If you don't self-impose, society will structurally impose it on you.
He said, back home, he would have been getting dirty looks, if he wasn't constantly justifying his existence in a place by either consuming or producing something.
Unfortunately, the modern world is run not by empaths, but by psychopaths. Even if we get to a state where we look out for each other, I fear it would be quickly subverted.
Mirandola's is the oldest source for the ranking of being that I can recall off the top of my head, but the idea is almost certainly even older.
> On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life. Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant. If sensitive, he will become brutish. If rational, he will grow into a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God.
- Oration on the Dignity of Man
I think it's useless trying to find councel regarding these things, people will just say what they believe is right. It's mostly just seeking external validation.
The end state should just be a lack of judgement -- right now we are too preoccupied with minmaxing so called productivity which is mostly an illusion most times. Much of this comes from a self imposed sense of guilt, in that doing nothing becomes like eating junk food. And this sense of guilt is in turn cultivated by the environment at large. Try telling people you're in between jobs or taking a sabbatical, they'll just assign you to the "loser" or "unemployed" class automatically.