I quit an easy job because of philosophical despair

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Why are my parents so pissed off that I quit my easy job because of philosophical despair over human nature

My dad is so pissed of that I quit one of the easiest and decent paying jobs you can get especially in this economy, because I was reading too much of Schoolteacher's pessimism about the cruelty of man, nature and existence. The stupid will to survive that "just is" and defies all reason. The selfish egoist sexual sadism of all nature and man. How can I live in a world like that? Maybe if I had been educated since childhood that thats the way the world is I could have accepted it. But in school they taught us lies about good guys and bad guys that I was the only fool stupid enough to believe.

My dad thinks I'm depressed because I have no friends or girlfriend. But this is a philosophical existential depression not a personal psychological one! I just can't move, get out of bed or live in this world under such cruel conditions!

Idiot.

Well spoken, sir!

A job is a paycheck, nothing more, nothing less. You can save the world on your own time.

and also, the world is the way you "perceive" it. there is no "ideal perfect world" if you perceive the world, nature, man negatively, you may need to adjust your attitudes and viewpoints accordingly. you can yap about "existential" this and that, but it sounds like too much shoe gazing and emo goth sad talk to me, which is extremely annoying and self serving. you need to reshape your attitude dude... before you know it, you'll be old and withering, life goes by fast, and then you'll wish you experienced the good things in life instead of crying and moping about. i think your dads right; you sound depressed; you should go talk to someone about that...

good luck

You are not the only one who bought into the idealistic good guys/bad guys as a kid. "Be good at what you do, have a strong work ethic, and you can never go wrong" is one of the great lies we are fed as children. And it is indeed hard to work under circumstances where cruelty, intimidation and degradation are the rules of the workplace.

On the other hand, I've found that to be 99% of workplaces. Those of us dependent on a paycheck to survive have to learn to live with a certain amount of the BS.

[quote="JoJerome""Be good at what you do, have a strong work ethic, and you can never go wrong" is one of the great lies we are fed as children. And it is indeed hard to work under circumstances where cruelty, intimidation and degradation are the rules of the workplace.

dude; read his post again; he said its one of the easiest jobs he ever had...

also, Being good at what you do, having a strong work ethic, and you can never go wrong is pretty good honest advice; sure, there are no guarantees, but lets look a the opposite of that statement:

"being mediocre at what you do, and having a poor work ethic, you can be certain things will go wrong"

that certainly makes sense to me. sounds like he had a poor work ethic so he quit.

this is just another example of people crying because life isnt perfect or easy. "life isnt fair!" exactly! why? "because it isn't"
why me? why not you. its a fre country, i'll do what i want. fine, but do so on your own time.

i'm not trying to tear the original poster down, i think he should go talk to someone about his depression, but please dont coddle him; he needs to deal with life as it is...

You most certainly are not an idiot. You are a human being wrestling with real issues.

I think it was Bertrand Russell (or someone pretty smart!) who said I'm not interested in finding The meaning of life (capital T), I am interested in finding meanings within life. So, with that said, let me please suggest . . .

THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION, by Gene Sharp, like ju jitsu or akido, the "soft" approach to political change

building bridges with Muslim peoples (probably out of five chance you yourself are from a Muslim background, four out of five you're not, actually your post sounds a little British to me, so be it) Me? I'm a good agnostic. I grew up in a strict, doctrinaire church. I had to rebel. I had to, went through a difficult post-religious period. Now I say, if I can make peace with the Baptists, I can make peace with anyone! (a double joke in that my church was a Friends Church and we used to look at the Baptists with jaundiced eyes as not fully committed!)

Help get some reasonable discussion of the economy going. No, we can't just balance the budget. That's exactly the wrong medicine during a recession! It's like people have never heard of Keynesian economics. In addition, when did we ever vote to be serfs of corporations? We didn't! And on this one, you'll find a lot of agreement among the general public, non-Aspies, non-Nerds. People seem to get it. Corporations have too damn much power. Now, what to do about it is a different matter.

Schools need to be something other than the memorized approach. Something other than the lecture/regurgitation model. Learning is almost what we do best as human beings, and yet we gum it up with all these rules. In particular, foundationalism is not the only game in town. For example, I think we should teach organic chemistry to 10th graders. That actually has some texture and plot and storeline to it. Regular chemistry just lays flat.

And how about medical care, how about a doctor you can actually talk to, who appreciates that you know something, that you're interested (yes, yes, I know that this gets into Aspie communication style, and doctors most of all need to go fast)

Energy policy, maybe public transportation that works, which is hard because our cities have become decentralized. Try and get with a group, beware of groups that rely on "consensus" (just becomes a conformist thing)

I have my own mix of socialism-libertarianism that I feel pretty good about, and yet I have attended Republican dinner and lunch clubs (not the expensive ones!), both to find out what ideas they're into, and also to work on my social skills by responding just to the context, to appreciating people people where they are, at least open to that. I have also attended Green Party meetings, I think expecting more agreement than there was and that was disappointing. But also I think a lot of the people had gone through a recent growth period with new ideas and were in a consolidation period, so were not real open to new ideas. Plus they had the "consensus" business. Animal Rights seems promising, as long as you can avoid the fringe groups or have a sense of humor about it.

