The Education of Axel Heyst

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AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I dislike assuming the identity of Wage Slave. The Gervais Principle, and much leftist thought, and much anti-work culture, supposes a black and white reality: you're a Wage Slave or a Capitalist Pig. A (under/over)-performing Loser, or a Sociopath. And if you're not on the top of the pile, it's better to be a smug and clever Loser than a Clueless loser-Loser. All fine, as far as it goes.

Trad FIRE/ERE in general is about escaping this system via retirement. The traditional strategy, uncharitably put, is to be a Clever Wage Slave/Loser for as short a period of time as possible so that you can become Retired, which is the only form of escape assumed possible.

One of the Principles of AxelERE is that $ ought only ever be an incidental yield. Slacking, or doing the bare minimum, only makes sense for activities where income generation is the zero-th order goal, and you are optimizing your own effort/$ ratio.

But in a lifestyle of incidental $ yield, I don't need to optimize my effort/$ ratio. None of the ratios I care to optimize involve $ at all, in fact. I just have to spot-check to ensure that the annual $ yield > annual $ burn. Whether my "labor" efficiency is $450/hr or $4.50/hr truly doesn't matter, because I'm only doing things I want to do anyway.

This is definitely an extension of the premise of semiERE, which is the idea that whiteknuckling a stressfull 40-60hr job for even 5 years but for most people 10 years isn't worth it (obviously this is a personal and subjective decision), and that doing part-time non stressful whatever work for $ is a better choice.

There certainly IS space in semiERE for slacking or doing the bare minimum. And I don't have a problem with that approach, as long as the entities being let down by your slacking aren't worth it. I don't care if you slack for EvilCorp, McDonalds, or Jackass McJerkface. But I do care if you slack when pouring a slab for my neighbor.

AxelERE simply doesn't have room for a Bare Minimum strategy - if Bare Minimum makes sense, it's not AxelERE. And *part* of the reason I've set my system up this way is because I've had tremendously enjoyable experiences with being productively engaged, both paid and unpaid, it's something I really enjoy when I choose to do it, and I don't want to corrupt my relationship with it. I've lucked out to not have had much exposure to the Gervais principle at work, and perhaps one of the things I detest the most out of our current consumer-capitalist system is the damage its done to the reputation of good honest work.

Sociopaths(/sociopathic society) have indeed taken, corrupted, and weaponized the concept of hard work and doing a good job. Hustle culture has indeed exploited workers by influencing them to unconsciously adopt the aims of organizations that don't have the best interests of their employees at heart. I despise all of that.

I just happen to see a way out of the situation, for myself at least, that doesn't involve only doing a good job if the work is for me, and doing the bare minimum if it's for notme. I'm not going to allow the weaponized hustle culture system to take the enjoyment of good hard work away from me.

--

The assumption here, of course, is that I'm always going to want to be Doing something, rather than just Being. It's not difficult to get paid to Do something you like. I assume it's quite difficult to get paid incidentally to Just Be. Just Being might require being FI or moneyless (although sure seems like you have to Do a lot if you're moneyless, so maybe FI/RE is the only option for Being).

AxelERE hedges against this by having a coast up to FI track going on in the background. I just assume that I'm not going to want to cease all Doing within the next 10 years or so.

[eta: I appreciate all the input on this, it's really helped me sort out my thoughts on out it, which were clearly muddled/implicit before.]

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I assume it's quite difficult to get paid incidentally to Just Be.
From "It's A Guy Thing: An Owner's Manual for Women" by David Deida
Should I Support Myself Even If He Wants to Support Me?

Your man may be moved to cherish you and protect you in a certain way, not because you are weak, but because you are radiant, precious, and beautiful to him. He knows that when you have to go out and compete in the masculine-dominated business world, you willhave to dampen your radiance and take up the sword, to some extent. He may want to relieve you of this obligation.
....
We deny the feeling of sweet surrender. We suppress the ecstasy of the heart. For whatever reason, the momentum of the world has led to the masculine force being more accepted than the feminine. The masculine is considered productive and efficient, but not necessarily the most fulfilling. We can make the happiest choice of both, the way of the sword and the way of the goddess, once we know the value of both and can experience both without stress. The warrior can gift the goddess, and the goddess can gift the warrior, whether we are talking about the warrior and the goddess inside each of us or the unique gifts shared between partners.
In summary, it's actually pretty easy to get paid incidentally to Just Be if you know how to relax into your Goddess energy in relationship to other(s.) Especially since the art of relaxing into Goddess energy is not much practiced these-a-days. However, Goddess energy should not be confused with Slacker energy; they are very much not the same thing, even though it is true that if a human in possession of Slacker energy were to happen upon the above passage in her rounds of reading... ;)

classical_Liberal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by classical_Liberal »

I think, this is all, in the end, semantics. Trying to draw distinctions between work and play. When is it work, when is it play?

