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8 hour work week
(A great article)

Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months of traveling.

Because I had been living quite a different lifestyle while I was away, this sudden transition to 9-to-5 existence has exposed something about it that I overlooked before.

Since the moment I was offered the job, I’ve been markedly more careless with my money. Not stupid, just a little quick to pull out my wallet. As a small example, I’m buying expensive coffees again, even though they aren’t nearly as good as New Zealand’s exceptional flat whites, and I don’t get to savor the experience of drinking them on a sunny café patio. When I was away these purchases were less off-handed, and I enjoyed them more.

I’m not talking about big, extravagant purchases. I’m talking about small-scale, casual, promiscuous spending on stuff that doesn’t really add a whole lot to my life. And I won’t actually get paid for another two weeks.

In hindsight I think I’ve always done this when I’ve been well-employed — spending happily during the “flush times.” Having spent nine months living a no-income backpacking lifestyle, I can’t help but be a little more aware of this phenomenon as it happens.

I suppose I do it because I feel I’ve regained a certain stature, now that I am again an amply-paid professional, which seems to entitle me to a certain level of wastefulness. There is a curious feeling of power you get when you drop a couple of twenties without a trace of critical thinking. It feels good to exercise that power of the dollar when you know it will “grow back” pretty quickly anyway.

What I’m doing isn’t unusual at all. Everyone else seems to do this. In fact, I think I’ve only returned to the normal consumer mentality after having spent some time away from it.

One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my trip was that I spent much less per month traveling foreign counties (including countries more expensive than Canada) than I did as a regular working joe back home. I had much more free time, I was visiting some of the most beautiful places in the world, I was meeting new people left and right, I was calm and peaceful and otherwise having an unforgettable time, and somehow it cost me much less than my humble 9-5 lifestyle here in one of Canada’s least expensive cities.

It seems I got much more for my dollar when I was traveling. Why?

A Culture of Unnecessaries
Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business. Companies in all kinds of industries have a huge stake in the public’s penchant to be careless with their money. They will seek to encourage the public’s habit of casual or non-essential spending whenever they can.

In the documentary The Corporation, a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.

This marketing campaign alone represents many millions of dollars that were spent because of demand that was completely manufactured.

“You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying, your products. It’s a game.” ~ Lucy Hughes, co-creator of “The Nag Factor”
This is only one small example of something that has been going on for a very long time. Big companies didn’t make their millions by earnestly promoting the virtues of their products, they made it by creating a culture of hundreds of millions of people that buy way more than they need and try to chase away dissatisfaction with money.

We buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill our childhood vision of what our adulthood would be like, to broadcast our status to the world, and for a lot of other psychological reasons that have very little to do with how useful the product really is. How much stuff is in your basement or garage that you haven’t used in the past year?

The real reason for the forty-hour workweek
The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.

The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.

Suddenly I have a lot more money and a lot less time, which means I have a lot more in common with the typical working North American than I did a few months ago. While I was abroad I wouldn’t have thought twice about spending the day wandering through a national park or reading my book on the beach for a few hours. Now that kind of stuff feels like it’s out of the question. Doing either one would take most of one of my precious weekend days!



The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is exercise. It’s also the last thing I want to do after dinner or before bed or as soon as I wake, and that’s really all the time I have on a weekday.

This seems like a problem with a simple answer: work less so I’d have more free time. I’ve already proven to myself that I can live a fulfilling lifestyle with less than I make right now. Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in my industry, and most others. You work 40-plus hours or you work zero. My clients and contractors are all firmly entrenched in the standard-workday culture, so it isn’t practical to ask them not to ask anything of me after 1pm, even if I could convince my employer not to.

The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays.

As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays.

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.

We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom.

Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives?

The economy would collapse and never recover.

All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be “healthy”, America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.

The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’ most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something.

You may have heard of Parkinson’s Law. It is often used in reference to time usage: the more time you’ve been given to do something, the more time it will take you to do it. It’s amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer.

Most of us treat our money this way. The more we make, the more we spend. It’s not that we suddenly need to buy more just because we make more, only that we can, so we do. In fact, it’s quite difficult for us to avoid increasing our standard of living (or at least our rate of spending) every time we get a raise.

I don’t think it’s necessary to shun the whole ugly system and go live in the woods, pretending to be a deaf-mute, as Holden Caulfield often fantasized. But we could certainly do well to understand what big commerce really wants us to be. They’ve been working for decades to create millions of ideal consumers, and they have succeeded. Unless you’re a real anomaly, your lifestyle has already been designed.

The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by.

Is this you?

Two weeks ago I would have said hell no, that’s not me, but if all my weeks were like this one has been, that might be wishful thinking.


"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"
 
I wish I could work a 40 hour week right now. I've worked every weekend and holiday to get my current project complete. I wouldn't say that we're conditioned by any entity to work eight hours a day. It's natural (for me, anyway) to work in prime daylight hours between getting up and going to bed. In fact, people worked longer hours until fairly recently and a six day work week was not uncommon.
 
A lot of the trades that I work with (especially Union ones) work a nine hour day, four days a week. Every Friday off. Pretty good.
 
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"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"
 
While all that may be true (I certainly believe it) it still doesn't add up to the conspiracies you are espousing.

Another thing I believe is that people are generally unable to live with uncertainty. So we seek answers to all the mysteries of the world, often making some up as we go along. Sometimes we tell ourselves big lies in order to resolve psychological tensions and make it easier for us to take action and move forward in life. I'm sure I've accepted many falsehoods into my mental model of reality, but I try at every turn to avoid them as much as possible. The single most effective way I can do that is to live with uncertainty. So I have a threshold for accepting views or explanations that is very, very high. It's very frustrating for people who know me who tell me to "just do 'x' already!" while I sit around and ponder whatever problem some more.

