"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Beyond the Work Ethic


I think we need to get away from the idea than the average person can allocate resources by supplying labor (or being under the protection of someone supplying labor). This is the problem - the Puritan idea that wealth is God's signifier of virtue and poverty God's signifier of sin; this model is adaptive in a preindustrial world and in an industrial world but is maladaptive in a crowded, information-driven world. Even the replacement of diligence and vigor with intelligence and study is a cruel lie. The world cares nothing for the individual, and the capacity to allocate resources comes down to luck and to pedigree.

1 comment:

manuel moe g said...

[1] I cannot help but think that the answer for the individual is: (a)Stoicism (b)the teachings of Epicurus (c) plus some moral motivation

[2] (I personally have only a Christian perspective, apologies...) speaking of moral motivation, there is a strange subgroup of Christians called Radical Christianity that believe (a) god is dead (b) Jesus actually meant all the things he said, and we should act accordingly (c) when Jesus said the last will be first, he meant it, act accordingly (social justice)

[3] I know of course that what is commonly called "free will" is silly, but what is terrifying is how little and how infrequent is stuff that can even be confused with "free will". We monkeys _will_ risk it all to extract and burn all fossil fuels as quickly as possible and recklessly perform genetic engineering pretending there is _zero_ risk of extinction of species (acting as if there is _zero_ risk of something happening is a very very strong statement of errant trust, yet we monkeys do so all the time, even otherwise trustworthy science communicators do so)