Work and play are complex
concepts
The culture that some of us
consider to be "utopia" is considered
to be "dystopia" to other people,
and no matter what type of culture a person considers to be
utopia, it requires
dystopia in order to maintain it. Utopia and
dystopia are just intangible concepts that are whatever we want them to
be.
The concepts of "work" and "play" are just as confusing. Most people
regard the word "play" to refer to an activity that we
enjoy doing, and want to do during our leisure time, and we regard the
word "work" as referring to activities that we do not want to do, but
we must do. One of the confusing aspects of those definitions is that
the activities that some people describe as "work" are what others
would
describe as "play".
For a simple example, to some people, taking care of a pet dog is a
pleasant, leisure activity. They enjoy cleaning the dog, throwing a
ball for it chase after, and taking it for a walk. To other people,
taking care of a pet dog is unpleasant "work". Those people are
disgusted by the ball covered with slimy, dog saliva; they dislike
walking a dog and having to stop every few minutes so it can sniff
something, pee, or poop; they are disgusted with having to pick up
and carry the poop; and they are irritated by the dog hairs that get
into their clothing and home.
In order to play, we must do some work
To confuse the issue of
work and play, most of the activities that modern humans consider to be
"play" are activities that require us to do "work" before, during,
and/or after the play. For example, the people who enjoy playing in a
swimming pool have to do some work in order to create and maintain the
swimming pool, or they have to do some work to pay other people to do
the work.
The people who enjoy horseback riding, snow skiing, or sailing have to
do even more work in order to play those activities, which is why they
are so expensive. The more expensive a play activity is, the more work
it requires us to do.
Animals “work”, they do not “play”
We assume that animals are
"playing" when they are involved with activities don't
seem to have any purpose. For example, kittens seem to be playing when
they chase after one
another, but in reality they are preparing
for a deadly battle. They are "working", not playing. They are
analogous to a soldier who is in boot camp, and who is learning how to
fight and defend himself, and who is developing his muscles and
coordination.
Young animals, especially the more intelligent ones, need to learn how
to use their muscles, eyes, ears, and other senses, and so they need to
expose themselves to different environments and activities. They need
to learn how to walk and run over rocks, grass, bushes, puddles, and
crevices in the ground. They need to learn how to avoid obstacles, such
as trees and cliffs. They need to learn how to identify the direction
that the sound is coming from, and what different items smell like.
Their digestive and immune system of animals also need to be "trained".
For example, baby koala bears must eat some
of their mother's poop in order to pick up the bacteria they need to
digest eucalyptus leaves.
The "playing" that the animals do when they are young is similar to the
"training programs" that people create for AI software. For example, this baby elk
is not "playing" in the puddle. It is learning something about its
environment, such as what water is, and how to deal with water.
It makes no sense to describe animals as "playing". It makes
more sense to say that they work all day, every day. Everything they do
is for a purpose, and that purpose is survival and reproduction. To be
more technical, an animal is just a group of molecules that react, and molecules do not play.
Describing an animal as spending some of his time "playing" is as
senseless as describing a bacteria as spending some of his time
playing. However, from the point of view of an animal, everything it does is
" play". If animals had enough
intelligence to speak to us, they would claim that they spend every day
playing,
and never do any work. The
reason is because most people
describe "work" as an activity that we don't want to do, but we must
do, and most people consider "play" to be an activity that we enjoy
doing.
Whether an activity is "play" depends on our genetic characteristics
and, as discussed farther down, our environment.
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For example, cats enjoy hunting mice and other
creatures, and the result is that they choose to do that day after day.
From the point of view of a cat, spending hours every day to hunt mice
is "playing" every day, not "working". Cats do not have
fantasies about retiring from the "work" of hunting and being pampered
by servants.
Many of the activities that humans considered to be "play", such as
swimming, water polo, skiing, playing a guitar, and snorkeling, would
be considered unpleasant and difficult "work" to a cat.
If a cat had to
spend hours a day swimming in a waterpark or playing a piano in order
to get food and a place to sleep, it would fantasize about retiring
from that unpleasant, difficult "work" and doing what it wants to do,
which is to chase after mice, birds, and grasshoppers.
Likewise, to a dog, chasing after animals is entertainment,
and so is marking their territory and barking at anything that comes
into their territory. This is why pet dogs spend so much of their
leisure time doing such activities. To a dog, those activities are
"play", not "work". They are "fun" leisure activities.
Work and play depend upon our genetic
characteristics
Each of us has slightly
different ideas on what is "work" and what is "play" because we have
slightly different mental and physical characteristics and peer groups.
