[cadamsdotcom]

Yep, purpose.

Societies today have immense latent potential. So many people are doing bullshit jobs that tick things over, sitting there wishing to be put to use for some intrinsically motivating purpose. An existential threat - war - is a well known way to bring that out. But war is too destructive for modern tastes.

We've seen developing countries get great results by government directing private industry in stronger ways than we're used to in the West. For example China's regularly published national development priorities for the next 5 years. If you hew to these you'll be helped in various ways. Singapore's and South Korea's rises to global powers were helped along by government getting everyone to row in the same direction - among other things, I'm greatly simplifying. But to focus on this one idea, I hope you can agree that providing purpose through top-down leadership is a great way to harness societies' latent potential and mobilize in a given direction..

Rudderless, laissez-faire governance got the US a surprisingly long way. But we are seeing the resultant directionlessness leave leaders unable to agree on whether to tear up what's been built, leave it in place, or go some completely random direction.

It's not the ships that were built, it's what they represented. That was what got them built.

[southernplaces7]

The latent authoritarianism in in opinions like yours makes it easier to understand why authoritarians keep rising to the top of different societies, so they can destroy lives, squander wealth and crush individual peoples' own perfectly productive capacities for finding their own cooperative purposes in life.

[vkou]

Pretty sure the current crop of politicians that are destroying lives, squandering wealth, and crushing individual people are doing it as banner-bearers, not of any kind of Eastern collectivism, but of the uniquely American brand of 'fuck you, fuck everyone, fuck any responsibilities I may have, don't tread on me, I've got mine'.

[southernplaces7]

I'd suggest you fixate just a bit less on just the media frenzy around the American example of Trump and his grab bag of incompetent nodding clowns in congress and cabinet for examples of authoritarianism in action. My comment was intended more broadly, because the problem is indeed broader.

There's no shortage of authoritarian governments all over the world, many of which use exactly the guise of collective purpose or some other similar nonsense to justify their destructive, repressive activities..

[vkou]

Well, of course they have to, it's kind of hard to run a regime that murders and tortures and robs people without, you know, at least pretending that you're doing it for their own good.

They also use 'upholding the law' as a common excuse, but that hardly results in "the guise of having laws or some other similar nonsense is an entry point to authoritarianism' becoming a reasonable thing to say.

[refulgentis]

In their personal lives. When they have to deign to consider the impact of decisions on other people.

In their professional lives, they are Patriots Advancing American Independence.

The unquestioned Purpose is what enables the lack of care for others (that blossom in oh-so-many dangerous ways)

[vkou]

You're assuming the agents behind all of this actually believe in anything but power and wealth, and aren't just cynically rolling out the authoritarian playbook to justify why they have to seize it.

[int_19h]

The ones that were just cynically using this popular sentiment for their own benefit were the previous wave.

But the problem with that kind of thing is that eventually it results in a wave of true believers. It doesn't mean that they stop padding their pockets, mind you - why would they, when they're obviously entitled to their fair share as the Champions of Something Great. But it vastly increases their capacity for damage because now they are going to do it even in situations where it doesn't benefit them in any way, and may even harm them, for the sake of their beliefs.

[refulgentis]

> So many people are doing bullshit jobs that tick things over, sitting there wishing to be put to use for some intrinsically motivating purpose

We're a generation of men raised by Fight Club—I'm wondering if a self-induced mass-culling event is really the answer we need.

[dredmorbius]

Before Fight Club was the Hitchhiker's Guide "B-Ark". Before the B-Ark was Robads 1000 Clowns. Before 1000 Clowns was Chaplin's Modern Times. Before Modern Times was ... pretty much all of Dickens's ouvre. And that potted list omits much.

Laughing at the futility of present-day enterprise, whatever the present or the enterprise, is a long-standing tradition.

And really no need to call for culls, directly or otherwise.

[refulgentis]

Dickens ~= Fight Club is a tough sell. :)

Most obvious reason: Dickens characters would be quite bemused by the idea we need to Retvrn from "email jobs" because something something we need meaning. :)

[dredmorbius]

Both are criticisms of the established economic order. I'm not trying to draw much further relation.

Again: there's a great deal other work. Erewhon, Looking Backwards, The Dispossessed come to mind. Arguably much of Neal Stephenson's work. Earlier, Gulliver's Travels and More's Utopia, though pre-industrial satire has a different vibe to it.

This turned up in search: Dystopian books on economy and work culture: <https://bookriot.com/dystopian-books-about-the-economy/>