Arbitrariness

Being a nihilistic thinker, I firmly believe that every decision ever made will prove to be arbitrary, but can also appreciate why we rush around trying to get things right in an attempt to make our short lives as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. I'll stop there with the existentialism, because this post is not intended as a pseudo-intellectual ramble but instead my simple observations on the differing levels of arbitrariness in the society I live in.

My earliest thoughts on this developed a few years ago in an office when I began to notice that everyone was using the word 'need' in regards to even the most pointless tasks. "We need to tweet that" or "we need to send this to X". It shouldn't annoy me because of course this is just a short cut from saying "we need to tweet that because." However at times it leaves me wondering if the people so freely throwing the word around do actually think "we need to do it". What starts as something they've just come up with to fill some time gradually inflates to become something they consider to be important because they do things like attach arbitrary 'deadlines' to it.

The worst kind of arbitrariness in an office occurs when there is not enough income-generating work to go around. Instead of just putting an office employee on some kind of standby mode, they will be assigned 'busy work' - pointless tasks that will have no benefit to the business. This will keep a lot of people from getting bored, sure, but it's crushing for morale when you realise how futile whatever-it-is-you're-wasting-your-time-with is.

Are you wasting your time being stuck in a job that's crushing your morale anyway? Not if it's paying the bills, you might argue. 'Wasting time' is another term that's commonly mistaken as being objective when in fact it couldn't be more subjective. People have said to me I am "wasting time by playing computer games", but how can that be if I enjoy them and my life goal is simply to have as much as fun as possible?

Another form of arbitrariness we can't escape from is the concept of time versus activity. It is only by chance that it takes our world 24 hours to complete a rotation, however we have decided to make the working day so long that we only get a few hours of daylight each day. If Earth took, say, 28 hours to complete a rotation I have no doubt we'd be in the office for a few more hours a day, with the same workload. Just because. The majority of us seem to have a natural tendency towards self-imposed boredom so this is how we set up our lives.

So yes, I'm the kind of guy who'd correct someone who said "we need to eat" to "we need to eat to survive". And I think like that because it annoys me that people seem to forget (or never realised) that humans were not put here for any purpose, we are not important and there is no meaning behind anything we do. We're here because as we evolved we did what we needed to do to survive. Sorry, I drifted back into pseudo-intellectual existentialism.

Apathy

I contemplated recently whether an employee should take the full blame for a lack of motivation at work or if the employer has some responsibility to motivate staff beyond a pay packet. I pretty much made up my mind that as long as the employer is paying on time and treating staff fairly, it is down to the employee to get the job done without moaning about a lack of motivation or inspiration from the top.

The problem with this is that after some time in a desperately dull and repetitive job it becomes practically impossible to stay motivated and keep productivity at a maximum. So is it the employer's obligation to accept this and adapt to it? I think so. It is not 'laziness' - that word is often used lazily in itself. It is instead a natural occurrence that if you despise a job so much, every atom in your body will tell you not to even turn up, never mind be productive.

If I feel like this as a spoilt, privileged westerner, I can't imagine what sweatshop workers must feel like when they wake up in the morning. Of course, not everyone can have a job they enjoy and that inspires them, otherwise nothing would get done and society would collapse. However there is a massive demand for the jobs that people don't even want, so we have to pretend we are 'excited' and 'motivated' by tedious jobs in order to keep bosses happy and stay in employment.

Surely it would be better if we could all admit our apathy towards a potential job in interviews and instead be hired for standing out purely by way of superior skill and suitability for the job. The problem with this is that there are so many candidates who are impossible to differentiate in terms of their educational and vocational experience on paper.

I believe there is a subtle difference between apathy and laziness that can be easily mistaken. If someone appears to be lazy but is still getting the work done to an acceptable standard, they probably just hate their job. If someone appears to be lazy and is not getting the job done, they are lazy. If someone appears to be hard-working and enthusiastic but is not getting the job done, they are incompetent, but they've no doubt got a lot of people fooled.

Repetition

The human mind's tolerance for repetition fascinates me. No matter how hard I try mentally, there is not much room for deviation in a routine of commuting to an office and sitting on a chair and staring at a screen for eight hours a day, five days a week. I've been doing this for about three and a half years now, and it's crushing my soul. So when I hear of people working in an office for 20, 30, even 40 years, I really don't know whether it deserves admiration or pity.

The most striking example of repetition tolerance in my work environment is the contentedness with which people can listen to commercial radio stations that play the same 12-15 obnoxious tracks day after day after day. How is this possible? It may be that they don't notice how strange it is, and I'm wondering if I've just been burdened with a sensitivity to noticing these things. Either way, thinking about it logically it simply has to be considered an odd thing for society to have taken on, especially considering the wealth of choice available. I understand people maybe not having the same insatiable inquisitiveness that I have to find real quality beneath the surface, but do people really not want to consume anything that's not marketed loudly and harshly right in front of their eyes?

I imagine the reason for my intolerance of repetition is that my mind naturally seeks adventure and variety whereas I appreciate for a lot of people this may not be the case, so they are perfectly at ease with a repetitive routine. So why have I put myself through it for so long? A decent wage. Too lazy and cowardly to push myself further. I am proud that I can at least see this and admit it. And I'll be looking to change it over the coming months. One thing I have realised is that repetition is easy. It is a shallow way of living. I know this because I do it myself in some aspects of life. I'll cook the meals I already know how to cook because it's easier and quicker than making something new. On the rare occasion that I'm watching TV I'll watch a repeat of The Simpsons where I already know what happens instead of seeing if there's anything new and interesting on. Which to be honest there probably isn't on free-view.

Consciously and constantly shunning repetition outside of work is tiring and time-consuming but it's worth it. There's so much to explore and know in this world. It's limitless and so is my lust for knowledge and fresh enjoyment. I'm not saying enjoying repetition is boring because I've realised that whether it makes you comfortable or not is down to personality, not necessarily a lack of imagination. However, I'd say things like wanting to listen to the same songs on a radio station for months on end does make it likely that you are inherently boring in certain ways. Still, each to their own.