For a few
examples,
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A person who has
the physical abilities to play golf, soccer, tennis, or rugby, and who
has the mental characteristics to enjoy those games, will regard them
as "fun" leisure activities. He will regard himself as "playing" those
games.
By comparison, a person who has severe arthritis, or who does not enjoy
those games, would have to be paid to play those games. He would not
describe himself as "playing" those games. Rather, he would describe
himself as "working at a difficult, painful, and irritating job".
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Some people
consider themselves to be "playing" when they spend hours a day
fishing, whereas other people consider that activity to be boring,
unpleasant "work".
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Some people
consider themselves to be "playing" when they spend hours a day
watching television soap operas, reading the Bible or the Koran, or
solving crossword puzzles, whereas other people would consider those
activities to be unpleasant "work".
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A child's mind is
significantly different from an adult mind, and as a
result, children and adults have disagreements on what is
work and what is play.
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Men and women have
different physical and mental characteristics, so we have differences
in what we regard as "work" and "play".
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Work and play depend upon our environment
Since our behavior is the
result of our brain processing information, our environment also has an
effect on what we regard as work and play. What we regard as work and
play depends upon the activities that we become accustomed to as we
grow up.
Our peer group also affects what we consider to
be work and play. The wealthy people, for example, have a tendency to
"play" the activities that are expensive so that they can feel special,
such as polo, yacht racing, and golf.
We inadvertently created the
concept of “work”
Our prehistoric ancestors
never considered themselves to be "working". When they woke up in the
morning, the men did not whine
about having to spend another day "working" to find food, and the women
did not
whine about the "work" of taking care of their children.
The men did not
complain that every day was the same boring, monotonous routine, and
the women did not
whine that they were being forced by sexist man to stay home with the
children. To our prehistoric ancestors, every day with another day in paradise.
They
had evolved for that environment, so the men enjoyed looking for food, just
as the wolves, cats, and antelope enjoy looking for food every day of
their lives. The women enjoyed taking care of their children, just like
the birds, cats, and prairie dogs enjoy taking care of their children.
They also enjoyed getting together in the evening to make a fire, cook
food, and eat. They did not whine about the "hard work" of starting and
maintaining a fire, cutting up a dead animal with flint tools, or
cooking meat. They did not complain about the hard work of making
spears, arrowheads, or clothing.
There were no weekends for them to "play", and they did not have any
vacation days,
sick days, or holidays. They did not whine about
Monday, look forward to Friday, or fantasize about a four-day workweek.
They worked every day of their lives, but they
considered themselves to be "playing" every day. Even today we find men
have such a strong desire to hunt for animals that they want to do it,
rather than regard it
as "work", and we can find women who enjoy taking care of children.
The situation changed dramatically when people settled into cities.
Everybody had to do tasks that were unnatural for
them because humans
did not
evolve to be farmers, carpenters, or blacksmiths.
The men who had a mind that was more similar to that of their
prehistoric ancestors wanted to spend their time hunting and making
tools, not farming or becoming an apprentice to a blacksmith. They
considered farming, carpentry, and other jobs to be "work", not play.
They became misfits, and that caused some of them to become "poor
people", and some of them became criminals or beggars.
Those misfits would have reproduced slightly less often than other
people, thereby allowing humans to evolve to enjoy the modern
activities, but the evolution would have been much faster if our
ancestors had been prohibiting the reproduction of the misfits.
As our ancestors improved their technology, their tasks became
increasingly unnatural. Eventually children had to learn arithmetic and
language, and how to
use certain types of machinery and tools. Many people had to sit on
assembly lines and do the same repetitious tasks over and over. Today
many people have to spend hours sitting in a chair.
Or technology has changed the activities that we must do each day, and
it has changed how children must prepare to be an adult, but our minds
and bodies have not completely adapted to these changes. As a result,
many of the
activities that we must do today are so unnatural for us that we do not
consider them to be "play". We consider them to be "work".
The concept of "work" is a side effect of developing technology faster
than we adapt to it. If our ancestors had been controlling
reproduction to such an extent that all of us today were completely
adapted to our modern technology, then children would consider going to
school to be so much fun that the "homework" would be "homeplay", and
none of the adults would consider themselves to be "going to work" each
day. Instead, they would consider themselves to be "playing" every day
at the farms, offices, factories, and assembly lines.
The human race must evolve for our
new activities
Everybody is a misfit in
our modern era, but some people are more of a misfit than others. The
people who are at the extreme edge of the misfit graph have trouble
finding jobs that they enjoy. They torment themselves and ruin our
social environment by whining about "work", Mondays, " hump day",
bosses, rat
races, and schools.
