My issues with jobs, money, and society in general

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Ankhros
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30 Apr 2011, 2:05 am

I fully expect to get a lot of flack for this, but maybe there will be one person out there who understands what I'm going through here. If there's at least one, I'll be glad I posted this.

I'm an aspie capable of great success in social interaction. In the neighborhood where I live, a lot of people know me because of jobs I've had where I was in a position to offer customer service. I enjoy making people's days with jokes I make based on my unique way of seeing the world. When you drop a mirror, you don't have a broken mirror. You have a mirror puzzle. Stuff like that. More than one person has suggested that I do standup comedy.

But while I love talking to people and getting to know them, I hate having to sell things or persuade people to do anything that I have to go out of my way to tell them about. If the company I work for has some kind of program the customers can sign up for, I know it isn't for the customer's benefit. It's for the company's. So when I have to take time out from actually helping the customers to play the salesman, I find myself unable to do it without getting physically sick. I can't taint my genuine interaction with another person with the interests of some corporation, and I've given up trying.

I have a job right now doing computer stuff for a real estate company (posting ads, making forms, solving whatever computer problems come up, and I once even repaired a tape measure). It's well suited to my abilities, but I find it more and more unbearable because of my growing dislike for the current political and economic system. It seems to me that a lot of people are stuck in jobs they hate because it's the only way they can make money. They have to make money because it's the only way to pay for things, and we all need things to survive. At the center of everyone's life is the quest to make money, and I just don't see why such a life is worth living. Why should I live if I have to make money? Because money is great? The love of it is the root of all goodness?

I don't make a lot of money, of course. How can I if I don't care about it? My survival depends on the kindness of my family. Go ahead, say I'm a lazy mooch if that's how you see me, but if you do, you're missing the point of all this. If I don't want to make money, my only choices are to mooch or die. The currency we use in the united states and the currency used in many other "developed" nations is entirely borrowed from a private bank known as the federal reserve. Other banks create currency in the form of bank credit when they make loans. What we call money has no actual value, and the vast majority of it exists only as numbers in computers. Not only is its value imaginary, but the money itself is imaginary! The people who control it are the banks that create it and the businesses that distribute it. We are all at the mercy of banks and businesses. I don't like that, and I'm not eager to play this giant game of monopoly where the only winner is the banker.

Sure I could move to another country, though I'm not sure how I would do that without money. But every country worth living in is playing monopoly just like the united states is, and the others are considered impoverished because of conditions arising from a lack of money. The planet's resources are being plundered for profit in the form of imaginary ones and zeroes, which can be produced in infinite amounts. It's a game the whole human race is going to lose, and I can't stand being a part of it.


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SammichEater
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30 Apr 2011, 2:34 am

I see what you mean, but you can't just complain about things without giving a possible solution. That gets us nowhere.

So suppose nobody cared about money. Nobody would do anything, and thus nothing would get done. Farmers aren't going to grow food if they can't sell it for a profit. Nobody is going to sell you food they didn't care about money. While you are right, money is not everything, money is required to live, and that's how we are required to contribute to society.

I do realize that the system is flawed and all, but unless you have any ideas to motivate people with reasons other than money, there's nothing you can do about it.


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Ankhros
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30 Apr 2011, 2:43 am

A problem without potential solutions is still a problem. I perfectly well can point out problems without proposing solutions because realizing there is a problem is the first step toward solving it. Posting about it here was kinda my way of trying to find a solution.

Do you really think nothing would get done without money? First you tell me that I should propose a solution, and then you tell me that there is no solution. There was a time when things were traded for things other than money. After all, the human race is older than money. Yes we died of diseases back then, but that has nothing to do with this. My point is that humans thrived in moneyless societies all over the world for tens of thousands of years. What has changed?

What I get from your response, though, is that money is the center of your world, and I don't think you really understand my frustration. I want what I do to be what matters, not what I get. I want to do something that I like doing for the sake of being happy and making other people happy.


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Subotai
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30 Apr 2011, 2:52 am

Yes, ridiculous isn't it? Money is a persistent illusion that everyone believes in and it is definitely rigged in the favor of the bankers.
In the distant past clothing was made to last, these days it's made to be replaced, as well as gadgets and most everything else. This creates waste and pollution from manufacture, landfills...
I can see why they call it the rat race.