Perhaps I missed it, but what was the job? What issues did you have with it?

Only quit a job due to philosophical dispair if you are about to start a philosophy degree! It's basically what I did

haha well, i guess that makes sense.. i learned how to do my job despite philisophical differences; hey, it's just a job, they dont own you like an object, basically, ya do what the boss wants while you're at work, and then on your free time ya do and think whatever you want. i used to worry about this subject, until i realized that its not my company, i dont have millions of dollrs invested in the company, its not my place to say or do whatever i want, and the owner has the right to run the business how he wants to run it. it basically comes down to respect for your employer, and he is signing your check every week, and if ya got a job you're lucky to have one.

and if it is unbearable, get a better job first b4 one quits. thats not my situation though, i value differences in workplace philosophy, and learned that if it was my business, and i was in charge, i'd probably do much of the same things;

its so easy to be idealistic when you dont have millions of dollars hanging in the balance; when its your business's ass on the line, and your decisions can result in hundreds of peoples livelihooods, one makes business decisions that might seem unfair or harsh to some, but in reality, realisitically, the bosses are doing everything possible to keep the business profitable and running, and when it comes to keeping a job, that number 1 priority in my opinion.

selfishness is not an asset in the business world. sacrifice and loyalty and hard work and team work are definte assets.

grow up!

That's just stupid. That's a pathetic reason to quit. What's the sefishness of nature and man got to do with you earning a decent wage.

i think its based on some utopian mindset where rainbows flourish and unicorns live, and everybody is wonderful all the time, and theres no angst or stress and everybody and everything is beyond perfect; fantasyland.

You guys being a little bit hard on him, don't you think?

Instead, why don't we try and build the brother up? Give him some good advice. Okay, a mistake may have been made, but where do you go from here.

And for starters, depression itself can be mild, serious, anywhere in between.

Now the advice about jobs. Okay, the advice that the company does it this way, well, let's do it this way, learn from it, see how it works out. Afterall, it's not my money invested. That will handle some situations, in fact, many situations. But in other situations, you are being asked or pressured to do something that is unethical according to your own terms.
'I'm not sure that's my program.'
That's okay. It's low-key, it's brief.

Sales jobs are often that way, and it's so unnecessary, you don't need to be telling the lie, but it's become common practice. And it's very difficult to opt out, without people getting the idea that you're being critical of them and taking personal affront. That's why you need something brief and matter-of-fact where it's implied you're just doing it your own way and you're not being critical of someone else.

Sales jobs can also be good because you're allowed to be different. It's viewed as an asset to have different kinds of sales people who can connect with different types of customers. So much depends on the particular company and the particular people. And your co-workers can be as important, if not more so, than the managers.

sorry, i'm done with this post; the guy who originally posted never came back and replied or contributed. it's like were trying to help him, or yes, give him some harsh tastes of reality, but he ignores us. he quit his job and now he has quit this post. i'm not trying to be critical here, but whats the point of posting anymore if he disappears and ignore the posting after he create it?

perhaps he has commitment issues? i dunno he's not here, and hasn't been since the original post. bye

Cruel compared to what? That first part is as pointless to argue as saying in a courtroom that God wanted an accident to happen to someone -- one can't possibly prove it one way or the other. On the second part, I actually agree with you in certain circumstances. I think people who are perpetually unhappy should make significant changes to better themselves, or should kill themselves. This would be why I'm not against assisted suicide, provided the person is sane. If one's at least slightly happy, or makes others' lives better, or is seen as most likely to make others' lives better than worse later, we want them to continue to "survive."

Huh? Again, compared to what? And tell me how *you* aren't being selfish? Were you donating any of your income to poor people? Moving on, there's nothing wrong with being sexual, within boundaries. Sex feels great, at least for men. Is this what you're talking about? On sadism, I don't know what you're on about.

I've learned as I've gotten older that "bad" people are usually not as bad as they appear, and visa versa. This is actually *more* reason to work for someone whose philosophies you don't disagree with.

Or maybe you're looking for any reason to be unhappy? Aspies have to be more careful about neuroticism than most people. Also, if philosophy was a useful field, you'd see paid professions in it other than teachers. The best philosophy I see to subscribe to is that happiness is the most important thing to seek, and should only not be when you can increases others' happiness higher than an action decreases yours.

Though it looks like you're not going to read this anyway...