All the people I know that died did so once they were retired. No thanks, I'm never quitting the work force. You know how many people I know that died from drinking and driving? Zero.
Both my parents retired. Are they living it up? Are they checking things off their bucket lists? Nope. They're having emergency surgeries, planned surgeries, going to the doctor all the time, taking a regiment of pills or they die, and hanging around the house because they're old and their mobillity isn't great.
A just reward after a lifetime of work.
It's a scam, friends. You're going to work until you're dead or until it doesn't really matter anymore whether you're dead or not.
I used to get downvoted to shit for saying things like this, but enjoy and use your youth.
No matter how you treat your body, you do not know what will happen to it. You may be athletic, rarely ill, an extremely healthy eater. You can still end up with a genetic condition you didn't know about, with a cancer you never fully recover from, losing all of your limbs, losing your bowels or bladder. Dying. All kinds of things.
All of this can happen at any time in your life. Any time. You are not safe from bodily ailment just because you are young and apparently healthy.
Even if nothing happens until you are old and decrepit like a healthy person ought to be, you will still have lost the best years of your life.
It's actually possible to get meaning from what you do as well. May not pay the best in the world, but it's out there. I was in non-profit administration for many years, and I work for a law school now that helps poor folks, many BIPOC, get degrees so they can better themselves and their communities. Social justice people. I've also worked for a private conservative-owned company that only enriched some fuckwads, and I'll not be doing that again.
Also I run a nonprofit that I founded on the side, and we're hoping to hire our first staff person this year, I get a lot of meaning from that.
Basically if you work to change the world for the better instead of just slumping through your day, you feel good about your life, even though it's hard work.
But even if you don't like your job and don't find much meaning out of it, it's still worth trying to find contentment and happiness in other parts of your life.
I've had jobs I hated with coworkers I loved. I've had jobs I've liked in places I hated. I've had jobs I mostly hated that I actually appreciate having taught me important skills I still use today (for example, a 3-year stint in restaurants in my 20's was miserable in a lot of ways, but it helped me stretch a tight grocery budget and fed me plenty of staff meals, and 20+ years later I'm still a great cook).
Jobs don't define us. For many people, they're just a small part of us. And we should go on to build fulfilling lives for ourselves across many domains, not just at work.
I had fun in college. My major didn't define my actual day to day, or my memories of that time. I had fun in high school. I had fun in elementary school too. I don't remember everything or even everyone, but I know I had a blast at those stages in my life, and most of the fun was had outside of school.
Yeah. The study part is all a lie anyway. Schools and colleges are all about instilling obedience into kids. The only actual learning happening is either natural or coming from young teachers who bought in a lie and haven't been disillusioned yet.
I'm living with my wife and kids half a continent away, but every time we visit my parents, they have some kids or house pets from my siblings to take care of. My parents are retired, they enjoy peace, quiet and especially their own schedule by now; they shouldn't be asked to act as child minders anymore.
Don't mistake this as me saying this work-til-you-die shit is okay, cause it's not. But freedom is as much a mindset as it is a material circumstance. There are people who have everything but freedom and there are people who have nothing but freedom.
I recently had to explain to my cystic fibrosis therapist / social worker that the thought of living another thirty years is not a good thing. And she knows that I have other, unrelated and equally bad chronic health issues (genetics matter!).
Fuck's sake, I don't want to live to be 70. What a nightmare.
The philosopher Emil Cioran had an interesting take on this. If I read him right we can stop looking for the meaning of life. It won't make us happy to look, but it also won't make us happy to stop. Nothing will make us happy.
It sounds like he might have gotten something out of studying the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path (which is not to say that he had to agree with our follow them).
Anf then you move to western or northern europe. Wait you guys got childhoods? Wait you guys get actual 6-8 hours of work a day instead of having 4 hours of unpaid overtime after it? Wait you guys get to retire at an age and health condition where you just travel poor african and asian countries for another 15 years being racist in some very strange colonialist manner?(this last one being a critique)
It's not that bad. You're generally not aware of what you're doing for the first 10 years. Then study for the next 10. Then, if you work to live and not live to work, you might get something out of life. Anything post work, I kinda see as a bonus, not a goal. Predisposed medical conditions may mean you aren't seeing those years anyway. Actually... it may be that bad lol.
