18 ms·

Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

341 points by applecore 10y ago

neves 10y ago
I'd like to read everyday articles like these. We are drowned in hateful speech. Would feel better reading something like it.
- pcmaffey 10y ago
  medium.com
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    "Medium: Growth hacking your way into SF gentrification."
- hypertexthero 10y ago
  As a counter to hate I recommend anything by Jiddu Krishnamurti, especially Think on These Things and The First and Last Freedom.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Kenji 10y ago
And although all the world’s major faiths teach love That's not what I see when I look into the holy books. Let's be frank here, faith and religion are still the tools to turn ordinary people into genocidal maniacs.
- jlj 10y ago
  You are confusing religion used for political and self-serving means, with the selflessness teachings that are common with many holy books including Buddhism and Christianity. It is humans that corrupt religion when we want to be gods or worship and obsess about the wrong idols.
- brightball 10y ago
  sigh Which "holy books"?
- hx87 10y ago
  Religions are more than their holy books. The Old Testatment preaches a hateful and parochial worldview, but the vast majority of Jews and Christians are perfectly normal human beings.
- komali2 10y ago
  I know what you mean (turning someone into a pillar of salt, killing infidels, etc), but there's a stark difference between the "tenants" of a religion and the single books that drive them. Hence why there's a million different flavors of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc - they all take their given "book" and interpret it differently. If you generalize Jesus' teachings, they're hard to argue as immoral - be good to your fellow man, abandon your earthly possessions, wash the feet of another because he is your fellow, stuff like that. Anyway my point is, a tool is just a tool to be used as you will. Religious texts can be used to bring people together or start a war, obviously - just look at the current shitstorm surrounding "radical islamic terrorism." There are over a billion Muslims in the world, 99.99% of whom live peaceful lives - and a small percentage are convinced to turn their religion into an ugly justification for bloodshed. No religion is immune to this.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    /s/tenants/tenets
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    > If you generalize Jesus' teachings, they're hard to argue as immoral - be good to your fellow man, abandon your earthly possessions, wash the feet of another because he is your fellow, stuff like that. Well, Jesus generalized his own teachings like this, quoting the scriptures of his time, in the gospel of Matthew: > “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” If God doesn't exist or isn't a good God, then it's not hard to argue that following Him could be immoral and teaching people to follow Him is surely immoral. And that's speaking as a Christian. Paul even wrote, "...if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.... If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." > Anyway my point is, a tool is just a tool to be used as you will. This point is well taken, though I would rephrase it. People take all sorts of things and then change them to suit their purposes. Jesus himself railed against this sort of thing, calling religious hypocrites "vipers" and "whitewashed tombs". > No religion is immune to this. Well, certain religions are certainly against this sort of thing. I'd argue that someone who has taken Jainism, say, and added violence, they've invented a new religion and stolen (and corrupted) the word "Jainism". This sort of thing has happened to Christianity for 2000 years. There's no copyright on the word. Just like a hacker can do whatever, say he's from Anonymous, and everyone takes that assertion on face value.
SeriousM 10y ago
Thank you for the paywall link
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
  Click the "web" button under it, then select the result from the Google search
  - flipp3r 10y ago
    Did you actually try this yourself? It presents a login page for me when I do this.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Incognito mode worked for me.
      - thisisandyok 10y ago
        Me too, thanks for mentioning that
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    This works much less well, for many people. For NY Times, the fact that I have non-persistent cookies as a Firefox extension helps greatly. For other sites (WSJ especially) I've got to jump through several more hoops. Given that the goal on HN is discussion of the article, and that the workarounds aren't evident or foolproof, this is a consistent pain point. And simply using the "web" button does not consistently work. You should be aware of this.
quickben 10y ago
Paywalled hard. Direct link, web>google, etc. See I think Dalai Lama is wrong in this case; behind my current anxiety is mainly the fear that soon, all HN subs will be paywalled :) On an unrelated subject: isn't this supposed to be penalized by Google? Different content for their bot vs human users?
- AvenueIngres 10y ago
  Here is a link: https://archive.fo/Ro6Vc https://archive.fo/Ro6Vc
- axit 10y ago
  Incognito worked for me
  - quickben 10y ago
    Oh, thanks.
- kerneltime 10y ago
  Or in other words free readers will be unneeded/unwanted by quality content...
AvenueIngres 10y ago
Tibetan bigots need to accept Han Chinese refugees. Period. To solve this issue, a response must be found and applied at an individual level so we can calm their fear of not being needed anymore. Of course, the cultural genocide thing is just a pretext they are using because they don't like Han Chinese. "We need to build bridges. Not walls." - Isaac Newton
sjclemmy 10y ago
It's odd, the world is the safest and most stable that it has ever been. There has never been a better time to be a human being, and yet, the media and certain politicians would have you believe that there is disaster after disaster, terrorist plots afoot around every corner, feeding your fear day after day. If ever there was an example of the devil at work, then that's it(and I'm not even religious). Uncertainty about the future has always been the same. Don't listen to those devils.
- shp0ngle 10y ago
  If you are rich and already in the top class, then maybe. But it's not terribly good for the middle class.
  - Raphmedia 10y ago
    If you are rich and already in the middle class, then maybe. But it's not terribly good for the poor class. ... Don't let wealth create unneeded divides. When you enter the mindset of "us vs. them" you will always be unhappy. Edit: I grew up in a very poor community and our family yearly income was well under the poverty line (20,209 in Canada). The middle class has always been the richest people in the world for me. Now that I am part of it, I don't feel rich at all. However, I know that I am lucky. It's question of perception. Don't let them divide and conquer you for political gains.
    - FussyZeus 10y ago
      While I agree you should try to be content with what you have, there's nothing wrong with aspiring to more. The middle class is being eroded away leaving us with a much larger group of have nots, and an increasingly hard to enter group of haves. I wouldn't have a problem with this except a lot of the haves are in that group via genetic lottery, nothing that they actually did or earned.
      - greendragon 10y ago
        If genetics determines all, then we should sort people to tasks best suited for their genetics. Ashkenazi Jew? Work on advancing gene therapy and retroviruses so humans now and in the future can be freed from genetic determinism. European? Build civilization. African? Physical labor/sports. East Asian? Also build civilization. To each is given the minimum necessary to do their genetically determined purpose, ignoring any abstract "human" needs for all. Surplus is captured by the State and hoarded, some used to incentivize the Jews to have more children since their problem is the most important. Eventually the Jews will succeed and no one will have any excuses anymore. That's not a world I'd like to live in. But it would solve you having a problem with inequality. Or maybe you just need a different perspective to not put so much into genetic determinism in the first place.
dschiptsov 10y ago
That's gross oversimplification for western amateur audiences. His Holiness is trying to speak the language of common western consumer. Behind our anxiety is ignorance. Period. Ignorance is described as a veil that obscures the view of what is from so-called primordial awareness or Atman, if you wish - the aspect of the whole (Brahman) in us. (The Buddha explicitly rejected the notion of Atman, but numerous later Indian (tantric) writers messed everything up). It is like continuous day-dreaming. The meaning of Awakening is literal awakening from this habitual delusional day-dreaming to what is. Most of our fears are due to misapprehension of reality, like classic mistaking of a rope for a snake, and our attaching to (and hence the fear of losing) that illusory my self, which is nothing, but an appearance to ignorant and confused introspection. This crude formulation is as old as Upanishads.
