
The new utopias: Should we retain the right to feel unhappy at work? - tomaskazemekas
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/05/new-utopias?fsrc=permar|image3
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mvdwoord
I suspect that some sort of biologically driven urge to dominate the gene pool
will keep humanity from ever reaching any form of utopia. As long as we are
programmed to compete with each other, this will always reflect in the way
society is organized. To me it seems that all of these utopian scenarios have
in common that people allow others to be successful, expecting the same in
return. This only works if everyone behaves this way and seems easy to abuse
by people taking advantage of others. In other words, we don't need to worry
about retaining unhappy feelings at work, others will make sure that you will
remain unhappy at work. Or you will become someone that makes others unhappy
at work. It may work on a small scale, here and there, but in general on a
global scale I believe we are doomed to live in an endless cycle of
evolutionary driven struggle of some sort. I do hope I am wrong, but in any
case we are a long way from reaching it, socially, not so much technically.
Which makes me a bit sad at times.

~~~
Styx-
Pessimist! :)

I disagree. I think much of human suffering due to competition stems from lack
of security, or the lack of reassurance that basic needs will be met.

Imagine a technological utopia. All of your needs as a human being are met.
All of the needs of your friends and family are met. Can you not imagine how
much easier it would be to advance toward a "social utopia"?

Before the Renaissance, the cut-throat psychotic human beings tended to do the
best in terms of gathering resources, security, etc. Since the Renaissance,
this has become less and less true and merit has started to take precedence.

Eventually, once the conditions for a technological utopia are met and for the
majority of the population, it will be a like a light has suddenly been turned
on. Those that have all of their basic needs met, tend to be nicer to others
on the whole.

Besides, even if I'm wrong, it's not hard to imagine some sort of machine or
system that short-circuits "our biologically driven urge to dominate the gene
pool" for the good of humanity.

~~~
FilterSweep
> I think much of human suffering due to competition stems from lack of
> security, or the lack of reassurance that basic needs will be met.

Good comment - there are two places I disagree with you:

1) See the hedonic treadmill theory[0]. You could point to someone, relatively
speaking, who is on top of the world. But they are still unhappy. Why is this?
It's sometimes theorized that we are at a "set point" in happiness, and while
we can run faster on the treadmill, or slow down on the treadmill from time to
time, we are stuck at this set level of happiness.

2) Surely the vast majority of the developed western world is not at a lack
for "basic needs", but why is there so much anger and despair? Because I
believe you might be missing more of the "basic needs" than just Food and
Water. See Maslow's hierarchy of needs[1]. While it is also theory which has
arguments against it, it utilizes a more comprehensive definition of "needs."

Surely there are many people in the western world who lack psychological
stability or lack companionship.

> All of the needs of your friends and family are met.

 _You will need to define "needs"_ because IMHO, that is not true. I have
relatives who are veterans of war, friends who have had psychotic breaks,
friends who have everything they need but something just doesn't "click" with
them.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

~~~
ctchocula
According to this post, the hedonic treadmill theory has been disproven. [0]

"The author is flat out wrong. The Hedonic Treadmill has been disproven.
Moreover, the author seems to be conflating the concept of the treadmill, with
adaptation. The former denotes the subject returns to the original state. The
latter recognizes that while we become accustomed to new things, we still
improve in happiness.

The author is also misquoting, or misunderstanding, Kahneman. Kahneman isn't
talking at all about the treadmill. He's talking about what he called the
"Focusing Illusion"\-- a fancy way of saying "the grass is always greener on
the other side..."

Relevant links:

"Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill: Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being"

[http://www.factorhappiness.at/downloads/quellen/S9_Diener.pd...](http://www.factorhappiness.at/downloads/quellen/S9_Diener.pdf)

Kahneman tried to explain the hedonic treadmill via with his own aspiration
treadmill. He claims that he not only failed, but the data were opposite to
his hypothesis.

[https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10056](https://www.edge.org/response-
detail/10056)

Kahneman's paper where that OP misquotes Kahneman from:

[http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/teaching/Schkade_Kahneman_...](http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/teaching/Schkade_Kahneman_1998.pdf)

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535504)

~~~
FilterSweep
Note the key word in my post _theory_ as opposed to "The Hedonic Treadmill" (
_law_ , or such thereof).

