I think everyone has heard various versions of this story:
"I hate the routine and boredom of stupid, pointless, bureaucratic job with my arrogant, officious boss and annoying coworkers, my nagging wife in my loveless marriage, my ungrateful spoiled kids, my dumbass ‘friends’ who are more or less forced upon me by proximity and the social order, and all the tedious rules and frustrations that come with living in civilized society. I know what I’ll do! I’ll run off and…
be a beach bum
join the circus
become a pirate
start a fight club
join an outlaw biker gang
fund my endless surf summer through a series of high profile bank robberies
become a catcher in the rye (I don’t know what that actually is, other than the book seems to appeal to a lot of disaffected youth)
start a cult
build an organization to violently effect change (not terrorists)
live in a shack in the wilderness
just not work, do lots of drugs and/or fuck all day (unless that’s consistent with the values of my society, otherwise I’ll go for a lifestyle of hustle-culture economic disruption and militant abstinence)
You get the idea.
I would say that this is just a common literary theme except that it many ways this sort of thinking makes it’s way into real world politics and social behavior.
So the Great Debate (such as there is one) may be “why do people have so much trouble creating a society that both works and yet doesn’t make people fantasize about (or in some cases actually) either running away from it or try to tear it all up?”
Interesting list. But the common one nowadays seems to be, “Sell your home and most of your possessions and become an Influencer. Do lots of traveling, preferably in a camper or converted van.”
I don’t think there’s ever been a time in history when a significant percentage of people haven’t fantasized about “running away” from it all, regardless of how good they have it. And a subset of those people actually go through with it, of course, with varying degrees of “success.”
Mainly because of conflicting interest. It’s in the interest of People X to enjoy a life of less work, more leisure, more enjoyment. It’s in the interest of People Y to prevent People X from living that kind of lifestyle, because that reduces (perceived) productivity.
True. The pirate example I was thinking of was taken from the HBO show ‘Our Flag Means Death’, loosely based on real life Stede Bonnet who left his family and life as a wealthy landowner to become a pirate.
The earliest example I can think of is the legend of Robin Hood. A member of the “yeomen” (middle) class, possibly even the nobility who for various reasons said “fuck this shit” and decided to spend his days hanging out with his bros and his girlfriend and picking fights with the local authorities.
I don’t know. Because often it seems like even people of privilege seem to sometimes feel that need to say “fuck this shit” and pursue some lifestyle that will piss everyone off.
I think maybe it comes down to a more fundamental human desire to just do what we want when we want conflicting with the fact that society can’t function if everyone does that.
Maybe another problem is that in a modern society, most people can’t just carve out a plot of land and decide to work it as hard as they like to make whatever sort of life they want to live on it. Our work is often abstracted as part of a complex system where it’s often not clear if our work is valuable or even needed and yet we have to do it to earn money to afford a lifestyle society tells us we are supposed to live.
But to your point, there is an aspect of People Y’s inability to tolerate having to do work People X don’t have to or People X enjoying things People Y can’t.
I think it more or less boils down to the “grass is greener over there” fallacy. No matter what some people have or achieve, they think it is easier or better somewhere else, so thoughts of wanderlust ensue.
We have a a world where a goodly number (but teeny percentage) of people seem to be having an awesome life. If your perception of your own life is that it’s a dead-end trap of frustrated potential and pure drudgery, well, “Fuck it; I’m going rogue!” can sure seem like the best solution on offer.
I suspect this is some kind of evolutionary trait. I can’t ever recall a society that didn’t make at least some people say to hell with it all. I like to indulge this impulse in fiction writing. Much lower stakes.
I know more than a few people who have difficulty accepting reality. Humans are very imaginative, but our expectations of the future often do not fit reality. I have one friend who is very intelligent and talented and has changed careers multiple times because he’s looking for this something, I don’t know what it is, that’s going to make him happy with his job. But the problem, I think, is inside him.
Don’t get me wrong, some jobs objectively suck, and probably more of them suck now than in the past. But I think we could all benefit from a little perspective. A long time ago on the Nerdist podcast, the host was discussing the challenges of working in show business, and he added, “It’s at least as difficult as working on the railroad.”