- hosh 10y ago
  I agree. Hard not to when practicing insight leads to those same conclusions. Having said that, I think this perspective is worth examining. I usually find an example of the emotional energy and start probing it to see if it holds up -- that is to say, do I really sense a fear whose encoded story is 'to not be needed'? How does that flow? Maybe it is there and maybe it isn't. This is a different perspective, also interesting and worth examining: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  It isn't surprising that comfortable pop psychology is more welcome on the NYT opinion pages than esoteric theology.
  - dschiptsov 10y ago
    There is no known contradiction of original Buddha's doctrine with modern evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The modern notions of Cognitive Dissonance, cognitive biases, framing effects and modern western philosophy of mind only supports Buddha's views. The only applicable critique is that original Buddhist doctrine is too general and allows flexible interpretations, nevertheless lots of scholars would maintain that Buddha's approach is one of the earliest attempts of systematic study of the mind using an imperfect method of introspection (famous Upanishadic neti neti doctrine is, perhaps, the earliest known to us), leaving validation of the insights to everyone who wished to follow the same path. Buddha's investigation into the nature of reality and mind, which obscures it, is qualified for philosophy - precursor of modern sciences, not a religion (there is literally nothing to be saved). Theology has been developed by various competing sects hundreds of years later.
ChefDenominator 10y ago
I have asked almost everyone I know if they have a subscription to: nytimes.com wsj.com forbes.com Guess what? I don't even have any minor acquaintances with subscriptions to these sites. So how come every single aggregator that I visit has articles from these sites commonly among the top and featured positions?
- ChefDenominator 10y ago
  Well how about that: an instant down-vote!
  - komali2 10y ago
    It's not going to help if you bring up downvotes, check the site rules.
    - ChefDenominator 10y ago
      There is nothing special, unique, or new in those rules. I don't care abut Internet points and am well aware of the standard Internet community circle-jerk echo chamber, and HN is no exception.
- tspike 10y ago
  Because, in the case of the first two, they are offering some of the only real journalism that remains. The latter is just fantastically adept at churning out gobs of clickbait.
  - ChefDenominator 10y ago
    The term "real" is subjective.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- dcosson 10y ago
forgottenpass 10y ago
For as prolific as he is, the Dalai Lama doesn't pop up on my radar much. But here he is in the NY Times opinion pages sharing monism. This speaks to a broader human truth: We all need to be needed. There's an old but relevant perspective on life. We value ourselves by how much we can contribute to the lives of others. Still though, I'm left wondering, what combination of forces summed up to this particular writing crossing my path? Leaders need to recognize that a compassionate society must create a wealth of opportunities for meaningful work Oh, there it is. A message about the importance interpersonal relationships to self worth is co-opted and reduced to nothing more than calling on the government to make sure everyone is feeding their 40 hours into the system.
- detaro 10y ago
  "Feeding their 40 hours into the system" is the opposite of "meaningful work".
- petra 10y ago
  >> society must create a wealth of opportunities for meaningful work You could interpret this line in different ways. One is your interpretation. Another one would be: Currently, people need work to feed themselves. Why not make thier job meaningful(and good for the human spirit), instead of, say the work at the factory(meaningless and negative for the human spirit), which there are many like it ? In fact , this could be an interesting use of automation. Or another way: many people do benefit from a good structure in their lives, not everybody is a self motivated entrepreneur or software developer like found here . Why not, together, think of such structures ?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- komali2 10y ago
  I don't understand how "meaningful work," when the Dalai Lama says it, means "40 hours into the system." My understanding of Buddhism is "meaningful work" or "meaning" can be slaving away 60 hours a week at your own company, sitting on concrete tinkering away at a motorcycle, or even living on a mountain shaving your head and relinquishing all possessions. The idea is to "find meaning," that is, only do things that for you are important and for you give you a sense of purpose.
trynumber9 10y ago
"In America today, compared with 50 years ago, three times as many working-age men are completely outside the work" I was taught that work is one of only two uses for a man. That other being a good father. It must be wrong but it is an unshakable thought. I can't imagine how I would hate myself if I couldn't provide. This fear, even though I have no dependents, is far greater than my fear of being unneeded. Maybe it's different for other people.
- angryredblock 10y ago
  I wasn't explicitly taught this - but as someone with no dependents, I relate quite strongly to this.
- fernandotakai 10y ago
  > I can't imagine how I would hate myself if I couldn't provide. This fear, even though I have no dependents, is far greater than my fear of being unneeded. it's one, if not the biggest, fear of my life. my wife is a college student and a housewife (college is different in brazil, it's not fulltime like in the us). not being able to provide would mean we would suffer a bit. i have a recurrent dream where i go look at my bank account/savings and it's zeroed, meaning i can't pay our bills. i always wake up really freaking scared.
  - kilroy123 10y ago
    God that sounds horrible.
- blackoil 10y ago
  this fear drives you to save more. My parent's generation had large saving and near 0 debt(except house) because of the fear of loosing. As the society advances, like I believe in Scandinavian country, the risk of not being able to provide food, health, education to kids and family goes down. This alleviates the fear and allows people to take more risk and still a happier life.
- orasis 10y ago
  So few men vocalize this fear. I lost a brother-in-law to suicide because of this. Thank you for sharing this.
carsongross 10y ago
Any analysis of anxiety that does not distinguish between males and females is going to be extremely hamstrung. Each half of the species has very different socio-biological failure modes.
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  Is anxiety a failure mode? Or is it somehow exactly what's needed to tell us that something's missing?
  - carsongross 10y ago
    The distinct failure modes being the source of anxieties.
debt 10y ago
to be fair though, if you're feeling severe anxiety you should go see a doctor. i've been seeing a lot of articles on hn lately that are like "just think your way into a good mood yay" or "heres arbitrary reason for how you feel etc" when we all know there's many environmental or genetic factors that play into how our minds develop. maybe it's the fear of the being unneeded or maybe if you have anxiety you should talk to someone or it's likely both.
- wozer 10y ago
  "Severe anxiety" was probably not the best choice of words. I believe from a Buddhist perspective, anxiety is a pretty basic thing, i.e. it is considered the normal state of the not-yet-enlightened person.
orasis 10y ago
This is the big missing piece with basic income: People need meaning in their lives as much as they need money.
- jordanlev 10y ago
  I am not very knowledgable about basic income and don't (yet) have a strong opinion one way or the other on it. But, in my understanding, the idea is that not having to worry about meeting one's basic needs then frees them up to do things that are more meaningful with their lives. As a gainfully-employed programmer, this doesn't really fit my current life situation (because there is bountiful well-paying work that is fulfilling to me)... but I can understand how people who are not in as fortunate a situation might have to sacrifice a lot of time and energy towards unfulfilling jobs which leave them without the ability to pursue more meaningful goals. Maybe, maybe not... but certainly worth some experimentation.
- iza 10y ago
  Personally I do not feel my job adds meaning to my life. In fact it deprives me of the time and energy to pursue the meaningful things I actually want to do.
  - tempodox 10y ago
    I have a similar view (although protestant work ethics would probably disagree), and while a basic income will not provide meaning (nor is it supposed to), “primum edere deinde philosophari” is still true. Any pursuit of meaning would be literally meaningless if we go hungry every day.
- white-flame 10y ago
  Meaning has next to nothing to do with income and sustenance. Problems with those can easily distract you from the very concept of stepping back and looking at meaning to your life. Excess of those can be their own burden as well. Some sort of basic income really doesn't change much at all, besides helping to remove distractions from the destitute to be freer to pursuing meaning.
