people may work because of money, social reasons and different interests. But why do we have to work to acquire 'em?? 
Hmm, I know they say there are no stupid questionsâŚbutâŚ
If people were handed everything for free, the economy would soon fall apart because nothing would ever get done.
without workâŚwhat is your reason to produce anything at all? People would never make or create anything unless they were forced to do so by thier needs and then it gets into issues of supplying people what they need and you are back to work because the demand increases so you have to supply to the massesâŚwithout work how would we as humans function without a real economy?
But there are however such things as stupid answers⌠
You assume economy is necessary and essential to efficient social life. Which is fundamentally wrong. And you underestimate humans when faced with a necessary job - no matter how unpleasant.
Your attitude is very theory X, much like FW Taylor who thought that money was the sole and fundamental drive to work and work well and hard. He was wrong. It can provide incentive in some cases, like for unpleasant jobs for example, but youâd be surprised how many people do jobs for other reasons, such as the prestige/status, or the social aspect, and sometimes because people genuinely love their jobs etc. People arenât like money-fuelled robots.
One reason we have money is to serve as an intermediary for possession or use of goods or services. And because some people are shits who lie and cheat (correction, almost all people), so they will take without giving in return later if they cannot or donât wish to return any favours right after being served one themselves. Giving is made mandatory with the use of money in this way. To force you to give as well as take or else suffer the consequences of being poor and having less of a standard of living (although not necessarily a worse quality of life - depends how intuitive and independent you can be which is very uncivilised, so people are out of touch with this side of themselves, particularly in the west).
These people arenât bothered to take virtue in giving without taking because they are not required to and are lazy and over selfish or spoilt. And since the world (particularly in the west) is so organised and forced/institutionalised, this is why most people are like this - especially when technology does everything for them and people are so sheltered in their upbringing.
Another, more necessary reason, is to control supply and demand. If every job had the same wage, or no wage, everyone would choose the best or most fun or relaxing according to their values. And all the unpleasant but necessary jobs would be in no demand. They would only get done out of necessity. But even then, so many people have the âsomeone else will do itâ attitude, so this will not always be the case.
This also goes for goods like food. The most simple and abundant food is usually the cheapest because there is such a high supply and low demand. And vice versa for the rare delicacies that are highly priced so they donât run out of supply, and end up with a surplus of the less appealing stuff.
I donât know how much this applies to the East and to 3rd World countries because I am not well travelled or cultured, but in westernised societies, this is definitely the case. We have tried to develop so quickly, but evolution hasnât caught up so there are adaption problems, so I am not sure that the benefits really outweigh the costs. In my opinion, social development may be doing more harm than good when it is forced to advance too quickly for nature.
âŚbut then westernised culture is getting more and more adept at manipulating nature, so Iâm not so sure that this will remain a bad thing in the long run if it is continued. Unless of course too many traditionalists or religious people make too much of a fuss about âplaying Godâ or other such ridiculous delusional arguments.
âNature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.â Francis Bacon
wow. thatâs it right there.
no matter who you are or where you are or what time period youâre living in, you must expend some energy in one direction to get results in another direction. so to speak.
in todayâs world, if i want to buy some adidas shoes i have to expend some energy (by âpunching the clockâ aka âworkingâ) in order to get those shoes. or i could steal them, but that also involves work (effort, expenditure of energy).
in more simplistic times, if i wanted to eat some apples, iâd inevitably have to expend some energy to do so. by growing them myself, stealing them, or climbing the tree and grabbing them.
whether you look at it microscopically or macroscopically, the principle is universal: âthere is no such thing as a free lunchâ.
and, if you really want to go deep, you might attempt to see the connection between those ideas (above, relating to âworkâ), and the ideas in physics relating to work and the conservation of matter and energy. that, i think, might help to shed some light on the âuniversal natureâ of the necessity of work, on a very large scale.
Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all. Out of greed and dogmatic values, and a lack of imagination with what to do with our leisure time, we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. We have continued to put in as many hours as we did before there were machines. We have been stupid, but there is no reason to go on being stupid forever. I believe in the virtue of idleness, as does Bertrand Russell. As long as we know what to do with our idle time, i.e. build things, learn, create, define ourselves. Think Star Trek-style utopia as it pertains to labor. Fâ work.
You are right. A good example would be the idealist sludge you came up with.
And what is money? A means to survive, representitive of goods and services. You really think the magority of people would be willing work without compensation? Wow, that is stupid, and shows you know very little of human nature.
The rest of your idealist rant fails to even make anything close to a point, much less anything on topic, so I donât need to adress it.
Why do we have to work to acquire them ?
But for the broadest sense (expending energy), this isnât necessarily true. Somebody can gain money and social status merely by birth for example.
If you just mean action=work then it would get metaphysical, the question could be rephrased something like; âWhy is a cause a necessary condition for an effect ?â (One may beg to differ about whether this is universally true or not.)
