Re: How do I convince dad not to throw me out of the house because I wont get any job where I'm ruled by authority?
- From: seapal <seapal@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:22:27 -0700 (PDT)
I want to start my response by saying that I'm not as naive as I seem
here. The post I'm responding to, in many places, reads like a
satire. Unfortunately sometimes some people sound this way but really
are sincere. At any rate, I've written a response for the writer in
the case that I'm not being trolled.
On Jul 24, 11:37 am, "runsch...@xxxxxxxxx" <runsch...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
How do I convince dad not to throw me out of the house because I wont
get any job where I'm ruled by authority?
To get a good answer you should tell us more about your dad. I'm
assuming you're officially an adult, which means any obligation or
other reason your dad has for taking care of you is very much "at-
will." He probably believes some typical lies though, and you can
build arguments from those, but then again most people aren't very
reasonable if you reach any conclusions they don't like, even if they
agreed with all the premises.
Why are my parents so pissed off that I quit my easy job because of
philosophical despair over human nature
My dad is so pissed of that I quit one of the easiest and decent
paying jobs you can get especially in this economy, because I was
reading too much of Schopenhauer's pessimism about the cruelty of man,
nature and existence. The stupid will to survive that "just is" and
defies all reason. The selfish egoist sexual sadism of all nature and
man. How can I live in a world like that? Maybe if I had been educated
since childhood that thats the way the world is I could have accepted
it. But in school they taught us lies about good guys and bad guys
that I was the only fool stupid enough to believe.
You quit your job because of philosophical despair over human nature?
How does that work exactly? How does a general feeling about
something so general cause you to quit your job? Can philosophical
despair over such and such make you throw away other things of value?
Or make you do other acts?
Admit your full reasoning. Were you right to quit your job? Why did
you quit your job? Saying "reading such and such" or "I despair over
such and such", and therefore, those facts make you quit your job, is
completely taking the person and the thought out of the whole
equation. Take responsibility for the decision, don't blame it on a
fact that you read some book or felt some feeling about some vague
world historical entity. I think if you clarify your reasonings you
will get more useful responses.
My dad thinks I'm depressed because I have no friends or girlfriend.
But this is a philosophical existential depression not a personal
psychological one! I just can't move, get out of bed or live in this
world under such cruel conditions!
How do I convince dad not to throw me out of the house because I wont
get any job where I'm ruled by authority
Let's just be honest. You need money. You have time, effort,
abilities, etc. that you need to trade. For cash. You need to sell
yourself. Some people out there want to buy it. You give them what
they want, and in exchange, you get what you want. Refusing to work
under an authority is, in effect, refusing to deal with buyers when
you are a seller. If you have any direction or aim in life, hidden or
not, you probably need some money to achieve it. You probably can't
afford the luxury of not compromising.
There are plenty of complicated alternatives that aren't so gloomy
though. You should think about this more. One way to do this would
be to check out some autobiographies of some apparent heroes of
yours. Is it possible to live a good life without being independently
wealthy? Can you possibly aspire to be like someone who had to
compromise with authority to get by? Can your relationship with
authority be meaningful without being a pact of non-participation?
Etc.
I know that there is a libertarian argument that capitalism is the
natural sister of democracy. That the free market is true economic
liberty of personal responsibility, free will and voluntary choice.
And you have an uncle named John Galt who used to have to lick toilets
clean but then invented a autolicker and became a trillionaire. For
the moment lets just leave that theoretical argument to the side.
What is the reality? In the USA all workers are at-will. Which means
you can be fired for any reason whatsoever save race or sex. For
rooting for another sports team, for complaining about an abusive
employee, for doing your job too good, for listening to your manager,
for asking for a raise or a pay decrease. For any reason whatsoever.
So your boss has basically godlike omnipotent power over your life.
