We all know the big story. You are born, you go to kindergarten, you go to school, to university, then you start your career, and then after several years or decades, you start dreaming of retirement. “Oh, if I could only retire now to have more time for myself and family” – the majority of people say during their career and lifetime. Oh, what will I do when I retire? Oh, that will be the joy.
In my opinion, this delusion that retirement will bring something wonderful is one of the greatest delusions that this society brought to humankind and to our thoughts.
Just imagine the unbearable nonsense of this paradigm – you work until you’re 67, and then you will receive something from your government to “enjoy” life. Which life exactly at 67? I mean, there are many people that still feel great at 67, but there are also many who die a couple of months or a couple of years after retirement.
Yet, most people cannot even fathom the limited time they have left in this world. Everybody is constantly planning something like we will all live 200 years, while the truth is completely different. There’s an interesting quote from Mike Tyson which could be applied here: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It is so true in many life situations, and it is also true for this situation. Getting punched in the mouth here is the realization of how much time many people actually have after retirement and how much time they spent on dreadful day-to-day and year-to-year rat race of meaningless jobs and activities.
Related:
Vicious Cycle of Birth, Work and Death
Now, this is a problem of this kind of society that we built, of course. For some to enjoy, some others need to work meaningless jobs until they drop dead. Literally and figuratively. It is what it is, but there must be a better way to organize society.
By some statistics, 85% of people hate their job. I mean, this is an insane society if we look at it – the big majority of humans hate what they do for most of their life. Moreover, they are doing it in their prime years. Then they (we) retire and then die. A nice little lie, or should I say deception, that has been perpetuated throughout society for centuries. Sure, one could argue that living today is better than living at any time in history. And this is probably true.
Nevertheless, whether we live the best lives today than in whole human history, we still must acknowledge that the concept of retirement and pensions as we know it today is complete and utter delusion or, should I say, error. I stated ‘error’ because it really is a mathematical miscalculation or error of human contribution to society via his or her ‘worthy’ lifespan. Can’t this calculation be a little bit different so that even though some will probably still have to work in a job they hate, possibly they could opt out earlier and still live a somehow satisfying life? It is a romantic thought, but it is one that is worth considering.
But what is happening in reality? Governments are prolonging the time people have to work to receive their jolly retirement check. One explanation for that is that people are living longer. And this is true. But it is also true that today we have machines doing much of the work people did just recently. On the other hand, we also have more and more greedy people where money pours by gallons every hour, and it is still not enough for them. The biggest problem lies exactly there. If wealth could be distributed somehow differently, then perhaps billions and billions of people wouldn’t have to work until they die at work.
Additional ambivalence for people is that they are constantly fed romantic falsehoods about how they will enjoy vacations and drink cocktails in the Bahamas if they work hard. Surely if you’re working hard towards some goal, that is very admiring and a good baseline to achieve some kind of happiness. Nonetheless, many people are working hard only to save for a two-week vacation, after which many are disappointed. Those places from postcards never look the same, are mostly crowded, and you wander around the city pointlessly just to be able to shoot some fancy Instagram photos, which then signal to your friends and acquaintances that you’re successful and happy.
Traveling is great, don’t get me wrong, but many people are doing it because of all erroneous reasons, and they end up unsatisfied and in debt many times. This debt (not only from vacations) prolongs then to next year, and so you start racing the famous rat race. This is only one of the things that enable retirement delusion to grow even bigger. Because you then think,” I will finally travel all the time when I am in retirement.” Yes, you could if you have money (which the majority don’t have), but again it’s not the same fun as it is in your 30’s 40’s or 50’s.
Consumerism
Then there’s the constant need to buy things. Better, newer, more expensive things just because you received a better paycheck (lifestyle inflation). And then you end up on the same wealth as you were at the beginning of your career with regards to actual freedom. But hey, you have all the expensive things, right? This again feeds the delusion. Oh, but one day… The goal is near, I am almost there, just this one more thing, and I will arrive at my destination. The end of a journey is near. But is life really a journey with a destination? Quote that “life is a journey” is one of the most common analogies in the world, but it is mostly wrongly interpreted. According to great British philosopher Alan Watts, it’s terribly misworded and has become misused as he explains that life cannot be a journey since “It doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at.“
Richard Branson’s wording in relation to Alan Watts says it well. Branson is saying how Watts explains that traditional systems of education have skewed the meaning of life (towards arriving at a destination) by placing too much importance on progressing through school and college to a career. And he also makes his point by saying that far too many people live to retire and therefore cheat themselves of an exciting existence.
