Approximately true, with some caveats. The 40-hour workweek was Henry Ford’s invention. After studying the productivity of his workers he learned it went down when they worked more than 40 hours. He was also famous for paying his workers enough to live well on a single income, so women were generally not in Ford’s workforce at all, but rather providing their family’s childcare, errands, etc. There were services provided to the employees who lived in the suburb-like utopian housing projects that Ford built for his employees, but the idea of paying for out-of-home childcare certainly didn’t exist at the time. Middle class people often had servants, but it’s important to keep in mind the middle class was quite smaller and different then, and could be compared to low millionaires today AKA the upper middle class.
The last bit, reassuring people, is basically misleading because the 40-hour workweek isn’t a major source of stress by itself and most people can handle it, provided they aren’t trying to balance other large responsibilities like being the primary caregiver to children or other jobs (as the commenter says). The real reasons most people are stressed out in the workforce today are more complicated but can be summed up by saying they routinely make bad life decisions and blame the outcomes on other people to guilt society into political concessions, as we see here.
Most people in America struggle because our society is very poorly managed, and I would argue maliciously so. A big reason people here make unwise decisions is that they’re encouraged to by authority figures and all the cultural products they consume. Most of our institutions are either feckless or downright predatory, with college and student loan debt being a notable example. So if I were going to reassure people, it would be by saying that our society is structured to ruin their lives. However, I’d also caution them that it takes two to tango and “you can’t con an honest person”, so they also need to accept their part of the responsibility for believing the lies they were told and making bad life decisions like going to college.
One of my sisters added:
The 40 hour workweek was set up by Henry Ford back when women stayed home. As women gradually entered the workforce over the last 50 years in particular, real wages (adjusted for inflation) steadily declined due to increase in labor supply. This has resulted in most families needing two incomes to afford increasing costs of living, and increasing levels of burnout amongst those working.
In many industries now, you may be expected to work 60-80 hours but earn a salary based on 40. Millennials, who ruin everything 🤔, have delayed marriage, children, buying a home, in part because of this reason.
If you are having a hard time, you are not a failure.
Are there certain ones you could say you are ‘missing’ or is the discrepancy relational?
(IE if you were in a relationship and the woman got in the way of a pet interest, would you want to resolve the conflict but you would not relate the felt emotion as signalling this, or would such an emotion simply not occur? What is the fundamental disconnect.)
I should have set the stage a bit, as there are ‘feelings’ as well as emotions. Emotions are types of feelings. Pain is a feeling as is ‘being tired’. I’ll try to make a list of valences and how they may interact soonish.
Another mistake is I was assuming birth=primary, but of course if we’re doing the materialism bit we should assume fetuses in the womb are experiencing emotions as well, and potentially fewer.
I might start working at a car dealership soon. Sounds miserable. Oh well.
Aeoli, have you heard anything about the late Cardinal Ratzinger’s posthumously published book? Apparently it confirms the existence of homo clubs in American seminaries. It even alleges that bishops conspired to conceal their existence from Rome.
Right, but that’s not the bombshell: it’s the high-level coverup – and the papal confirmation thereof – that’s alarming.
I suppose it’s completely irrelevant to you as a protestant. It just saddens me that the current Pope is . . . what he is, and that the former ‘trad’ pope presumably did little or nothing to address the problem.
Reminds me of Cioran’s observation that, “The god in whose name one no longer kills is truly dead”. At a minimum, every last one of the bishops involved should be VERY publicly excommunicated.
Eh, that’s based on the old idea that God is a human institution. There’s no real theology behind it, just well-warranted cynicism about organizing groups of humans.
https://trueataraxiaradio.wordpress.com/2023/01/27/something-from-nothing/
What do you think the irreducible emotions are?
Are there certain ones you could say you are ‘missing’ or is the discrepancy relational?
(IE if you were in a relationship and the woman got in the way of a pet interest, would you want to resolve the conflict but you would not relate the felt emotion as signalling this, or would such an emotion simply not occur? What is the fundamental disconnect.)
> What do you think the irreducible emotions are?
Best I can answer is that very young infants appear to have:
-Sad
-Happy
-Angry
These appear a bit later:
-Afraid
-Surprise
And disgust first appears several months in.
I could go either way on the question of whether pleasure and pain constitute emotions. I’m inclined to say they are.
I should have set the stage a bit, as there are ‘feelings’ as well as emotions. Emotions are types of feelings. Pain is a feeling as is ‘being tired’. I’ll try to make a list of valences and how they may interact soonish.
Another mistake is I was assuming birth=primary, but of course if we’re doing the materialism bit we should assume fetuses in the womb are experiencing emotions as well, and potentially fewer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptagonal_tiling
That’s interesting. Is there a 3D equivalent? (Thinking of Flatland: The Movie.)
Pingback: Debatable | vulture of critique
I might start working at a car dealership soon. Sounds miserable. Oh well.
Aeoli, have you heard anything about the late Cardinal Ratzinger’s posthumously published book? Apparently it confirms the existence of homo clubs in American seminaries. It even alleges that bishops conspired to conceal their existence from Rome.
I haven’t heard about it, but I didn’t exactly need a new book to tell me about homos in seminaries.
Right, but that’s not the bombshell: it’s the high-level coverup – and the papal confirmation thereof – that’s alarming.
I suppose it’s completely irrelevant to you as a protestant. It just saddens me that the current Pope is . . . what he is, and that the former ‘trad’ pope presumably did little or nothing to address the problem.
Reminds me of Cioran’s observation that, “The god in whose name one no longer kills is truly dead”. At a minimum, every last one of the bishops involved should be VERY publicly excommunicated.
Eh, that’s based on the old idea that God is a human institution. There’s no real theology behind it, just well-warranted cynicism about organizing groups of humans.
Right. I didn’t intend to make a theological statement. I meant it (and I assume Cioran meant it) sociologically.
> I suppose it’s completely irrelevant to you as a protestant.
That’s probably the difference, yeah. I wouldn’t say irrelevant so much as emotionally detached.