Talk:Personal life

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The first paragraph of this seems very POV: like some particular guru's theory rather than a general definition of personal life. --[[user talk:BozMo|(talk to)]BozMo 13:34, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

I think what Clayworth wrote is the opposite of what this article should be; it should be related to personhood. Michael Hardy 19:24, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Work hard, play hard

I think the article misstates the concept of "work hard, play hard."

It's not at all about your vocational and personal lives being separate. Instead, the phrase is closer to saying this: "While you can be idle and only work enough to sustain yourself, you would be far better off investing your time and your knowledge (and your capital) into creating more wealth. This investment will increase the quality of your leasure (even though you will have less leasure time initially), because you will have more wealth to trade with others, to obtain more goods and services that will improve your life or the life of those you love." Or, perhaps shorter: "Create as much wealth as you can, and consume as much as you can." MShonle 23:20, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

This whole article is sounds like it was written by a freshman undergraduate, or is a bit of high-school yearbook philosophizing. Wikipedia is the most sophomoric project ever ventured. Just TRY, people, TRY, a little.

[edit] Factually incorrect

The second and third paragraphs strike me as pretty inaccurate. Comparisons of pre-colonized African life and modern American life found that the hunter-gatherers of Africa had far more free time for self-expression and self-actualization than do low-level workers in the modern period. Furthermore suggesting that individuality is "in the fabric of American society" and that Americans have a special love of privacy seems pretty vague and POV. AaronSw 15:17, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I hope my revisions to the article have improved this section somewhat, as well as improving the article stylistically. If hunter-gatherers had more free time than modern workers, and you know of the studies which discovered this, please add the references - that's beyond the scope of what I can do. The part I added, I think, points out the more important distinction: that between an individual-centered society and a collectivist society.
And I think that it's indisputable that the U.S. is a paradigmatic example of the former - perhaps not unique, but if we can find a reference from de Tocqueville or something, I think it'll be a substantiated assertion. The concept of privacy, it could be argued, is really a construct of modern life in general, since people now have enough space apart from others to conduct a "private life." In a medieval city, for example, people were never apart from others long enough to view themselves as having a private life. It is certainly true that European philosophers, like Locke, were talking about individual rights before the United States came into existence, but the claim in the article is true: the U.S. was the first nation to enshrine their rights in its founding document. And that legacy is still with us today, in such things as the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which really approaches the issue from the position of philosophical individualism characteristic of modern Western philosophy. Evan Donovan 19:33, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My personal life is my career?

"Personal life (or everyday life or human existence) is an individual human's personal, private career"

My personal life is my career? Private as opposed to public? This may be true for some, but for me, probably the last part of my life I would identify as personal would be my career (unless we are talking about whatever I choose to do with my private time, which I've never thought of as my career). Sometimes my career seems more impersonal or even anti-personal, it's more of a antithesis or negation of my personal life. The only reason I even have a career is so that I can have a personal life. I know for some people their career is basically their life, but that's not true of everyone. If I could afford to I would completely and forever quit my career so that I can have more of a personal life. I suppose it all depends on how you choose to define career and personal life. --Jim 17:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

i agree fully - to the brim - Jim; that is exactly the reason i came here. Note that Jim said "career" is so far from "personal life", that it is actually thinkable as a contrary to it. that is a huge difference in meaning to be defining one with the other. this article will require some serious thought; this is not the article for nonce usages of words. lakitu 14:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. "Jim" needs to learn that the word "career" has more than one meaning. Whether one has remunerative work or lives off an inheritance does not affect whether one has a career that is one's personal life. "Jim" could say "If I could, I'd quit my work career so that I could have a leisure career", and that would be consonant with one of the standard definitions of "career". Michael Hardy 23:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Now I've looked in the Oxford English Dictionary. It says a career is

A person's course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life)

"lakitu", don't call something a "nonce usage" when it's in standard dictionaries. Michael Hardy 23:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Honestly - do you really feel the best word to summarize my "personal life" is my "career"? What dictionary entry is the one you are citing, in the Oxford English Dictionary? It surely is not the modern one. The O.E.D. lists a lot of denotations. I REFUSE to conflate "career" with "personal life" - i have NEVER heard this sense of "career" until i came here. i do not think we should define things unnaturally/unrecognizably like this. I cannot imagine more than 1% of the population recognizing this usage of the word "career". If you ask people what their career is, they will tell you about their string of employment, the kind of work they do, the money they make, etc. They will NOT tell you about their lover, their free time, their hobbies, etc; - & THOSE are the things of Personal Life. The sense of "career" you are using is misleading at least, difficult to understand at best - & this is a public encyclopedia; not the place for weird definitions to come out & play. Again - this sense of "career" you use is NOT the usual sense of the word, & you are using it in the opening definition of the recognizably important Personal Life article. i fully disagree with saying my Personal Life is my Career. Those two, Personal Life & Career, are to be contrasted, not synonymized. Just because a word has an obscure meaning doesn't mean we should use it.

