This is one reason why Europeans hate the US so much. It's like the smart kid who studies hard and keeps pushing up the grading curve on every test. It forces the rest of the kids to study harder. And it makes them want to shoot spitballs at him.

The smart kid also does his chores, cleans up the trash in the neighborhood, works a job after school, rides a nice bike, and says his prayers. No wonder they hate him.

If life has a religious meaning, Americans are wasting their lives by working just as surely as Europeans are.

Which religious leader was it that said having a large home, two, three cars and a big screen plasma satellite TV made life meaningful ?

Looking around America, I don't see much evidence that the average American's long work hours go to fostering anything other than material comfort.

If it has a religious meaning you have duties to others beside yourself.

Work is an embodiment of love, Michael - service to others.

oj:

Sure, I agree.
Which is why I made the first comments.
Americans aren't using their enormous productivity to mold the Earth into paradise, although such could be done.
Americans may be religious, by and large, but they don't lead lives dominated by religion, nor by service to others. Americans' first priority is feathering their own nests.

I don't particularily blame Americans for that, it's just human nature, and of course the tiny percentage of American output dedicated to good deeds is gargantuan by global standards.

However, it does mean that being snide about the Europeans' work ethic, based on Americans' greater religious dedication, is unwarranted.

pj:

It can be. It isn't always.
First, if so, why not work 100 hours a week, or even every waking hour ?
Some of that "service to others" is unnecessary, and some of it is downright harmful.
Is serving fat people fast food a loving service, or is it enabling people's self destruction ?
Do people really need 1,000 different types and styles of automobile, and do they really need to be able to choose all new styles every year ?

Also, dealing drugs is work, and who would claim that it's the embodiment of love ?
(Except addicts, of course).

Nice sentiment, tho'.

Michael:

In the words of a great former President, there you go again. You seem to know exactly what is and is not the right way for people to live and now to work. Are you suggesting that Paul's point about the nature of work has to be qualified by a social audit of each case? That reminds me of the sixties' radicals who argued that even the poor secretary struggling to support a family at Dow Chemical was personally responsible for the deaths of kids from napalm and was guilty of a war crime and should quit.

Work represents a commitment to others. In most cases that will be family, although with vocations like teaching, the military, etc, it can go beyond that. Outside of criminal enterprise, there is no superimposed duty to assess the overall social benefit of the work. If you wish to live the simple, ascetic life, great, but if you can't do so without scorning the guy who takes the family to Disney first class or overspends on Nintendo, you miss the point. In a free society, surely we start with the assumption that the evils of conspicuous consumption or soul-deadening materialism are personal moral and spiritual issues, not matters for the government to monitor and control.

To respond to your last point in my post far below, I don't think I am such a fool as to fail to recognize the health dangers of habits like smoking and over-eating. My beef is with the modern Health Gestapo that ordains we have a positive duty to the state to live according to the current wisdom on health and that it is a consequent proper function of the state to "guide" us all to that lifestyle with varying degrees of coercion. At a more existential level, I am mystified by your sunny confidence that making heroic collective efforts to extend life as much as we can is an absolute good even if there is no particular purpose or identifiable benefit and also that healthy people who live to ninety cost us less than unhealthy ones carried off at seventy. I don't know that that is not true, but I am skeptical, especially as you seem to ignore mental health issues from Alzeimer's to the explosion in anti-depressants, etc.

Michael:

To the contrary, the genius of America is that the entire culture is so religion imbued that almost all our differences with other peoples flow from that source.

Thought experiment:

Reduce European taxation to US levels, and see what people do when they retain more of what they earn.

You can't claim the virtue of supply-side economics in one post, then ignore it in another.

Peter:

Michael is doing nothing more than highlighting how our economy is a function of enlightened self-interest.

Nothing particularly religious, or inherently in service to others, about that. Just ask Adam Smith.

Jeff:

They'd spend more on themselves. It's Christianity they lack, not money.

Jeff:

I understood Michael to be complaining that the choices the market drives are far from enlightened. Smith tells us we (collectively) need material incentives to work, but I don't think Smith is much help in telling us whether people will work for themselves or their children.