Just don't take it that seriously. Live till you die.
After a foray into consulting and plant management, I'm back in the shop working with my hands and programming. My favorite part of the trade is teaching kids. (Enough grey in my beard that anyone under 30 is a kid). I could make more money doing other things but I don't need the stress.
I hope I'm able to work until I die, even if I 'retire'. I've begun learning Blender and mixing it with CAD so that I can do sculpture.
I generally know what cruelty-free means, but searches for "cruelty free pee" just yield regular stuff about cruelty-free products, as well as some anti-odour thing for pet pee... ;n;
Did you know that it's possible to bleed to death (or, in some of our cases, almost bleed to death) as a result of chronic hemorrhoids? Because I do now! Also, blood transfusions kind of suck.
The meaning is to live life and enjoy as much as you can along the way.
I'm going to leave my kids more than my parents will leave me, and more than their parents left them, and hopefully they'll be shaped with better ideals because of me.
I wish I could do better than my parents but that is out of the question. I grew up poor, we were middle class when I was in high school, and then my boomer dad started making good money right as I was graduating and moved out. I make less less than half of what he was making 35 years ago, not even adjusting for inflation. I have no retirement savings but maybe I'll get a small inheritance if I manage to outlive them both and medical bills don't burn through their funds. I'm expecting to work for 60 years.
I'm curious on how you plan to retire at 50. Doing that where I live means you basically get no pension so you'd have to have saved up enough to live the rest of your life during those 27 years, so a bit over half your income would need to go into a savings account.
Look up "FIRE" for "financial independence, retire early."
tl;dr - save a larger chunk of your salary and invest it become part of the owner class, living off the interest, dividends, and capital gains surplus value generated by the working class.
I’m curious how you were free at the time in your life when you have the least amount of freedom to make any decision whatsoever (0-6).
Well, I guess that's debatable, sure. I was thinking in the sense that I wasn't studying or working, so the last option was that I was free. I guess you could say that that is a different kind of thing altogether? I was constrained both by my parents attempting to raise me and by my stupidity, weakness, frailty, and overall lack of understanding of everything on account of being a tiny child. Still, I think I had huge freedom, in that I was being guided by my seniors, though there was really nothing I had to do, and everything I needed was provided to me free of charge. I don't know, sounds reasonable to me to call that freedom.
And I think part of the point is that you are not free in your retirement years because your body is old.
Personally, I think this is absurd! There's definitely something to that, I agree -- disease, for example, definitely hinders one's ability to enjoy life -- but there are many older folks that are perfectly healthy and capable of living fulfilling lives in retirement. My grandmother (mid-70s), for example, and my own father (mid-50s) are shining examples! They're both very active physically, which is something that I myself have been doing for about 2 years now, in preparation for my life post-retirement.
Also, I think that sort of mentality is destructive. Do you dread old age? I certainly don't! Not only do I intend to stay healthy, but even if I don't, I intend to keep doing things I enjoy. Are you marathon runners or something?! I enjoy reading, eating good food, riding the train, art, and nature... I don't suspect my old age to rob that from me. Not until I'm way old, anyway, and by then, I shall die after having enjoyed many great things for many years, I hope, with a smile on my wrinkly and sun-damaged face.
Sure, but you should not expect to be healthy in your old age. Hope for it, plan for it, sure. But also realize that you don't have a whole lot of control over it in the end. Use what you've got while you've got it.
And no, I don't dread old age. My genetic problems reared their heads long ago.
Sure, but you should not expect to be healthy in your old age. Hope for it, plan for it, sure. But also realise that you don’t have a whole lot of control over it in the end. Use what you’ve got while you’ve got it.
To an extent, I agree with this. Of course, any number of things could (and will) happen, outside of my control, and some of those things might cause me sickness and hurt my health. True, and I accept that, as we all should. But I shouldn't expect to be healthy? Why not?!
Not as healthy and capable as I am now, certainly, but healthy? Yes. I think I should expect it. Living a healthy life, making the right choices for my long-term health... I'm stacking the deck in my favour. If something happens to me, alright, but why would I expect to be unhealthy when I've seen first-hand and second-hand and third-hand that it is perfectly possible to be old and healthy? I think you sound like a fatalist.
