QA:我们一生三分之一的时间都在工作。我们为什么要干这么多活?为什么没有一个更好的体系让社会运转呢?
2021-06-22 不如狗 18967
正文翻译

We spend one third of our lives working. Why do we have to work so much? Why isn't there a better system to make society function?

我们一生三分之一的时间都在工作。我们为什么要干这么多活?为什么没有一个更好的体系让社会运转呢?

评论翻译
Emily Ender
OK. Now for something completely different, with an amused aside here that at the outset of mass industrialization, there was a bit of a panic in some corners of society that mechanization would reduce people’s working hours so much that they wouldn’t know what else to do with themselves and therefore crime would go up! That was well over a century ago. From reading the other answers here, it seems what goes around comes around…

好的。现在伴随着有趣的旁白说一些完全不同的东西,在大规模工业化的开始,社会的某些角落里有一点恐慌,因为机械化会大大减少人们的工作时间,以至于他们不知道还能做些什么,因此犯罪率会上升! 那是一个多世纪以前的事了。从这里的其他答案来看,似乎该来的总会来的……

Meanwhile, a story. Once upon I time I had a career in “the real world” where I spent certain hours from Monday through Friday doing mostly paperwork, data entry and organization, and answering email. In exchange for this, I was paid money and received other “benefits,” which were really just non-cash compensation for my labor. I had already worked my way up through a pay rise or so and had been marked for a promotion—they actually created the position just so I could fill it. Instead, I quit this job to follow my spouse across the country as he pursued his career.

与此同时,有一个故事。曾几何时,我在“现实世界”中有一份工作,从周一到周五,我花了几个小时做文书工作,数据输入和组织,回复电子邮件。作为交换,我得到了金钱和实际上只是对我的劳动的非现金补偿的其他“福利”。我已经通过加薪的方式获得了晋升——他们实际上创造了这个职位,就是为了让我能够填补这个空缺。相反,我辞去了这份工作,跟随我的配偶在全国各地追求他的事业。
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I haven’t worked for money in almost nine years. But don’t worry, it’s not as fun as it sounds. Three of those years were spent in the rural Deep South of the USA with no earned income, living on combinations of charity, financial aid, and government assistance. Use your imagination as to how that was.

我已经快九年没为钱工作了。不过别着急,这并不像听起来那么有趣。其中有三年是在美国南部农村度过的,没有任何收入,靠慈善、财政援助和政府援助过活。用你的想象力去想象那是怎么回事。

Back to OP. I’d like to offer a different interpretation of this question. For one thing, it’s curious, isn’t it, how many of the other answers presume the remunerative kind of “work” in OP’s question. There’s a fine argument that the question’s wording lends itself to this interpretation, but it does raise a question: Why is paid work—in my country, often the kind of paper and electronic busy work I described above—the only thing that comes to mind when people talk about “work”? Why is it that this kind of work is the primary kind of work our society values?

回到开头。我想对这个问题提供一种不同的解释。首先,这很奇怪,不是吗,有多少其他的答案假定在开头的问题中有报酬的“工作”。 有一个很好的论点是,这个问题的措辞适合这种解释,但它确实提出了一个问题: 为什么有偿工作——在我的国家,通常是我上面描述的那种纸质和电子工作——当人们谈到“工作”时,唯一浮现在脑海中的是什么? 为什么这种工作是我们社会最看重的工作?

What would happen if our society came to value instead the kind of work entailed in raising children? running a functioning household? maintaining a loving and committed partnership with one’s spouse? helping to uplift one’s communities? If the pandemic is teaching us anything, it’s that the work that has been least valued heretofore is in fact the most essential, although in fairness, most of that work is also remunerative (at starvation wages in my country, I might add).

如果我们的社会不再重视养育孩子所必须做的工作,那会发生什么? 经营一个正常运转的家庭? 与配偶保持一种充满爱和承诺的关系? 帮助提升自己的社群? 如果说这场疫情教会了我们什么,教会我们那些迄今为止最不受重视的工作实际上是最重要的,尽管公平地说,这些工作中的大部分都是有报酬的(我得补充一句,在我的国家,工资简直要饿死人了)。
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I suspect, though, that first, as in the case of “essential” work exposed by the pandemic, something would have to happen to force our society to notice the immense amount of labor it takes to maintain relationships, sustain households and communities, and nurture and educate the next generation of humans. I mean, really notice it. Not just pay lip service to it.

