this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I often daydream about how society would be if we were not forced by society to pigeon hole ourselves into a specialized career for maximizing the profits of capitalists, and sell most of our time for it.

The idea of creating an entire identity for you around your "career" and only specializing in one thing would be ridiculous in another universe. Humans have so much natural potential for breadth, but that is just not compatible with capitalism.

This is evident with how most people develop "hobbies" outside of work, like wood working, gardening, electronics, music, etc. This idea of separating "hobbies" and the thing we do most of our lives (work) is ridiculous.

Here's how my world could be different if I owned my time and dedicated it to the benefit of my own and my community instead of capitalists:

  • more reading, learning and excusing knowledge with others.
  • learn more handy work, like plumbing and wood working. I love customizing my own home!
  • more gardening
  • participate in the transportation system (picking up shifts to drive a bus for example)
  • become a tour guide for my city
  • cook and bake for my neighbors
  • academic research
  • open source software (and non-software) contributions
  • pick up shifts at a cafรฉ and make coffee, tea and smoothies for people
  • pick up shifts to clean up public spaces, such as parks or my own neighborhood
  • participate in more than one "professions". I studied one type of engineering but work in a completely different engineering. This already proves I can do both, so why not do both and others?

Humans do not like the same thing over and over every day. It's unnatural. But somehow we revolve our whole livelihood around if.

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[โ€“] demesisx@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'm an intellectually overqualified filmmaker surrounded by anti-intellectuals (I routinely get made fun of for being interested in technical stuff)....and right now, I am on workman's comp with a broken foot. So: exactly what I am doing right now is exactly what I would want to be doing.

What's that?
Hanging out with my daughter in my lab,

Learning

  • Haskell/Plutus
  • Purescript
  • using Nix to glue them together
  • hacking an espresso machine (either with a RISC_V Lychee Pi or an ESP32...haven't decided yet).

Practicing:

  • guitar

Blazing:

  • chronic
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I'd love to spend more time planting trees. I volunteer to do it occasionally on weekends but I really love the process of going from sprout to seedling to planted. I just wish I could do more of it.

[โ€“] mub@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Gymnastics, surfing, and study and write philosophical works. And maybe practice guitar.

[โ€“] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would be what I am now, just a more "official" version of it, since what I do is akin to a paid hobby and has no firmly nested societal position. But that's assuming what I do would be valued in other types of societies either (it's just barely valued in Capitalism). I know a Marxist society most likely wouldn't value what I do as it's only a necessity-based job on a technical level. And it would have little relevance in Distributism, I think. Mutualism is a coin toss.

[โ€“] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 4 points 1 year ago

What do you do now?

[โ€“] sturmblast@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I'd be writing a lot more music

[โ€“] spiderjuzce@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

I would write and draw more. There's so many stories I wanna make. I might even take up some other medium like animation or something physical like sculpture or architecture. It would be fun to design spaces that don't need to have the soul sucked out of them to appear "mature" or "professional"

I feel like the fear of not making profits and not surviving pressures me into watering down everything I do so it's appealing to someone else. That's why art is strictly a hobby for me and not a career I wanna pursue

[โ€“] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same thing I do now, but instead of full-time work / part-time student, I'd flip it to part-time work and full-time student.

I'm hanging on to the bottom step of the medical ladder - this field is fascinating as fuck, and even as just a tech I get a lot of satisfaction in my role (albeit minor relative to doctors or nurses) in helping others recover from whatever sickness/injury they present with.

Without the financial barriers and current need to work till exhaustion to afford rent, I'd be highly interested in going all the way to physician, but at the rate I'm able to actually afford the time and money to take classes, I'll be pushing 40 when I'm able to clear the hurdle from tech to nurse; and it already hurts to move half of my fucking joints, so once this nursing shit is finished, I don't see myself climbing any more ladders, literal or otherwise... at that point it'll just be the counting the days till retirement or planning out the most pleasurable way to commit suicide.

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[โ€“] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Without capitalism, I'd probably be serf like my great-grandparents were. There's a lot to criticize about capitalism, but it's still an improvement on its predecessor.

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[โ€“] Lauchs@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'd hang out and enjoy the fruits of other people's time being sold. Pretty hard to think of a hobby that wouldn't cover.

[โ€“] Behaviorbabe@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Something new every day. Create. Spend time with my children. Volunteer my time and knowledge.

[โ€“] shapesandstuff@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

I think about this at least a little bit most days.

I'd finish some video games again.

Work on more music, ideally practice piani again to get my theory back on track.

Make projects, communal gardening etc..

Outside the selfish self-enrichment kinda stuff, teach kids programming, and participate more in my hema club.

[โ€“] galloog1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

What would you when you get in this undefined yet not capitalist utopia and are forced to work long hours at a job you didn't choose to help further the cause of the revolution?

[โ€“] bermuda@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Rock climbing. I got into over summer but I only have time to go once or twice a week at most. And that's just indoors. A whole outdoor trip would take way too much of my time, time that I don't have.

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