Since there is limited welfare, its not impossible to starve from
poverty so it literally is life and death. Without getting into a
theoretical debate about capitalism, on a personal level its hard for
me to just accept that some of the worst people in the world, the
alpha male wolves should have such arbitrary power over my life. When
you think that the lion's share of your time revolves around work, and
your job pays your bills for the offhours. Since we're all such
individualists, whats the solution for the individual. I guess theres
the claim that anyone can be an entrepreneur. But for a young guy
right out of college, what are the options really? Boss or death. I
don't know if I can endure hierarchy and authority. Perhaps a public
sector job would be better since then at least there is a system of
checks and balances between unions and management, so its more like a
constitutional monarchy. And in an indirect sense you are working for
yourself since you elect the government you work for. Technically you
can elect your boss out of office but its a rather tortuous process
and not reality. Most you can really do is write your congressman
complaining.
Sometimes we have to endure challenging times. When I get a flu or a
bad cold, I am reminded of this fact. But then my life opens back up
and for a few days I'm so happy to just have my body back to normal.
I tell myself to remember how much I appreciate simple things like
that. But I don't. My suggestion is that you walk more often. Walk
alone, undistracted, for an hour a day.
As for society, I have to wonder how all this focus on the big picture
really applies to you. It seems like you're escaping into the details
of the big picture, something that is hopeless. It's like you want to
harp on a hopeless picture because fighting with the details more
relevant to your situation are too difficult--maybe they are less
hopeless, practically, but more hopeless, emotionally. It seems like
you're intellectualizing to shelter yourself from difficult relations
with people. Your biggest struggle with authority right now is your
dependence on your dad.
Perhaps you can convince him to be your patron, and you can paint or
write or whatever. Maybe he'll set you up a trust fund. No? Then
what are your real plans, for your real life? What if your dad was
gone tomorrow, and you were left with nothing that would last you more
than a year. That year passes. Now what? Maybe you don't know what
you need. So you have to keep trying to stay exposed so that you can
keep moving. You aren't going to find anything new if you don't care
enough to keep that possible. What I mean is, don't despair so much
that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe meeting the right
group of friends would be a positive influence. But how does that
happen? Not by giving up and escaping into cosmic general despair.
So I guess for me the question is both personal and philosophical.
They feed off each other. I can sort of predict the responses. Its the
boss' property so he can do whatever the hell he likes. And I should
just toughen up and take my punches. Democracy has been such a big
deal in my life politically and philosophically that I forgot to
examine democracy in my personal life. I think this was a big mistake
in college, because I took a pretty antagonistic view towards college
life, when in reality there is more democracy there through hall
councils, SA, and clubs than in the real world. Now college is over,
and there is very little democracy in the real world. It seems
individualism is valued over democracy. We are all lone atoms. There
is value to that. But on the other hand you deal with your neighbors
as atoms, not as a democratic body. Few people even know their local
government. I'm very political and have no idea. And the small town
Dem and Rep parties are surprisingly closed off, you would think they
would WANT more members. So I started off with a sort of Jeffersonian
democratic vision of the yeoman farmer breaking up the landed estates
and farming his own land ruling his own nation like the Atheninan
democrat or the New England Town meetings. With the values of a old
New England town. But as I searched for daily life democracy I became
more radical.
So I don't know what the solution is metaphysically or personally. Can
this world be made livable? Can I put up with a job? To get a job is
the ultimate affirmation of life. Its saying to the universe I'm
satisfied with the decades that have come before, and I'm willing to
work, fight and struggle to preserve whatever I already have. I'm not
sure if I'm ready to take that leap of faith and affirm my past life
for the future
Clearly it's difficult navigating between the conflicting lies that
everything around us is built around, and the void that they leave.
Building your own ideas, or finding more credible ones, is tricky,
because the dishonest ones often leave a hole that is impossible to
fill by anything real. But over time you will toughen up to those
voids. I don't think that thinking in terms of "capitalism" and
"democracy" will get you anywhere in this respect. Think more about
how your locale works, because every little area that justifies such
and such under flags of "capitalism" and/or "democracy" is really a
completely different entity. If you avoid terms like those, I think
you'll find that thinking about these situations is not as impossible
as those terms indicate. They act like disguises to confuse the
issue. They shove a mixture of conflicting assumptions into the
discourse, and create more work--the task of fitting reality to them.
Just think about the people where you are, and their relationships to
other people, wherever they are, however abstract. IMO it's easier
that way.
.
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