Do people slack off in their play? Seems like it'd be less fun to play with (or against) someone not trying.

Work or play, at some point rest and quiet is still a requirement, more so for some at baseline than others.

Unfortunately, rest and play seem to be associated, work separated, but I think this is wrong. I think work and play should be associate and rest differentiated. Rest creates energy reserves for work/play. How much rest is needed is a function of a human's baseline requirement, and on how much work/play has been intermingled. This is to also imply, the less rest one receives below baseline requirement, the more work/play differentiates itself into work and play.

Miss Lonelyhearts
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Miss Lonelyhearts »

Edit for rethinking

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

For what it's worth, my original comment was coming from the suffering I endured in American high school. I felt most of my assignments were a waste of time, so I did what was necessary to keep my parents and teachers off my back so I could focus on the things I was actually interested in (world languages, history, political activism). I felt that as I had no choice in coming, I had no obligation to do anything I didn't want to.

I even wrote a massive petition to let my parents homeschool me, but I was stuck in school anyways. I still harbor resentment towards the thousands of hours I wasted in useless fucking classrooms with flourescent lighting. Note that I don't blame teachers - I actually had a couple of good ones. But as a whole I was a round peg in a square hole and would have learned more if I had been given the freedom to design my own curriculum.

Working for self vs working for others was not the best way to word this, but this is what I meant.

Vaikeasti
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Vaikeasti »

jacob wrote:
Sat May 17, 2014 11:57 am
When I want or need to use goods and those aren't automatically provided to me, I define that as "work" (for the purpose of this discussion). If I have goods that go unused, I define that as "pollution".

At its most fundamental level, ERE is about designing one's world so as to eliminate work (the kind that is required to satisfy needs and wants, not the fun kind that done voluntarily) and pollution (wasted effort, wasted goods, ...). When things are optimally designed goods will flow through me with little effort and waste.
I agree with classical_Liberal that this seems like a difference with the meaning of words. How do you define work is the key here.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

Often passion ("it's not a job if you love it") or morality ("hard work is its own reward") is a way to underpay an employee relative to the value that's being extracted. IOW, it's riding on the idealism of the employee. This is a situation that can lead to burnout once/if the employee loses faith in that passion or morality.

Also see, viewtopic.php?p=249397#p249397

It seems that morality was the main argument installed in the company-man (Boomer generation and older), whereas passion is a more recent invention (I hear it more from Millennials than Gen-X).

ETA: Insofar one's intrinsic motivation has been burned---e.g. the schooling system---it can also be tricky to come back from that. Recall that "education is what remains after we forgotten everything we learned in school", that is, the dominant patterns installed (usually below immediate awareness) is work attitude, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, work habits, etc.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@c_L, I really dig that, particularly the idea of associating work and play, with rest differentiated.

@RF, I get (now) where you were coming from, and it seems like you did the best you could considering the circumstances. But, now that you're a free man for the rest of your life, what is your attitude towards work ethic going to be? (My particular answers probably aren't a good fit for you - but you have a great opportunity to not get stuck in negative emotional-thought patterns with respect to work, by applying intentional thought to them.)

@jacob yes, certainly. Probably one reason why I cherish my work ethic is because I don't feel like it was installed in me by The System. I skipped the pre-adult indoctrination phase by being homeschooled. Of course, my *parents* had their work ethic installed by the military-industrial-puritan complex, but my sensation of it was a much more.... intimate(?) relationship. I absorbed the idea that productive work *can* be its own reward by getting lost in schoolwork which was entirely up to me as to when and how to approach it; by seeing the fruits of my family's labor as our off grid property developed, and getting the sense that our resilience and family autonomy was growing as a result of our hard work; and by absorbing it from the other independent-minded folks out there.

In fact, it might be accurate to say that I 'learned' that hard work is how one earns their independence from The System. No one else is going to bust me out of my cage, so if it's going to be it's up to me.

And at work, while it was certainly obvious that the company was exploiting idealistic millennials with meh pay but "Important Green" work, I always saw that dynamic playing out as a kind of 3rd party observer. I always felt it didn't have much to do with me, because my ideals and work ethic were *mine*. On multiple occasions my boss told me I needed to take it a little easier. I just shrugged and kept doing what I wanted to do, because I felt in ownership of my output and my own reasons for the amount of it.