不过,我想,首先,“至关重要”的工作受到疫情的影响 必须要发生一些事情来迫使我们的社会注意到维持人际关系,维持家庭和社区,养育和教育下一代需要大量的劳动力。我是说,真正注意到它。而不是嘴上说说。

This is the work I do every day. (By the way, it’s extremely exhausting, both physically and emotionally.) Just a few days ago, I thought it out: My existence is mostly occupied with all of the essential functions that have constituted human life since the beginning of forever; I spend the vast majority of my working hours: planning for the acquisition of food; acquiring said food; preparing food; storing uneaten food; cleaning up after the preparation and eating of food; keeping my domicile in sanitary and working condition; keeping my family adequately and cleanly clothed; raising my children; and investing what energy I can in relationships with our community and our elders. Yes, there you have it, folks—all our basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing, tending the young, and forming community—100% my job.

这是我每天做的工作。(顺便说一下,无论在身体上还是心理上,这都是非常累人的。) 就在几天前,我想到: 我的存在主要被人类生命的所有基本功能所占据,这些功能从万古之始就构成了人类的生活。我的大部分工作时间都在: 计划购买食物; 获取所说的食物;配置食材;保持住所卫生和工作状态; 让我的家人穿得足够干净; 抚育我的孩子; 将我所能的精力投入到与社群和长者的关系上。是的,大家都知道了,我们所有的基本必需品:食物,住所,衣服,照顾年轻人,建立社群,100%都是我的工作。

But, because I live in an industrialized economy, it takes money to do absolutely all this work. That’s my spouse’s part of the equation: to provide the income.

但是,因为我生活在一个工业化的经济体中,做这些工作绝对需要钱。这是我配偶的责任:提供收入。
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not panting to go back to the Bad Old Days (otherwise known as most of history) of subsistence farming where, among other things, “sanitation” constituted digging a hole in the ground, or, further yet, hunting and gathering and all that attendant moving around. And dying of hunger after a long winter.

别误会我的意思,我并不想回到过去的糟糕日子(或者说大部分历史),那时的农业是自给自足的,在那里,“卫生”包括在地上挖一个洞,或者说得更远一点,狩猎和采集以及所有相关的活动。然后在漫长的冬天后死于饥饿。

I get it. Life for humans is full of labor, no matter which way you cut it. Sometimes, though, I just can’t help but wonder how much of our post-industrial labor is really necessary. The way post-industrial society lends itself to social breakdown and thereby manufactures and even exports social crises, and then creates thousands upon thousands of nonprofit businesses and NGOs with infinite amounts of paperwork, data entry, and email for our workforce to perform, in order to solve said crises is a story unto itself. But let’s keep this personal to me:

我明白了。人类的生活充满了劳动,无论你以何种方式来切割它。但有时候,我忍不住想知道,我们的后工业时代的劳动力中有多少是真的有必要的。后工业社会以这种方式导致社会崩溃,从而制造甚至输出社会危机,然后创造成千上万的非营利企业和非政府组织,为我们的劳动力提供无限量的文书工作、数据输入和电子邮件,以便他们解决上述危机,这本身就是一个故事。但这些都是我的私事:

The chunk of my working hours I don’t spend concerned with my family’s material necessities I spend managing the accounts, and there are slews of them: the bank accounts—checking plus several savings accounts: tick, tick, tick, tick. The insurance accounts—that’s health, dental (which is stupidly separate), and life for each member of the family, and with more than one policy on a few of us, that’s at least a dozen more tick marks. And that’s all separate from the auto insurance, which is required by law, bundled with renters’ insurance. Tick, tick, and tick. Then there are the HSAs, the retirement accounts, the online portals to manage each of these accounts, the electronic accounts—not just email and social media, but all those fantastic online retailers who all want separate logins and passwords—and of course, the electronic devices that allow me to access these things require their own levels of maintenance (raise your hand if you’ve recently reorganized the folders on your hard drive!).

我工作的大部分时间都花在了管理账户上,而不是关心家庭的物质需求。银行账户和几个储蓄账户: 等等,等等,等等。保险账户——包括健康保险、牙科保险(愚蠢地分开)和每个家庭成员的生活保险,如果我们中的一些人有不止一份保险,那就至少多了一打标记。这些都是与汽车保险分开的,汽车保险是法律要求的,与租车人保险捆绑在一起。等等,等等,等等。然后是健康储蓄账户,退休账户,管理每个账户的在线门户,电子账户——不仅仅是电子邮件和社交媒体,还有所有神奇的在线零售商,他们都需要独立的登录名和密码——当然,允许我访问这些东西的电子设备需要它们自己的维护级别(如果你最近重新整理过硬盘上的文件夹,请举手!)

