Continuing with this one here. I was driving with my brother to visit our dad yesterday and we got onto talking about that very exploitative system. He mentioned that something like a universal basic income would be a good thing however if this happened people would descend into depression with nothing to do.
I found this interesting because the only reason people would “fall into a depression” is because their entire sense of identity has been constructed specifically to forever feed back into society. All ‘my’ feelings of being a valued group member are predicated upon doing specifically this. So yes as people currently are they would fall into a depression, but this is not set in stone.
Of course the ‘me’ that only knows ‘himself’ as a group member will fall into a depression when ‘he’ can no longer score points within the group. But this isn’t the fate of humankind forever, we are not stuck like this.
That entire edifice of beliefs, values, responsibilities, obligations etc can come crumbling down, then I no longer need to score points within the group in order to feel valued. Then I can take full due of the benefits that the modern way of living provides without descending into a depression.
How twisted is it that the ‘meaning of life’ is apparently in forever having to ‘earn my worth’, that ‘my’ very meaning is to forever feed into society, so much so that ‘I’ would reject leisure and freedom and continue living as if a peasant instead.
It was fascinating to observe the gridlock in my brother, that he just couldn’t quite allow that life could be perfect without any of those values that come from society. I pointed to the example of our half brother who is still young. That we both observed him having the time of his life whilst doing nothing ‘productive’ at all. There was no “descent into depression” at all, instead there was delight, intimacy, enjoyment and naiveté.