One could argue that I just played perfectly into the Disciplined Minds system perfectly, but, well, that's impossible to prove because the reality is only discernable as far as I'm honest with myself.

At any rate, I understand very much that most firms exploit people's sense of morality and passion. For me, the solution was (is) to claim and exert authority over my own ideals and ethic and wield them to my purposes. This discussion has helped me realize that that might be a very niche strategy.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Western Red Cedar »

Interesting to follow this thread. There was a reason I shared the quote with you offline and didn't post it myself :lol:
AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:59 am
In fact, it might be accurate to say that I 'learned' that hard work is how one earns their independence from The System. No one else is going to bust me out of my cage, so if it's going to be it's up to me.
I think this is really critical and aligns with my own thoughts on work ethic. It seems to me that the Renaissance ideal is based on a certain level of mastery. That mastery requires a diligent work ethic.

I enjoyed the Gervais principle when I initially read it years ago, but it also seems a really cynical and dark take on the structure of employment. We have the opportunity to find meaning and value in even the darkest circumstances (see Viktor Frankl). I've traveled on the cynic's path, and it isn't a pleasant way to live.
jacob wrote:
Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:21 pm
Maybe ... how about

Red is defending.
Blue is having.
Orange is doing.
Green is accepting.
Yellow is understanding.
Turquoise is recognizing.

(work in progress, subject for/to debate)
I'm quite ignorant of spiral dynamics and only looked into it last week. My understanding is that we aren't completely at one level/color. We may have small elements of other stages present even though we are in a dominant stage. We may also have been at a fairly shallow level of certain stages, and return to that stage at a deeper level based on new circumstances.

Action/doing may be necessary when we fully understand or recognize.

The basis of Holiday's book is based on the following premise:

"Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps. It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty. It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will."

It's inspired by the Marcus Aurelius quote:

"Objective judgement, now at this very moment.
Unselfish action, now at this very moment.
Willing acceptance - now at this very moment - of all external events.
That's all you need."

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Ego
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Ego »

Really a lot of good stuff in that post. I pulled out a few pieces I especially liked.
AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 11:52 am
Trad FIRE/ERE in general is about escaping this system via retirement. The traditional strategy, uncharitably put, is to be a Clever Wage Slave/Loser for as short a period of time as possible so that you can become Retired, which is the only form of escape assumed possible.

...

I'm not going to allow the weaponized hustle culture system to take the enjoyment of good hard work away from me.
Those smart enough to realize that hustle culture and corporate culture conspire to exploit them will often use that potential exploitation as a rationalization to adopt a life purpose that involves the avoidance of exploitation. Others who are a bit smarter will spend all of their creative energy devising ways to win the game by exploiting the exploiter.

Living a life with the goal of avoiding exploitation is not really living.
Living a life with the goal of causing loss for someone else is also not living.
The mindset inevitably bleeds into other areas of life. Relationship. Family. Friendships. Community.

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon making a spin class. I will not be paid for those four hours of work. I always arrive about an hour before class to troubleshoot the system (there are always problems) but will only be paid about $30 for the hour I was actually teaching. I could use the same class over and over again and avoid the four unpaid hours of work (other instructors do). I could show up five minutes before class and not care if things go wrong (other instructors do). But I would hate every minute of it. The way things are now, I love it. Happily exploited? Perhaps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_o ... e%27s_face

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think the core disconnect is between what/who is a producer in ecology vs economy. At the ecological level, all humans are apex consumers. Ergo, our efforts towards economic production, spurred on by work ethic, are part and parcel of consumption or exploitation of the wilderness.

Obviously, adopting the stance that the best action a human could take towards preserving the wilderness would be suicide is not to be recommended, but promoting work ethic just for the sake of work ethic or feeling of accomplishment is not “high” enough thinking. Even something as small and abstract as creating a new spin class burns resources which might be better left unexploited.

I joke around about the grouchy old high producers with whom I often associate, but on some level I admire their drive applied to the projects we’ve done. Yet there is another level on which I think that it might be better if I just stayed in observation mode, wandering around and making notes about what already exists, rather than always endeavoring to produce tangible change or ever more commodifiable utility.

