Lmao. I don't think the people who spend all night doing that in service of their companies last long. They'll eventually become normal salary men unwilling to put in any extra hours since they know they are unappreciated.

Now the people who do continue to spend their nights learning about Oracle or another easy to understand thingie they are driven by something else. This is not me saying that something else is good or bad or important or unimportant. Just pointing out that nobody stays up late nights to service their corporations long term unless they somehow eventually become valued more than a tiny 

dog

 

I do find 

family

to be the most important thing. I believe it's easy to sardonically laugh at people who say 'family is most important' but still spend most of their waking hours on other things...

i can't speak on their behalf but i have a feeling that i'm a fractal of the common-man... as in how i operate is how the average person operates. so i'll share how i operate to imply that i think this is what's going on with other people even though i just said i can't speak on their behalf lol.

I have a desire to improve. To improve requires resources. These resources may be skills or capital or social.

I understand that improvement here is completely subjective. I understand that my sense of improvement can come at the cost of macro destruction etc etc.

This desire to improve has been seeded by my desire to be a part of a family. Thus I desire to improve because i want to be an important member of a family.

Why do i want family? It's the only thing that matters to me. I don't mean family literally here. I like 

Seth Godin

's definition of family here:

"Family is the people when you need them they can't say no"

And the reason I think family is important is because of two things but let me start with the one that i think will resonate more with you.

1. Whenever i read a good story (novel/novella/short story) the keystone moments they capture are never about someone detaching from their humanity and buying their way out of inconvenience by paying the neo liberal machine. the stories always feature some situation when a change happens and it affects the character and their 'family'. they might be escaping an old family... or arriving at a realization about their old family. they might be finding a new family. or maybe they are realizing they have no family at all.

2. When you have no immediate health concerns the need for family might seem weak. Just a month ago I thought this too. Once you let's say face some life threatening or disabling disease straight on you realize that you might not just be able to buy your way out of this. 

To summarize I believe that family is what we'll seek when we face death head on. People who forget that they will die might stray away from family and think that it's intellelctual or stimulation they want forever.

But every single person on their death bed wants one thing. Just a matter of whether you want to accept that now or later.