And no, I don’t dread old age. My genetic problems reared their heads long ago.
That's really unfortunate :C I do hope you still find joy in life :D
36 years as a walking corpse that society no longer wants, outside your grandkids. So you have to perpetuate the cycle to feel anything. Oh, and some beautiful landscape and nice things you can buy, again, while you rot away, and no one cares what you have at all, no one to share with.
And they are trying to take away the 3rd one, because without that you won't need things like retirement savings, so they can just take all of that away from you.
Most people polled in most eastern Europe post-Soviet countries who lived in socialism (except a few like Poland or Estonia) claim that life was better under socialism
I remember the poll you're referring to. It was click-bait articles that made it sound like that, the actual research stated nothing like this.
They were basically "did you enjoy your life when you were young" kind of questions. And, to the apparent shock of everybody, when you ask an 70-80 year old that question, they'll answer "yes".
The only people who think fondly of the times under russian occupation are the people who were a part of the system.
It's a historical, provable fact that russia invaded the Baltics, Poland, Czechoslovakia and a bunch of other countries in the East, installed puppet governments, and unified everything as "USSR" (with some countries, like Poland, having a bit more independence, and technically wasn't a part of the USSR).
People in the Baltics are extremely russophobic
"Russophobic"? We're not afraid of them, we just don't like them for the hundreds of years of meddling and suffering they've caused us. Again, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's history.
Life expectancy globally is around 71 years. Only a handful of countries (Afghanistan and a few sub-Saharan countries) have a life expectancy below 60.
I think you're confusing average with median. If 90% of people make it to 70, but 10% die before reaching 5 years, you'd have average life expectancy at birth of about 60, but 90% of the people will live longer.
That's why prehistoric life expectancy values are misleading. It wasn't that uncommon to reach an older age, just a lot more humans didn't survive the first few years
The meaning of life? Learning to enjoy it. Realizing that even though it's a grind sometimes, every instance is something like a miracle, because given all the things from a microbiological scale to an astronomical scale that had to align in just the right sequence for this moment to occur, the probability that you'd even exist to be reading this message is so incredibly close to nil and yet it is happening.
I have also felt that way when I was depressed, and found that, for myself, my current perspective is much more conducive to an enjoyable life - - it was brain wash myself or be miserable, and this worked well. I understand though, that my journey is my own and I don't fault anyone for their perspective either. So I guess, if I'm a bit more honest, this is just the meaning of life for me.
Another way I see it is that meaning itself is the meaning of life. We are meaning machines, it's what we bring to the universe. Without us the universe truly is meaningless and for that reason I feel life is immeasurably valuable.
And to be perfectly blunt, what you describe is beyond a victim mentality, it's an entire victim identity, and I'd recommend finding a less self destructive path.
101 Comments
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz · 78 pts · 167d
0-10 years.
You can die during the first 60 at any time, never making it.
EonNShadow@pawb.social · 33 pts · 167d
Or never retire due to circumstances outside your control in your working years
40+ years is a long time for shit to go wrong
expatriado@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 167d
i think about this when looking at the deduction % on my paystub i chose for retirement savings i may never use
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online · 8 pts · 167d
At least it will give your children or siblings something to fight over when you die.
expatriado@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 167d
only 1 child, so he has it easy, unless i remarry, then it may get spicy
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 167d
Die before retirement? Well that's one way to escape wage slavery 😄
DarkFuture@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 167d
I've watched multiple co-workers not make it to retirement.
Really makes you want to keep doing it.
Grimy@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 167d
All the people I know that died did so once they were retired. No thanks, I'm never quitting the work force. You know how many people I know that died from drinking and driving? Zero.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world · 37 pts · 167d
"Free"
Both my parents retired. Are they living it up? Are they checking things off their bucket lists? Nope. They're having emergency surgeries, planned surgeries, going to the doctor all the time, taking a regiment of pills or they die, and hanging around the house because they're old and their mobillity isn't great.
A just reward after a lifetime of work.
It's a scam, friends. You're going to work until you're dead or until it doesn't really matter anymore whether you're dead or not.
Drusas@fedia.io · 14 pts · 166d
I used to get downvoted to shit for saying things like this, but enjoy and use your youth.