My point is, that’s a lot of—no, wait a minute. I don’t have a point. My point is to ask what the point is. All these things that are supposed to make our lives easier and more convenient, all these hallmarks of how truly “advanced” our society is—for me, they’re just yet more things I have to clean up or keep current.

我想说的是,这太不,等一下。我没有重点。我的重点是问问题的重点是什么。所有这些应该让我们的生活更容易、更方便的东西,所有这些我们的社会是多么“先进”的标志——对我来说,它们只是更多的东西,我必须清理或保持更新。

In my country, it seems people spend a ridiculous amount of time on all the paperwork and electronic accounts and just general busy work that most of us would readily say constitutes the “real world,” while we allow our access to the actual necessities of human existence—food, shelter, clothing, relationships, community—to continue to deteriorate. And, if they’re not deteriorating enough in our own lives, then we’re content to continue supporting structures of power that create systemic deterioration for other people.

在我的国家,似乎人们花费大量时间在所有文件和电子账户和一般忙碌的工作,大多数人会毫不迟疑地说,构成了“真实世界”, 当我们允许我们获得人类生存的实际必需品——食物、住所、衣服、人际关系、社群——的时候,情况却继续恶化。

Which, in my opinion, makes OP’s question not such a bad one. Why, indeed?

在我看来,开头的问题还不算太坏。的确,为什么呢?
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Sue Thomass
Work is something that most people do not have a coherent understanding of. Work for most means earning a salary, but what we actually need to have a good quality of life, is something most people do not think about. Still others, want to control what kind of a quality of life others have. More people spend more effort at trying to send others ill will, than they do working, than we can imagine. Even self diagnosis, of our attitudes and perceptions, is something that is out of most people’s wheelhouse. The nature of most commerce, is in finding a solution to a man made problem. For example medicare, or pharmaceutical, is not interested in the cure, (there is no money in the cure) but rather in profiteering, and although poor quality food and lifestyle is the main culprit in most of our diseases, again there is no money in the cure, people for the most part are working hard to find ways to profit from the insanity in the world - and why? well it is not because they did any homework or thinking on the topic of what makes life worth living, or what constitutes a good quality of life. Our mental health, depends on us having well thought out axioms to base our behaviour on, but again, as I stated at the start, most people do not have a coherent understanding or comprehension of what work actually curtails. When people start to give the same respect to themselves, as people who work at living coherent lives, then people might have a higher regard to the ethics involved in keeping sanity in the workplace.

大多数人对工作都没有一个连贯的理解。对于大多数人来说,工作意味着挣到薪水,但我们真正需要的是过上高质量的生活,这是大多数人没有想到的。还有一些人,想要控制别人的生活质量。更多的人花更多的精力试图给别人带来恶意,这比他们所做的工作还多,比我们想象的要多。甚至对我们的态度和认知进行自我诊断,也是大多数人所不擅长的。大多数商业活动的本质是为人为的问题寻找解决方案。例如,医疗保险或制药公司对治疗不感兴趣(治疗中没有钱),而是为了牟取暴利,尽管劣质的食物和生活方式是我们大多数疾病的罪魁祸首,再说一遍,治疗中没有钱,大多数人都在努力寻找从世界疯狂获利的方法-为什么呢?这并不是因为他们做了任何功课或思考了什么让生命有价值,或者什么构成了良好的生活质量。我们的心理健康,取决于我们是否有深思熟虑的公理来作为我们行为的基础,但是,正如我在开始时所说的,大多数人对工作实际上限制了什么并没有一个连贯的认识或理解。当人们开始像那些过着有条理的生活的人一样尊重自己时,人们可能会更加重视在工作场所为涉及的道德规范保持理智。

Russ Dewolf
You literally do not have to work so much, and it’s not to “Make society function” at all. It’s for your own personal choices beyond a certain poinit.

你不需要工作太多,这根本不是为了“让社会运转”这是为了你自己的个人选择。
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You have to work some of course; you need food, shelter, clothing…but none of us “have to” have a lot of things we in our society think of as necessary. Literally billions of people on the planet live perfectly acceptable lives with far less.

当然,你得做一些工作;你需要食物、住所、衣服……但在我们的社会中,没有人“必须”拥有很多我们认为是必要的东西。实际上,地球上数十亿人过着完全可以接受的生活。

We choose to work in an amount that we project will support the stuff we want to have beyond subsistence.

我们选择一定量的工作,我们的计划将支持我们在维持生计之外想要的东西。。

There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m a big fan of air conditioning, partially pre-made food, a TV, not having ten roommates…whatever…

这没什么不对的。我喜欢空调,喜欢半熟的食物,喜欢看电视,喜欢没有十个室友…诸如此类…

But my grandparents lived civilized middle class American lives without even knowing any of those tech things existed, and they worked a lot more than I do, and they lived with their large families in much smaller homes that I now live in with just four of us.