The people who advocate the four-day work week believe that they will
have a better life because that will give them three days to play, but
we cannot solve this problem by reducing the amount of time we spend
"working".
The people who want a four-day work week, or who want to retire early,
are not
suffering because they have to "work". They are suffering because the
modern jobs are unnatural
for us. Although they will get more enjoyment from life if we allow
them to do less work, that is an idiotic
policy because it causes some people to become parasitic.
The only sensible solution is to provide everybody with a job that they
enjoy. There are two techniques to accomplish this:
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Alter the jobs so
that we enjoy them, which includes redesigning products to alter the
jobs that are required to manufacture, maintain, and recycle the items,
and
to put more resources into developing machines to do the undesirable
tasks.
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2)
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Restrict
reproduction so that each generation gets more enjoyment from going to
school, learning a useful skill, and doing the modern jobs.
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This constitution advocates doing both of those. After many
generations, the children of the future will love going to school to
learn about the world and develop a useful skill, and they will become
adults who love going to work and doing something useful for society.
There will be no whining about jobs, no fantasizing about retirement,
and no whining about Mondays.
We should enjoy working, not fantasize about
being pampered
We must expect young
children to want pampering by their parents, but adults should enjoy
working and contributing to society. However, many adults are
struggling to avoid work and be pampered by servants.
This Constitution does not permit a peasant class, and it does not
allow people in leadership positions to have maids, butlers, or other
servants. Everybody is required to contribute to the team, and nobody
is allowed to have special privileges or pampering.
We must limit genetic diversity and degradation
One of the activities of
prehistoric men was defending themselves, their family, and one another
from predators and neighboring tribes. Although the men were
undoubtedly frightened occasionally by the wolves and neighboring
tribes, they enjoyed the challenge of defending themselves and their
family and friends. Nobody made them do it. They defended themselves
and their tribe because they wanted to; because they enjoyed doing it.
We can see this genetic characteristic in men today. For example, when
confronted with a badly behaved person, many men have such a strong
desire to defend themselves and their family that they have trouble
resisting the temptation to attack the person who is irritating them.
People who want to be policemen have to go through training programs to
give them practice in controlling their desire to attack criminals, and
those who don't have enough self-control are rejected from the training
programs.
This characteristic is also noticeable with pet dogs, such as when a
dog defends itself from a vacuum cleaner, an automobile, or a strange
human or animal that enters its territory. The dog attacks those things
because it wants to. It regards that activity as play, not work. It
regards it as fun, not dangerous.
Since everybody is a unique jumble of genetic characteristics, some of
the prehistoric men had less of an interest in defending themselves
from danger, and a stronger interest in running away. There were also
men who were more feminine or child-like, and who wanted to be taken
care of and protected.
During prehistoric times, a man who did not enjoy defending himself and
his family would have had much less success with life and reproduction.
This resulted in every man having a desire to defend himself and his
family. However, when people settled into cities, the men did not have
to deal with predators very often, and there were fewer fights with
neighboring tribes.
As a result, the men who did not have a strong
desire to take care of themselves could survive without any problem.
Likewise, the men who were feminine or childlike could also survive and
reproduce. This has resulted in what we see today, and which men run
away and hide from problems like a frightened child.
Those of us who have provided evidence to other people about the
demolition of the World Trade Center towers, or the lies about the
Holocaust, have encountered grown men who push the information away and
refuse to look at it. Some of the men will look at the information, but
then ignore it.
Although those men consider themselves to be brave and courageous, and
although some of them are capable of yelling at people who irritate
them, they should be regarded as "defective" men for being unable to
defend and protect themselves, their family, and their society. They
behave like children who want to run away and hide from danger.
The human race has degraded genetically to such an extent that those of
us who want to defend ourselves and our society from crime and
corruption seem to be in a small minority. The majority of men are
capable of losing their temper and yelling, and dealing with trivial
dangers, such as a badly behaved child, but they run away and hide when
confronted with more dangerous situations, such as crime networks and
corrupt government officials.
A man's job is to take care of his family and
society
This issue complicates what
we regard as work and play, and what we
regard as jobs and leisure activities. For example, we could claim that
part of every man's "job" is to participate in the protection of
himself, his family, the women, the children, and his society. The men
who ignore dangers could
be described as childlike or feminine, and they could be described as
unacceptable for a modern society.
An organization will function properly if a small
percentage of its men are so feminine, neurotic, or childlike that they
refuse to participate in the protection of the organization, but the
organization will be destroyed if the majority of
its men refuse to participate in its protection. The only way to
prevent this problem is to restrict
reproduction to the men who have the desire and ability to take
care of their society.