the OED definition you (Michael) gave was truncated; here is the full denotation for this sense of "career":

5. a. A person's course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life), esp. when publicly conspicuous, or abounding in remarkable incidents: similarly with reference to a nation, a political party, etc. b. In mod. language (after Fr. carrière) freq. used for: A course of professional life or employment, which affords opportunity for progress or advancement in the world. Freq. attrib. (orig. U.S.), esp. (a) designating one who works permanently in the diplomatic service or other profession, opp. one who enters it at a high level from elsewhere; (b) career girl, woman, etc., one who works permanently in a profession, opp. one who ceases full-time work on marrying. Also, careers master, mistress, a schoolteacher who advises and helps pupils in choosing careers.

(Oxford English Dictionary)

so, in mod. language, we see the sense most of us are familiar with - the standard niche of the word: "A course of professional life or employment". THAT is the modern standard definition of "career" (ask people around you) - & THAT is not Personal Life. As Jim pointed out, the modern, most-used denotation of the word you used to define Personal Life is contrary to Personal Life. I vote to change the opening definition of Personal Life from someone's "career" to something much more agreeable. I cannot imagine leaving this as is. lakitu 08:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm intrigued that there is a debate on the relationship between "career" and "personal life". Could this be a cross-pond or cultural difference in use of terms? Because the usage I am familiar with would place these on opposite sides of a divide: On one side is a person's public vocation(s), and on the other is their hobbies, family, and private matters. The distinction is considered important for press coverage of a public figure, in that a newspaper would feel it appropriate to publish a story detailing the job history ("career") of a politician or prominent business figure, but would withhold publication of their dating history or health or other private matters ("personal life"). There may also be legal distinctions.
The precise wording at the top of this debate is "personal, private career", which mixes the sides in a way sure to cause confusion. I have no problem with the concept of a private career, something a person chooses to pursue outside their job and the public spotlight. In fact, at some point the private career of an Albert Einstein working in the Swiss patent office could become their public career, or a Hollywood waitress taking acting lessons could be "discovered". Even so, personal life includes many things that do not (usually) fit into a "career" of any sort: diet, sex life, family squabbles, TV viewing, walking the dog, and so on. If there is any "course or progress" to be found in these, it is a random walk!
Finally: Language often delights me, and I've got a pretty good education that includes vocabulary and nuances of meaning not shared by a wider audience. Am I writing for me, or for them? In the Wikipedia context, and when trying to satisfy professional referees, I must write for my audience, even if that means (reluctantly) eschewing richer language. (Like "eschew"!)
In kindness to our readers, if for no other reason, we should try for better wording. --KSmrqT 18:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that if someone somehow fails to know that the word "career" has more than one sense, they would figure it out by seeing how it's used in this article. I don't think anything is unnatural or unrecognizable or weird about this usage. What you are proposing is dumbing down the article.

I don't think there's anything pondian about this distinction. The difference is between colloquial and philosophical. "Personal life" is the course of one's life resulting from one's deliberate personal choices, whereby one creates one's personal identity.

I am not adamant about using the word "career" in this article. But I am adamant about this: one's personal life does obviously include one's remunerative work career. To hold otherwise would be to make the article cutesy at best, like People magazine or something like that, rather than something to be taken seriously. You say "THOSE are the things of P[sic]ersonal L[sic]ife." I object to contrasting remunerative work with personal life; I insist that remunerative work is obviously included within personal life. Indeed, remunerative work is one of the most important parts of personal life. Its course is determined by one's important deliberate personal choices. That's what personal life is.

I have no problem with speaking of "personal life as opposed to career" in other contexts. But those are other contexts. Michael Hardy 22:48, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

One other thing: I would be disappointed if, when reading articles, I found only words and usages that I'm already familiar with. Michael Hardy 22:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

PS: I notice that it says "not limited to their employment career". Given that it says that, how would anyone misunderstand in the way that lakitu expects? Michael Hardy 22:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've rewritten it to get rid of the allegedly obscure word. Please note that it was someone else (I don't know who) who put that word there. So one person wrote it and another understood it. Michael Hardy 23:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the rewording. I didn't check the history of edits, but merely responded to the thread of conversation, and that only because it began on your (Michael Hardy) talk page. :-)
I do worry about "dumbing down" articles, perhaps with a different meaning. If I were to write an article in Xhosa, no matter how elevated the content few people could read and understand it. I am willing to use common language if it helps me communicate better, which is not the same as removing content. If you choose to call that dumbing down the vocabulary, I'd have to agree there is merit in your position. However, if I must use precise technical language to say something correctly, then I will do so. Yet use of an Ivy League vocabulary is no guarantee of quality; utter garbage can be clothed in impressive finery. What I like to do is adopt accessible language and examples, but bring my readers to topics they never imagined. For example, I often respond to elementary questions on the mathematics reference desk with both an elementary answer and additional enrichment material, perhaps at the graduate level. It's the best I know to do. --KSmrqT 00:59, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

