Trying something different

I decided to try something different today. A lot of the times I find myself having thoughts about school, work, and life in general, and sometimes they are somewhat profound, but I never bother to write them down, so I end up forgetting about them, only to leave a wisp of an evidence of what was probably something profound remain in my head the next day. So I decided that it might be a good idea to write it down, so people and I can read them in the future.

Today, I was watching Grey’s Anatomy on my computer. I know it is lameass, and it’s feminine, for women and everything. But even in crappy, trashy television, I can derive some meaningful things out of it. This time it is no different.

In the show, the main character talked about surgery students have committed not only many years of school, but 100 hours a week of training for a few years as interns in hospitals once they’ve done school, only to eventually emerge for a career that would demand at least that many hours. Now, surgeon is a really prestigious occupation in our society, and they are getting paid handsomely for it. But really, what good is all that money when you can hardly enjoy it?

I’m not saying that people should not become surgeons or whatever profession they want to do because of the amount of extrinsic motivation is lacking. That’s another thought for another time. But watching a bunch of Grey’s Anatomy episodes, I think that the very reason of human existence is slowly unraveling in front of me.

Our modern lifestyle obscures the fact that life is about survival. Thousands of years ago, the most pressing issue for every human being on the planet was ‘am I going to have enough food to eat’? All people did was find food. It’s what they do for work; it's what they do to survive. If you don’t work to find food, either through stalking and killing a pack of animals, or finding and picking edible plants, you are going to die. If you can work, you will have food on the table, and you get to live to do repeat this process tomorrow. And if you are good at doing this day after day, maybe you can have enough surplus food to be able to afford to reproduce and feed it to your offspring, and teach them to continue this cycle once you die.

As time went on, people invented better ways of repeating this food cycle. The most important inventions were agriculture and animal husbandry (thanks Civilization 4!). Now, since people are able to mass-produce food this way, not having to hunt wandering animals, but being able to pluck food out of the ground or the animal pen with relative ease, you don’t need everyone in the community/tribe to find food; you only need the a group of people (a.k.a. farmers) to provide food for themselves and people that aren’t working to directly produce food.

Obviously, people that aren’t farming or herding cattle have to work on other things, because it’s inefficient to have everyone on the farm, since all that extra food will spoil and end up not being of much use to other people (diminishing returns: the more supply of something that is past what is needed, the less useful the extra units become).

The people that aren’t farming are going to have to work on other stuff to contribute to society and offer services that people with food want, so that they can acquire food from the farmers, put food on the family dinner table, and live another day. Those people are indirectly hunting for food, because working brings something that society wants (like healthcare, entertainment, things that better society like road construction, houses, cars, etc.), and in exchange you get to have food, and you get to live to work tomorrow to bring food to the table again.

Basically, life is about survival, and survival means being able to put food on the table for you and your family, and to get food means you have to work, either directly producing food or indirectly acquiring food from people that produce it. Without work, you don’t get to put food on the table, and without food on the table, you die and you fail your life’s purpose, which is to survive.

However, as our societies and civilizations crawl through the ages, people began to forget this fact. Why do people work? Sometimes people don’t even know. They’ll say things like money, iPod, cars, iCars, new computer, satellite TV, latest music or getting drunk on weekends. Everyday we’re bombarded by advertisement, display of the rich and glamorous in the media, celebrity gossip, or whatever the hell. If the world isn’t telling us what a movie star is wearing to the Oscars, it’s someone trying to sell us something, like a car or a diamond or Xbox 360 or something that make us feel good, entertained, modern, and comfy. But behind the advertisement, there’s a firm that’s worried about the tanking economy, lowering demands for their contribution to society, and how it affects their organization, and if the company can make enough money to pay its employees so they can put food on the table and survive. Behind the smiling movie starlet or the flashing lights from the paparazzi, there’s the worry that what if nobody is willing to pay for their “contribution” to society. And if that happens, how are they going to put food on the table and survive?

I just see a lot of people going to school and working for money, glamor and status. How glamorous or awesome would it be if I’m a movie star or a pro snowboarder, or, what a boost in status would it be if I graduate and become a dentist, lawyer, doctor, politician, or actuary(seriously)? People just seem to forget that the the biggest concern people have is to be able to work so that they can put food on the table and live to do it again tomorrow, not to gain some status or attention from society.

In modern society, a lot of young people (I know I sound like I’m 80. Bare with me) just believe that life is about having fun and having to experience ALL, or as much entertainment and attain as much status and glamour as possible. Ooooo, I have to get the Xbox AND the PS3 AND the Wii. And I gotta see ALL the movies that are coming out, watch all the trailers and exclusive interviews, and I have to read about this celebrity gossip about this, that, and the other thing. But really, people have limited time for this kind of thing. All the entertainment (which I’m not bashing on or anything. I know that people that work in entertainment have to make a living and feed their family and all that too) is NOT suppose to be experienced. You have to be wise with what entertainment you are going to have to commit your time (and money) to, because you only have limited time to do that, since the reason you have any time at all to do any of that is because of the left over time and money you have from working to put food on the table. In other words, people are way to busy with work, putting food on the table, and survival, to be a professional couch potato and entertainment sponge.

That’s why I’m irritated as hell when shows like My Super Sweet 16th are on TV. Those bimbos are just obsessed with having as much fun as possible and experiencing every piece of entertainment in existence, they think that life is about absorbing every piece of entertainment on Earth and being entertained as possible and hedonistic like Jabba the Hut. Most of them aren’t even as hot as they think they are.

Surgeons (at least depicted in Grey’s Anatomy, and probably real ones) are curious. There is a lot of entertainment and distractions available in the world, all competing for their attention, but in the case of surgeons, even though they have a lot of monetary resources to enjoy entertainment, they don’t have the time. Their salaries are more than enough for their survival needs and luxuries, but their line of work demands a lifestyle that leave them with little time to enjoy the luxuries that they can afford.

I guess that’s why work usually isn’t supposed to be “fun”, i.e. entertaining, because nobody pays you to be entertained, that is not a contribution to society and it doesn’t put food on the table. If you can derive meaning and pride and happiness and enjoyment in your work, that’s great, but work isn’t entertainment, and people can’t expect work to be entertaining. Work is contributing to society’s needs, so you can get your share of food on the table (or money to buy food to put on the table).

Anyways, that’s what I thought about after watching Grey’s Anatomy. They just work so hard, and a lot of real life pre-med students out there want to be a surgeon because it’s glamorous and it pays well. So what? There’s no time to enjoy it, and people just have to get their head out of their asses and realize what life is all about: putting food on the effing table.

Another observation is that no matter how modern and developed a society is, no matter how much MTV, MuchMusic, or iPods and Mazda there are in the world to distract you and make you feel modern, you're just one bankruptcy, one unemployment slip, and one sliver of an edge away from total starvation and death.

Anyways, that’s my first entry into my new blog thing. My arguments aren’t perfect, I welcome any criticism or any thoughts on my little rant here. I promised to certain people that my blog wouldn’t be negative, but somehow I failed. Oh well.