Submitted 2 weeks ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5d5e487a-5698-411d-a13a-55fc2c13b32b.png
“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.
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.
Hey, I’m ~40 and this is that I do, too! Plus work.
Same. And take care of aging parents. And kids.
This framework fails to consider all the time between those main activities, which we spend shitposting.
Indeed, most days consist of 8 hours working, 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours shitposting.
Don’t forget sleeping and drinking.
Which we do in order to make the working hours bearable.
How selfish of you to deny your fortune to be able to contribute to the wealth of the chosen few!
bUt iF yOu SeE yOuR wOrKpLaCe lIkE fAmIlY tHeN yOu nEvEr wOrK a DaY iN yOuR lIfE!
40 years? Try 50+
I started working at 14-15, and I’ll be happy if I can retire at 65
I’m expecting 13-73.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but what are you supposed to do if you’re incompetent?
It should be all systems and auto.ation engineers, and operators, the other jobs should be extinct.
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.
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.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is, in fact, the objective truth.
Suicide until you’re reincarnated in billionaire family.
You incarnate into a rich family just in time for global economic collapse because of the actions of your family.
Free? That’s when your kids send your grandkids for you to take care of. Ungrateful bastards…
You think you are going to retire for 5-10 years? Cute.
40 Hopefully!
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.
I don’t get it.
I’m on the hedonistic treadmill enjoying the run
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.
I’m a 43 year old engineer in an auto plant and I really enjoy my work.
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.
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)
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, you may just get a fatal genetic disease at 8 years old
I’m telling you guys - life in USSR was much much better than this shit we live in now.
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”.
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. Hard to blame them, I can’t imagine how safe and free from anxiety I’d feel if I had a guaranteed job, housing costed 3% of my monthly income, and my neighborhood was walkable and full of affordable canteens with cheap seasonal ready meals. Sure, it would be a small flat, I wouldn’t own a car, and I’d have to wait 4 years on a list to buy a new radio, but those are literally non-issues to me in comparison.
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.
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 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
Reminds me of that David Bowie lyric…“We live for just these 20 years, do we have to die for 50 more?”.
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.
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 that had to align for this moment to occur from a biological scale to a cosmic scale and all at the right time, the probability that you’d be reading this message is so incredibly close to nil and yet it is happening.
Study never stops though. So technically study would be 60yrs. Shit, I studied more in the US Coast Guard than in school!
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
0-10 years.
You can die during the first 60 at any time, never making it.
EonNShadow@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
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 2 weeks ago
think about this when looking at my pay tub and seeing the deduction % i chose for retirement savings i may never use
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 2 weeks ago
At least it will give your children or siblings something to fight over when you die.
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Die before retirement? Well that’s one way to escape wage slavery 😄
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve watched multiple co-workers not make it to retirement.
Really makes you want to keep doing it.
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.