My father is very uneducated and has worked only physically for all his life. I have studied computer science and I now work in Home Office due to Covid. Behind my back, he talks to all family members that "home office" is not "real work". One can only play at the computer at home, but not work. He doesn't know better, and he's unwilling to learn. When I ask him if he wants to join me for a day at work, he just goes silent and ignores it. He does neither understand what I do nor does he care. But still he always talks behind my back to family members about how lazy I am because I'm in home office.
I understand the psychology of it. For him, home != work. Since he has very little theory of mind, he cannot imagine that others life other lifes, and that his work != the work of everyone else.
He hates thinking (he once said that he'd rather lift tons of heavy rocks for weeks instead of spending a single minute thinking). He hates opposing opinions, since that may lead to the thought that he may have been wrong, which is a thing he hates. Talking about this is nearly impossible.
In his mind, he thinks "he's playing computer games" when he thinks about me being in front of a computer, since he doesn't do anything else with them and what I do (HPC programming) is way to abstract for him to understand. All my results are also way too abstract for him to understand. And since he doesn't understand them, he thinks they're useless.
Is there any chance I can get him to understand that physical work is not the only kind of viable work that exists?
This is a terrible situation. When I was not in home office, I, in his mind, was still lazy, but at least I went to the office and since he kind of knows that office can be work, he more or less accepted it silently. But now he doesn't anymore.
