Reply To: The recent "discovery" of Dark Matter

[Warwick]

Rezwan wrote:
I suspect that, as we solve the affluence problem and get rid of this sense of fear and survival and miserly possessiveness that people have which makes them see everything as property they must hoard and control – perspective on nature will shift, and become much more interesting.

Two sides to that. Surveys show that rich people are the most materialistic. Correlation or causation?
On the other hand, I used to work with someone from an oil company who would tell me about having to explain to the directors about how you just _can’t_ persuade someone at a refinery to pay any attention to environmental practices when their horizon is dominated by the immediate survival needs of their family.
Maybe like with a lot of things, if being a bully is at the top, and being a victim is at the bottom, freedom is in the middle.

Rezwan wrote:
It’s the limited resources paradigm, after all, that is behind a lot of things that are supposedly for our sake, but really are not what we want. Take those commercials where someone has a headache, and they take a pill and feel better. The person is shown at a grueling job, where they can’t miss a second, but because of the pill, they get to stay on the job. Yippee.

Obviously, evil employers are behind that ad. If your employee has splitting headaches, their body is telling them to get rest and change their lifestyle. Many employers just see the workers as tools, want them to ignore the sensible message from their bodies to get rest. So they vilify the headache, and not the insane work hours, and work to solve the symptom (headache), and not the cause of the headache (life out of balance).

I know exactly the ads you’re talking about. The thing is, 50 years ago, futurologists told us that robot slaves would have reduced the amount of work and that we would have much more leisure. So why, at least outside the home, did it not materialise? One answer is because capital has actually increased its power to take a share of income – partly as a result of monopolization in many sectors. More prosaically, the *increase* in work hours over recent decades is directly due to several factors: the demise of the power of trade unions, labour market deregulation, the rise of white-collar wage-slavery due to changes in labour supply. The changes have had the biggest impact at the bottom of the scale, with unskilled workers frequently being expected to work weekends if they are going to be the lucky one that gets the job.
Meanwhile, in France they still have the 35-hour week I think. But who would invest there when they can go somewhere the workers do 45-60 hours a week?

Rezwan wrote:
All of that is possible, is reinforced, under a survivalist mentality, where you’re worried someone else will take your job if you don’t kill yourself working, or the Chinese will control market share, or whatever. Zero sum self and nature exploitation. Very boring. And I don’t think it reflects reality. But people do get shrill about it.

This is often couched in terms of “efficiency”.

The temptation of efficiency is strong, and certainly, efficiency has its place. But I think a big part of human essence is inefficiency, gratuitous exploration, play. Hopefully, this will assert itself more as years go by. The grumpy hoarding survivalist generations will pass, and the emerging generations will be a lot more groovy about it all. More integrated with natural patterns, setting their clocks by wildebeest migrations, very happy to have excuses to not go to work for 3 weeks at a time while roads are closed.

Except that many people would be perfectly justified, in today’s world, to correctly assume that someone else will have your job if you don’t kill yourself working. And the idea that “the hoarding survivalist generations will pass” supposes incorrectly that long work-weeks are a voluntary choice on behalf of the employed.

Obviously I’m writing this as I wait for my Professor to reply to me so I can carry on editing, it’s only 8.38 pm. 🙂