[Closed] Men! What are we for?

Same as you mate. Bikes keep me sane.
With football (in half an hour! Yay!) satisfying the chase instinct, I guess. Although I just enjoy it for the pain and sweat.
Tell you what - having something to look forward to on a Monday lunchtime makes the week start out just about ok.

[i] What is it that we need to be doing to feel as if we are satisfying certain instincts?[/i]

I imagine we need to be cold, injured, in fear of our lives, and desperate to find food to satisfy basic insticts. I'm quite happy sticking with being unfulfilled for most of the week 🙂

[i]If we have to spend 40 hours a week (or thereabouts) following a culturally recent path of 'career' work, how many of us find it rather unfulfilling?[/i]

I am also one of those people.

Unfortunately it is just 40 hours per week that allow me to pay for the things I like doing. Nothing more.

As a wee addendum, I am aware that the use of the word 'career' suggests that there was a choice made in terms of this path, so I concede that I have to accept responsibility for this. I'm fortunate in this regard.
It could be a far worse situation: enslavement in a labour camp, long shifts in a noisy factory, no work at all, and so on. There's not much fulfillment in those.

Maybe I need the help of some career guidance resources. Any suggestions?

The problem of which you speak is the reasoning behind friday and saturday night brawls in every town and city the length and breadth of the country.

A general feeling of impotence is felt by us all these days.

The best way of dealing with the feeling of importence and the anomie of our empty and valueless consumer society is to buy Howies organic clothing, grow your own vegetables and occasionally rape and dismember someone, then eat their warm corpse.

our lives are too easy these days as most of us, despite how it feels some time, have much more free time and time to do something other than just surviving. this gives you the time and space to ask yourself such questions as "what is the point?" etc., and you then soon realise that there isn't one beyond survival. the reason people enjoy hobbies and diversions of different sorts is that while your mind is occupied negotiating a tricky piece of singletrack/dressing up as elvis/watering your begonias you're distracted from existential uncertainty.

Good point Jack. I watch these late evening TV shows where camera crews are sent out with cops around tah nation, and I see these lads (and lassies) having a right go at each other and I think 'what? why?', and reckon there is a mis-directed energy there. 'impotence', you said. Perfect description.
What's the answer? What's the reckoning on how society needs to change to improve this situation?

flatboy

I like that reasoning. Really strips it back to basics, eh?
Beyond survival, there is no point to life. Ha! It's making me wonder if there's any point in surviving now! lol
What a miserable pr1ck I am today.

BigDummy - Member

The best way of dealing with the feeling of importence and the anomie of our empty and valueless consumer society is to buy Howies organic clothing, grow your own vegetables and occasionally rape and dismember someone, then eat their warm corpse.

You sick, sick puppy.

Howies ?!

Beyond [b]reproduction[/b], there is no point to life.

Corrected. S'all about shaggin innit?

I like that reasoning. Really strips it back to basics, eh?
Beyond survival, there is no point to life. Ha! It's making me wonder if there's any point in surviving now! lol
What a miserable pr1ck I am today.

sorry, didn't mean it to have that effect - you can look at it in a positive way, if you stop trying to pin down some overarching "point" to things then you can identify the things you like doing with your freetime - biking, gardening, whatever - and do as much of them as possible!

Beyond reproduction, there is no point to life.

very good point. (also, how did i forget that!)

our lives are too easy these days as most of us, despite how it feels some time, have much more free time and time to do something other than just surviving. this gives you the time and space to ask yourself such questions as "what is the point?" etc.

This.

flat, It didn't upset me more. It cheered me up. Thanks.

Now all I gotta do is get the 'reproduction' bit nailed, albeit we have one already and one's enough for us and it's the 'practice' I'm talkin' about. Hmmm. It brings Bigdummy's suggestion into focus...

good man! 🙂

Mike

I have just left my corporate career and will be doing an MSc for a year in September. I will also be in the rainforests for a month in Peru this July doing my thing.

It's interesting just how many people at work they said that what I was doing was either brave or an inspiration to them. Not so much that they copy, but that they saw me doing something I really believe in. I am sure quite a few of them would love to do the same thing - i.e. give up that type of work for something more fulfuilling.

So yeah, have a think about what it is you really want to do then do it. It may be something outside of work, and may not happen instantly, but as Gandhi said, be the change you wish to see!

life for the sake of it.
i've felt like this for quite some time.
there really isn't any point to it all beyond that; everything else is just a distraction along the way.
we try to provide enjoyment for ourselves because without that distractive element i think we'd dwell on the ultimate futility of essentially meaningless existence and there's a good chance we'd do away with ourselves...

I think a fundamental question is "Why should there be a point?". We live, we die, and eventually we are forgotten. The value of your life is to yourself and those who know you, and doesn't need to be justified beyond that.

i actually quite like my life...

I think Simonfbarnes hits the nail on the head.

The thing is that a bad job is like a bad relationship (in my opinion), it just drags and you're the only one with the power to change that. We humans do seem to have an unbelievably high tolerance for misery mind you 😉

My theory is that everyone feels out of control or impotent about some aspect of their life, but life is all about balance, so to appreciate the good you need to suffer some of the bad too.

...or if you like, the point is the enjoyment and fulfillment you get out of it, so you might say you bear a duty to yourself to maximise those things rather than just waiting for them to happen to you :o)

I want you to hit me as hard as you can

Nah, you're just bored. Change your career whne the economy is up again?

Have more fun outside of work?

[img] [/img]

The first rule of Fight Club is...

always look both ways before crossing the road

edit... no, that's tufty club isn't it?

I've often wondered what men are for too..............

our lives are too easy these days as most of us, despite how it feels some time, have much more free time and time to do something other than just surviving. this gives you the time and space to ask yourself such questions as "what is the point?" etc.

Speak for yourself!!

Try this - get made redundant just after buying a new house, getting wed and having the first sprog, take the leap to start your own business and then find that you are to be a dad again. Certainly sharpens your survival instincts.