No matter how you treat your body, you do not know what will happen to it. You may be athletic, rarely ill, an extremely healthy eater. You can still end up with a genetic condition you didn't know about, with a cancer you never fully recover from, losing all of your limbs, losing your bowels or bladder. Dying. All kinds of things.
All of this can happen at any time in your life. Any time. You are not safe from bodily ailment just because you are young and apparently healthy.
Even if nothing happens until you are old and decrepit like a healthy person ought to be, you will still have lost the best years of your life.
toynbee@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 167d
Hey, I'm ~40 and this is that I do, too! Plus work.
Quexotic@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 166d
Same. And take care of aging parents. And kids.
lemmyman@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 167d
This framework fails to consider all the time between those main activities, which we spend shitposting.
rucksack@feddit.org · 11 pts · 167d
Indeed, most days consist of 8 hours working, 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours shitposting.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 167d
Don’t forget sleeping and drinking.
Which we do in order to make the working hours bearable.
DmMacniel@feddit.org · 31 pts · 167d
How selfish of you to deny your fortune to be able to contribute to the wealth of the chosen few!
LMurch@thelemmy.club · 21 pts · 167d
OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 167d
bUt iF yOu SeE yOuR wOrKpLaCe lIkE fAmIlY tHeN yOu nEvEr wOrK a DaY iN yOuR lIfE!
Drusas@fedia.io · -1 pts · 166d
Can this (I hAvE tO mAkE mY pOiNt...) just die already? It was kind of amusing twenty years ago.
daw@feddit.org · 12 pts · 166d
iT wAs kiNdA AmuSIng tWeNTy YeARs aGo
Passerby6497@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 167d
40 years? Try 50+
I started working at 14-15, and I'll be happy if I can retire at 65
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 3 pts · 167d
I'm expecting 13-73.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 15 pts · 166d
You should be having fun during the 20 years that you're studying. And you should be having fun during the 40 years that you're working.
BanMe@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 166d
It's actually possible to get meaning from what you do as well. May not pay the best in the world, but it's out there. I was in non-profit administration for many years, and I work for a law school now that helps poor folks, many BIPOC, get degrees so they can better themselves and their communities. Social justice people. I've also worked for a private conservative-owned company that only enriched some fuckwads, and I'll not be doing that again.
Also I run a nonprofit that I founded on the side, and we're hoping to hire our first staff person this year, I get a lot of meaning from that.
Basically if you work to change the world for the better instead of just slumping through your day, you feel good about your life, even though it's hard work.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 166d
Yes, there's that, too.
But even if you don't like your job and don't find much meaning out of it, it's still worth trying to find contentment and happiness in other parts of your life.
I've had jobs I hated with coworkers I loved. I've had jobs I've liked in places I hated. I've had jobs I mostly hated that I actually appreciate having taught me important skills I still use today (for example, a 3-year stint in restaurants in my 20's was miserable in a lot of ways, but it helped me stretch a tight grocery budget and fed me plenty of staff meals, and 20+ years later I'm still a great cook).
Jobs don't define us. For many people, they're just a small part of us. And we should go on to build fulfilling lives for ourselves across many domains, not just at work.
I had fun in college. My major didn't define my actual day to day, or my memories of that time. I had fun in high school. I had fun in elementary school too. I don't remember everything or even everyone, but I know I had a blast at those stages in my life, and most of the fun was had outside of school.
Work is the same way.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 165d
It should be all systems and auto.ation engineers, and operators, the other jobs should be extinct.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 165d
Yeah, but what are you supposed to do if you're incompetent?
drath@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 165d
Yeah. The study part is all a lie anyway. Schools and colleges are all about instilling obedience into kids. The only actual learning happening is either natural or coming from young teachers who bought in a lie and haven't been disillusioned yet.
vane@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 167d
Suicide until you're reincarnated in billionaire family.
echodot@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 166d
You incarnate into a rich family just in time for global economic collapse because of the actions of your family.
yelling_at_cloud@programming.dev · 13 pts · 166d
The meaning of life is listening to groovy basslines on the way to and from work. And hugging your loved ones.
Don't let anything distract you from that.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 166d
Ladies and gentlemen, this is, in fact, the objective truth.
Bruncvik@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 167d
Free? That's when your kids send your grandkids for you to take care of. Ungrateful bastards...