NTDF9 10y ago
Anecdotally, I've been thinking about this. "Being needed" is can also be looked at as "having a sense of purpose". Today, the only "Sense of purpose" is wealth accumulation and debt reduction. There is very little we can do with: - Family (marriages, divorces are way too high)..not permanent - Community (everyone lives in distant houses and neighbors change frequently)..not permanent - Kids (nobody can afford one), parents (either divorced, separated or in an old-age home)--not permanent - Friends (too little time to socialize, too much competition, competing with the Joneses, too much changing locations, hard to make new ones)...not permanent There is very little satisfaction in fighting for the above because NO effort to above leads to PERMANENT satisfaction (except maybe wealth). Therefore, demotivating any real sense of purpose for anything besides digits on your online accounts...which really isn't the same as "being needed".
- tempodox 10y ago
  As to your “not permanent” points: The realisation that the only constant in life is inconstancy goes back to at least 17th century. It's part of the human condition.
- xherberta 10y ago
  In my experience wealthy people != satisfied people. Take heart! Plenty of marriages do endure. Community does exist. People can and do find joy and meaning in raising kids on paltry incomes. Friendship is possible! Relationships can be more satisfying when you drop the expectation that your efforts will be reciprocated. Giving can be its own reward.
xherberta 10y ago
Yes, the poorest among us are materially well-off, by any historical comparison. Yet the article speaks to how we're doing psychologically and spiritually. It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. Trump has gotten this far by stirring up rust belt fears of human obsolescence. Less-educated white males are seeing their place in society disappear. If you don't think "the rest of us" have to care about that, wait and see the response as autonomous vehicles take out the trucking industry. Even if Trump loses this time, the same underlying sentiments will produce more Trump-y candidates in the future, unless something can be done to create real change and ways for all sorts of people to be active and valued participants in our society. It's important to recognize the pain and suffering behind the fear of being unneeded. Interesting questions abound: If prescription anti-depressants worked, wouldn't Americans be the happiest people ever? We already know behavioral advertising changes one's perception of oneself -- does that shift affect well being? What's the psychological cost of commodifying one's special moments as social media posts? How do we engage undocumented kids who feel sidelined by the lack of paths toward rewarding careers? How do our attitudes toward birth, death, and caring for the very young and very old work against well-being? Why do we measure economic health of our country without reference to the distribution of ownership of capital? (We carefully measure the number of wage slaves, but who's measuring the number of people who own productive enterprises? Stocks are too far removed from "productivity" and shouldn't count.)
- sparky_z 10y ago
  > If prescription anti-depressants worked, wouldn't Americans be the happiest people ever? Just like depression is more complicated than "not happy enough", anti-depressants are more complicated than "drugs that make people happier".
- kordless 10y ago
  > It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. You are speaking for the Dalai Lama's intent with this blaming statement. "Glib" is Germanic and means "slippery". And while only he can speak to whether he is being slippery or not with his words, given the words themselves do not blame I doubt that is the case here. However, the Dalai Lama is likely attempting to double bind readers, which means a polarized view of his words will manifest if the readers themselves are deep in dissonance. In other words, it's your own doing speaking for others and ask leading questions as a result of digesting his "opinion". For example, if prescription and anti-depressants "worked", that would imply we all agree to what "worked" meant together. We don't, which is part of the situation in the US and with comments that blame. Trump has gotten as far as he has because a good number of people are allowing Trump to speak for them and their own internal dissonance with blanket blaming statements that are in direct conflict with reality and can only be "solved" by breaking reality "out here". America does not need to be great again because being "great" is a transitory trait. Things don't become great because we want them to be great. Great just happens as a result of everything coming together in a holistic (and efficient) solution. Humans will continue seek to solve their dissonance in a cost effective manner, but ultimately it is on each of us to solve our own dissonance without being judged for our inability to do so OR told how to solve it. We all have dissonance, and it's the internal acceptance of that dissonance, or sin for you Christians, that will allow us to break it. That's a big challenge today given software makes just about everything more efficient. I think we've found it more convenient to lean on others options with these new found inefficiencies. The Dalai Lama suggestions are wise, given we'll continue to struggle to find meaning in a world with less jobs and more judgement. BTW, it's my belief that the affects we are seeing with today's societies are related to the ones we experience in architecting private and public cloud services.
sekou 10y ago
A question that comes to mind: What is the future of "meaningful work" If technology is poised to render sustenance-based work obsolete? The utopian idea is societies where education, arts and entertainment are what we consider to be "work." It's something that's been talked about since the industrial revolution, but assuming it's a multi-generational shift how do we set course to ensure a sense of well being in the human species?
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  This is such a good point! I have a feeling industrial based societies will automate themselves out of relevance. Because those who are bored will just find things for themselves to do anyway. Crafts, cooking, gardening etc, stuff people did before the industrial revolution. In some ways it's the end of the treadmill and we'll be back at square one.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    > In some ways it's the end of the treadmill and we'll be back at square one. Well, there's something to be said about a peaceful, physically healthier, longer lived, and better nourished humanity. Even if it all boils back down to cooking, cleaning, maintaining the homestead, and taking care of the family in the end.
the8472 10y ago
if you have paywall issues: https://archive.fo/yBrfC https://archive.fo/yBrfC
habosa 10y ago
There is a lot of discussion on HN (in this thread and in many others) about what we will do when technology replaces a significant fraction of our jobs. People are talking about a 10%, 50%, or even 99% reduction in the workforce size due to technological advances (mostly AI). I totally reject the conclusion that the workforce will be significantly reduced by any imminent technology. Look at humans throughout history. We have continuously invented ways to automate (or nearly automate) away the labor behind our needs and desires, but people have been working 40+ hour weeks since the industrial revolution. It seems that our wants and needs advance as quickly, or even more quickly, than our ability to meet them with technology. I think a good analogy (for this crowd) is personal computing. Every year our computers get much faster, yet the overall "speed" of the experience remains about the same. Why? Because as soon as we get our hands on a new CPU we go and write a program that requires more CPU power, rather than simply watching our old programs run faster. I don't think there is anyone out there running Netscape on Windows XP on top of a brand new Intel Processor with 32GB of RAM. I think we are being a combination of overconfident and unimaginative when we think we are on the brink of a technological utopia where DeepMind AI does our job for us. We are unable to imagine the wants we will have in the future. This is by definition, if we could imagine them we'd have already started working towards them! I will present a concrete example, one that's overused but still effective. Consider the smartphone. This is a device that is pocketable, affordable to ~50% of the world's population, and can answer nearly any factual query in seconds. I think if you had told someone in the 90s about that they would assume we'd have vastly more leisure time. We'd have fired all the librarians, replaced the teachers with machines, and our children could complete 12 years of education at home in a fraction of the time. But of course this is not what happened. In fact we created more work for ourselves, I bet half the people in this thread are employed by a company that makes software for smartphones. We didn't know we'd want 100 apps and games on each phone, but now that we're here we won't easily give them up. I don't mean any of the above to sound negative. This is a wonderful thing! This infinite cycle of desire is what has driven us to this point and is what will drive us into the future. But the one negative consequence (in my opinion) is that humans will not soon be a leisurely species. We will keep busy, and we will keep inventing things to busy ourselves with.