Married2aSwabian
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Married2aSwabian »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Wed Oct 13, 2021 11:52 am


The assumption here, of course, is that I'm always going to want to be Doing something, rather than just Being. It's not difficult to get paid to Do something you like. I assume it's quite difficult to get paid incidentally to Just Be. Just Being might require being FI or moneyless (although sure seems like you have to Do a lot if you're moneyless, so maybe FI/RE is the only option for Being).
Maybe if you’re a Zen Master, you can get paid to just be…but you still have to do the work to teach others and maybe write books! I struggle with this, too. The “To Do” list is something that I’ve used (beaten myself up with) since I was a kid…and there’s always another list once the last one has everything checked off. Now that I’m working to incorporate mindfulness meditation into daily life, I think, “Can we just make up a “To Be” list and go with that for a change?”

One point that has come up lately in a book I’m reading and guided meditation is feeling tone: positive, negative or neutral. You don’t have to identify the exact feeling, just high level when experiencing certain things. For me, work is often associated with a negative feeling tone. Not sure why - probably because I got a sense early on from my old man that it needs to be perfect, otherwise the SOP is to get pissed off. Not really productive. If I think about feeling tone when doing woodworking, however, that is almost always positive. So maybe the intersection of passion + positive feeling tone is what we can aim for? That truly does not feel like work, paid or otherwise.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:11 am
I don't know that I'm 'promoting' work ethic for it's own sake, I'm just saying lets all chill out a bit on demonizing the intrinsic enjoyment of productive activity, primarily for strategic reasons given below. At some level, unless we agree with the voluntary human extinctionists, somebody has to do something at some point. Gotta eat. Observe reality all you want, but at some point somebody's gotta chop some wood and carry some water. I vehemently agree with anti-consumerism, but that's anti-consumer culture, not the bare act of consuming things, or producing things for consumption.

Indeed humans are apex consumers. Is that... wrong? It's an ecological function. Taken to the extremes our current society is in mad pursuit of discovering the limits to, of course it's a terrible thing. The Californian natives detailed in M Kat Anderson's Tending the Wild engaged in productive activity exploiting the wilderness for consumption. They just didn't get carried away with it.

There's a bit of nuance in between "All humans ought to work hard all day every day to extract as much shiny stuff from the bowels of the earth as possible" and "All productivity is exploitative" that I feel is getting glossed over here. The main reason I'm continuing to engage in this is because of the danger I see in this community doubling down on a needlessly narrow carrot-vector field.

Ahem. Let me unpack that.

1. There's a certain number of people in the world who work at jobs that suck, dislike productive activity, and for whom the idea of FI/RE is very attractive immediately upon first contact. That's awesome. Traditional FIRE and ERE is a finely tuned machine for converting these folks. Carry on.

2. There's also a certain number of people in the world who don't (think they) work at jobs who suck, very much enjoy productive activity, and who are mildly befuddled at the whole notion of FI/RE upon first contact with it, and never again give it a second thought. These are the people who carry on innovating useless crap we don't need anymore, have high-jafi lifestyles that they feel okay with because they recycle and stuff, etc. These people are never[1] going to be swayed by Early Retirement Extreme, because it's a carrot and they (think they) hate carrots: they prefer beets.

And a damn sure way to make sure these beet-folk stay away from the philosophy of ERE is to tell them, explicitly or implicitly, that they're Losers, Clueless, or Part of the Problem for merely enjoying productive activity. I think there can, or ought to, be space for both kinds of people. I could be wrong about this, though, and maybe there just needs to be a functionally equivalent ERE cousin for the second kind of person? No one thing can be all things to all people.

[1] Not entirely true, upon second reflection. Many of these folks will be swayed by the lure of total autonomy over what exactly they work on. So ERE does have space for these minds, it's just that they have to get past the Title Page, and the Glossy Brochure, and do a little digging around in the book or wiki to find the space for them... and then they have to put up with being work ethic-shamed or questioned every once in a while. Which might be healthy for them. /shrug

Qazwer
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Qazwer »

Some people seem to embrace FIRE or ERE because they value production and find parts of their work fulfilling. If they could just accept it as a trade of time for money, they would not get as upset with the stupidity around them. This seems to be a common theme on forums. ‘I am a highly trained employee and my boss is an idiot.’
If it were merely about money and not viewing their work hours as valuable, the answer would be to take the money.
Watching stupid is hard when you value what you do.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

You know what our problem is? Not enough diagrams.

Image

Colors no relation to SD.

The vertical axis could be "cares/does not care how one's actions (or non-actions) effect other people", but let's assume we're only talking about people who care about other people.