Drusas@fedia.io · 3 pts · 166d
Parents are the ones who should be grateful for their children. Parents are the ones who wanted the children.
Bruncvik@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 166d
I'm living with my wife and kids half a continent away, but every time we visit my parents, they have some kids or house pets from my siblings to take care of. My parents are retired, they enjoy peace, quiet and especially their own schedule by now; they shouldn't be asked to act as child minders anymore.
endless_nameless@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 167d
Don't mistake this as me saying this work-til-you-die shit is okay, cause it's not. But freedom is as much a mindset as it is a material circumstance. There are people who have everything but freedom and there are people who have nothing but freedom.
Bazell@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 166d
Wilco@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 167d
You think you are going to retire for 5-10 years? Cute.
4everjugon@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 167d
40 Hopefully!
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de · 8 pts · 167d
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 166d
I recently had to explain to my cystic fibrosis therapist / social worker that the thought of living another thirty years is not a good thing. And she knows that I have other, unrelated and equally bad chronic health issues (genetics matter!).
Fuck's sake, I don't want to live to be 70. What a nightmare.
nexguy@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 166d
300 years ago:
Probably die
Work
Die
mycodesucks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 165d
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/column-why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you-idUSBRE97S0KV/
pmk@piefed.ca · 6 pts · 167d
The philosopher Emil Cioran had an interesting take on this. If I read him right we can stop looking for the meaning of life. It won't make us happy to look, but it also won't make us happy to stop. Nothing will make us happy.
PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space · 5 pts · 167d
Credit: Sidney Harris
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 167d
I don't get it.
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 166d
It sounds like he might have gotten something out of studying the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path (which is not to say that he had to agree with our follow them).
Simplified explanation: https://buddhismforeveryone.com/the-four-noble-truths/
four@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 167d
I'm on the hedonistic treadmill enjoying the run
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 167d
Anf then you move to western or northern europe. Wait you guys got childhoods? Wait you guys get actual 6-8 hours of work a day instead of having 4 hours of unpaid overtime after it? Wait you guys get to retire at an age and health condition where you just travel poor african and asian countries for another 15 years being racist in some very strange colonialist manner?(this last one being a critique)
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 165d
It's not that bad. You're generally not aware of what you're doing for the first 10 years. Then study for the next 10. Then, if you work to live and not live to work, you might get something out of life. Anything post work, I kinda see as a bonus, not a goal. Predisposed medical conditions may mean you aren't seeing those years anyway. Actually... it may be that bad lol.
Just don't take it that seriously. Live till you die.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 165d
Yeah, you may just get a fatal genetic disease at 8 years old
VinegarChunks@lemmus.org · 4 pts · 167d
I’m a 43 year old engineer in an auto plant and I really enjoy my work.
Machinist@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 166d
After a foray into consulting and plant management, I'm back in the shop working with my hands and programming. My favorite part of the trade is teaching kids. (Enough grey in my beard that anyone under 30 is a kid). I could make more money doing other things but I don't need the stress.
I hope I'm able to work until I die, even if I 'retire'. I've begun learning Blender and mixing it with CAD so that I can do sculpture.
I love the smell of black cutting oil.
MacaqueAndCheese@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 167d
The only thing missing from this is the quest for a cruelty free pee, that seems to take up most of our lives these days.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 167d
What?!
lemmyman@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 167d
It's not my job to educate you
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 167d
I generally know what cruelty-free means, but searches for "cruelty free pee" just yield regular stuff about cruelty-free products, as well as some anti-odour thing for pet pee... ;n;
MacaqueAndCheese@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 167d
Cruelty free pee is pee that didn't burn when it came out. It's so cruel that God does this to me.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 167d
Yikes... Good luck with that.
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 166d
Are you named for Gongitsune?
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 165d
Nope! I don't think my parents named me after anyone or anything. They just picked a common but not too common name with a respectable meaning.
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 166d
Can relate.
Did you know that it's possible to bleed to death (or, in some of our cases, almost bleed to death) as a result of chronic hemorrhoids? Because I do now! Also, blood transfusions kind of suck.
lemmyman@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 167d
/unshitpost
I have no idea either
/reshitpost
Try harder, colonialist
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 167d
brownsugga@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 167d
The Beatles had the meaning of life in a song back in the day- Life Goes On
That's it, it just goes on
If you're lucky you have a kid
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 3 pts · 165d
This assumes retirement will exist for most people.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 166d
Reminds me of that David Bowie lyric..."We live for just these 20 years, do we have to die for 50 more?".