- Pamar 10y ago
ChefDenominator 10y ago
I have asked almost everyone I know if they have a subscription to: nytimes.com wsj.com forbes.com Guess what? I don't even have any minor acquaintances with subscriptions to these sites. So how come every single aggregator that I visit has articles from these sites commonly among the top and featured positions?
- sctb 10y ago
  Please stop reposting this. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989.
  - ChefDenominator 10y ago
    Can you please quote from my above comment the part where paywalls are discussed?
  - ChefDenominator 10y ago
    Didn't think so.
cossatot 10y ago
It's an interesting source. Tibetan society pre-1940s (most recent Chinese invasion) was incredibly feudal. The Dalai Lama was the top of the feudal society, both monarch and high priest. I've spent a bit of time in Tibet, and the Tibetans dearly love the current Dalai Lama. Now, maybe he's an exception for reasons of being a leader in exile, and a general scholar and nice guy. But I wonder, in most feudal societies, do the serfs feel needed by their societies and their monarchs?
blueprint 10y ago
Not necessarily. For most people, yes. But for those with eyes open the anxiety and agony is that our solutions are needed but that we cannot enlighten human societies. The best we seem to be able to do is either fund activities on our own or find those who have kept themselves true enough to be able to understand, recognize, correctly learn, and practice truths. But it's difficult to find those who want to know, so while valuable, this way is quite arduous and lonely. The Dalai Lama may talk about western psychology's abandonment and bonding conditions, but he has not wanted to meet even me as I know the one truth that he has not been able to realize even half of one of Buddha's teachings.
MattyRad 10y ago
This is a refreshing and useful article in light of the upcoming election and political fallout. It's a reminder that the world, despite the media/politics, is getting better and better, and consequently the need for human labor is decreasing. The Dalai Lama doesn't offer any answers, only recognition of the "problem" and hope that we can collectively find a solution. It's especially important for us as the very people who are actively trying to make human labor obsolete. As a generally libertarian minded person, I find this is a very compelling article for compassion in a relentlessly utilitarian society.
zappo2938 10y ago
I Want You To Want Me [0]. Some of us just want to love and be loved. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw-PVwBU9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw-PVwBU9k
IllusoryReverb 10y ago
I am not certain the author of the article has identified the true cause/root of the problem. To me, the need to be needed is certainly important, but, I do not think that that need is the true cause of the anxiety described in the article. The way the western world has reacted to immigration and socio-political landscape currently obtaining is not well explained by the need to be needed as explained in the article. To me, the need to be needed/fear of being unneeded takes a back seat to the idea of 'other'. The otherness of the migrants, of the new persons, the lack of 'connection' with them certinly is a better explanation than the feeling of being superflous. My view is that if we, as humanity in general, could only see each other first as individuals and secondly as persons with intrinsic worth - basically treat each other as we would a treasured member of our family, their troubles with the same sense urgency with which we would treat our close friend, brother, sister in the exact same circumstances, then the world would be a better place for all. But, it feels like this is naïve, not 'realistic' or 'practical' there is too much standing in the way, at least thats what it looks like to me when I attempt to do so. It gets overwhelming, emotionally anyway. To me, behind our anxiety, as humans, is the fear of what would happen if we truly saw others as though they were ourselves. Really and truly. I am not sure we can do so, because we would realize just how fucked up the world was. I for one would rather not, the shame, fear is too much. I would rather build a wall and tell myself there is not much I can do, I do not have enough to help, I would be disregarding my responsibilities. But I know the truth. I am just scared.
white-flame 10y ago
These problems and anxieties stem from a belief that things are unfair. Be it racial biases, economic disparity, or policing offensiveness, many of these complaints boil down to this: In such a "modern" society, shouldn't we be finally past these problems? Why does it look like they're getting worse?* People contrast the problems they face against the positive strides they see elsewhere, and it foments an us-vs-them mentality, projects a "f- you, got mine" on the positives, and increases outlooks of entitlement. This is a continually escalating and divisive cultural cancer that's erupting. However, it has little to do with feeling "unneeded" (though obviously in the lost jobs cases that's mixed in), but rather more of people feeling actively antagonized. It's a mess. (* answer: greater information flow and media that profits from outrage)
humanrebar 10y ago
It's odd to see this sort of philosophy/theology posted on here, but since the subject was broached, from the article: > Virtually all the world’s major religions teach that diligent work in the service of others is our highest nature and thus lies at the center of a happy life. Actually, Ecclesiastes (great read for all philosophy geeks) is a long discourse of happiness, the point of life, etc. Its final conclusion was: > Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. The core of Judeo-Christian theology is the supremacy of God and trust that following His instructions is the best way to live the best possible life. Of course there is a lot of teaching about how to care for others, and there's a lot of teaching against selfishness, but that is the result of following a good God, not the point in itself. Ecclesiastes actually brings up charity as wise, but falls far short of saying it's the point of life. It points out that there's limits to human knowledge. In my wording, help people, because that could be you tomorrow, but the person you save from a fire today could drown tomorrow. You'd need to be able to see the future to utterly help someone, and only God has that kind of foresight. So if you trust that God exists and is good, you should obey His teachings. > Indeed, what unites the two of us in friendship and collaboration is not shared politics or the same religion. It is something simpler: a shared belief in compassion, in human dignity, in the intrinsic usefulness of every person to contribute positively for a better and more meaningful world. I'm eager to collaborate productively with everyone. But if you're interested in being my friend, you need to understand where I come from. I value human life because mankind was made in the image of God (imagao dei). My eagerness to give human compassion, dignity, and usefulness another shot grows out of my trust in God and his teachings that say to do just that. But I do that in spite of the track record of humanity, not because I have faith in what humans will do in the future. Who knows the future? There's a bit of an "all religions are the same" meme out there, and it's important to correct it, especially when respectable people repeat it.
slimypickle 10y ago
The comments in here remind me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 Eric Schmidt takes the side a lot of people here take, which is "everything is getting better", and Peter Thiel takes the other side, that things aren't getting better. I don't think things are getting better at all. You can easily just use your own metrics and then come to the conclusion that everything is getting better. The problem is, your metrics are bullshit so you are coming to the wrong conclusion. I have seen all kinds of metrics used in here like "don't have to hunt", "live longer", "safer", "can watch netflix". I don't think any of these things have to do with whether or not people's lives are getting better. You can just take one of those metrics - "live longer", and see that in itself, it can't measure "getting better", because you can live for 80 years and have a terrible life, or have 60 years of an excellent life. I think people in silicon valley are just completely clueless and are making the wrong bet, which is why they never see things like Trump coming. Things aren't getting better and people know it.
justratsinacoat 10y ago
Article is about modern human psychological well-being; comments are about how materially satisfied modern (Western) humanity is, so what's the fucking problem, gosh!? The best part is the latter doesn't actually discount the former, it just trivializes its importance. Oh HN, never change.

