[JackMorgan]

I'm legitimately happy you are content and satisfied.

I have a half dozen coworkers who value family, church, and hard work. Most of them are stress-eating themselves to death. They binge shop on Amazon, buy cars and houses they can't afford or enjoy, and generally seem to hate going home at the end of the day. I've seen them beg to be allowed to come back into the office, so they can escape their family. They seem to have loveless marriages, and dread the weekend.

I don't agree that traditional values is the cure for all humanity's woes. Perhaps some of these people you talk about would be happier with a traditional life, but then perhaps some people with a traditional life would be happier with something more freeing.

And perhaps there's many more dimensions at play, not just values.

[anon291]

"hard work" is not a traditional value. That's an American thing which is relatively young as far as tradition goes.

Do your friends value an integrated life? Community? Leisure? These are the traditional values missing and they're so missed even so called conservatives have forgotten they exist.

[seibelj]

Yes there was no such thing as hard work before America. All of civilization sprung up from nowhere in a life of leisure where everyone relaxed, then America came around and made everyone work hard.

[anon291]

That's not at all what I said. I merely said that excluding leisure and an integrated life as similarly important traditional values is ahistorical. Work is a traditional value in western culture, but it's not the only one.