What is the point of retiring when you are too old to do anything?

do you belong to the rebellion ?

Well, you've been tricked into having an overly excessive "work ethic" and to think this is a morally correct thing to have.
You retire when you're that old because you're of no use anymore.

IMO, fuck the system.

I agree with both of your posts... It's a total fucking sham....

Yeah.. Golden Age Retirement, enjoy life.. BS!

It seems getting old is punishment for having lived.

Would this be better? A fiction where a child is born old, then becomes younger with time until he dies.

Every living thing and most non-living things deteriorate over time. But it it somehow unnatural that humans do likewise?

It is better to find work that you reasonably enjoy, and then find meaning in it. If you view work as slavery, you have cursed yourself. I also think there are many who retire too early. Their minds become inactive, and they go downhill.

That is why it's important to do things intelligently. Go get your degree or formation in what you want. THEN, take a sabbatical of a few years doing what you absolutely love. Travel the world, work with animals, live in Tahiti. Do this when you're young.

THEN, come back to the "world", and start your career. That way, you'll have no regrets.

I don't.

You may be too old and grey to do anything, but that says nothing about the sexy nurses who will strap your parachute to your weelchair right before they push you out the plane. Oh and did I mention one of them sits on your lap to jump with you? For..."safety" precautions.

Life is what you make of it. And there isn't an elderly person big enough for a parachute.

(Yes I would like to parachute jump when I'm elderly, does it show?)

I agree, people should be able to retire at 55 (not forced) and given a pension if they need it. Let the young people get the work, they need it much more!

Very true.

My plan is to work until 40, but by then I have to have a fallback that is being "paid to play", something that I'm good at that people will pay me to do and I'd be doing anyway as a hobby even if I had another job.

That's the secret to life in this world... getting paid to play.

Look at musicians for example, bastards have it made.

If you have a hobby or something you love to do, try to get good enough at it that somebody is willing to ive you money to do it... if you can make a weeks wages doing it... bada bing, you're sorted.

thanks to the agriculture revolution we've created this society that requires people to work certain jobs. for thousands of years prior to that we lived like the rest of the animal kingdom in that we only "worked" to put food in our belly, after we ate we relaxed, traveled and enjoyed each others company.

but with the revolution came a need to secure land, and defend it, gather in cities, harvest food, process it, war with other tribes for land and resources. in order for this new society to function we had to create jobs to make sure everything ran smoothly.

alot of great things came from it like trade, art, culture and so on....but the downfall of mankind can be traced back to the agriculture revolution IMO.

I would not want to live as a hunter gatherer.

Who says we can't enjoy 'old age'?

Former President George H.W. Bush celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday with a parachute jump from 13,000 feet over his presidential library. [link to usatoday30.usatoday.com]

What is the point of retiring when you are too old to do anything?

around 50-65

it would be next to impossible to go back to it and live comfortably. but if it was all you ever know...it was probably quite nice.

Yes but that "work" to put food in our bellies occupied pretty much all our waking hours.

Now there's a man to my heart. He knows living!

What's the alternative?

You sure about that?
I've walked off the grid for extended times and I remember a boatload of empty hours with no television to entertain after I was done with the pressing needs of the moment.

That idea works well in Greece, right?

And most Euro countries have generous manditory vacations for workers. That is working well too.

There is none. Therefore, find work and an employer that you reasonable enjoy, and seek to find dignity and self-respect in work.

Hell yeah!!

"What's the point of retiring when you are too old to do anything?"

That's why "useless old farts" need to be forced to be around the workplace even when they can't do anything. Maybe they could make coffee, play old music, and rag on the workers. Ya think this could become law?

BTW, I "retired" when I was 23. It had nothing to do with money saved or any foolish shit like that. It was a change in attitude, where my spirit comes first, and work or money is only a means to an end, but not the main issue.

Later, in my 40's while still "retired" I ran a small company with a half dozen employees producing bronze hardware of my own creativity. As an employer I played the role of secretary, coffee maker, DJ, and I organized field trips every week to the mountains, sushi bars, what ever seemed fun among us. I made sure that I charged enough for the products so that we could all goof off for a third of the time, which is the nature of the human spirit.

Now in my 50's I find my sources of life sustenance to be more varied, the spirit provides in any case because I have always been generous with the spirit. I can play the bohemian artist bum and even earn money easier than ever before. I still have no so called "retirement savings", and I am not at all concerned.

It is not all about income, but also finding comfortable places and ways to live happily with very little money.

That requires an attitude that is not formed by what the media want you to believe in relation to happiness and living styles.

People get into such restrictive boxes about how life works. At least from my experience to blow away all those concepts for me has been "do'able" and I am pleased with my life-path.

That propaganda deals with how people need to conform to expectations of how "life" is supposed to work according to all our indoctrination from schools, media etc.

Early retirement for the masses creates a financial bubble. It is unsustainable in the long-term.

that isnt entirely true....lions sure do alot of hanging out.

and that "work" certainly is more full-filling than sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day.

Yeah, I was going to say this, Charms. The OP obviously has the idea that "the good old days" were somehow much more LEISURELY, and relaxing! In fact, the opposite is true! Human beings have more free time and leisure now than ever before in our history.

Hunter/gatherers were always in a state of hunting for food or fighting to keep it from other marauders. Life was not "fun" or easy. Nowadays? If you enjoy your "work" and make a relatively good living at it, you can enjoy your off-work time quite a lot.

I like what you have to say. Instead of moaning and complaining, you took the initiative to make the system work for you.

Actually I'm not, my bad... as soon as I wrote that I started googling hunter gatherer societies that exist today (like in the Amazon) and it seems the only serious work anyone has to do is build their dwelling and once that's done... it's done and the whole community helps out.
Hunts go out maybe once a week, stay out until enough food has been stocked to last for a good while.

Then they mostly seem to just chill, tell stories, get high and enjoy life and each other.

I happily stand corrected.

Who would willing pay another person to just play? Would you pay me to waterski? Would you vote for higher taxes so the government could pay me to hike the appalacian trail?

I thought not.

no not realy, maybee since "civilised" times this has been the case but early people had a lot of free time.

not to mention what they were doing for work is what many of
us do now when we have the free time.