I remember one doctor in Poland wrote "He got his legs fucking torn off and they fucking won't regrow" when he was re-assessing disability benefit for a guy without legs.
"What do you do?" may have the connotation of being about work, but the literal words are actually a great conversation starter. You are falling into the same trap if you answer "nothing" because you don't do wage labor.
You don't do nothing! How dare you!!
You organize online!
You learn about socialism!
You're working your ass off to try to get healthier!
You need to rest and recover more than some folks, but that's not nothing!
If you want to change the culture, answer the literal question, not the question they think they're asking.
If they follow up with "I meant for work," then give them a face and say you can't work bc of your disability. Simple as.
This is an awesome take delivered really well.
Thank you so much!!!
I've recently started dipping my toes into writing, and I can't think of a compliment I'd like to receive more than the one you gave. Thank you.
People who get full time jobs stop having 80% of their free time, which is instead sold to capital. They seem boring and focused on work, because work is all they have.
I remember a news article years ago about a poor elderly couple who worked in a supermarket. They won millions on the lottery..... and kept their jobs. They said the work helped pass the time and all their friends worked there too. I just thought, how sad. You could do anything with that money but you can't think of anything else to do except stack the shelves and sweep the floors in the same place you've been doing for decades.
This is definitely going to be a diagnosable mental illness after the revolution. The treatment would include a forced vacation, and something like a job fair but for hobbies.
SRSLY Wrong has a great bit in one of their life after Utopia episodes about the need for authoritarian vacation police who force you to take time off work and spend it doing leisure activities
So many of the old people in my life are miserable because they don't have hobbies, or at the very least didn't keep doing them once it got a bit difficult.
I'd defend their decision, because it is very human to keep working, because all their friends work there too.
Structure is important, I kinda get their idea.
It's sad that some people can't structure themselves without a dead end job though. If I had no money worries and wasn't disabled I could easily structure my day around hiking, political activism, learning art, reading and other such activities.
If you have enough money to be save from any financial troubles, why care if your job is dead end? Enforces structure is easier to keep, so why not? They see their friends, their boss can't threaten them with destitution, their day is structured. Sure they could create their own structure, but for many this leads to vibin' through the day, which isn't healthy at all.
I don't think "vibin' through the day" is inherently unhealthy, but capitalism can certainly make it feel unhealthy or be more unhealthy than it is, since it probably means you don't have much money and so your options are pretty limited for what you can do with your time. And on top of that, you will have a harder time relating to the majority (who are working heavily) and can't spend much of that time socializing with other people if they're busy working. There's also self-esteem to consider and because capitalism has this culture of "you're valuable for how hard you work," you could feel worse as a person simply for not being someone who is busting your ass.
Like if you go back to some people in previous societies in history, many of them were probably working far less hours, just due to the logistics of things. Now I'm not saying that necessarily means their lives were easier, but I doubt they were sitting around in their downtime going, "I just wish I had more structured busywork to do."
Well that's the price I suppose
lemmy has shown me the other side of this type of asshattery:
i made a career change a few months ago because i realized that my work was helping maintain all the fuckery that we're dealing with in the west and it led to me to working 2 full time jobs at the same time for a while. during that time, the liberal lemmy users accused me of being unemployed because i was posting frequently to help alleviate the stress and they REALLY didn't like what i had to say.
it made me realize that the people who are trapped into this group-think were your value as a person is defined by how you answer the "so what do you do" question is so invasive that they believe that it's not possible for you to enjoy yourself with something other than work, while you're working.
it also made me realize that they defined themselves as a human being by their work; which led to a further understanding of why job interviews are so screwed up. my autism forces me to have a different take of interviews and, up until then, i wondered by they guarded the positions w so much fervor; now i think i understand that it's how they define themselves and they want to make sure that you're one of them.
My answer is I learn things, I work on several projects both individual and in groups, I solve problems for them, etc.
"Oh so you do nothing?"
... yes Ken, I do nothing. Exactly. I'm not paid for it so it doesn't count as anything.
your value as a person is defined by how you answer the “so what do you do” question
I feel like this is a huge part of everything that is wrong with our societies. we are expected to be human doings rather than human beings.
i suspect is a class thing; as in how much respect should they give you based on your perceived class based on the work you you.
it's a little bit like how they treat you based on how you're dressed.
Or based on your gender and ethnicity.
So I'm not disabled but i also hate this question because it's like what i do to make sure i don't starve tells you nothing about me as a person. So what i do is purposefully misunderstand. I'll start telling them about my hobbies. Like oh i like to write, or i garden, or something.
I feel like the average person would still use this against you, either say "No, I mean what do you do for work?" Or think "Well if you won't answer the question the way I intended you must be unemployed and therefore worthless."
If they do that then theyre not worth talking to anyway. If someones just asking what do you do cuz its like the thing people say and theyre trying to start small talk they'll be perfectly happy with the hobby response. If someones trying to find out how much money you make/your social class they wont be. And in that case they can fuck off anyway. It's a good way to weed out the shitty ones, and still get to talk to the people who are chill, and just trying to chat.
Asking someone fresh off the surgery bed "what do you do" is crazy. Your answer isn't going to be anything good considering you had to get some work done.
i feel you comrade
This is why it's best not to go out anywhere or talk to anyone except for strictly utilitarian purposes, imo.
every time someone asks me that question i still get the juvenile urge to blurt out "your mom"
i am 34 years old
Although they did do the whole “You’ll get better soon,” thing, and imply that I can get back to work eventually
I get where they come from but at some point it's like, no. you won't "just" get better. Science doesn't have all the answers and sometimes the only thing you are left with is to accept it. It gives people false hope and repeats things they have heard a hundred times already. Sometimes it also implies that the patient hasn't done everything they could and should find that magical cure that doesn't exist. Which cure? Well you know, the one that you don't know about, your doctor doesn't know about, even the person telling you about this cure doesn't know what it is. But still, have you tried it??
Everyone thinks they know how they would act better than you in a given situation but they would never want to be put into it.
This is so true. There is always this assumption that there is a cure, or at least a way to effectively manage, every condition well enough that you can return to work (because returning to work is all that matters, they never care about you being cured so you can be pain-free or have a life) and won't accept that medical science can't fix everything already. So you're treated like it's a moral failing on your part for still being ill/disabled. A moral failing that you still need help - you're a lazy scrounger.
because returning to work is all that matters.
Absolutely. This even exists inside medicine. The magic phrase to make a doctor take you seriously is "This is impacting my ability to work"
If you still wouldn't be able to work, well...
Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.
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