Corporate propaganda
Not necessarily, as another commenter said they need something “fulfilling” to do with the rest of their lives. After you’ve been working for 50-60+ years, 5 days a week, 8-16 hours a day, and then you suddenly have every day free you don’t know what to do with the time. I’ve been unemployed a few times for a year at a time and after about 3-4 months it starts to get pretty boring.
My uncle lived to 100, he was completely healthy at 98 and would walk a mile or two a day around town, but broke his hip, the recovery process is practically what killed him because he could no longer be active every day. For like 6-9 months he just sat around, he’s muscles and mind atrophied, and the rest of his body started to “fall apart”, and he was never the same. He died about a year later.
Probably but I feel there’s some truth to it. If you retire and sit on your ass all day, that is also not good for your health.
My brother and I were both worried about our workaholic father when he was about to retire. He made so many projects for himself (genealogy of our family, writing a book, building a mechanical prototype, etc) that he always said he had not enough time in a day.
Ya so he is still “working”. I think many watch tv and eat. Lol.
My father-in-law retired at 60. He didn’t make it to 70. There’s nothing for him to do so he drank almost everyday.
2 were self employed, running their own businesses, one was fucking fishing, and one “cuts fabric” part time.
Show me a corporate desk slave that a) lives that long, b) works that long and c) doesn’t resent their entire existence, and I might buy into this obvious fucking farcical corporate propaganda piece.
Fuck you, eat the rich.
(Not you, Op, the author)
While it is dystopian that many people have to end up working beyond retirement age, I can see why some people choose to take on a “retirement job”.
Our jobs are what we do for the majority of our time, for better or worse, so once you retire there’s suddenly a purposeless void where work used to be. To keep your mind going and your body moving, you need to fill that void with things you want to do - but for a lot of people it’s hard to do that sustainably, so after a few years they need something else, and for some people that’s a “retirement job”.
Yeah there’s nothing wrong with people choosing to work out of boredom. The issue is when they have to, like you said.
Choosing to work because you’re bored and depressed is just a paid hobby
Depends on the “work”. Is it back breaking farming or is it leeching off the company’s salary while blocking younger workers from getting promoted?
This less about a dystopia and more about humans need purpose in life to keep hanging on.
Papers show longer and better life outcomes for people with purpose.
… The dystopien part is where they work for someone else because they are not able to find perspective outside of their “being exploited” indoctrinated system.
I think that a significant factor in the cross section of “need purpose” and “work = purpose” comes from a sort of brainwashing though. When you’re taught (intentionally or otherwise) that amount of money, marketable skills, monetization of hobbies, etc all directly correlate to your worth as a person, it’s absolutely surprising nobody that people who stop working (whether through retirement, disability, having children, etc) become depressed.
I totally agree with you, except for the part where you say that it isn’t dystopian. A utopian society would be beyond that frame of mind imo and retired people would feel free to explore hobbies and passions, feeling more fulfilled than they ever did selling their labor for survival. I don’t think these people want to go back to work; I think they want to feel useful. And they’ve only ever felt useful as workers. They can’t imagine any other productive use because they’ve never experienced it.
I think people feel useful in social contexts, people they see everyday, who depend on them, who have consistent interactions. And most people get that through work. Especially when we’re talking about older people when their friends start dying. The young people at the job, at the volunteer center, at whatever, provide the connective through thread in their lives to give them purpose.
Some people are very fortunate and they can find purpose without structure, but a lot of people need that structure. I think you’re 80% more likely to die within a year of your spouse dying when you’re over a certain age. Just you need that social structure
We are indeed social animals.
Counterpoint: my nan is 104 and hasn’t done a day of work since she was a Land Girl during the second world war.
What is a land girl?
In both of the world wars Britain had an organisation called the Women’s Land Army. Which was a thing women could volunteer for to work on farms while the men who would normally work there were at war.
Guess she was an at home mom, right? Because that’s more than a full time job, especially back in the days when the man didn’t take care of the kids except when it came time to scold them.
True. But even once the last child was an adult she didn’t even have any kind of part time work.
Good she did her job! She did her part and presumably satisfied with it.
This whole devaluation of womens labour contributionand to society as mothers is fucking disgusting.
Just to chime in a little. I don’t think the implication was “my nan never worked”, I think it was more “she never had a 9 to 5”. No one in this conversation was trying to say being a mom is easy, so much as they’re saying working a desk job is harmful to the soul. While more demanding than a desk job, raising children is also a truly meaningful occupation; like, deep down, meaning of life type meaningful. You don’t get “paid”, but no amount of pay is worth more than watching your child learn and become a person either. Ultimately I don’t think the ease or difficulty of jobs is whats enabling or preventing these people from living a long time. It probably has more to do with a sense of purpose. The article is disingenuous because an overwhelming majority of jobs do not provide a sense of purpose.
The concept of retirement for working class people is new (aristocrats retired all throughout time)
- invented in Germany by a priest in 1600s but died out
- independently invented in America when a soldier in the military (late 1700s) had both his arms blown off and a law was passed for him to collect an amount for his (and family’s) maintenance from the neighbors.
Before invention of retirement, the working class had the mentality that you work until you are dead with 99% of the working class in brown collar work. During the industrial revolution where most people transitioned from brown collar to blue collar work, retirement became much more common with social mobility.
During the great depression, USA legislators picked a number “65” to be the “age of retirement” with the reasoning that it would get more young people back to work. The average age of mortality at that time was ~67 years old. They did not index that age with the average age of mortality, so as life expectancy increased, there is now a period in people’s life to be “retired”.
Problems with how this developed:
- social security in the USA is not able to keep paying out at this rate, the age of retirement should be more closely aligned with an “indexed” age whether that is the current average age of mental incompetence or an actuarially determined “you did your time, so you can now get out and your contributions should fund the government support of you”. The political cycle will probably destroy any hard to understand actuarial index, so that leaves us with the first option.
- retired people are a political force (high voter turnout). It is easy to vote to get a raise and ignore issues that would bring actual long term growth when you have a short term mentality. I think that accepting 100% of the cost of your maintenance from the government may be the price of your vote (you cannot vote if you are retired). I am sure that this is another unpopular opinion.
With that perspective, I don’t know if corporations are entitled here, or the people are just doing what their ancestors did for 1,000s of years and are owning it in a positive way.
The premium capitalist health insurance plan- extend your lifespan through mindless servitude.
That’s clearly how our hunter-gatherer bodies and minds were supposed to work.
