We can do better, live better. It’s right to want more, it’s just that what they’re selling isn’t the be all, end all that we want.
A very resigned view of "just work", which happens to be an activity we spend at least 1/3 of our entire life. This opinion reflects the big problem of society today becoming more selfish and self-centered, lacking right-brain people skills.
It's selfish because we're looking at things from the point of view of what we can take. Majority of the articles I come across position the situation as me vs work, which is an old-fashioned perspective proper of when working conditions were miserable.
"Jut work" is just me summarizing your last sentence of "Work is a piece of life, but it is not the whole", which I could not disagree more. Remove a wheel from the car, and let me know if it can run.
Yes, but the takeaway sounds bit different than that doesn't it? I ended with a feeling of we need to accept work as an adversity we have to deal with, an as a separate entity of that.
My point is, compartmentalizing work (as well as other areas) IS the problem. The moment we do that, we see it as something that we don't need to put effort to make it an essential inseparable unit of our life. Instead of a ring connection of life pieces, I see it more as an N-to-N network between them.
But this requires a change of paradigm of how we live life. We're living it compartmentalized, which is why we have the different schedules and hard separations between the activities. And this separation, in my opinion, is what is preventing us from designing of our life to an upgraded model where that separation is almost non-existent, or at least, very blurry.
Maybe the last generation hated their jobs too, but resilience was prized above all else. Just stick it out, no matter how unhappy you are.
Very true.
I think the central premise (of a disintegrating life) applies to them as well. Although it was not as visible and productized at the time.
They could have very well been compartmentalizing their work and life, but chose stuck it out, simply because tenacity (fear driven or not) was highly prized.
This deserves a follow up: The Great Reintegration
At the risk of sounding it it might be some kind of movement waiting to happen, if it took X amount of time and effort to disintegrate, it will take even more to reintegrate.
Wow, great observation. Definitely something I’ll need to mull over.
Also feels like the incentives are stacked against us to reintegrate. By optimizing and then productizing each of the elements of our lives, companies have created a flywheel for disintegration.
I think it's true - the world tends to "chaos" and fractalizing outwards. Yet at the same time in each civilizational shift forward, it relied upon a great effort to pull everything back into a new configuration, carrying forward the benefits of what was passed on by the predecessor.
An analogy is culture. Once it's "lost", it will be much more difficult for succeeding generations to regain it; until perhaps it is rediscovered due to a necessity or by chance, revealing the underlying utility of that cultural practice once again. Similarly for values, societal configurations, philosophies.
I'm a preservationist and I get nostalgic when good things are fading away. I'm 100% with you on reintegration.
Is the goal to re-align your life into the previous diagram, having different aspects of your life bleeding together, or optimize the current social system to have independent but healthy aspects or your life?
Interesting! And great comments discussion.
Our relationship with work is fundamentally a complicated mix of give and take. Food, shelter, identity, window on the world, finding competence, dealing with incompetence, people skills, time management, all in the framework of (for most of humanity) working for someone else.
The imposition of efficiency as a stand-alone goal is the bottom-line degradation of our relationship with work. The feeling of being productive is satisfying in itself, but at the upper end of the curve, efficiency as a silo value is inhuman. Nothing causes resentment more than the feeling that within this major life framework, it would make more sense to replace you rather than tolerate you, let alone nurture you. Hence the don’t give a rat’s ass of quiet quitting, dreaming of ‘going postal’ (1980s-1990s reference to gunning down coworkers in anger and resentment, so this is not a new phenomenon) instead of building something that fits with your own idea of your own life.
Change is two directional: at us and from us. Covid, at us, brought more flexibility, less water cooler time. The Industrial Revolution was just the start of technology’s at us. The 19th century version of quiet quitting was just not showing up on Monday, until factory owners came up with half-day Saturdays. The full 2-day weekend came into existence in the 1920s so Ford workers had time to spend on driving, and a desire to become car-buyers.
AI is already coming at us. Articles and discussions like this prompt some healthy consideration of what change could come from us in the adjustment.
From the societal standpoint, it’s not just about great changes for a few, so much as a few changes for greater numbers. How will we build community and connection? How will people pay their bills? Find opportunity?
“We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.” R Buckminster Fuller
Sorry for the long post, it’s just so important and interesting.
Deb,
You are such a thoughtful person. Thank you for this.
"Change is two directional: at us and from us. Covid, at us, brought more flexibility, less water cooler time."
Its interesting to consider how much of our disintegrated life is our own fault, and the fault of our incentives. I was considering including something along these lines in the piece, but it just felt too tangential and bloated.
The reality is, there is no economic incentive to have a holistic and integrated life. You can charge a lot more for things (once you start breaking them out into tiny sub-niches) that cure one of lifes "inefficiency" (AKA $3000 Peloton).
The last couple of generations have been market-targeted since birth. Mass marketing (pushing their shiny stuff, accessories sold separately!) ramped up with television, exploded with the internet, stripped options with algorithms, shifted what we used to own into subscription-only access, and it’s left us all stranded, longing for that holistic and integrated life.
And yet….the internet shines so brightly with human connection, and that access gives exploratory agency across the planet. Maybe that’s enough to give leverage against the reduction of people to consumer units, and where we can reclaim ourselves.
Gloriously messy, but seriously, always been so, maybe simply our turn to figure out how to push life where we want it. I think that’s what you and a multitude of others are doing. Keep it up. Dissatisfaction is rampant. We can do better, live better. It’s right to want more, it’s just that what they’re selling isn’t the be all, end all that we want.
A very resigned view of "just work", which happens to be an activity we spend at least 1/3 of our entire life. This opinion reflects the big problem of society today becoming more selfish and self-centered, lacking right-brain people skills.
Hey Antonio!
Not sure I understand. Can you expand on the selfish part a bit?
(Also, Is “just work” a book or article? Not sure.)
It's selfish because we're looking at things from the point of view of what we can take. Majority of the articles I come across position the situation as me vs work, which is an old-fashioned perspective proper of when working conditions were miserable.
"Jut work" is just me summarizing your last sentence of "Work is a piece of life, but it is not the whole", which I could not disagree more. Remove a wheel from the car, and let me know if it can run.
Lol sorry, I’m still a bit confused.
The article effectively states there is a harmony between the different pieces of your life.
When you start optimizing, (and begin to disintegrate the pieces) you disturb this harmony.
Work *should* have an interplay with all other areas of your life, but it should not color your every action.
Yes, but the takeaway sounds bit different than that doesn't it? I ended with a feeling of we need to accept work as an adversity we have to deal with, an as a separate entity of that.
My point is, compartmentalizing work (as well as other areas) IS the problem. The moment we do that, we see it as something that we don't need to put effort to make it an essential inseparable unit of our life. Instead of a ring connection of life pieces, I see it more as an N-to-N network between them.
But this requires a change of paradigm of how we live life. We're living it compartmentalized, which is why we have the different schedules and hard separations between the activities. And this separation, in my opinion, is what is preventing us from designing of our life to an upgraded model where that separation is almost non-existent, or at least, very blurry.
Then that’s my fault for being unclear. That was the central assertion of the entire article.