Do I know the explanation for 9-11? No. Nor do you. Possibly nobody will ever know how it all ended up going down exactly. I simply have an idea about it that I'm comfortable with. But I don't go around arguing it to whoever will listen, because I don't know. I listen to other's views, looking for new info that might contradict what I believe. Same with JFK, same with a dozen murdered and missing doctors. Hey, there's thousands of murdered and missing aboriginal women that the government refuses to investigate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/11/canada-aboriginal-women-murder_n_5804550.html Maybe they discovered Harper's secret tunnel to Russia in northern Manitoba and had to be 'disappeared' before they told the truth? Or maybe not.

I know what I believe, and if anyone wants to hear it I'll tell them. But most people just want their (mostly shaky) views to be validated by the acceptance of others, to be reassured that there is some certainty in the world. So they spout their opinions like doctrine, unwilling to challenge their own beliefs. Yet all along, their 'definitive' views exists solely because of their inability to live with uncertainty.

The only conspiracy about 9/11 is the story the news told you.

Seriously, a guy in a cave organizes 4 planes to hit targets in the US?. Many of the alleged hijackers were found alive and found by the coyrts to have nothing to do with it. After the first plane hit the first building any otger plane off coyrse woukd be blown out of the sky. Tower 7 which took the least amount of damage collapsed at free fall speed "due to fire".

Anybody that believes the "official story" is the conspiracy theorist. Only time in history high rise steel framed buildings collapsed due to fire and all 3 happened on the same day.

Even if you believe somehow both towers 1 and 2 both collapsed indentically and symmetrically from planes hitting at different points ( which defies physics). What reasoning can you give for building 7 collapsing the way it did. If building 7 was a set up than the whole thing was. But hey only 4000 people died.
 
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-The missing trillions were never investigated or talked about after...



"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"
 
The only conspiracy about 9/11 is the story the news told you.

Seriously, a guy in a cave organizes 4 planes to hit targets in the US?. Many of the alleged hijackers were found alive and found by the coyrts to have nothing to do with it. After the first plane hit the first building any otger plane off coyrse woukd be blown out of the sky. Tower 7 which took the least amount of damage collapsed at free fall speed "due to fire".

Anybody that believes the "official story" is the conspiracy theorist. Only time in history high rise steel framed buildings collapsed due to fire and all 3 happened on the same day.

Even if you believe somehow both towers 1 and 2 both collapsed indentically and symmetrically from planes hitting at different points ( which defies physics). What reasoning can you give for building 7 collapsing the way it did. If building 7 was a set up than the whole thing was. But hey only 4000 people died.

Please enlighten us.

How should the towers have collapsed?

BTW, I've done a lot of reading about these conspiracy theories so be mindful of what you write. If it's stupid I will call you on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Please enlighten us.

How should the towers have collapsed?

BTW, I've done a lot of reading about these conspiracy theories so be mindful of what you write. If it's stupid I will call you on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

1144f97c783452ca51246d280e58795f.jpg


More details at.. Please read with everything else you read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

30 years from now.. Things that happened today will maybe get unclassified, all the while , there will be another you picking apart another him. Because you cannot wrap your head around the notion, powerful people will go to any means to rule the world


"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"
 
Last edited:
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More details at.. Please read with everything else you read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

30 years from now.. Things that happened today will maybe get unclassified, all the while , there will be another you picking apart another him. Because you cannot wrap your head around the notion, powerful people will go to any means to rule the world


"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"

Terrorists may have been given direction or encouragement from many sources. No argument there.

The BS about the towers being brought down by explosives or The Pentagon being hit by a missile is just BS.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
There is a curious feeling of power you get when you drop a couple of twenties without a trace of critical thinking.

I do all my critical thinking while dropping a deuce.
 
1144f97c783452ca51246d280e58795f.jpg


More details at.. Please read with everything else you read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

30 years from now.. Things that happened today will maybe get unclassified, all the while , there will be another you picking apart another him. Because you cannot wrap your head around the notion, powerful people will go to any means to rule the world


"If i was educated, I'd be a damn fool"
If I ruled the world, I'd free all my sons...

Sent from a Samsung Galaxy far, far away using Tapatalk
 
The BS about the towers being brought down by explosives or The Pentagon being hit by a missile is just BS.
I know! It's just crazy, right?
But unfortunately, wishing for something does not, will not make it so...

The explosions of the squibs, floor by floor, can be clearly seen in video of the twin towers 'falling'.
NYC Firefighters reported hearing the explosions "boom! boom! boom!" all the way down.
Thermite micro-spheres were clearly identified - no shortage of them! - in the debris-strewn dirt at the base.
Molten steel can clearly be seen running out of the towers.
Fires and molten steel didn't go out and cool off for days.
No part of the fires (jet fuel, burning office furniture) was ever hot enough to melt steel!
A third building - WTC 7 - which was never hit by a plane, fell that day too.
WTC 7 fell a half-hour after the BBC reported it fell, and you can see the tower still standing in the video of her reporting it had fallen.
Larry Silverstein was clearly heard to exclaim "pull it" just before WTC 7 was demolished.
~1500 Architects and Professional Engineers have stated that the only way WTC 7 could have been symmetrically imploded at free-fall velocity was if all 84 columns were taken out at once.

It's just a scam, Caboose - a blatant one too!
And the PNAC neocon hawks in Washington had been moaning for "a new Pearl Harbour" for about a year previous.
They said they needed one to energize the American people, so they'd accept war in the Middle East.
Hey it looks like they got their wish...

"It is far, far easier to fool a man, that it is to convince him he's been fooled."
-Mark Twain
 

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