Diddlydee@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 167d
The meaning is to live life and enjoy as much as you can along the way.
I'm going to leave my kids more than my parents will leave me, and more than their parents left them, and hopefully they'll be shaped with better ideals because of me.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 2 pts · 166d
I wish I could do better than my parents but that is out of the question. I grew up poor, we were middle class when I was in high school, and then my boomer dad started making good money right as I was graduating and moved out. I make less less than half of what he was making 35 years ago, not even adjusting for inflation. I have no retirement savings but maybe I'll get a small inheritance if I manage to outlive them both and medical bills don't burn through their funds. I'm expecting to work for 60 years.
menas@lemmy.wtf · 2 pts · 165d
The mean-ing of life :
salty_chief@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 167d
Study never stops though. So technically study would be 60yrs. Shit, I studied more in the US Coast Guard than in school!
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 167d
I was free from 0-6.
I am going to study from 6-27, roughly, though also working in the meantime. Let's call that 20 years.
I intend to work from 23-50, at most. Hopefully less. That's 27 years.
There's some overlap.
Let's say I die at 80 (I'm almost 25). A slightly early death, on average.
That's 36 free years. 27 years of work. 20 years of study.
36 free years VS 44 work/study years
Methinks possible. Methinks not so bad?
Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 167d
I'm curious on how you plan to retire at 50. Doing that where I live means you basically get no pension so you'd have to have saved up enough to live the rest of your life during those 27 years, so a bit over half your income would need to go into a savings account.
lemmyman@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 167d
Look up "FIRE" for "financial independence, retire early."
tl;dr - save a larger chunk of your salary and
invest itbecome part of the owner class, living off theinterest, dividends, and capital gainssurplus value generated by the working class.gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 167d
You seem to already know pretty much what I plan to do. What I'm already doing.
I'm saving a bit more than half my income, and I'm investing it rather than putting it in a savings account, but yeah that's it, you got it!
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 166d
I'm curious how you were free at the time in your life when you have the least amount of freedom to make any decision whatsoever (0-6).
And I think part of the point is that you are not free in your retirement years because your body is old.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 166d
Well, I guess that's debatable, sure. I was thinking in the sense that I wasn't studying or working, so the last option was that I was free. I guess you could say that that is a different kind of thing altogether? I was constrained both by my parents attempting to raise me and by my stupidity, weakness, frailty, and overall lack of understanding of everything on account of being a tiny child. Still, I think I had huge freedom, in that I was being guided by my seniors, though there was really nothing I had to do, and everything I needed was provided to me free of charge. I don't know, sounds reasonable to me to call that freedom.
Personally, I think this is absurd! There's definitely something to that, I agree -- disease, for example, definitely hinders one's ability to enjoy life -- but there are many older folks that are perfectly healthy and capable of living fulfilling lives in retirement. My grandmother (mid-70s), for example, and my own father (mid-50s) are shining examples! They're both very active physically, which is something that I myself have been doing for about 2 years now, in preparation for my life post-retirement.
Also, I think that sort of mentality is destructive. Do you dread old age? I certainly don't! Not only do I intend to stay healthy, but even if I don't, I intend to keep doing things I enjoy. Are you marathon runners or something?! I enjoy reading, eating good food, riding the train, art, and nature... I don't suspect my old age to rob that from me. Not until I'm way old, anyway, and by then, I shall die after having enjoyed many great things for many years, I hope, with a smile on my wrinkly and sun-damaged face.
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 166d
Sure, but you should not expect to be healthy in your old age. Hope for it, plan for it, sure. But also realize that you don't have a whole lot of control over it in the end. Use what you've got while you've got it.
And no, I don't dread old age. My genetic problems reared their heads long ago.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 165d
To an extent, I agree with this. Of course, any number of things could (and will) happen, outside of my control, and some of those things might cause me sickness and hurt my health. True, and I accept that, as we all should. But I shouldn't expect to be healthy? Why not?!