Like yeah, parts of my job suck right now but I’m sure the dream job I’m thinking about will suck in other ways. But I’m not in danger, I’m not being abused, my body isn’t being destroyed by years of hard labor. I’m not even slinging burgers - which I have done, and I’d take this job over that one in a heart beat. A lot of my suffering at work - actually, I retract that - all of my suffering at work is a direct result of how I think about it.
I mean, a lot of it is involuntary. If a flame is burning my skin, I’m sure going to be suffering whether I want to or not.
But I digress. Back on topic, it’s human nature and biology to want to conserve energy. Work = expending energy. We want to conserve energy and laziness is a smart, not dumb, strategy. But the pleasure of doing things we want gives dopamine, too, which work doesn’t. So it’s all the deep desire for less energy expenditure and more dopamine gained.
I have the fantasy I could be an itinerate artist. Just travelling around in my VW bus stopping at a kindly place, park in a lot and display my works while sitting there doing art. With my perfect well mannered dog at my feet. Meeting quirky townsfolk and trying not get involved in the community mysteries(this ain’t no Agatha Christie fantasy)
Maybe I sell enough for a room and gas and a meal. Move on the next day to another kindly place.
I disagree. Our brains are designed by evolution to punish us for behavior that damages our fitness. People for the most part can’t think their way out of losing their families to a natural disaster, or losing all their resources and status, or developing a chronic pain disorder, etc. The logical parts of our brains evolved long after the parts of our brain that punish us for behaviors that damage our fitness.
As far as the OP, what art other than office space (and the TV series our flag means death, and robin hood) cover this? In the end in the movie office space, the main character just gets a job in construction which pays less and is harder on the body.
One thing I’ve seen come up on social media and message boards is so many people who are middle aged or older who are just done with life in general. They feel its just a chore. The only thing keeping me going is knowing technology will radically advance, resulting in massive advances in neuroscience. Living to keep living in these shit bodies and these shit brains is tiring. And I’m not even depressed, my depression is in remission. But I can see why so many people find life tiring, to the point where even running away to become a beach bum doesn’t feel exciting.
Also even if we downgraded our lifestyle so that our actions had more meaning in our lives (each action we took decided if we killed game to eat for example) that would result in a massive downgrade in our quality of life in every other area.
If we all descended from hunter-gatherers, we descended from people who pretty much did do as they pleased—the gathering—aside from infrequent bouts of ‘working together’ to bring down a large animal. That may not have happened all that often. It was more a matter of gathering seeds and grains and setting snares for small animals—all of which was done by individuals making their own individual decisions on how their time was spent.
Sure, you had more prestige if you gathered more vegetable and animal matter for the group to eat. But that didn’t mean you were punching a time clock.
The idea that the Virtuous person punches a time clock (punctually) and works for hours each day to someone else’s orders, is completely divorced from the life our ancestors lived. Our brains evolved for the ‘do it your way on your schedule’ lifestyle.
So naturally the modern lifestyle causes discontent.
I suspect a lot of this idea stems from wanting a return to the “carefree life of a child.”
I put that in quotes because, of course, many children have a less than idyllic life. Even those who have very good childhoods would likely be surprised if, as adults, they could go back and experience the stress, anxiety and impatience that characterize the lives of even happy children. We tend to idealize our memories.
So grown-ups think back to those halcyon days when (in their memories at least) they played all day and had few demands on their time, doing as they pleased and provided for by others.
Children, meanwhile, look forward to the independence of adulthood. When they’re grown up, they think, they can do whatever they want and not have to answer to anybody.
The pirate-beachcomber-circus-whatever fantasy combines the two.
I have a pretty meaningful life but that even resonates with me. I’m tired all the time. I have no time. I feel like I’m running on empty. I’m not depressed; in fact I’m probably on the happier side of average. But life is fucking exhausting. It was a triumph for me to take five minutes to pick up the house today.
There’s no real escape short of a job that requires fewer hours. But that’s going to have its own drawbacks.
I guess my question is what’s stopping you if that’s something you really want to do? Doesn’t sound like it would cost that much money.
I feel like a lot of people have similar fantasies about what they would do if only. But a lot of them seem very doable in terms of cost or access to whatever preparation. So the question is what prevents them from doing it?
