The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I feel this strongly, and wish we had more leisure in society. At the least U.S. Seems criminal to me that we've gained so much in material wealth, and yet our lives are more crammed than ever.
I'm also a bit insecure compared to my partner who is far more competent at a lot of things. I mostly just don't enjoy my work, and have dealt with chronic health problems, so I worry about losing the ability to make money and live the life I want to. Ultimately I'd love to quit my career and do something more creative, but I despair that I may never get there. Financial Independence is a ridiculously difficult hill to climb, at least for me.
Envy also eats at me. I have been meaning to get into Girard's theories on desire, but I've noticed as I've aged I become more and more covetous and envious of the people around me. Even though I have always disdained 'Keeping up with the Joneses,' or appearances or however you want to phrase it, status and the respect of my peers has become far more important over time.
Despite the fact that I'm closer to my thirties than twenties, I feel like I have a lot of maturing to do. Mostly in stress-regulating and keeping normal habits. I find it difficult to keep up with the amount of conscientiousness needed for someone in the upper-middle class in our society - clean house, social obligations, interesting/fulfilling career, etc.
Agree that they're all minor in the grand scheme, and I appreciate the sentiment. I wish you luck in the next year.
I've heard of Girard but I'm uneducated on the topic, is there a good primer out there? Status envy can be so destructive, and we can always diagnose it in others easier than we see it in ourselves. I'm vaguely suspicious that a lot of my affectations are obscure flexes that only make sense in my own brain; but I'm glad I missed a lot of the ones my friends have fallen for in housing or careers.
Copypasting a comment I made the last time someone asked for a primer on Girard, pinging @TheDag as well:
The two episodes with Rene Girard on the podcast called Entitled Opinions are really good. He goes over memetic desire as well as his concept of scapegoating. I found everything he had to say very interesting and I listened to the two episodes two years ago but still think of them often.
The first episode: https://entitledopinions.stanford.edu/ren-girard-why-we-want-what-we-want
The second episode: https://entitledopinions.stanford.edu/ren-girard-ritual-sacrifice-and-scapegoat
Thank you for putting in the effort to link these! Will definitely get on listening to them.
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https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/03/30/i-see-satan-fall-like-lightning-rene-girard/
Charles Haywood gives a decent summary and review here. He narrates all his reviews, too, so you can listen rather than read if you prefer.
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I asked the same question about Girard on here a while back, only response I got was to look into Wanting by Luke Burgis. He was on a podcast I’m familiar with and he got me interested so I should probably get to that.
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I think this is a major misconception about society. Social commentators think Americans are overworked due to forces outside of their control. I think instead Americans are choosing to work longer hours. For three reasons: 1. greater returns to capital in terms of investing (home ownership, stocks) and purchasing power. A century ago, a day's worth of work bought SPAM; now you can buy Netflix subscriptions, TVs, iPhone, etc. This material wealth is part of what creates an incentive to work. 2. Inflated wages creates an incentive work, especially for professionals. In the '70s there was no such thing as the $200k+/year white collar job like we see today. 3. Work is a form of escape and provides meaning to people's lives. This is why the PMC, who may have more than enough money to live comfortably off of, voluntarily continue to put in long hours. Americans could choose to work less and still maintain a good standard of living.
You seem to be taking a naive view that everyone can do every sort of job, and that switching costs don’t exist.
I’ve got serious health issues so physical labor is out of the question for me. Including things like serving and being a clerk etc. Almost 30% of adults in the U.S. have some sort of chronic health issue as well. It ain’t easy out in these streets brother.
What are some of these laid back jobs you are talking about?
My argument is that workers have more utility for the $ they earn: more purchasing power. This creates an incentive to work more than necessary.
The situation does seem pretty bad in this regard.
I mean I don’t understand your argument. Obviously more money = more purchasing power?
I guess what I’m saying is because most higher status higher paying jobs have agreed on a schelling point of at least 40 hours a week, it’s incredibly hard to find a “Good” job that also doesn’t overwork you. Add taking care of a household, handling a relationship, pets, kids, older relatives, etc into the mix and we have almost zero leisure time.
Used to be one adult’s salary could fund a whole household of kids and a spouse. The spouse handled all household stuff so there was more time for leisure. Now both adults have to work full time+ and clean and take care of kids so it becomes an impossible race.
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