341 points by applecore 10y ago

neves 10y ago

I'd like to read everyday articles like these. We are drowned in hateful speech. Would feel better reading something like it.

pcmaffey 10y ago
medium.com
- JBReefer 10y ago
  "Medium: Growth hacking your way into SF gentrification."
hypertexthero 10y ago
As a counter to hate I recommend anything by Jiddu Krishnamurti, especially Think on These Things and The First and Last Freedom.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Kenji 10y ago

And although all the world’s major faiths teach love That's not what I see when I look into the holy books. Let's be frank here, faith and religion are still the tools to turn ordinary people into genocidal maniacs.

jlj 10y ago
You are confusing religion used for political and self-serving means, with the selflessness teachings that are common with many holy books including Buddhism and Christianity. It is humans that corrupt religion when we want to be gods or worship and obsess about the wrong idols.
brightball 10y ago
sigh Which "holy books"?
hx87 10y ago
Religions are more than their holy books. The Old Testatment preaches a hateful and parochial worldview, but the vast majority of Jews and Christians are perfectly normal human beings.
komali2 10y ago
I know what you mean (turning someone into a pillar of salt, killing infidels, etc), but there's a stark difference between the "tenants" of a religion and the single books that drive them. Hence why there's a million different flavors of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc - they all take their given "book" and interpret it differently. If you generalize Jesus' teachings, they're hard to argue as immoral - be good to your fellow man, abandon your earthly possessions, wash the feet of another because he is your fellow, stuff like that. Anyway my point is, a tool is just a tool to be used as you will. Religious texts can be used to bring people together or start a war, obviously - just look at the current shitstorm surrounding "radical islamic terrorism." There are over a billion Muslims in the world, 99.99% of whom live peaceful lives - and a small percentage are convinced to turn their religion into an ugly justification for bloodshed. No religion is immune to this.
- jacalata 10y ago
  /s/tenants/tenets
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > If you generalize Jesus' teachings, they're hard to argue as immoral - be good to your fellow man, abandon your earthly possessions, wash the feet of another because he is your fellow, stuff like that. Well, Jesus generalized his own teachings like this, quoting the scriptures of his time, in the gospel of Matthew: > “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” If God doesn't exist or isn't a good God, then it's not hard to argue that following Him could be immoral and teaching people to follow Him is surely immoral. And that's speaking as a Christian. Paul even wrote, "...if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.... If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." > Anyway my point is, a tool is just a tool to be used as you will. This point is well taken, though I would rephrase it. People take all sorts of things and then change them to suit their purposes. Jesus himself railed against this sort of thing, calling religious hypocrites "vipers" and "whitewashed tombs". > No religion is immune to this. Well, certain religions are certainly against this sort of thing. I'd argue that someone who has taken Jainism, say, and added violence, they've invented a new religion and stolen (and corrupted) the word "Jainism". This sort of thing has happened to Christianity for 2000 years. There's no copyright on the word. Just like a hacker can do whatever, say he's from Anonymous, and everyone takes that assertion on face value.

SeriousM 10y ago

Thank you for the paywall link

hellogoodbyeeee 10y ago
Click the "web" button under it, then select the result from the Google search
- flipp3r 10y ago
  Did you actually try this yourself? It presents a login page for me when I do this.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Incognito mode worked for me.
    - thisisandyok 10y ago
      Me too, thanks for mentioning that
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  This works much less well, for many people. For NY Times, the fact that I have non-persistent cookies as a Firefox extension helps greatly. For other sites (WSJ especially) I've got to jump through several more hoops. Given that the goal on HN is discussion of the article, and that the workarounds aren't evident or foolproof, this is a consistent pain point. And simply using the "web" button does not consistently work. You should be aware of this.

quickben 10y ago

Paywalled hard. Direct link, web>google, etc. See I think Dalai Lama is wrong in this case; behind my current anxiety is mainly the fear that soon, all HN subs will be paywalled :) On an unrelated subject: isn't this supposed to be penalized by Google? Different content for their bot vs human users?

AvenueIngres 10y ago
Here is a link: https://archive.fo/Ro6Vc https://archive.fo/Ro6Vc
axit 10y ago
Incognito worked for me
- quickben 10y ago
  Oh, thanks.
kerneltime 10y ago
Or in other words free readers will be unneeded/unwanted by quality content...

AvenueIngres 10y ago

Tibetan bigots need to accept Han Chinese refugees. Period. To solve this issue, a response must be found and applied at an individual level so we can calm their fear of not being needed anymore. Of course, the cultural genocide thing is just a pretext they are using because they don't like Han Chinese. "We need to build bridges. Not walls." - Isaac Newton

sjclemmy 10y ago

It's odd, the world is the safest and most stable that it has ever been. There has never been a better time to be a human being, and yet, the media and certain politicians would have you believe that there is disaster after disaster, terrorist plots afoot around every corner, feeding your fear day after day. If ever there was an example of the devil at work, then that's it(and I'm not even religious). Uncertainty about the future has always been the same. Don't listen to those devils.

shp0ngle 10y ago
If you are rich and already in the top class, then maybe. But it's not terribly good for the middle class.
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  If you are rich and already in the middle class, then maybe. But it's not terribly good for the poor class. ... Don't let wealth create unneeded divides. When you enter the mindset of "us vs. them" you will always be unhappy. Edit: I grew up in a very poor community and our family yearly income was well under the poverty line (20,209 in Canada). The middle class has always been the richest people in the world for me. Now that I am part of it, I don't feel rich at all. However, I know that I am lucky. It's question of perception. Don't let them divide and conquer you for political gains.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    While I agree you should try to be content with what you have, there's nothing wrong with aspiring to more. The middle class is being eroded away leaving us with a much larger group of have nots, and an increasingly hard to enter group of haves. I wouldn't have a problem with this except a lot of the haves are in that group via genetic lottery, nothing that they actually did or earned.
    - greendragon 10y ago
      If genetics determines all, then we should sort people to tasks best suited for their genetics. Ashkenazi Jew? Work on advancing gene therapy and retroviruses so humans now and in the future can be freed from genetic determinism. European? Build civilization. African? Physical labor/sports. East Asian? Also build civilization. To each is given the minimum necessary to do their genetically determined purpose, ignoring any abstract "human" needs for all. Surplus is captured by the State and hoarded, some used to incentivize the Jews to have more children since their problem is the most important. Eventually the Jews will succeed and no one will have any excuses anymore. That's not a world I'd like to live in. But it would solve you having a problem with inequality. Or maybe you just need a different perspective to not put so much into genetic determinism in the first place.

dschiptsov 10y ago

That's gross oversimplification for western amateur audiences. His Holiness is trying to speak the language of common western consumer. Behind our anxiety is ignorance. Period. Ignorance is described as a veil that obscures the view of what is from so-called primordial awareness or Atman, if you wish - the aspect of the whole (Brahman) in us. (The Buddha explicitly rejected the notion of Atman, but numerous later Indian (tantric) writers messed everything up). It is like continuous day-dreaming. The meaning of Awakening is literal awakening from this habitual delusional day-dreaming to what is. Most of our fears are due to misapprehension of reality, like classic mistaking of a rope for a snake, and our attaching to (and hence the fear of losing) that illusory my self, which is nothing, but an appearance to ignorant and confused introspection. This crude formulation is as old as Upanishads.