Michael - Love is not a simple thing, and the difference between true love which helps and a false love which hurts can be thin. Yet on average work contributes a great deal to the welfare of others. One need only imagine how people would live if no one worked - how nasty, brutish, and short life would be as we all starved or died from exposure in short order - to see the enormous benefits we reap from others' work.

For conservatives who believe in outlawing such unloving work as dealing drugs, your drug-dealing example wouldn't take you far.

Hard to understand how a people who only want to spend more on themselves would erect a welfare state.

Envy. Got to make sure you get to waste as much on yourself as your neighbor does.

I have no problem with the work ethic, just the idea that it flows naturally from faith. Why have we never heard of the Catholic work ethic?

The work ethic came first, then Protestantism as the theological justification for pursuing material self-interest.

Robert:

Because there wasn't one.

My main point is that even if life does have meaning, the average American isn't any closer to living a meaningful life than the average European is.

We merely choose different ways to misspend our lives.

Peter B:

I have no confidence that extending everyone's life is an unmitigated good.
I don't even have confidence that extending my own life will be a net positive, although I plan to do so anyway.

However, I am 100% confident that the vast majority of American want to live longer, and that US public policy will reflect that overwhelming desire.

As I understood it, your initial post was about the financial costs of longevity, and how North American societies aren't facing up to the true cost.
I merely pointed out that the financial burdens would be considerably lessened if everyone took good care of themselves.

Alzheimer's is much less prevalent in populations that eat right, exercise, and keep mentally active. Check out the "Nun study".
The explosion of anti-depressants, as brought up on this blog, isn't solely due to people's increasingly poor mental health, (which is affected by diet), but primarily to people's increased desire to be doped up.

Jeff Guinn is close to the mark about what I was attempting to convey earlier, but our choices do matter.
If one doesn't support war, what kind of choice is it to work at a place that produces napalm ?
Or fighter jets, or tanks ?
If one believes that Hollywood is polluting our society, how schizophrenic would it be to work for MTV ?

It's true that in a free society, we don't care if anybody is killing themselves physically or spiritually, or is enlightened, as long as they don't involve any unwilling person.
However, that's just the role of the State.

If we are spiritual people, we must act to foster good, and block evil. That means thinking beyond the immediate implications of our choices, to the predictable follow-on effects.

For the non-fanatic, that involves some cost/benefit analysis; if the only job one can find is at a defense plant, it's probably better to take the job and feed your kids, even if it means others have to die. However, life rarely presents us with such stark choices.

Peter, the way you've framed the issue, you couldn't logically take issue with an anti-choice person working in an abortion clinic, although almost everyone would instinctively recognize that as a moral conflict.

Or, you might find it more palatable to examine the question through the lens of John Kerry: A guy who wants the US to be independent of Middle Eastern oil, but owns several SUVs.
Obviously, those aren't compatible.
He has the civil freedom to drive his SUVs, but doing so contradicts his moral (religious) stance.

pj: I agree, I was just inserting a "can be" into your first post.

"The explosion of anti-depressants, as brought up on this blog, isn't solely due to people's increasingly poor mental health, (which is affected by diet), but primarily to people's increased desire to be doped up."

No, the explosion of anti-depressants is due to their availability. Mental health has always been a problem, now there are medicines to treat it.

Is the explosion of the use of antibiotics in the 20th century due to the increase in the occurence of infectious bacteria, or to the increased desire of people to be medicated?

I take antidepressants. It doesn't "dope" you up. It relieves depression. It makes you better able to deal with stress, and to function normally. If you don't have to take them, be glad that you don't.

Robert:

The precise point is that Europeans feel the desire to take anti-depressants. They are depressed. As they should be given the state of their society and their secular nihilism.

OJ, their use is common in the US also. Religious people also get depressed. Utah has one of the highest per-capita rates of anti-depressant use.

Robert:

Yes, part of the reason that antibiotic usage is high is because patients demand them, even when they're not warranted. (Or even effective).

Check out some of the multitude of articles published about the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

The right antidepressant, at the right dose, will relieve depression/anxiety/stress.
The wrong antidepressant, or at the wrong dose, can make one wiggy, or even suicidal/homicidal.

Although it's true that mental problems have always been with us, and now we have medications to treat them, in part the availability of medications are driving diagnoses of mental illness.
In 2002, 10% of adolescent boys in America were taking Ritalin; does it seem probable that every tenth boy has mental problems ?
(Beyond the normal ones for adolescent boys).