CanadianRose
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30 Apr 2011, 6:52 am

I can understand your frustration with wanting to provide good service for the sole benefit of providing good service and not play the "money game"

I guess I have a problem with your "choices" - you say that you can be a "mooch or die"

The problem with dying is that ... well ... you're DEAD. Then all of the good things such as your sense of humour, your personality and your helpful nature are not shared with the world. You also don't experience the joys that come with the world and your unique place in it (enjoying a garden, feeling the rain on your face, or whatever it is that brings you joy).

The other choice was to "be a mooch" (or, more nicely put - relying on family/friends for money/material things). The problem with this choice is that you are still relying on a monetary/banking system - it is just that you require OTHERS to stoop so low as to make money and do things that you wouldn't do yourself.

However, there is some ways out of this dilemma:

1) work for non-profit societies. Use your aptitude and skills doing something for the betterment of others. Work for the SPCA or an organization that strives to help people with housing or ??? Non profit societies exist for the benefit of their mandate - which is usually helping people (or animals in the case of the SPCA) and they match services to people based on need and charge only enough to continue operation.

2) find a good, profit motivated company which has a mandate to provide good service and prides itself on matching its products/services to that of its clients/customers so that the customer is well satisfied and happy and returns to do repeat business.

3) work for a company that it is involved in profit - but find work that does not involve directly selling or interacting with customers/clients. Work behind the scenes (i.e. stocking the supermarket, fixing the computers, doing bookkeeping/accounting, but stay away from the actual selling part of the work).

Anyways - even in ancient times - there was still trade. People would fish and trade some of the fish for rice. People would grow rice and trade some of the rice for cloth to make clothes. The clothmakers would trade some of the cloth for some medicine (like a root or something).

I agree with some of the other commenters - the society of stuff has gotten out of control.

We don't have to go overboard with stuff and material things - we can adjust our lives and try our best to work for what matters and be of good service to society without foisting stuff on to society.

It is just about making reasonable choices.



LostInEmulation
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30 Apr 2011, 11:24 am

I personally do not agree with the statements about money. Even in times when money did become worthless, like during hyperinflations, people reinvented it. In Germany, during the hyperinflations, it was cigarettes, in Zimbabwe and Yugoslavia it were foreign currencies (US dollar and German Mark). In many places non-traditional currencies exist or existed: cocoa beans, kauri shells, stone slabs, gold, silver, etc.

There are a lot of things wrong with the economical system, I agree, but blaming it on money or stuff is just bad form.


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arielhawksquill
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30 Apr 2011, 2:09 pm

I fully agree with the OP and feel the same way myself. I deal with it by doing behind the scenes work, as a previous poster said, and by living a life of voluntary simplicity.
You can learn more about such lifestyles at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living

You might enjoy the work of Douglas Rushkoff, whose book "Life, Inc." is about the history of how humanity became enslaved by corporatism and central currencies. He offers some practical suggestions on what people can do on the local level. His website is http://rushkoff.com/



Musicprophets
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30 Apr 2011, 9:37 pm

yes i agree with the op. great insightful observations, while others who dont understand your point will say you are just being a negative nancy. and then flip it to where you are the problem, and not the other way around. you hear so much about what degrees are stable, what degrees are high-paid, what degrees are for the future, yadda, yadda, yadda, and then you go out there and its a f*****g nightmare and there you are, on your own, having a job that you hate, and just doing it because it pays the bills. all the while going after all these materialistic, selfish, shallow needs and desires and never feeling satisfied, complete, happy with life. and then the blame game goes around to every type of "expert" who has their expert opinions and expert recommendations to fix the "problem" and then they forget about it ( the media and distract us with BS like the royal wedding and f*****g charlie sheen) and you no longer hear about the nuclear power plants in japan, the war in iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and all the other natural and human made disasters around the world, because after awhile, the advertisers get restless and have to bring out the new shiny toy for the public to be mesmerized about and then get used up and thrown away. and these days as you hear little tidbits about the usa defaulting on its trillions of dollars of loans to other countries and how the government is going bankrupt and china will be controlling the usa in 5 years. we are still just so foolishly and pathetically obsessed with "making money". it will take a collapse of the whole country for us to finally get around to fixing the problem...and by that point, it would have already been too f*****g late. but as long as we have american idol and dancing with the stars and glee and nfl lockout and charlie sheen and stupid hollywood movies with our thumbs pressed to our cellphones more hours out of the day than we are asleep, everything is fine, right? but like i said, i agree with the op.



Subotai
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01 May 2011, 9:18 am

The worst thing is rampant capitalism will destroy the world, and people are aware of this!
The solution? Propaganda campaigns, distractions and coverups.