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ctulek
The core problem of utopias is that they take one dimension of human character
and push it to its extreme. We are both competitive and cooperative beside
many other things. On top of that, the same person can become/look as if more
competitive or more cooperative in different groups. That is, even in a group
of heavily cooperative people the one with more competitive tendencies will be
described as competitive. This may even results this guy being expelled from
the group.

Many novels and movies use this to build their story. In a "bad" world a guy
saves everybody or in a "good" world things go wrong because one of them
starts doing "bad" things.

The modern approaches we take give more emphasis to the differences of people
in both work environment and society.

------
golemotron
The problem is when people expect work to be pleasurable. It's good when it is
is, and it's something to strive for, but the reality of work is that some of
it is unpleasant.

Software development in particular is hard. The problem you work on doesn't
care about your feelings. We gloss over this fact when we turn our workplaces
into creches. Pride in doing a job well is more sustainable than a demand for
happiness and novelty.

~~~
gadders
If work was that much fun, they wouldn't have to pay us to make us do it.

~~~
k__
Well, there are many OSS/FS projects out there, where people do exactly that.
Do that work without getting paid.

It's not the software work per se that isn't fun most of the time.

Often the problem is that people who have no idea about software development
want to shape "how" we work.

"I pay you mad bucks for this, so you have to sit here and be watched multiple
times a day so you I know you're really working!"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe I'm a weird case, but most of the time the part in which the work is
paid for is enough for me to immediately lose interest. That is, I can do
equivalent work 10x faster as long as I'm doing it out of my own motivation,
and not because someone _expects me_ to do it.

(Yeah, I had problems with assignments in school too. I'm just wired this
way.)

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shruubi
I thought most, if not everyone was unhappy at work?

I always thought the idea of being happy about doing a job was a little weird,
and maybe it's just me, but given that almost every job puts you in a service
position, I find it weird that people expect you to be happy to act as a
service-monkey to someone's whim all in the goal of making someone else lots
of money.

~~~
TeMPOraL
When I was younger I bought the idea that "you can be happy at work if you
work on what you love". Well, few years and three jobs later I now know I hate
programming.

Or rather, I still love to code - I just immediately switch to loathing it
when the "for money" part gets involved. In time I realized that there is
likely no job that would make me happy, and even if I started my own business,
I'd probably be overwhelmed by various market-related bullshit. I stopped
expecting to be happy at work, and... I got much happier.

(It's either that or SSRIs working.)

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ap22213
I don't need utopia; I would be happy with just less stress, more support, and
more free time.

Stress is working over 55 hours a week. It's having bosses who want impossible
things faster. It's being overwhelmed with complexity and responsibility with
little control. It's being compelled to continuously mask my personality,
identity, and emotions.

But, that's just me.

I just want a safe, simple place to think about ideas and concepts and
collaborate with other like-minded people whom I trust to build them into
reality. The trust part is really important (and increasingly hard to find).

~~~
ap22213
As a side note, while capitalism has been great at allocating resources, is it
really the best way? It seems like it over-allocates politicians, middle
managers, bean counters, marketers, advertisers, record keepers, and market
optimizers. (and, of course, all of the duplicated efforts)

With billions of people networked together and with general understand of who
the inventors, thinkers, leaders, and doers are, why can't we have something
better?

