Noam Chomsky - Work

[moonrakerone]

It's like that joke about Friday. "Thank God it's Friday. Thank God 5 out of the 7 days of my life are over. Now I'm gonna spend 2 of those 7 days drunk so I don't have to think about the upcoming 5/7ths of my week."

[jacob_ian_decoursey_the_author]

It’s not that I don’t enjoy work. I enjoy work, activities one might even call “backbreaking labor.” What I don’t enjoy is compulsory work that encompasses the majority of my conscious life for something as abstract as a wage and in service to a large employer I have no stake in.

[minamur]

This really speaks to me. I used to be a programmer, now i'm a janitor and more happy by far. As a programmer i routinely felt what i was working on was ultimately useless, or that if it wasn't useless it had to be squeezed in in a rush that didn't allow for the project to be done in the way it should. Janitorial work is more of a chore, but i have autonomy and i can see the improvement to the world that i make every night.

[coastTOcoast]

Nice to hear Chomsky with a solid interviewer who pushes back and makes him go even deeper.

[seneris]

There aren't many sins worse than robbing someone of their entire life

[erickreyes]

“The joy is in creating, not maintaining.”-Vince Lombardi

[erNomic]

We still live in a primitive society fighting imperialism just as we did 1000 years ago. Cell phones and shiny plastics have most of us fooled.

[joshuapray]

I have always wondered what Noam Chomsky does in his free time. At 1:50 he answers the question (at least in regard to the weekend before this recording), and damn what a satisfying answer! This man is a hero.

[songsabai]

When this interview was conducted, 'permanent debt slavery' had yet become the norm in mainstream society.

[Discovery_and_Change]

1:14 wage slaves who will do any work because otherwise they'll starve
5:42 design social institutions so that some people are compelled to do that work (that no one wants to do)
6:16 in our society, the people who do unwanted work are paid the least
6:46 undesired work is given to wage slaves

[ItinerantIntrovert]

Learning itself is a perfect example of the benefits of conscious work, as opposed to unconscious or forced work--in joy and fruitfulness!!

[Ben-bglp]

His statements 50 years ago still holds true now and you can see it in Amazon's warehouses.

[wotwot]

This is gotta be one of the best lesson from Prof. Chomsky.

[caspar_gomez]

"because much of the most meaningless drudgery can be taken over by machines, which means that the scope for really creative human work is substantially enlarged"... oh noam you sweet sweet

[zuesr]

chomsky is so precise, professional I could imagine interviewers sweating to interview Chomsky one needs wisdom and insight years of training

[Deurhzd]

What sucks is the accountability, specially to people you do not respect.

A man could build a pyramid by himself and not care about it, and it wouldn't even stress him out significantly.

Make it a managed environment and it is hell.

[bradfordmccormick]

I recently read that Abraham Lincoln thought the main difference between slavery and wage labor was that the former was a permenent not a temporary condition. I always resented being a wage-slave subjected to the coercive power of a manager. And as for commuting: I envied Japanese WWII kamikaze pilots who only had to make their commute once.

[Peter-vcut]

The glaring assumption in Chomsky's proposal is that everyone knows what their talents are/what they'd love to do. The way our society/education, financial systems and parental upbringings are wired, the task of finding out what one truly enjoys doing and can do that consistently with an incremental level of involvement over time requires a fair degree of introspection and trying out many different things before you find what you truly love to do. Our society doesn't usually allow for that kind of time or truly encourage that kind of mind set. Very few people can spot their true passions early enough to shape their lives around it. Many never find it. And then, there are those that find it out when they're older, their minds trapped in the sunk-cost affect scenario, and real financial and familial burdens, where there seems to be no way out other than withstand unprecedented rejection, hardships and loneliness and alienation. I completely agree with his proposal and it'd be a great society where everyone does what they love and the residual tasks are evenly shared. But it's quite likely a utopian idea unless one proposes how to shake and break down the existing systems that push us all in the hamsters wheel in the first place.

[sillyputtyisfun]

The fact we needed Noam Chomsky to talk about it to realize it shows how out of touch the corporate world as a whole is with the mental qnd physical healtu of its workers.

[danigiammarco]

Studying 21st century skillsets at the moment, I like his idea of doing the 'crap' work in a shared fashion. Humans still need novelty, don't like being ordered or owned, and like feeling achievement. If you're lucky enough to get yourself a job that intrinsically motivates you, that's amazing! If you haven't gone to find this, I think it becomes a philosophical question; are you motivated enough to enjoy life besides wage slavery? Can you overcome this, philosophically? Can we educate people to do this work and maintain their own identities? Is this whats already happening? I hope that all people can educate themselves to find meaning in the work that they do, and enjoy what they can in life without having to suffer from desires they cannot achieve.