Not as healthy and capable as I am now, certainly, but healthy? Yes. I think I should expect it. Living a healthy life, making the right choices for my long-term health... I'm stacking the deck in my favour. If something happens to me, alright, but why would I expect to be unhealthy when I've seen first-hand and second-hand and third-hand that it is perfectly possible to be old and healthy? I think you sound like a fatalist.
That's really unfortunate :C I do hope you still find joy in life :D
Drusas@fedia.io · 2 pts · 165d
I'm really not. Quite the converse, really: I think that people take the present for granted, and their futures as well.
But thank you. Life is often tedious but has plenty of joyful moments.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 167d
36 years as a walking corpse that society no longer wants, outside your grandkids. So you have to perpetuate the cycle to feel anything. Oh, and some beautiful landscape and nice things you can buy, again, while you rot away, and no one cares what you have at all, no one to share with.
gon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 167d
What are you talking about? Grandkids at 50?
Do you have to work or study to feel anything? What cycle are you talking about?
I'm confused.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 166d
And they are trying to take away the 3rd one, because without that you won't need things like retirement savings, so they can just take all of that away from you.
sommerset@thelemmy.club · 0 pts · 167d
I'm telling you guys - life in USSR was much much better than this shit we live in now.
Riverside@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 166d
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 166d
I remember the poll you're referring to. It was click-bait articles that made it sound like that, the actual research stated nothing like this.
They were basically "did you enjoy your life when you were young" kind of questions. And, to the apparent shock of everybody, when you ask an 70-80 year old that question, they'll answer "yes".
The only people who think fondly of the times under russian occupation are the people who were a part of the system.
Riverside@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 166d
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 166d
No idea what does that have to do with anything. Please elaborate.
Riverside@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 166d
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 166d
What "conspiracy theory" do you mean?
It's a historical, provable fact that russia invaded the Baltics, Poland, Czechoslovakia and a bunch of other countries in the East, installed puppet governments, and unified everything as "USSR" (with some countries, like Poland, having a bit more independence, and technically wasn't a part of the USSR).
"Russophobic"? We're not afraid of them, we just don't like them for the hundreds of years of meddling and suffering they've caused us. Again, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's history.
Riverside@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 166d
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 166d
I really hope this is a joke, mate...
If not: no, no it wasn't. Unless by "USSR" you mean "Petersburg, Moscow, and their immediate surroundings".
laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 167d
Hapankaali@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 167d
Life expectancy globally is around 71 years. Only a handful of countries (Afghanistan and a few sub-Saharan countries) have a life expectancy below 60.
laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 167d
four@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 167d
I think you're confusing average with median. If 90% of people make it to 70, but 10% die before reaching 5 years, you'd have average life expectancy at birth of about 60, but 90% of the people will live longer. That's why prehistoric life expectancy values are misleading. It wasn't that uncommon to reach an older age, just a lot more humans didn't survive the first few years
Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 167d
The meaning of life? Learning to enjoy it. Realizing that even though it's a grind sometimes, every instance is something like a miracle, because given all the things from a microbiological scale to an astronomical scale that had to align in just the right sequence for this moment to occur, the probability that you'd even exist to be reading this message is so incredibly close to nil and yet it is happening.
toynbee@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 167d
I thought it was 42.
Or "A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, 'This book will change your life'."
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 166d
A significant minority don't see that as inherently positive, much less providing meaning. Random chance and now you had to deal with all of this.
Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 166d
I have also felt that way when I was depressed, and found that, for myself, my current perspective is much more conducive to an enjoyable life - - it was brain wash myself or be miserable, and this worked well. I understand though, that my journey is my own and I don't fault anyone for their perspective either. So I guess, if I'm a bit more honest, this is just the meaning of life for me.
Another way I see it is that meaning itself is the meaning of life. We are meaning machines, it's what we bring to the universe. Without us the universe truly is meaningless and for that reason I feel life is immeasurably valuable.
And to be perfectly blunt, what you describe is beyond a victim mentality, it's an entire victim identity, and I'd recommend finding a less self destructive path.
Drusas@fedia.io · 1 pts · 166d
You're doing a lot of projecting there. Or assuming. I'm not miserable and I don't need a destructive life.
Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 165d
I certainly assumed.
I'm curious though, what's the alternative to acceptance and embracing life for what it is?