但我的祖父母过着文明的美国中产阶级生活,他们甚至不知道这些技术的存在,他们工作的时间比我多得多,他们和他们的大家庭住在小得多的房子里,现在的我只有四个人和我住在一块。

Even I’ve personally lived three months in a tent. Saved a ton of money.

就连我自己也在帐篷里住了三个月。省了一大笔钱。

The one thing that we (IMHO) have to work too hard for is health care, but under our “system” (?) even that is “optional”.

有一件我们(依我之见)不得不努力工作的目的,那就是医疗保健,但在我们的“体系”(?)下,甚至这也是“可选的”。

Mike Church
Well, for start, you don’t work for one-third of your lives.

首先,你没有三分之一的生命在工作。

If you work eight hours a day, five days a week, that’s 40 hours out of 168 - less than 25%.

如果你每天工作8小时,一周工作5天,那就是168个小时中的40个小时,少于25%。
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Now, you also get vacation days. And you only work for about 40–45 years of your (on average) 72 years or so.

现在,你还有假期。在你(平均)72年左右的时间里,你只工作40-45年。

So …

所以……

If you are fully employed for 45 years, you live for 72 years, you take 20 vacation days a year, then you will work for around 86,760 hours out of a grand total of around 631,152 hours. Or 13.75% of your life. On average, that’s 3.3 hours per day.

如果你全职工作45年,那么你的寿命是72年,每年有20天假期,那么你将工作约86760个小时,总共约有631,152个小时。也就是13.75%的时间。平均每天3.3小时。

Now to your question.

现在来回答你的问题。

There is a better to make society function. It’s by having fewer people in society, all of them contributing their particular skill to that society. We could have some people producing food, some people making safe places for us all to live, some people distributing food to all those places where people gather to live in their safe places, some people protecting us from illness, and so on.

有一个更好的办法让社会运转。就是社会上的人越来越少,所有人都为这个社会贡献他们的特殊技能。我们可以让一些人生产食物,一些人为我们所有人提供安全的居住场所,一些人向所有聚集在安全地方人们分发食物,一些人保护我们免受疾病,等等。

Oh, wait. that’s what we’re doing now.

哦,等等。这就是我们现在正在做的。

Pascal Morimacil
You have to work so little, because there were huge movements of workers, striking, organizing, and demanding better conditions.

你必须少工作,因为有大量的工人运动,罢工,组织,要求更好的条件。

Otherwise, you’d be working 16h per day.

否则,你每天要工作16小时。
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You are still working 8h per day, because there has been no organized social movement dedicated to lowering work hours.
There is more technology, there are more machines, more stuff was automated, people are more educated, …. But none of that really matters.

你仍然每天工作8小时,因为没有有组织的社会运动致力于减少工作时间。
有更多的技术,有更多的机器,更多的东西被自动化了,人们受到了更多的教育,....但这些都不重要。

Pay and working conditions are set by supply and demand, meaning the ratio between how organized labor is, and how organized the owners are.

工资和工作条件由供给和需求决定,劳动力的组织程度与所有者的组织程度之间的比率。

Owners have multinational joint stock corporations. Do you have a unx?

所有者拥有跨国股份公司。你们有工会吗?

Jeff (B) Taylor
Hi John,

你好,约翰,

Do you really think more leisure time would be beneficial to most people? I think work is what keeps most people sane. The illusion of life, sex, money, power, fame, sooner or later become tiresome and we yearn to go home, to God. We realize that the illusion has no substance and we yearn for what's real ,then we look inward. I wish you the best,my friend , be well

你真的认为更多的闲暇时间对大多数人有益吗? 我认为是工作让大多数人保持理智。对生活的幻想,性、金钱、权力、名声,迟早会变得令人厌倦,我们渴望回家,向往上帝。我们意识到幻觉没有实质,我们渴望真实的东西,然后我们看向内心。我祝福你,我的朋友,一切安好。

(The satisfaction derived from the fleeting things of life is not lasting ; and our wants remain unfulfilled. There is thus a general sense of dissatisfaction accompanied by all kinds of worries. ) Meher Baba

(从稍纵即逝的事物中获得的满足是不会持久的; 我们的需求仍然没有得到满足。因此,人们普遍感到不满,并伴有各种忧虑。)美赫巴巴
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(( Everything real is given and received in silence. ) Meher Baba