The reason I called it "dumbing down" is NOT that I thought people should know that word usage before reading this article, but that those who don't, should figure it out from reading this article. It was phrased in a way that I would have expected to make that possible. Michael Hardy 01:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Right, that makes sense. Only judging by the reaction here, you were overly optimistic.
I've had papers peer-reviewed where it was clear some of the reviewers (not all) had their heads tucked far up where the Sun don't shine, mistaking things that were clearly and explicitly stated. But since I can't grab them and say, "Did you read paragraph three on page five?!!", I try to rewrite so even an idiot can't miss it.
I'm also reminded of a paper sent to me by a young author following on some of my work. While I was reading it a mistake jumped out at me. When I brought it to his attention he was mortified, and worried because the paper had already been sent out for review. It was not a difficult mistake to correct, and did not invalidate the paper, so I suggested an experiment: let the editor know, but wait for the reviews to come back. You can probably guess the results. Not one reviewer caught the error!
If these things can happen with professional reviews, how much more so with readers of all levels from all over the globe? The best I know to do is to write defensively for the article, and to write persuasively on the talk page. It's not always enough. And on Wikipedia some insistent clueless editor then comes along and mangles it anyway. How to balance striving for quality with letting go is a recurring challenge here. Ah well. --KSmrqT 05:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

It would help for it to do a better job of establishin a clear defition and scope in the first paragraph. I assume that the author ment that many people derive their personal satisfaction and sense of purpose and well-being from the career. When this is the case, it obviously spills over into one's personal, private life. We are accustomed to talking about our career and family life as separate, but for career-oriented single (especially younger and peahsp some Wikipedians?) people - well, such people many not actually keep a separation between career and "private" life. -- Fplay 01:02, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, & this is the same thing Jim & i commented on above: the word "career" is saliently out of place in the opening definition of the article. lakitu 08:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Fplay, you wrote: "I assume that the author ment that many people derive their personal satisfaction and sense of purpose and well-being from the career. When this is the case, it obviously spills over into one's personal, private life."

I don't think that's what was intended at all. "Career", in THIS context, clearly means the course of a person's life, including, but NOT LIMITED TO, his or her remunerative work career. And obviously a remunerative work career is an important part of one's personal life, not just something that "spills over into" one's personal life. Michael Hardy 14:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Progression

"Life's progression from birth to death is not a mere succession of moments." That's arguable and not encyclopedic. Very POV. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.162.206.239 (talk) 20:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Gender aspects

The following aspects are missing (cf. my contribution 19. March and its revert): "Personal life is the course of an individual human's life in a special society and gender system, especially when viewed as the sum of personal available societal chances and choices contributing to one's personal identity and subjective realisation of a gender role. It is a common notion in modern existence – although more so in more prosperous parts of the world, such as Western Europe and North America, where there are both continuated gender asymmetric ascription of everyday caring work burdens (household chore), economically located in "private" life, which in androcentric perspective is assumed as free of work, and service industries designed to help people improve their personal lives via work-life balance, day care and other care services, domestic technology, counselling or life coaching.

In the past, before modern technology largely alleviated the problem of economic scarcity, most people, women and men, are assumed spending a large portion of their time simply attempting to stay alive. Survival skills were necessary for the sake of both self, family and community; food needed to be harvested and shelters needed to be maintained. There was little privacy in a community, and people were identified by their social role. Unpaid "house"-work, Jobs and resulting double burden were assigned out of necessity rather than personal choice."

Michael Hardy is arguing, that this his emphasis on gender should not be made a part of the definition of "personal life". According to him, personal life has to be seen as an androcentric construction (cf. http://web.mit.edu/workplacecenter/docs/wplh.pdf )--Annamarie Ursula 12:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RENAME to EVERYDAY LIFE?

Folks, I think this ought to refer to the 'everyday life' philosophical approach, and should be renamed "Everyday Life." What do you think? --Dylanfly 14:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

This article is basically all original research that is presented as fact; and moreover seems to be original research by armchair sociologists blinded by their own inexperience and pompous theorizing. The direct allegation that people in poor countries can't afford the "luxury" of personal space is a truly remarkable manifestation of patronizing ignorance.

If this article is to continue to exist, it should show clearly that these "facts" are theories, and should attribute all of these assertions to the notable scholars from which they emanate. However, if presenting certain theories as if they were absolute truths is the goal of this article- as it seems to be- it doesn't merit space on wikipedia. --JrFace (talk) 11:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)