If you mean that people often need to do a lot of stuff they donât enjoy to get some profit, and are asking why that is ? Then I guess the answer is because they feel the profit outways the misery of the work involved.
I donât exactly understand what you are trying to ask.
Perhaps your question is sort of retorical in that it is more of a statement that work, for most, sucks. With which I agree.
Yet again I fail to cough up anything exciting.
Yeah, Iâm an idealist and I love my theory, no matter how little it mirrors reality at the current point in time. But what good did it do for anyone to just dwell and study and hopefully understand how things are now, ie realists, if they donât know what to do with this knowledge, other than fill their short lived brains with it?
My rant did have no particular point, I just wanted to pick every hole in your holey comment you demeaned jo with that I could. So it was indirectly relevant, plus I wanted to try and help your seemingly limited knowledge of human nature apparently portrayed by your brief send-off reply.
As I covered in my idealist rant, I explained what money was, an intermediary to goods and services and a control of supply and demand. Maybe you didnât read that, Iâm not sure. It certainly isnât a representation of them. Money is in no way similar to any good or service; no matter what price you label it with - thatââŹâ˘s just an attempt to value something fundamentally intangible, not a representation of it.
I also covered that fact that too many people would take and not give if given the choice unless they received compensation, and that I recognise this case in reality. Money just makes sure that these people at least give in some way; otherwise they canât survive inside the society. They would have to be expelled and survive on their own, which to most people is less preferable. The compensation to the giving is not the money, it is what the money gives you potential to do, ie take from other people what you have earnt. Although as I also pointed out that receiving money so that you may spend it on something you want is not the only compensation you get from working and giving. Some people will work, not because they want to give necessarily, but because they like the status/prestige or the social aspect or because they just love their jobs. Sometimes regardless of the wage. This is incidently proven in reality and not idealist⌠and I have also experienced it first hand for myself.
But enough of my hypocrisy, demeaning you just as you did jo and telling you not to, I apologise for any offence taken. I just thought u were uninformed and I wanted to help you out. Seems youâre far far above me and donât need it or to even address my ignorance, sorry to bother you.
Welcome to the forum Gamer.
I read Bertrandâs essay on idleness. It makes sense. Instead of being happy with the basics and living simply so that others may simply live, we have to have a newer stereo, a third car, etc. A little work is still necessary, but a lot of it is not.
Confucious say: âWhen a manâs work and play become one, he is close to heaven.â
Thank you for those who ANSWERED my question. I just would like to have your views about human labor since I am currently working on a book right now about it.
Is it a âlaborâ of love?
Silhouette,
You didnât demean anything, you are still full of shit though.
Money IS representitive of goods and services.
Person X works 50 hours, and is given moneyâŚwhich represents in a material form the work he did. Person X can then take his hard work (money) and exchange it for other goods and services.
Do I really have to spell it out? Wake up and smell the reality.
Agreed. Just donât let it happen again.
You can mean two things in your question. If you are working on something you delight in, would you consider it work? Of course there is an expansion of effort and labour, physical and mental, but these are unfelt in the light of the the delight. On the other hand working for a living is mostly a chore, a toilsome and burdensome necessity. So do you mean whether we need to labour to get anything done at all or why is there the necessity of toil and chore just to get on with life?
The first is probably because this is what it is to be in a physical world. Even plants labour, unseen within its microscopic cells: cells breeding cells, and cells upon cell building up stems, stalks, leaves, flowers, etc. It is just physics and chemistry. Even thinking is work: chemicals get burned up, our blood flow more profusely to the brain, etc. In other words in reality whenever there is to be a change, work is involved.
As to why we need to labour to get on with life in contrast to say the animals who live amongst their food, and need not make it: like the monkeys or the birds in the trees, or the lions sharing the plains of Africa with the dense herds of wilderbest, gazelles, etc, and the effort expanded to get this food, although strenuous is but delightful and rewarding. The only answer I know to this is a biblical one. Man was once like the animals living amongst its food - which consist of seed bearing plants and fruits containing seeds in them, ie a vegetarian diet - in the garden of Eden. But with the Fall he now has to toil for his food.
The sociological or evolutionary explanation is probably the theory that as man evolved, somehow (perhaps for reasons unknowable) the behaviour of merely hunting and gathering for your food became deterimental to some segments of a population, in that they are less sucessful at reproducing, in contrast to those that started to work to âmakeâ their food, such as agriculture and domestication of animals. And soon this latter segments of population became more successful, at the expanse of the âprimitiveâ hunters/gatherers. And so you and I are the âsuccessfulâ outcomes of evolution and toiling for our food is a trait of this success.
âThe hydrogen atom does not have to compromise its function potential by first âearning a livingâ before it can function directly as a hydrogen atom.â - R. Buckminster Fuller