Robert:

Less:

http://vanderbiltowc.wellsource.com/dh/Content.asp?ID=317

OJ, I don't doubt the findings. But if you go to church, but you still suffer depression, then you may just have a need to take antidepressants.

Michael, antibiotics do get overused, but there are still circumstances when their use is necessary. As for the overuse of antidepressants, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that their availability is driving the diagnoses. Often the diagnosis is made by prescribing the medicine and seeing whether the symptoms are improved. Depression is not like an infection, it's symptoms manifest in subjective mental states, not observable physical states.

It is very easy, if you don't suffer from depression, to make make snap value judgements about people who use them. Yes, there are side effects with some of the drugs, but they are developing new ones that perform better with fewer effects. Severe depression is not a trivial thing, not like a cold that you can just get over with rest and fluids.

Robert:

Yes, but you're more likely to if you don't, which explains Europe.

Robert:

Antidepressants and antibiotics are good things to be sure, just as novocaine is a good thing. The question is whether something is happening in our society to make more and more of us need, or feel we need, or be told we need, them. Michael's point about Ritalin is spot on, as is the pervasiveness of counselling. Given the huge explosion in their use, I have a very hard time with the notion that there was just as much emotional disturbance in the past as now, but nothing could be done about it so it was seen as normal. Unhappiness in the past was not seen as a health issue and we are determined to peg even the mildest gloom as such. The combination of prosperity, loss of faith and decline of personal commitments is doing something to weaken many characters, or at least to demand to be able to transcend the human condition, and Orrin is right about Europe.

Michael:

OK, so we're close to meeting at a mid-point. Eat your vegetables and go for brisk walks I say. And, sure, nobody wants to die. But we've got to do something to keep all these octogenarians busy and productive enough to pay for all those pills.

But I still don't see how you avoid the hard fact that those who don't take care of themselves as they should die earlier and at least save us social security and assisted medical care for all those missing years. Are you saying that the healthy not only live longer, but that all those extra years are as healthy as when they were middle-aged? I don't think so, but maybe it's time to call in the number crunchers.

Back when Europe was all happily Christian and goal-oriented, the use of depressants and antidepressants was no lower than now.

Source?

Per capita (all ages) consumption of gin in England in 1721: 21 gallons per year.

That's all I remember from my college year of world history. It's the kind of number that sticks with you.

England was certainly religious in 1721, just a short while after the Sacheverell riots, in case Orrin is thinking of declaring that England had already abandoned religion by then.

Yes, the consumption of alcohol, a depressant, has declined and the consumption of anti-depressants skyrocketed as religion has declined. Instructive.

Same purpose, different chemicals.

Overall, I expect Europeans are more sober now than at most times since they became rich enough to be as stoned as they wanted to be.

Depressants serve the same purpose as anti-depressants? Sometimes you don't even try to make sense.

Peter,
You make good points, and I think that you are partly right. Part of our problem today is that we have given up on the idea that pain and struggle is a normal part of life. We have expectations of a "fulfilled" life, whatever that means, and treat any falling short of that ideal as personal and moral failure. I think that a driving force behind this heightened level of expectations is consumerism.

Another force is the social fragmentation that you alluded to, but also the fact that modern life presents much more uncertainty and change than previously. Even though people are better off materially, the rate of change and threats to disruption of our daily routine instill anxiety in the psyche, and prolonged levels of anxiety and stress can lead to depression. Humans need routine and stability in their social status, even if at a low level. Even rapid change for the better can bring this about. Some of the most stressed out people are the high acheivers.

Robert:

Bunk. Life for folks who live into their 80s routinely is obviously more stable than it ever was before. War, plague, epidemic, etc. are all things of the past.

OJ, do a quick count of the people that you know as to how many have been a)divorced, b)changed jobs or been laid off, c)moved to a new state or country one or more times in their life, etc. There are many more factors that you could add. The amount of change that a person living a "normal" life nowadays is much greater than the average person 100 years ago. Even if not catastrophic, change is stressful.

We have extensive genealogies of our family--the men averaged two or three wives, they dying in childbirth, and inumerable stillbirths. Death of loved ones is certainly the most stressful change and has gone from frequent to rarish.