Another POV on Office Space was Peter was a guy with zero goals or ambition (besides “doing nothing”) who seemed to blame everyone else for his unhappiness. When given an actual promotion, not only does he not take his job any more seriously, he embezzles money from the company. Ultimately he does work through some of his issues and takes the construction job where he seems to enjoy actually building something instead of sitting in a cubicle. But until then, Peter is very much "I don’t like my job or paying bills or other adult stuff so I’m just going to check out, spend time with my girlfriend and last out against the company.
Some of the stories other I was thinking of: be a beach bum
Thinking like stock stoner surfer characters like Bill & Ted, Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times or The Big Lebowski who just seem sort of checked out from workaday society.
join the circus
The Greatest Showman. Zak Effron’s character is specifically convinced to leave his life in high society to join Barnum’s dubious circus.
become a pirate
Every pirate story ( Treasure Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, Our Flag Means Death, Black Sails (largely based off of Treasure Island) ). Pirates are portrayed as romantic heroes who want to live life by their own rules.
start a fight club
Fight Club
join an outlaw biker gang
Every biker movie. Portrayed as modern-day pirates who want to live life by their own rules.
fund my endless surf summer through a series of high profile bank robberies
Point Break. The Ex-Presidents refuse to be like those “dead souls inching along in their metal coffins”.
become a catcher in the rye (I don’t know what that actually is, other than the book seems to appeal to a lot of disaffected youth)
Really any sort of youth counter-culture movement.
start a cult
Also Fight Club, but I think that dissatisfaction with life is how actual IRL cults form
build an organization to violently effect change (not terrorists)
One Battle After Another comes to mind. I wonder how sympathetic the protagonists would be if the bad guys weren’t overtly racist fascists.
live in a shack in the wilderness
Into the Wild. The IRL Unibomber story. That van-life couple that murdered his girlfriend. Also any story or IRL where someone decides to just leave civilization and eke out a living in a remote location.
just not work, do lots of drugs and/or fuck all day (unless that’s consistent with the values of my society, otherwise I’ll go for a lifestyle of hustle-culture economic disruption and militant abstinence)
Pretty much any stoner comedy.
I’m reading ‘Brave New World’ at the moment, and I think a lot of dystopian fiction shares these themes. Demolition Man is obviously based on Brave New World. Logans Run. The Divergent YA series. Stories where society isn’t necessarily portrayed a overtly totalitarian. In fact on the surface they seem almost utopian. But they are also highly structured and engineered in ways that often seem terrible to us. And from the protagonists perspective they don’t work.
As one such disaffected youth who was enamoured of this novel, I think it was a dream about children running through a field and hurtling themselves off a cliff, and the protagonist had to catch the children to keep them from falling. And when the protagonist was asked what he wanted to do with his life, he just said he wanted to be the catcher in the rye.
I know it’s polarizing, but I do love that novel.
But becoming the catcher in the rye is like, I dunno, saving the world? Some of us fantasize about that too. Even though I can barely manage my own little world. Plus if I wanted to be the next Mandela that’d be thirty years in prison. It always amazes me how these folks have children. When I think about truly risky activist behavior I am stopped cold by the instinct to keep my kid safe and to be there to help him grow up. I can’t imagine how desperate you have to feel to take that kind of risk.
Obviously I can’t run away from my family, and I wouldn’t want to. But as I mentioned in another thread, I periodically fantasize about living alone. Or I just exercise my wanderlust via fiction writing.
Oh and if you consider that I legally emancipated at age 17, I actually did have a moment in my life where I said “fuck it” and left everything behind. I literally walked out the door in the middle of an argument, walked down the road, and never returned. But a key element there is I actually had people to call and somewhere to go. I stayed briefly with my grandparents and ended up moving in with my Aunt. My Aunt was poor and I was supporting myself. It wasn’t easy, in fact it really fucking sucked, but it beat the alternative, and it was good to be free.
To a large degree, it’s because “the cruelty is the point”. Our society is largely designed to cater to a minority of wealthy, powerful sadists who enjoy tormenting and humiliating everyone else. Even their obsession with profit is as much about making other people poor as making themselves rich.
Most people are unhappy with life because their life was designed by other people specifically to make them unhappy. They have a meaningless, degrading job that is structured to let their boss bully them for the jollies as much as possible while rewarding them as little as possible. They have bad health care if any, little free time, a collapsing and contaminated environment, and no future to look forward to. It’s rational for people to not be happy with their life in our society; they aren’t supposed to be. They are supposed to be in a state of humiliation and despair on their good days.