hosh 10y ago
I agree. Hard not to when practicing insight leads to those same conclusions. Having said that, I think this perspective is worth examining. I usually find an example of the emotional energy and start probing it to see if it holds up -- that is to say, do I really sense a fear whose encoded story is 'to not be needed'? How does that flow? Maybe it is there and maybe it isn't. This is a different perspective, also interesting and worth examining: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...
jessaustin 10y ago
It isn't surprising that comfortable pop psychology is more welcome on the NYT opinion pages than esoteric theology.
- dschiptsov 10y ago
  There is no known contradiction of original Buddha's doctrine with modern evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The modern notions of Cognitive Dissonance, cognitive biases, framing effects and modern western philosophy of mind only supports Buddha's views. The only applicable critique is that original Buddhist doctrine is too general and allows flexible interpretations, nevertheless lots of scholars would maintain that Buddha's approach is one of the earliest attempts of systematic study of the mind using an imperfect method of introspection (famous Upanishadic neti neti doctrine is, perhaps, the earliest known to us), leaving validation of the insights to everyone who wished to follow the same path. Buddha's investigation into the nature of reality and mind, which obscures it, is qualified for philosophy - precursor of modern sciences, not a religion (there is literally nothing to be saved). Theology has been developed by various competing sects hundreds of years later.

ChefDenominator 10y ago

I have asked almost everyone I know if they have a subscription to: nytimes.com wsj.com forbes.com Guess what? I don't even have any minor acquaintances with subscriptions to these sites. So how come every single aggregator that I visit has articles from these sites commonly among the top and featured positions?

ChefDenominator 10y ago
Well how about that: an instant down-vote!
- komali2 10y ago
  It's not going to help if you bring up downvotes, check the site rules.
  - ChefDenominator 10y ago
    There is nothing special, unique, or new in those rules. I don't care abut Internet points and am well aware of the standard Internet community circle-jerk echo chamber, and HN is no exception.
tspike 10y ago
Because, in the case of the first two, they are offering some of the only real journalism that remains. The latter is just fantastically adept at churning out gobs of clickbait.
- ChefDenominator 10y ago
  The term "real" is subjective.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dcosson 10y ago

forgottenpass 10y ago

For as prolific as he is, the Dalai Lama doesn't pop up on my radar much. But here he is in the NY Times opinion pages sharing monism. This speaks to a broader human truth: We all need to be needed. There's an old but relevant perspective on life. We value ourselves by how much we can contribute to the lives of others. Still though, I'm left wondering, what combination of forces summed up to this particular writing crossing my path? Leaders need to recognize that a compassionate society must create a wealth of opportunities for meaningful work Oh, there it is. A message about the importance interpersonal relationships to self worth is co-opted and reduced to nothing more than calling on the government to make sure everyone is feeding their 40 hours into the system.

detaro 10y ago
"Feeding their 40 hours into the system" is the opposite of "meaningful work".
petra 10y ago
>> society must create a wealth of opportunities for meaningful work You could interpret this line in different ways. One is your interpretation. Another one would be: Currently, people need work to feed themselves. Why not make thier job meaningful(and good for the human spirit), instead of, say the work at the factory(meaningless and negative for the human spirit), which there are many like it ? In fact , this could be an interesting use of automation. Or another way: many people do benefit from a good structure in their lives, not everybody is a self motivated entrepreneur or software developer like found here . Why not, together, think of such structures ?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
komali2 10y ago
I don't understand how "meaningful work," when the Dalai Lama says it, means "40 hours into the system." My understanding of Buddhism is "meaningful work" or "meaning" can be slaving away 60 hours a week at your own company, sitting on concrete tinkering away at a motorcycle, or even living on a mountain shaving your head and relinquishing all possessions. The idea is to "find meaning," that is, only do things that for you are important and for you give you a sense of purpose.

trynumber9 10y ago

"In America today, compared with 50 years ago, three times as many working-age men are completely outside the work" I was taught that work is one of only two uses for a man. That other being a good father. It must be wrong but it is an unshakable thought. I can't imagine how I would hate myself if I couldn't provide. This fear, even though I have no dependents, is far greater than my fear of being unneeded. Maybe it's different for other people.

angryredblock 10y ago
I wasn't explicitly taught this - but as someone with no dependents, I relate quite strongly to this.
fernandotakai 10y ago
> I can't imagine how I would hate myself if I couldn't provide. This fear, even though I have no dependents, is far greater than my fear of being unneeded. it's one, if not the biggest, fear of my life. my wife is a college student and a housewife (college is different in brazil, it's not fulltime like in the us). not being able to provide would mean we would suffer a bit. i have a recurrent dream where i go look at my bank account/savings and it's zeroed, meaning i can't pay our bills. i always wake up really freaking scared.
- kilroy123 10y ago
  God that sounds horrible.
blackoil 10y ago
this fear drives you to save more. My parent's generation had large saving and near 0 debt(except house) because of the fear of loosing. As the society advances, like I believe in Scandinavian country, the risk of not being able to provide food, health, education to kids and family goes down. This alleviates the fear and allows people to take more risk and still a happier life.
orasis 10y ago
So few men vocalize this fear. I lost a brother-in-law to suicide because of this. Thank you for sharing this.

carsongross 10y ago

Any analysis of anxiety that does not distinguish between males and females is going to be extremely hamstrung. Each half of the species has very different socio-biological failure modes.

pc2g4d 10y ago
Is anxiety a failure mode? Or is it somehow exactly what's needed to tell us that something's missing?
- carsongross 10y ago
  The distinct failure modes being the source of anxieties.

debt 10y ago

to be fair though, if you're feeling severe anxiety you should go see a doctor. i've been seeing a lot of articles on hn lately that are like "just think your way into a good mood yay" or "heres arbitrary reason for how you feel etc" when we all know there's many environmental or genetic factors that play into how our minds develop. maybe it's the fear of the being unneeded or maybe if you have anxiety you should talk to someone or it's likely both.

wozer 10y ago
"Severe anxiety" was probably not the best choice of words. I believe from a Buddhist perspective, anxiety is a pretty basic thing, i.e. it is considered the normal state of the not-yet-enlightened person.

orasis 10y ago

This is the big missing piece with basic income: People need meaning in their lives as much as they need money.

jordanlev 10y ago
I am not very knowledgable about basic income and don't (yet) have a strong opinion one way or the other on it. But, in my understanding, the idea is that not having to worry about meeting one's basic needs then frees them up to do things that are more meaningful with their lives. As a gainfully-employed programmer, this doesn't really fit my current life situation (because there is bountiful well-paying work that is fulfilling to me)... but I can understand how people who are not in as fortunate a situation might have to sacrifice a lot of time and energy towards unfulfilling jobs which leave them without the ability to pursue more meaningful goals. Maybe, maybe not... but certainly worth some experimentation.
iza 10y ago
Personally I do not feel my job adds meaning to my life. In fact it deprives me of the time and energy to pursue the meaningful things I actually want to do.
- tempodox 10y ago
  I have a similar view (although protestant work ethics would probably disagree), and while a basic income will not provide meaning (nor is it supposed to), “primum edere deinde philosophari” is still true. Any pursuit of meaning would be literally meaningless if we go hungry every day.
white-flame 10y ago
Meaning has next to nothing to do with income and sustenance. Problems with those can easily distract you from the very concept of stepping back and looking at meaning to your life. Excess of those can be their own burden as well. Some sort of basic income really doesn't change much at all, besides helping to remove distractions from the destitute to be freer to pursuing meaning.