What I'm trying to say is that just because someone is on the right hand side of the diagram, doesn't mean they're on the lower right hand side of the diagram. There's a whole upper quadrant. Now, of course there's unintended consequences and problems of execution (aiming for upper right, but landed in lower right) that we can argue productively until the cows come home, but in order for those conversations to be productive we need to be on the same page about how we feel about this diagram. e.g. maybe some people feel that the upper right hand quadrant doesn't exist (which is how I could uncharitably choose to interpret 7's last comment, which, to be clear, I'm not).

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I am currently rather ill and swollen up like a decrepit puffer-fish on my 4th round of steroids in just over a year. I am spending most of my days engaged in the exhausting task of attempting to teach math and science to underprivileged adolescents who were possibly poisoned with lead around age 5. One recent evening, I watched a lush period production, "The Pursuit of Love", on my free month of Prime Video. In one scene, it is early on in WW2 Britain, and all the young men are off to war, and 3 affluent young female cousins, all pregnant at the same time, are lying together in the sun, wearing their very pretty dresses, on a blanket laid out on the lawn of the country estate to which they have retreated to avoid the bombings of the city. Aaaah, I thought, wouldn't it be nice to just be there with them, and I recall one of my favorite photos of myself at age 23, my infant son held in one arm, feeding at my breast, and my eyes on a book held in my other hand.

Where does breastfeeding or lying on a blanket pregnant in the sun fall on the above chart? Where does going off to war fall on the above chart? Where does reading a book fall on the chart? Where does mowing the lawn fall on the chart?

i consciously chose to take up gardening when I gave up having babies. It might be argued that at some level the purpose of the strong adult feminine energy is to encourage the transfer of the life energy of the adult masculine towards the benefit of the next generations. In fairly recent although now previous eras when societal sexual dichotomy was more manifest, this could often result in, for instance, a husband carrying the load of a soul-sucking 1950s company man job for the good of his family. In my own recent experience, whenever I involve men with strong work ethic in my gardening projects (care of my "babies"), the use of power tools and the tearing down and throwing of stuff into dumpsters almost immediately results. Even if I don't involve men with strong work ethic in my gardening project, they still come right on to my property and start using their power tools. So, my only choices are to act like a man myself and fight at the boundary with my own power tools, or just wring my hands and attempt to exert charm as an organizing principle, because there is little hope that most attempting-to-do-good men running fossil fuel powered work ethic will listen to what I have learned from my observation or my reading.

Anyways, I do understand that this is not what you are about , so carry on!

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Oct 16, 2021 4:49 pm
2. There's also a certain number of people in the world who don't (think they) work at jobs who suck, very much enjoy productive activity, and who are mildly befuddled at the whole notion of FI/RE upon first contact with it, and never again give it a second thought. These are the people who carry on innovating useless crap we don't need anymore, have high-jafi lifestyles that they feel okay with because they recycle and stuff, etc. These people are never[1] going to be swayed by Early Retirement Extreme, because it's a carrot and they (think they) hate carrots: they prefer beets.

And a damn sure way to make sure these beet-folk stay away from the philosophy of ERE is to tell them, explicitly or implicitly, that they're Losers, Clueless, or Part of the Problem for merely enjoying productive activity. I think there can, or ought to, be space for both kinds of people. I could be wrong about this, though, and maybe there just needs to be a functionally equivalent ERE cousin for the second kind of person? No one thing can be all things to all people.
The beet people are/were the FatFIRE people. As the movement diffused downwards towards the mainstream to form a continuous function of memetic transition, the RE was ultimately dropped, so now they're the FatFI, who may possible retire a few years before they originally planned it. Eventually it'll shift to plain old millionaires and estate planning. At that point the chain will be complete.
AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Oct 16, 2021 4:49 pm
[1] Not entirely true, upon second reflection. Many of these folks will be swayed by the lure of total autonomy over what exactly they work on. So ERE does have space for these minds, it's just that they have to get past the Title Page, and the Glossy Brochure, and do a little digging around in the book or wiki to find the space for them... and then they have to put up with being work ethic-shamed or questioned every once in a while. Which might be healthy for them. /shrug
ERE (if going by the canonical version in the book) does require a tremendous amount of work. It's not "easy and simple" becoming or being a renaissance man. What happens for those who do it is similar to the sportsball saying that "it never becomes easier, you just go faster", that is, look for even greater/more complex problems to solve. IIRC, FI in the ERE book is just a small section (as big as semiRE)... however as the ideas failed gracefully, the language became more Orange so job/career/investment oriented.