((一切真实的东西都是在沉默中给予和接受的。) 美赫巴巴
[译注:美赫巴巴(Meher Baba)(原名Merwan Sheriar Irani;(1894年2月25日- 1969年1月31日)是一位印度精神大师,他声称自己是他那个时代的阿凡达,即人形的上帝作为20世纪主要的精神人物,他是“Meher Baba运动”的中心人物,他的追随者估计从数十万到数百万不等。他的追随者集中在印度,但也有相当数量的人在美国、欧洲和澳大利亚
-------维基百科]

Bobby Tatro
Just as too much work causes stress, enough stress to jump through our office window on the 16th floor. Too little work makes us ignorant and apathetic. We need mental exercises to remain healthy. Studies found that monkeys in captivity lived much longer if they had to solve puzzle boxes in order to reach their treats. The main issue is to make sure what ever profession you choose, at the end of the day, you feel satisfied with it…

就像太多的工作会带来压力一样,足够的压力让我们从16楼的办公室窗户跳下去。我们需要脑力锻炼来保持健康。研究发现,圈养的猴子如果必须解决谜盒才能得到食物的话,寿命会更长。最主要的问题是,无论你选择什么职业,在一天结束时,你都要对它感到满意……


Chris Ferrell
I don’t think people do, at least not in the US. From age 0 to about 20 (give or take, depending on college or trade, advanced degrees, or whatnot), and then you work 9 hours / day for 5 days a week. Various retirement accounts (IRA, 401k, SS) start generally at 62.5, but we will use 65, and with an average life-span of 85… you get much less than 1/3rd.

我认为人们不会,至少在美国不会。从0岁到20岁(上下浮动,取决于大学或贸易,高等学历,或其他),然后你每天工作9小时,一周工作5天。各种退休账户(IRA, 401k, SS)一般从62.5岁开始,但我们会65岁才使用,而平均寿命是85岁……你得到的远远少于三分之一。

Doing the math, I calculate around 753,360 total hours and 132,977 working hours. Division tells use that’s 17.7%.

算一下,我计算了下总共大概753,360个小时,工作了132977个小时。除法告诉使用率为 17.7%。

Thanh Pham
In America we are machines driven societies, we need to leverage our education and intelligence to be the boss of the machines. That is how we created wealth and happiness in America.

在美国,我们是机器驱动的社会,我们需要利用我们的教育和智慧来成为机器的老板。这就是我们在美国创造财富和幸福的方式。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


You need a college degree and hardworking using your thinking abilities to manage your work or professional life and your family personal life. To get the best quality of life both financial and mental for your life.

你需要一个大学学位,努力运用你的思维能力来管理你的工作或职业生活和你的家庭生活。以获得最好的生活质量无论是经济上还是精神上。

Jim Haygood
It’s our choice to work or not to work and to whatever extent we desire. Society is simply a product of our desire to live in somewhat of communal environment. In which way we choose to live our lives is never really on “them”, it all comes back to us. Even though at times, we’d rather not admit it.

工作或不工作,是我们自己的选择,是我们想要达到的程度。社会只是我们渴望生活在某种公共环境中的产物。我们选择怎样的生活方式从来都不是由“他们”决定的,而是会回到我们自己身上。即使有时候,我们宁愿不承认。

Geoffrey Edwards
Frankly, when I think about this, I’m immensely glad I’m not an ape. The amount of health, comfort, entertainment and food I get out of the pitiful amount of work I do (compared to an animal of similar size) seems like a huge bargain.

坦率地说,当我想到这一点时,我非常庆幸自己不是猿猴。我从少得可怜的工作中获得的健康、舒适、娱乐和食物(与体型相似的动物相比)似乎是一笔巨大的交易。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Andy Christian
Because people don’t work for free. Without work, society turned to dust, and really fast too.

因为人不是免费工作的。没有工作,社会就会很快化为尘埃。

So work needs done, and any system that would reduce work, would make everyone poorer.

所以工作需要完成,任何减少工作的体系都会让每个人更穷。

Carl Backes
Actually, we spend much less than 1/3 of our lives “working”. The question asserts that which is far from being true.
Why do people post such nonsense????

事实上,我们花在“工作”上的时间还不到生命的三分之一。这个问题的断言是完全不真实的。
为什么人们会发布这些废话????

Cal Stowe
It’s just a matter of how much you want. You get rewarded based on the value you create. If you don’t want much, you don’t have work much.

这只是你想要多少的问题。你的回报是基于你创造的价值。如果你不想要太多,你就不会有太多的工作。

Raymond Wayne Holton
We also spend one third sleeping! That leaves practically nothing for having fun!

我们还花三分之一的时间睡觉!那就没有什么好玩的了!

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