Mortgages and kids. Apparently having one or both makes a difference. Not that I necessarily buy that argument, but it does make a compelling case against acquiring either.

That’s assuming that all jobs are equally enjoyable to all people, which is not true. Some people like working in groups, others like working alone. Some people like deadlines, others get nervous breakdowns from them. Some people are energized by working with the public, others detest customer service.

You are also assuming that all enjoyable jobs are white-collar, which strikes me as a rather elitist sentiment. Some people find working with their hands to be very rewarding and love their jobs as mechanics or woodworkers, for example.

Why on earth do they agree with being employed in sweatshops? The answer isn’t, that they are too stupid to imagine a more fulfilling life, but that they can’t acces it.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t imply stupidity, merely acquiescence, to which I still object; I object to the idea that just because I can’t access something, I should be willing to settle for something less than what I want. I object to the idea that other people are complacent in getting what they want, too. Do you think my success in finding the kind of work and compensation I wanted came easily? Sure, I have privileges others do not but I also have disadvantages that others do not.

It’s not my responsibility to give other people a better life, it’s their responsibility to get it for themselves. My only responsibility is not to hinder their accessibility of it. And I object to the fact that so many people put their own responsibility to improve their own lives off due either to misguided institutionalism or personal complacency. Even smart people do that, and I object just as much when they do it as when stupid people do it.

(I like your site otherwise, and I didn’t want to offend you.)

Don’t worry; no offense was taken. :) Thanks for sharing your point of view.

That was so rude. Why are people willing to work in shitty jobs for that many hours a day? Why on earth do they agree with being employed in sweatshops? The answer isn’t, that they are too stupid to imagine a more fulfilling life, but that they can’t acces it.

there is a limited offer of enjoyable jobs, and one needs a lot of priviledge to be able to get one. It’s not your fault, either.

Ok, there is also the solution of leaving the system, but freegainsm is hard, and there are less and less places to just retreat and get a non-capitalistic life. And buying land there costs money, too.

Cheers from a looser, who had once worked as an architecture student for less, than 4 dollars a hour (2.5 euro). Did I do it because a mental inefficiency, because I was too stupid to understand the elegance and freedom of being paid well? Hell no.

(I like your site otherwise, and I didn’t want to offend you.)

But now? No. I love my life. I’m open to most of my vanilla friends. I have a great sex life that’s enhanced by D/s, and a community of intelligent, fun, open friends who enjoy bdsm. I have friendships that include touch and pain and intimacy as much as they include going out to dinner and talking. I get out of town to go to conventions and stay in hotels and be exhausted, but I have a great time. And I have the relationship I dreamed of but didn’t think was possible. I can’t imagine being happier with a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, and missionary position sex once a week. Perhaps a few years ago, sure – that was the fantasy. But now? No. It may be a cliche, but it IS part of who I am, and I wouldn’t want to remove it. I don’t regret the journey I took to get here, or the emotional pain along the way, either. It was necessary to get me where I am and to who I am.

The one he specifically referenced involved putting dogs in cages with floors that could be electrified. If you shock the dog by electrifying half of the cage floor, they will run to the other half. As long as there’s an un-electrified half to escape to, the dogs show stress but otherwise continue to behave normally.

However, if you electrified the entire floor of the cage, such that the dog couldn’t escape, the dog quickly becomes conditioned to not even move when the current is turned on. Other behavior patterns also quickly emerge: they bite themselves, they become lethargic, eating behaviors change, and they will urinate on themselves and lay in it. They basically give up on living.

What’s very interesting to me is that you don’t have to electrify the whole floor of the cage all that often. I think he said they found this effect even with the shock being inescapable as little as one in 10 times.

Feeling powerless to get what we want takes a toll on us. The main way I can think of to make that better involves both unconditioning ourselves, and changing the external conditions of our lives so that we can have what we want.

Most Americans are not content with what they have, they are resigned to it, because they don’t see better options, or because they have been whacked on the nose too often, or because they have been conditioned by culture to want more than is possible or available. I want that to no longer be true of me. I’m working on it.

Now, I suppose that for the sake of argument one could posit a general society that actually has a basic set of desires that could be met reliably to produce the “happiness outcome,” but such a world seems so foreign to me that we would be entering a debate akin to asking whether we are happier than aardvarks.

That being said, there is way in which I can imagine being happy in such a situation without my above assumption of secret wells of disgruntled deprivation. If one were to assume vanilla desires and be located towards the lower extreme of the sexual desire scale (i.e. asexual to hypersexual), it seems like ones needs could be fairly effectively taken care of in perpetuity through infrequent vanilla sex.

*sighs*

Unfortunately, some of us are that middle-class suburban guy, and aren’t happy with that. Sometimes it’s because we’ve been told all of our lives that despite all those other things that we did as youngsters, it’s only in being the MCSG that we will find contentment. Sometimes I think that it’s even worse to have worked very hard to become a MCSG because we are in less of a position to explore and experiment when the realization hits that, no, this really isn’t it, either.

There’s an expression that goes “It’s not getting what you want that makes you happy, it’s wanting what you get.”