I quit an easy job because of philosophical despair

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I knew a good guy who fell off the perch of life to this kind of thinking. Decided the 'system' was all BS, stepped off lifes escalator, took copious amounts of drugs, and I would not be surprised if he was dead.

Its easy to overthink our roles in life, and especially in a negative light as our OP is. I have struggled occasionally with the same line of thinking, but the fundamental difference is that I just cannot accept that it is the 'truth'.

Instead of considering ourselves as 'slaves' to the 'system' we have to accept that there is a 'system' and work it to our own purposes. Work for the money doing the things we enjoy, derive purpose from our employment. From there we require the knowledge that employement generates the income to not only survive, gain comfort, but also enable us to create out of our own desires. You see the system can work as much for us, as we for it. thats the fundamental difference in thinking from the idiocy of the EMO mindset.

Hell, even start your own business so that you can feel more in control.

Whats the alternative? Scrounge from the garbage bins, existing no more than at survival level? living off the handouts of others? F*ck that! Our purpose is to be more than that, so harden up, educate yourself, and move on and up 'system' or no system. Thats irrelevent in this world, thats the prison our mind puts us in if we chose to navel gaze in that direction, and it helps noone bar the philosophers who get paid to think that way.

Well without work none of us would have houses, food, plumbing, healthcare and all the other basic necessities that we take for granted. The concept of a society as defined by Aristotle is that it exists and was created to bestow greater benefit for all; that benefit is impossible if we don't contribute and that is why work exists. It is why we no longer live in caves, hunt animals and gather berries. Also beyond philosophical reasons it is absolutely necessary; it is easy to criticize it when you live with your parents. Imagine if you didn't, would you feel the same way? Would you become homeless? Would you want to become poor and have absolutely nothing? I hope you change your mind and maybe instead of finding work that you hate, you could find one that appeals to your believes. Many feel the same way you do and they dedicate their life to their cause; working to fight injustice, writing philosophy, et cetra.

I think the creator of this thread has an issue with reality itself; which is relatively justifiable. Ultimately, these philosophies can either lead to a realization of wanting a different (better) reality, and who doesn't, or at the very least a different culture/society. You could take it to the extreme, and ask why do we even need to eat, or why do we live on a finite planet circling around a raging ball of fire, that in turn is hurtling around a supermassive black hole; otherwise known as the center of our galaxy. Either figure out a way to re-engineer the universe with less destruction and/or carelessness, or realize (but not accept) reality is both amazing and relentless, and figure out what to do from there. Asking deep questions won't necessarily change physics and/or biological needs. However, it can sometimes lead to new perspectives of what's important and/or worth doing, (at the moment). I went through a similar scenario, several years ago, where I refused to submit to work, especially useless service-sector jobs that only seemed to perpetuate ignorance and/or stupidity. However, I later realized that simply abstaining as a sort of ambiguous "boycott," won't necessarily fix anything on it's own. You could either start a cultural movement, or find a different culture and/or activist organization, to aid as an extension of your current thinking rather than letting your thinking go to waste. Obscurity isn't anything, but obscure. What are your ideals and/or passions?

Do they now have to support you since you don't have a job? That could be a huge reason. I know if my son quit a job for something like that and he expected me to support him, I'd be FURIOUS!! !

But honestly, it does sound like you may have depression (I do and a lot of what you said sounds familiar).

I'm with the OP. The things "normal" people find acceptable and even natural I reject with all my soul and my logic. The lives most people lead are sickening and irrational to me. But maybe you all hate working for a boss way less than I do.
I can't conceive of anything worse than being chained to a job I hate, regardless of any other issues. It's like the world says to me "Show up for torture at Guantanamo five days a week, eight hours a day. We'll give you eight bucks an hour" and everybody but me jumps at the "opportunity". I would rather blow my head off. I may yet.
I am long-term unemployed and have now been homeless for a month. Things are looking down.
I can say with certainty that MikeGeeWhiz and the other posters insulting the OP don't have mental spaces big enough to comprehend what people like us are going through. I don't know whether to feel jealousy or contempt for the happy drones.

These related resources (then) may be of some value:

"Do you believe this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living? I ask that question to people all over the country and no one ever says “yes.” And if you don’t believe that this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living, what does that mean for our strategies and for our tactics? The answer is, we don’t know; and one of the reasons we don’t know is because we don’t talk about it; and one of the reasons we don’t talk about it is because we’re all so busy pretending that we have hope." Derrick Jensen

"There is only one measure by which we will be judged by the people who come after: and that is the health of the land base... They're not going to care if we're nice people, they're not going to care if we wrote really good books, they're not going to care if we drove a bio-diesel car... They will care that they have water to drink and that they have food to eat, and that they're not being poisoned... This seems so obvious to me, but a lot of people have argued against it, and it makes no sense to me. You can have this wonderful, groovy eco-socialist utopia, and if you're living on a poisoned planet, you don't have anything." Derrick Jensen

"People ask me a lot if I advocate violence. And I always say, No, nor do I advocate non-violence. I advocate being present to your circumstances, and being present to your own gifts, and using those gifts... My gifts happen to be for writing... Imagine if we all started saying, and actualizing, I will do whatever it takes, and meaning it! Whatever it takes! Not meaning, I will do whatever is comfortable, I will do whatever is legal, I will do whatever is safe, I will do whatever is considered moral by those in power. Instead, meaning I will do whatever it takes. What happens if we do that?" Derrick Jensen

"...there's a great book by Robert J. Lifton called The Nazi Doctors, in which he writes about doctors who would work in concentration camps, and they would do the best they could to help the inmates.... They would do everything except question the concentration camp itself. And they would do everything but question the racism and the whole system that led to the concentration camps. So, they would hand someone an aspirin to lick if they were sick. Or they would hide them from selections for a little while. So, (viewed from) inside the system, they were doing everything they can; (viewed from) outside the system, of course, they were perpetuating it." Derrick Jensen

One of my favorite (short, concise, and easy to understand) books on these subjects (also by Derrick Jensen) is actually a satirical graphic novel titled: As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial. The title is (of course) a pun, and the story is about the concept of false hope. You can get the graphic novel if you click here, or start reading it online for free if you click here. "Two of America's most talented activists team up to deliver a bold satire of modern environmental policy in this fully illustrated graphic novel. The U.S. government gives robot machines from space permission to eat the earth in exchange for bricks of gold. A one-eyed bunny rescues his friends from a corporate animal-testing laboratory. And two little girls figure out the secret to saving the world from both of its enemies. As the World Burns will inspire you to do whatever it takes before it’s too late." If you want some of his more "text-heavy" books, you could read Endgame: The Problem of Civilization; or watch related videos (part 1, part 2).

However, I'd highly-recommend watching Zeitgeist 2: Addendum. "Every time you walk into work, you step into a dictatorship. In a world where 1% of the population owns 40% of the planet's wealth... In a world where 34,000 children die every single day from poverty and preventable diseases, and where 50% of the world's population lives on less than 2 dollars a day... One thing is clear. Something is very wrong... The failure of our world to resolve the issues of war, poverty, and corruption, rests within a gross ignorance about what guides human behavior to begin with. This documentary addresses the sources of the instability in our society, while offering radical long-term solutions." You can watch the ~2 hour documentary for free if you click here, or watch a ~38 minute shortened version of the documentary if you click here. I'll also attach the full youtube video to the end of this post; enjoy.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg[/youtube]