NTDF9 10y ago

Anecdotally, I've been thinking about this. "Being needed" is can also be looked at as "having a sense of purpose". Today, the only "Sense of purpose" is wealth accumulation and debt reduction. There is very little we can do with: - Family (marriages, divorces are way too high)..not permanent - Community (everyone lives in distant houses and neighbors change frequently)..not permanent - Kids (nobody can afford one), parents (either divorced, separated or in an old-age home)--not permanent - Friends (too little time to socialize, too much competition, competing with the Joneses, too much changing locations, hard to make new ones)...not permanent There is very little satisfaction in fighting for the above because NO effort to above leads to PERMANENT satisfaction (except maybe wealth). Therefore, demotivating any real sense of purpose for anything besides digits on your online accounts...which really isn't the same as "being needed".

tempodox 10y ago
As to your “not permanent” points: The realisation that the only constant in life is inconstancy goes back to at least 17th century. It's part of the human condition.
xherberta 10y ago
In my experience wealthy people != satisfied people. Take heart! Plenty of marriages do endure. Community does exist. People can and do find joy and meaning in raising kids on paltry incomes. Friendship is possible! Relationships can be more satisfying when you drop the expectation that your efforts will be reciprocated. Giving can be its own reward.

xherberta 10y ago

Yes, the poorest among us are materially well-off, by any historical comparison. Yet the article speaks to how we're doing psychologically and spiritually. It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. Trump has gotten this far by stirring up rust belt fears of human obsolescence. Less-educated white males are seeing their place in society disappear. If you don't think "the rest of us" have to care about that, wait and see the response as autonomous vehicles take out the trucking industry. Even if Trump loses this time, the same underlying sentiments will produce more Trump-y candidates in the future, unless something can be done to create real change and ways for all sorts of people to be active and valued participants in our society. It's important to recognize the pain and suffering behind the fear of being unneeded. Interesting questions abound: If prescription anti-depressants worked, wouldn't Americans be the happiest people ever? We already know behavioral advertising changes one's perception of oneself -- does that shift affect well being? What's the psychological cost of commodifying one's special moments as social media posts? How do we engage undocumented kids who feel sidelined by the lack of paths toward rewarding careers? How do our attitudes toward birth, death, and caring for the very young and very old work against well-being? Why do we measure economic health of our country without reference to the distribution of ownership of capital? (We carefully measure the number of wage slaves, but who's measuring the number of people who own productive enterprises? Stocks are too far removed from "productivity" and shouldn't count.)

sparky_z 10y ago
> If prescription anti-depressants worked, wouldn't Americans be the happiest people ever? Just like depression is more complicated than "not happy enough", anti-depressants are more complicated than "drugs that make people happier".
kordless 10y ago
> It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. You are speaking for the Dalai Lama's intent with this blaming statement. "Glib" is Germanic and means "slippery". And while only he can speak to whether he is being slippery or not with his words, given the words themselves do not blame I doubt that is the case here. However, the Dalai Lama is likely attempting to double bind readers, which means a polarized view of his words will manifest if the readers themselves are deep in dissonance. In other words, it's your own doing speaking for others and ask leading questions as a result of digesting his "opinion". For example, if prescription and anti-depressants "worked", that would imply we all agree to what "worked" meant together. We don't, which is part of the situation in the US and with comments that blame. Trump has gotten as far as he has because a good number of people are allowing Trump to speak for them and their own internal dissonance with blanket blaming statements that are in direct conflict with reality and can only be "solved" by breaking reality "out here". America does not need to be great again because being "great" is a transitory trait. Things don't become great because we want them to be great. Great just happens as a result of everything coming together in a holistic (and efficient) solution. Humans will continue seek to solve their dissonance in a cost effective manner, but ultimately it is on each of us to solve our own dissonance without being judged for our inability to do so OR told how to solve it. We all have dissonance, and it's the internal acceptance of that dissonance, or sin for you Christians, that will allow us to break it. That's a big challenge today given software makes just about everything more efficient. I think we've found it more convenient to lean on others options with these new found inefficiencies. The Dalai Lama suggestions are wise, given we'll continue to struggle to find meaning in a world with less jobs and more judgement. BTW, it's my belief that the affects we are seeing with today's societies are related to the ones we experience in architecting private and public cloud services.

sekou 10y ago

A question that comes to mind: What is the future of "meaningful work" If technology is poised to render sustenance-based work obsolete? The utopian idea is societies where education, arts and entertainment are what we consider to be "work." It's something that's been talked about since the industrial revolution, but assuming it's a multi-generational shift how do we set course to ensure a sense of well being in the human species?

pmyjavec 10y ago
This is such a good point! I have a feeling industrial based societies will automate themselves out of relevance. Because those who are bored will just find things for themselves to do anyway. Crafts, cooking, gardening etc, stuff people did before the industrial revolution. In some ways it's the end of the treadmill and we'll be back at square one.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > In some ways it's the end of the treadmill and we'll be back at square one. Well, there's something to be said about a peaceful, physically healthier, longer lived, and better nourished humanity. Even if it all boils back down to cooking, cleaning, maintaining the homestead, and taking care of the family in the end.

the8472 10y ago

if you have paywall issues: https://archive.fo/yBrfC https://archive.fo/yBrfC

habosa 10y ago

There is a lot of discussion on HN (in this thread and in many others) about what we will do when technology replaces a significant fraction of our jobs. People are talking about a 10%, 50%, or even 99% reduction in the workforce size due to technological advances (mostly AI). I totally reject the conclusion that the workforce will be significantly reduced by any imminent technology. Look at humans throughout history. We have continuously invented ways to automate (or nearly automate) away the labor behind our needs and desires, but people have been working 40+ hour weeks since the industrial revolution. It seems that our wants and needs advance as quickly, or even more quickly, than our ability to meet them with technology. I think a good analogy (for this crowd) is personal computing. Every year our computers get much faster, yet the overall "speed" of the experience remains about the same. Why? Because as soon as we get our hands on a new CPU we go and write a program that requires more CPU power, rather than simply watching our old programs run faster. I don't think there is anyone out there running Netscape on Windows XP on top of a brand new Intel Processor with 32GB of RAM. I think we are being a combination of overconfident and unimaginative when we think we are on the brink of a technological utopia where DeepMind AI does our job for us. We are unable to imagine the wants we will have in the future. This is by definition, if we could imagine them we'd have already started working towards them! I will present a concrete example, one that's overused but still effective. Consider the smartphone. This is a device that is pocketable, affordable to ~50% of the world's population, and can answer nearly any factual query in seconds. I think if you had told someone in the 90s about that they would assume we'd have vastly more leisure time. We'd have fired all the librarians, replaced the teachers with machines, and our children could complete 12 years of education at home in a fraction of the time. But of course this is not what happened. In fact we created more work for ourselves, I bet half the people in this thread are employed by a company that makes software for smartphones. We didn't know we'd want 100 apps and games on each phone, but now that we're here we won't easily give them up. I don't mean any of the above to sound negative. This is a wonderful thing! This infinite cycle of desire is what has driven us to this point and is what will drive us into the future. But the one negative consequence (in my opinion) is that humans will not soon be a leisurely species. We will keep busy, and we will keep inventing things to busy ourselves with.