Militaries require men to be able to protect themselves and their team
from danger, but no society requires men to have participate in the
protection of their society. However, every society should follow that
attitude.
An organization can also tolerate a small percentage of men who
exploit, abuse, rape, kidnap, and sell the women and children, but the
organization will suffer tremendously if a large percentage of them are
doing that, especially if they are in leadership positions.
The protection of the women, children, and the organization should be
considered to be a part of
every man's "job". Every man should consider that task to be a "fun"
activity.
We should enjoy taking care of
our women and children, not run away and hide like a frightened child.
We should also want to take
care of our society,
not demand that somebody pay us a high salary to do it.
A similar concept applies to women. A prehistoric woman who did not
want to take care of herself or her children was much less successful
in reproducing. The battle for life resulted in women developing a
desire and ability to take care of themselves and their children. They
enjoyed grooming themselves, feeding their children, and making
clothing. They considered themselves to be "enjoying life" when they
did those activities, not "working".
Today the situation has dramatically different. It is now possible for
women to survive and successfully reproduce even if they have no desire
to do anything useful. For example, if a woman doesn't want to take
care of her children, or is too incompetent to do so, the government
will give her children to some other couple, thereby allowing her to
successfully pass on her inferior genetic characteristics to the next
generation.
If a woman marries a wealthy man, or if she inherits a lot of money,
then she doesn't even need a desire or ability to groom herself, make
meals, clean her home, or drive a car. She can hire maids, chauffeurs,
and other people to do the work for her. She can also get food from
restaurants. She doesn't even have to clean her home because it is now
possible for people to survive as hoarders
who live in a pile of trash, feces, and rotten food.
A woman today can even reproduce successfully if she become so obese
that she cannot get pregnant. For example, some of them have had
bariatric surgery, which allowed them to lose enough weight to get
pregnant. There are also drugs that women can take to help them get
pregnant.
We must start restricting reproduction at some point in the future.
This requires that we determine the characteristics we want the future
men and women to have.
We must decide what we want work and play to be
Work and play are whatever
we want them to be. Since nature is no longer determining which of us
survive and reproduce, we must make decisions on what we want the
future generations to be in regards to their jobs and leisure
activities.
Should we work five days and have two days of leisure, or should we
work three days and have four days of leisure? Or should we work six
days a week? How many holidays should
we have each year? How much vacation time should we have?
Should we work from 9 in the morning to 17 at night? Or should we work
from 7 to 15? Or should we work only five hours a day?
Regardless of how much leisure time we have, we have to decide
which leisure activities to support, and which to prohibit for being
too idiotic, worthless, expensive, or obnoxious. Should we promote mud racing, agility sports
for dogs, wet
T-shirt contests, skiing, beauty contests for babies, skeet
shooting, or
golfing?
After we decide what type of work schedule and leisure activities we
want to promote, we must restrict reproduction to the people who enjoy
that culture. Otherwise every generation will become more diverse in
their desires, resulting in every generation having a larger number of
people who whine about the jobs and the leisure activities.
Ignoring this issue is detrimental
Every government has
imposed a lot of restrictions on our leisure activities and our work
environment, but no government has yet put restrictions on the reproduction of the people
who dislike our modern culture.
If we do not put restrictions on reproduction, every generation will
become more diverse in their physical and mental characteristics, and
eventually every person will be so unique that everybody will want
different leisure activities, jobs, and work environments. Everybody
will complain that the government is preventing them from enjoying
their life.
Eventually
some adults will be so childlike that they will play with cardboard
boxes.
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We must deal with the unpleasant fact that we must decide
what we want for our
leisure activities, jobs, meals, clothing styles, and other culture,
and we must
restrict reproduction to the people who enjoy that culture.
Ignoring this issue will allow humans to diverge into millions of
different, incompatible species.
The Leisure and Social Club Ministers make decisions about which
leisure
activities are acceptable, and the Employment Minister is responsible
for determining
which jobs are acceptable.
The Employment Minister is
also required to alter the unpleasant jobs to allow more people to
enjoy
their
work. As mentioned earlier, this includes requesting products to be
modified so that the jobs required to produce and maintain them become
more enjoyable, and requesting the development of robots and machines
to do more of the unpleasant tasks. The Employment Minister also
provides recommendations to organizations on what their working hours
and days should be, and how many
vacation days we should have.
However, no matter what the Employment Minister does, there will be
people who do not like any of the jobs, work environments, or work
schedules. Those people must be prohibited from reproducing, or
restricted to only a few children.
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