Instead of seeing life as a journey, Alan believed we should experience it like a musical thing. Songs are playful, unpredictable, and have moments of brilliance all throughout the composition. “Same with dancing, you don’t aim at a particular spot in the room because that’s where you should arrive. The whole point of dancing is the dance.”
Consequently, the whole point of living is to live life. Not to wait for retirement. As waiting for retirement is not really living. In Allan Watt’s dance analogy, this would be like you’re sitting on a table waiting for the dance to end so that you can dance then without music when everyone is gone. Oh, the world we’re living in. Adding to that, do you know what percentage of people actually live to their retirement? Or how many years do people live on average after they retire? Well, statistics are not very good. By that, I mean statistics on life expectancy compared to the prolonged time for retirement.
Life Expectancy
The United Nations estimates a global average life expectancy of 72.6 years for 2019. This is significantly more than in previous centuries. By Our World in Data analysis, a newborn baby in 1800 could expect a rather short life, no matter where in the world it was born. In the 1950s, newborns had the chance of a longer life if they were lucky enough to be born in the right place. In recent decades all regions of the world have made very substantial progress, and it was those regions that were worst-off in 1950 that achieved the biggest progress since then. The divided world of 1950 has been narrowing. Globally the life expectancy increased from less than 30 years to over 72 years in just a couple of centuries. And this progress was not achieved in a few places. In every world region, people can today expect to live much longer than in the previous century.
So far, so good. Actually great. So many people living a longer life is an astonishing result. However, on the other hand, people are expected to work longer, much longer, and thus the “freedom” time is also shrinking. Not to mention the quality of that “freedom” time. Needless to say, working by you’re almost 70 and then looking forward to retirement doesn’t make sense, but it greatly fits a narrative of illusion called – free, happy, and long golden years. Then how to distant yourself from this grand illusion of retirement? There is a simple equation – spend less than you earn and, in return, try to achieve financial freedom in some reasonable timespan. That is, of course, if you want to. There are still (fortunately) many people who like their jobs, and they should enjoy them. Nevertheless, I think both groups (people who like their job and people who don’t) should consider finding ways to stop living in a world of grand retirement delusion. Not everybody can become a monk. But there are other ways. As Naval Ravikant, Indian-American entrepreneur, investor, and thinker stated:
“Essentially, what you want to get everybody is retirement. But not the – I’m 65 years old, sitting in a nursing home, collecting a check’ retirement. Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.”
After this quote, one may wonder – well, why am I naming this chapter as “Retirement the great delusion” while also stating and quoting that goal should be so that everyone is retired. That’s kind of an oxymoron, but if we follow Naval’s excellent analogy of scarifying today for some imaginary tomorrow, then we get the whole picture. This is, of course, easier said than done, but by little steps, humanity should walk towards a future where the present moment is not immolated by great delusion.
Expensive vacations are not the solution, expensive cars are not solutions, and escaping into constant work is also not the solution. This is only prolonging the inevitable. I mean, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” At least not with the same set of tools and mindset. Tools consisting of schooling and a journey through life to reach the final destination need to fundamentally change if we want to distance ourselves from grand illusion. Some would propose that perhaps Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the solution. But I would argue that this is far from the solution. It could even be a bigger issue. Humans are competitive artistic beings, and UBI would probably only make people duller and more lethargic with no desire to do anything.
Some set of rewards for great work needs to be in society. We cannot all sit on our asses, watching Netflix all day while receiving 1000$ from our governments. This could actually look like early and depressing retirement for many people. Even though the current political and economic system is playing with some kind of rudimentary UBI during the COVID crisis, I believe this is not the solution for the future. People need to accept automatization and robotization with joy and not with fear. Because if we implement a reorganization of society in such a way where robots and AI take the majority of our (current) jobs, that should only mean that humans have more time for their creative, artistic jobs, which are high on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
At the end of the day, human beings are not meant to do repetitive, dull work all day throughout their lives. We are much more, and society should someday really enable all people to reach their potential, whatever that may be for any individual walking on this Earth. For some, it may be painting, for some writing songs, for some inventing new things, but probably nobody would choose to flip burgers. Robots will do that very soon, and when their parts deteriorate, they should be sent to retirement (or metal garbage in this case), and humans should pursue their desires without fear of failed grand delusion.
