思考与写作raptitude.com
你的生活方式早已被设计好了
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
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导读
这是 Raptitude 博客 2010 年的一篇文章，作者 David Cain 认为，现代人的生活方式并非自己选择，而是被现成安排好的：每周四十小时的工作把自由时间压缩到最少，人于是更愿意花钱买便利、买即时满足，而这又反过来迫使人继续长时间工作，形成循环。文章主张减少不必要的消费，从而换回时间与自主。
为什么经久不衰：它把"个人消费选择"和"工作制度"放在一起审视，十几年来每次讨论过劳、四天工作制或消费主义时都会被重新翻出来，今天读依然切中要害。
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反驳"被设计"的说法：这更像是过剩资本流向人们自愿追求的愉悦，而非自上而下的计划。
西方经济体，尤其是美国，是经过精心算计地建立在满足欲望、成瘾和不必要消费之上的。"精心算计"——像计划经济那样自上而下的指令？我不同意。作者所说的许多"多余之物"，不过是过剩资本流向了人们觉得愉快的东西，无论是毒品、旅行、美容还是摇滚乐。而这些享乐的供应者已被证明极擅长创造和提供这类机会。
ilamont查看英文原文
Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of such pleasures have proved to be remarkably adept at creating & providing these opportunities.
40 小时工作制不是企业发明的，且工时历史上一直在缩短，作者的因果论证站不住脚。
我对这一点略有异议。40 小时工作制是相当晚近的产物；过去人们工作时间长得多，还没有休息日或只有一天。趋势其实还在继续减少（至少德国如此），35 或 32 小时工作制越来越普遍。此外还有别的模式，比如每周四天、每天 10 小时再加三天休息。当前模式确实服务于企业，但它绝不是企业的发明；企业是它延续的重要原因，但更可能是因为它们需要劳动时间，而不是那种特定的消费行为。
Sebb767查看英文原文
> The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. I slightly disagree with this point. The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of. The trend actually goes in the direction of reducing it further (at least here in Germany), where 35 or 32 hour weeks are getting more common (depending on the job, of course). Plus, there are alternative models, such as 4x 10h days + 3 days off. Sure, the current model serves corporations, but it is by no means their invention. And while they are a big part of why it still is so large, the reason is most likely that they need the labor hours, not the specific consumption behavior.
极简生活对个人容易，一旦涉及伴侣、孩子和社会期待就极难实践。
我离开职场大约五个月了，现在正想回去。我对已有的东西挺满足：一台已经买好的笔记本电脑、一书架大概 50 多本没读的书，只要有饭钱和房租水电，我就挺好。问题出现在有伴侣、有孩子之后：很难"说服"家人（包括妻子）孩子不需要十条裤子和五十个塑料玩具（他大多穿二手衣，玩具也就二十来个，还都是手工木头的）。还有妻子一直梦想的那次旅行，也去不成；她想买条漂亮新裙子——也不行；孩子该不该上私立学校（我并不喜欢，但看看附近的公立学校，也许这主意不算太坏），钱够吗？是的，我们都能过极简生活，但也得承认，对我们这些"技术人"来说容易些，因为一台笔记本就是好几小时的娱乐；可要是牵扯到社交生活（女友、朋友、家人），就真的很难。所以我很难过又要放弃自由时间去上朝九晚五的班，但做咨询付不起账单，也没法给妻儿一个"好"生活。
BSousa查看英文原文
Lately I've been thinking about this a lot. I also took a break from corporate life for about 5 months now, and now trying to get back into it. I'm actually content with what I have, give me my laptop (which I already own) and my bookshelf (with probably more than 50 unread books), as long as I have money for food and house/utilities, I'm actually quite ok. The problem arises when you are in a relationship and have a kid. It is really hard to 'convince' people (including the wife) the baby doesn't need 10 pairs of trousers or 50 plastic toys (He actually has a lot of hand me downs, and all of his toys, maybe 20 if the many, are handmade wooden ones). Also, that vacation the wife always dreamed, you can't really do that. Or she wants a new fancy dress - nopes. Ohh the kid should go to private school (while I'm not fond of it, looking at public schools in the area, maybe isn't that bad of an idea), will the money be enough? Yes, we can all live minimally, but we also have to agree, it maybe easier for us 'techies' to do so as a laptop is usually hours of entertainment, but trying this with a social life (girlfriend/friends/family) makes it really hard. All this to say, I'm really sad I'm giving up my free time to work 9-5 again, but consulting isn't paying all the bills and allow me to provide a 'good' life to my wife and kid.
"生活方式"一词本身就源自营销研究，用它来反消费主义颇有讽刺意味。
有意思的是作者用了"lifestyle"这个词，而它流行的词源其实来自市场调研。这个词普及得相当晚（就在一代人之前），很大程度上由斯坦福研究所的 VALS 研究推动，那项研究被认为部分促成了今天我们所知的广告业。Adam Curtis 的影片《自我的世纪》对这个词及其语境有很好的探讨。我们常用"生活方式"来谈论如何摆脱消费驱动的心态，可这个词恰恰是为向这种心态营销而开发出来的。
moxie查看英文原文
It's interesting that the author uses the word "lifestyle," because the popular etymology of the word actually comes from marketing research. The word itself was popularized relatively recently (only a generation ago): http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 It was driven largely by VALS, research done by Stanford Research Institute on new marketing techniques, which has been partially credited for transforming advertising into what we know today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALS The Adam Curtis film "Century Of The Self" has an excellent exploration of the term "lifestyle" and the context it came from. I think it's interesting that we commonly use the word "lifestyle" to talk about breaking out of a consumer-driven mindset, when the language itself was developed precisely for marketing to that mindset.
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