Let's see thoughts about the article:
1) We need to be careful to not confuse capitalism with workaholism. People don't work too much because we live in a capitalist society; there's a multitude of reasons.
2) Is it work that is taking such a toll on people, or is it their own personal emotional stuff, or is it just the fact that we've become a very soft people who expect easy as the standard and don't know how to cope with difficulty? Is Capitalism responsible for depression and burnout or is it our social media world where our whole lives are confronted by the highlights of other people's masquerading as their whole life? If comparison kills, we've got a whole lot more people to compare ourselves to than ever before.
3) I'm sick of hearing people talk like a utopian society has existed and it is inexcusable that we should not live up to that. When has there ever been a society that valued people's individual well being or mental health more than it valued its members in terms of their use to society? When has there ever been a society where people were just given housing without doing any work for it? And yeah then there's the advances in medical technology (hand washing wasn't something doctors really even thought about 200 years ago) It may not be ideal that the hardest workers get the most rewards, but who should those rewards go to: the biggest whiners, the people who belong to the right societal clique, the people who will hurt or kill you for them? And it's not like modern times have invented mental illness and burnout and all this other stuff; it's just that people didn't have the luxury of whining and introspecting about it in previous generations because they were too busy surviving to devote much time to thinking about how miserable their lot in life was..... and everyone around them had the same troubles.
4) Money comes from work because money is a measure of the value that your work has to the community. It's just a medium of exchange so that we don't have to spend a lot of time negotiating how much tech support I have to give the cook at Mcdonald's in order to get a burger (and if that cook is
@Lynx then I'm really in trouble because he can do his own tech support).
5) We're much more prone to anxiety (especially about our self worth) if we don't have a secure foundation, tradition, community to draw on. So yeah if you think you're a monkey that just happened to develop some extra brain cells, you're going to have a whole lot more difficulty with the idea of your worth being inherent than if you believe that there's a God who created you and loves you and has a purpose for you. And if you think your well being and security depends on you and not God you're going to stress about that more too.
Ok if I don't stop there I'm just going to keep ramling on in disorganized numbered points.
5) Work isn't a bad thing. God worked. God gave Adam the job of caring for Eden before the fall. Jesus worked as a carpenter for a time. And it's Biblical (as well as a principle of America's first permanent English settlement), If someone won't work, they don't get to eat (see 1 and 2 Thessalonians). Gasp.. how could you deny food to people just because they won't work..... well because someone has to do work to get that food and make it ready to eat and that work needs to be repaid (seems to me there was a story about a hen on that theme as well).