I'd pay $$$$$$$ if some of you brilliant people can figure that out.

~~~
TeMPOraL
People treat economic systems like static things. They're not. Personally, I
think capitalism _was_ good, but is not good _anymore_. It has driven us to
the era of plenty, of advanced technology, but its incentive system seems to
be increasingly misaligned with the shared values of humanity - hence e.g. the
misallocation you refer to. So, for instance, competing on merit was working
for a long time - but it no longer does, hence great rise of marketing that
exists to _game_ the market into profits.

Capitalism served us well, but it's time to move on.

------
preordained
I think the most accessible evidence for the likelihood of anything nearing a
"utopia" is right here in the discussions people have about it. You have
divisions, factions, "camps"...opposing points of view on this and anything
else that human minds might ponder. As long as people are capable of
disagreeing with each other, you will never have peace. While you might try to
put constraints on how damaging a certain division might be, that form of
control or "management" will only produce a feeling of oppression in those it
would constrain, no matter how well intentioned. As long as anyone can feel
disenfranchised or marginalized at any level (the key here is "feel", again,
intentions don't matter), you have the seeds of rebellion.

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kstenerud
"Utopia" is simply one person's idea of the ideal. If he's lucky, he'll get a
group of people together to build that vision, but eventually new people will
be born or coerced into it, and be unhappy with it because they would not
choose such a structure.

Not to mention the fact that not a soul on this planet is capable of the
foresight necessary to endure the changing needs of the people. We feel far
safer keeping rigidly to the known doctrine, even if it makes everyone
miserable.

Every single utopian vision is tyranny.

------
eli_gottlieb
I don't see why on Earth I should be happy about wage-labor.

~~~
st3v3r
You shouldn't, but that doesn't mean you have to be unhappy while doing it.

------
sudhirj
Historically, competition is what drives humanity forward. For a utopia to be
stable, it'll probably need homogeneity has well, which sort of defeats the
purpose.

~~~
mrow84
It seems to me that, historically, it is simply adversity in a general sense
(be that other humans or not) that has driven humanity forward. "Competition"
per se is not the motivating factor, it is just that there is a problem that
_needs_ to be solved. When the necessity of problem solving diminishes, so
does progress.

The competition theory of social organisation tries to stimulate this by
creating artificial adversity through (typically non-violent) competition
between people. I speculate that one of the key issues with this approach is
that a lot of the problems that you create are not bounded by "underlying
reality" as such - they emerge from the competition itself, and so we end up
spending a lot of effort solving meta-problems which, if you stripped away the
competition, aren't really "helpful".

Further, it seems difficult to distinguish which problems are "real" problems,
and which aren't, because the competition does exist - what we end up with is
a pervasive sense that a lot of what we're doing isn't useful, but we can't
work out what or why.

~~~
Styx-
Yes, I agree.

Considering a post-scarcity world, it is not difficult to imagine a pseudo-
utopia with the way technology is going. Using the example of Manna, imagine
the ability to plug into some perfect VR world that looks and feels just like
reality. Why would anyone want to "compete" in that scenario?

Already today, human beings would rather stay at home and consume various
forms of media (tv, games, etc..) than go out and "compete." Humans typically
value security over a marginal gain in luxury. Even the risk-takers among us
err closer to the security-side of this spectrum on the whole.

I think those in this thread that worry that humans will always have an innate
desire to one-up their brethren are worrying about nothing or some close
approximation to nothing.

~~~
mrow84
I'm afraid I am less utopian. To me it seems more likely that we will
eventually overreach our productive capacity by wasting time on the
"unhelpful" problems I mentioned above, and then enter a period of decline.

The best we could hope for in such a situation is that we realise the
immediacy of the "real" problems, and start to focus on those, arresting the
decline before it becomes too severe. I have an (unfounded) expectation that
the process of switching our (i.e. humanity's) productive capacity to focus on
the "real" problems would be characterised by cooperation rather than
competition, because the adversity required for progress would already be
there, and we wouldn't need competition to create it.

If humanity becomes more fragmented during that process (see the rise of the
isolationist right around the world), then we would run the risk of that
cooperation being focused on destructive goals - that would seem to me to be
along the lines of the worst-case scenario.

It strikes me that a lot of that is my interpretation of some of what is in
Joseph A. Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies", which I saw
recommended on here, and subsequently read. I heartily re-endorse the
recommendation (I did a search to see if I could work out whose recommendation
it was that pushed me to read it, but I'm afraid I can't work out which it
might be, for which I apologise).

------
ilostmykeys
the war against any emotion other than "happy", is a real thing, but it's also
something that we do subconsciously because of lack of grounding

------
nxzero
Unlikely that it's possible to be truly happy unless you know it's possible to
be unhappy; aka lack of free will is often a killer.