Pamar 10y ago

ChefDenominator 10y ago

sctb 10y ago
Please stop reposting this. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989.
- ChefDenominator 10y ago
  Can you please quote from my above comment the part where paywalls are discussed?
- ChefDenominator 10y ago
  Didn't think so.

cossatot 10y ago

It's an interesting source. Tibetan society pre-1940s (most recent Chinese invasion) was incredibly feudal. The Dalai Lama was the top of the feudal society, both monarch and high priest. I've spent a bit of time in Tibet, and the Tibetans dearly love the current Dalai Lama. Now, maybe he's an exception for reasons of being a leader in exile, and a general scholar and nice guy. But I wonder, in most feudal societies, do the serfs feel needed by their societies and their monarchs?

blueprint 10y ago

Not necessarily. For most people, yes. But for those with eyes open the anxiety and agony is that our solutions are needed but that we cannot enlighten human societies. The best we seem to be able to do is either fund activities on our own or find those who have kept themselves true enough to be able to understand, recognize, correctly learn, and practice truths. But it's difficult to find those who want to know, so while valuable, this way is quite arduous and lonely. The Dalai Lama may talk about western psychology's abandonment and bonding conditions, but he has not wanted to meet even me as I know the one truth that he has not been able to realize even half of one of Buddha's teachings.

MattyRad 10y ago

This is a refreshing and useful article in light of the upcoming election and political fallout. It's a reminder that the world, despite the media/politics, is getting better and better, and consequently the need for human labor is decreasing. The Dalai Lama doesn't offer any answers, only recognition of the "problem" and hope that we can collectively find a solution. It's especially important for us as the very people who are actively trying to make human labor obsolete. As a generally libertarian minded person, I find this is a very compelling article for compassion in a relentlessly utilitarian society.

zappo2938 10y ago

I Want You To Want Me [0]. Some of us just want to love and be loved. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw-PVwBU9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw-PVwBU9k

IllusoryReverb 10y ago

I am not certain the author of the article has identified the true cause/root of the problem. To me, the need to be needed is certainly important, but, I do not think that that need is the true cause of the anxiety described in the article. The way the western world has reacted to immigration and socio-political landscape currently obtaining is not well explained by the need to be needed as explained in the article. To me, the need to be needed/fear of being unneeded takes a back seat to the idea of 'other'. The otherness of the migrants, of the new persons, the lack of 'connection' with them certinly is a better explanation than the feeling of being superflous. My view is that if we, as humanity in general, could only see each other first as individuals and secondly as persons with intrinsic worth - basically treat each other as we would a treasured member of our family, their troubles with the same sense urgency with which we would treat our close friend, brother, sister in the exact same circumstances, then the world would be a better place for all. But, it feels like this is naïve, not 'realistic' or 'practical' there is too much standing in the way, at least thats what it looks like to me when I attempt to do so. It gets overwhelming, emotionally anyway. To me, behind our anxiety, as humans, is the fear of what would happen if we truly saw others as though they were ourselves. Really and truly. I am not sure we can do so, because we would realize just how fucked up the world was. I for one would rather not, the shame, fear is too much. I would rather build a wall and tell myself there is not much I can do, I do not have enough to help, I would be disregarding my responsibilities. But I know the truth. I am just scared.

white-flame 10y ago

These problems and anxieties stem from a belief that things are unfair. Be it racial biases, economic disparity, or policing offensiveness, many of these complaints boil down to this: In such a "modern" society, shouldn't we be finally past these problems? Why does it look like they're getting worse?* People contrast the problems they face against the positive strides they see elsewhere, and it foments an us-vs-them mentality, projects a "f- you, got mine" on the positives, and increases outlooks of entitlement. This is a continually escalating and divisive cultural cancer that's erupting. However, it has little to do with feeling "unneeded" (though obviously in the lost jobs cases that's mixed in), but rather more of people feeling actively antagonized. It's a mess. (* answer: greater information flow and media that profits from outrage)

humanrebar 10y ago

It's odd to see this sort of philosophy/theology posted on here, but since the subject was broached, from the article: > Virtually all the world’s major religions teach that diligent work in the service of others is our highest nature and thus lies at the center of a happy life. Actually, Ecclesiastes (great read for all philosophy geeks) is a long discourse of happiness, the point of life, etc. Its final conclusion was: > Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. The core of Judeo-Christian theology is the supremacy of God and trust that following His instructions is the best way to live the best possible life. Of course there is a lot of teaching about how to care for others, and there's a lot of teaching against selfishness, but that is the result of following a good God, not the point in itself. Ecclesiastes actually brings up charity as wise, but falls far short of saying it's the point of life. It points out that there's limits to human knowledge. In my wording, help people, because that could be you tomorrow, but the person you save from a fire today could drown tomorrow. You'd need to be able to see the future to utterly help someone, and only God has that kind of foresight. So if you trust that God exists and is good, you should obey His teachings. > Indeed, what unites the two of us in friendship and collaboration is not shared politics or the same religion. It is something simpler: a shared belief in compassion, in human dignity, in the intrinsic usefulness of every person to contribute positively for a better and more meaningful world. I'm eager to collaborate productively with everyone. But if you're interested in being my friend, you need to understand where I come from. I value human life because mankind was made in the image of God (imagao dei). My eagerness to give human compassion, dignity, and usefulness another shot grows out of my trust in God and his teachings that say to do just that. But I do that in spite of the track record of humanity, not because I have faith in what humans will do in the future. Who knows the future? There's a bit of an "all religions are the same" meme out there, and it's important to correct it, especially when respectable people repeat it.

slimypickle 10y ago

The comments in here remind me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4 Eric Schmidt takes the side a lot of people here take, which is "everything is getting better", and Peter Thiel takes the other side, that things aren't getting better. I don't think things are getting better at all. You can easily just use your own metrics and then come to the conclusion that everything is getting better. The problem is, your metrics are bullshit so you are coming to the wrong conclusion. I have seen all kinds of metrics used in here like "don't have to hunt", "live longer", "safer", "can watch netflix". I don't think any of these things have to do with whether or not people's lives are getting better. You can just take one of those metrics - "live longer", and see that in itself, it can't measure "getting better", because you can live for 80 years and have a terrible life, or have 60 years of an excellent life. I think people in silicon valley are just completely clueless and are making the wrong bet, which is why they never see things like Trump coming. Things aren't getting better and people know it.

justratsinacoat 10y ago

Article is about modern human psychological well-being; comments are about how materially satisfied modern (Western) humanity is, so what's the fucking problem, gosh!? The best part is the latter doesn't actually discount the former, it just trivializes its importance. Oh HN, never change.