It's possible that the word "work" is just too heavily associated with traditional connotations like job, career, boss, client, piece, product, ... just like "retirement" was too heavily associated with "put out to pasture" or "rich enough to tourist party full time". https://earlyretirementextreme.com/thre ... usion.html That is ... we still have a mental definition of work that's too narrow.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I think these last two posts made a light bulb go off in my head. I've been thinking of people much more specific than I've been describing.

I'm not referring to Boomer grouchy Tim the Tool-Man Taylor types, nor fatFIRE people, although both fall under the broad category of "likes to work", so I can see that I ought to have explicitly narrowed who I'm talking about.

I'm basically talking about people like me, 5-10 years ago, and like my friends. Millenials who graduated university, probably with STEM degrees, around 2009, and have enough Green in them to have selected careers based on how much positive impact they thought they could have in the world. These are people who read Timothy Merton and Charles Eisenstein for fun. They would have taken PTO from their "deep green" professional jobs to help plan and participate in General Strikes and port shutdowns with Occupy [their city]. Their hobbies include brewing beer and kombucha, gardening, bicycle activism, urban farming, and the like. They might opt out of their employer-match 401k system because they have a vague distrust of it, and a vague suspicion of the ethics of investing. The bare idea of having the kind of net worth that fatFIRE folk have is basically offensive to them, if they're being honest.

So, to people like these, the phrase "early retirement" is immediately equivalent to "the cessation of my efforts to have positive impact in the world".

If you don't have a career that supplies meaning like this, and you become aware of climate change and other symptoms of the metacrisis, it makes sense to look to your own lifestyle as the first means of response, and quitting your BS job might be a nice bonus.

But to someone whose sense of positive impact in the world is constructed via the work they're doing, then their sense of impact-meaning comes from their deep green/sustainability focused *job*, meaning that the impact-carrot of lifestyle change is much less enticing. For instance, in my career I was responsible for saving many many multiples of the amount of energy (carbon) I'll ever be able to personally burn in my lifetime. If you had approached me in 2015 with the carrot of early retirement, I would have responded that a) I can have more positive impact in my job, and that b) I liked it, anyways.

In other words, to this specific kind of person, ERE doesn't at first blush offer an enticing carrot. I encountered the book first in 2017 or so, and basically shrugged. It wasn't until my disillusionment and doubt around the impact I was actually having at work reached the point that I was floundering for a sense of meaning/purpose/impact in the world that ERE was able to hook in my brain.

But, most of 'these kind of people' are like one and a half steps away from ERE already, and could (I think!) be a boon to the emergent response that is ERE.

white belt
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by white belt »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Oct 17, 2021 1:09 pm
But to someone whose sense of positive impact in the world is constructed via the work they're doing, then their sense of impact-meaning comes from their deep green/sustainability focused *job*, meaning that the impact-carrot of lifestyle change is much less enticing. For instance, in my career I was responsible for saving many many multiples of the amount of energy (carbon) I'll ever be able to personally burn in my lifetime. If you had approached me in 2015 with the carrot of early retirement, I would have responded that a) I can have more positive impact in my job, and that b) I liked it, anyways.
But did your job really save many multiple levels of carbon? I don’t know what you specifically did, but clearly if more humans did these jobs the world wouldn’t be in its current predicament. However, I also think that type of justification is quite dangerous because of how easy it is to greenwash things. If you didn’t do that job, wouldn’t just someone else have taken your place? By that framework, my role within the US war machine has burned much more carbon than most people could in a lifetime. If we are going to play by that logic, what’s the point of doing anything CC related?

To be honest, I don’t have a ton of experience with the type of people you describe. I suspect those career fields are dominated by Activists.

Edit: The most dangerous person is the one who believes adamantly they are doing the right thing when in fact they are making things worse.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@wb, yes, agreed, and that's exactly my point. It wasn't until I went through a process of disillusionment and doubt (and extreme fear that I was possibly doing more harm than good), exactly as you describe, until ERE made clear sense to me. But until I did, "my job is more impactful than my lifestyle" was the narrative that guided my decisions. And yes, I'm describing career-oriented Activists.

So, I don't know, maybe I've talked myself into a corner. I was trying to arrive at arguing for an aim of making ERE more welcoming to that kind of person... but maybe that kind of person has to go through the same kind of crucible I did before they'll touch ERE with a ten-foot stick. And I don't know if ERE has a role to play in midwifing that process or not.

I see a demographic with a huge amount of potential, and (to me) they seem so close.

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