5 ms·

Look I hate Facebook, Google, the news, prefer physical books, like to exercise, whatever but I always hate seeing this stuff. In Western society there are alw

by Top19 9y ago

Look I hate Facebook, Google, the news, prefer physical books, like to exercise, whatever but I always hate seeing this stuff. In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. One thing happier people do in fact have is a sense of historical perspective and also future sacrifice. Knowing the sacrifice that 500 mothers and fathers made before you to move the human race hopefully a little forward, and knowing that you can help pass along their sacrifice, knowledge, and your own hard work to your children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations.

maxerickson 9y ago
Are a large percentage of people in our technological society actualized in that way? Do people that take a 2nd job to put food on the table for their kids see that as progress for the human race?
- imustbeevil 9y ago
  Would you rather take a 2nd job or run around naked looking for an animal you can kill? Everyone realizes the progress humanity has made. It is disrespectful to the people taking second jobs to insinuate that they'd be better off living ten thousand years ago. What does that say about how you view their life?
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I didn't insinuate they'd be better off as hunter gatherers, I questioned whether the flowery stuff the other poster said about advancing the human race was something they gave much thought.
  - ddingus 9y ago
    False choice. The current level of economic struggle in the US is both unacceptable and unnecessary. I might take the hunt, and or form community with other peers who have had quite enough. Together, it's not a bad equation. I lived that kind of way for a time having delivered from the wilderness to food on the plate before age 16.
  - tspike 9y ago
    On the subject of disrespect: characterizing the entirety of the vast diversity and prehistory of hunter-gatherer society as "running around naked looking for an animal to kill."
  - marchenko 9y ago
    When you consider that hunting has been an elite pastime for the entirety of recorded civilisation, I suspect that many people would indeed opt to "run around [in environmentally-appropriate clothing] looking for an animal to kill"
gt_ 9y ago
To be clear, the only recommendations in the article are long hikes and maybe some arts and crafts. It's predominantly an anthropological case study.
- brailsafe 9y ago
  These are great suggestions.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    I work 50 hours a week and still found time for two hikes this week, in the morning before work. Like the idea of spending more time playing sports, only have time for one jui jitsu class a week.
colmvp 9y ago
> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. Or that abstaining from social media but still having access to online content would benefit my brain. To me, it's not like M&M Peanuts, where I can either have no M&M Peanuts because none exist in the house, or can consume entire bag in one sitting because some are in the cabinet. Instead, I think it's fair to say I should be more open about being discriminating on the technology we use instead of naively accepting every new hot thing as being good for us as long as we have the discipline to moderate. I know of people who basically lost years of their lives to World of Warcraft, which is entirely why I never ever touched that game with a ten foot pole because I know my susceptibility to those games. It's also why I deleted Facebook/Twitter, because I know I easily get hooked onto news and that hundreds of designers/engineers are working on captivating my brain in the name of ad revenue. In a sense, I feel like we just all need to be honest about our own limits and acknowledge that technology has a drawback that is not insignificant. Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized.
- alsetmusic 9y ago
  > I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. The title refers to a completely different lifestyle, not an added day of leisure. It directly contrasts “hunter-gatherers” and “wealthy westerners.” This is not a trivial distinction.
- aorloff 9y ago
  You might have picked M&M peanuts randomly, but sugar is a big part of the creeping force of civilization, and hard to fathom its impact on you until you take a break from it for several months.
3131s 9y ago
One of the things that was pointed out last time this topic came up (only a few weeks ago) is that most all of us who benefit from modern civilization enough so to be commenting about it on HN are enabled by massive amounts of cheap, wage-slave labor from the poorer half of the world. So while the average 9-to-5 job, smartphone-browsing lifestyle is probably preferable to the brutality of being a hunter-gatherer, if I were a garment factory worker making 100$/month under terrible conditions and long hours, then things might change -- I'd personally take my chances out in the wilderness.
- mc32 9y ago
  Farmers and other poor from China's interior make a different calculus. Many move to the eastern parts of the country to work in those factories because they are a better alternative to what they have back home. It's not all that different from kids in Podunk USA moving to bigger cities for better opportunities despite "the rat race" in cities. If north America and Europe had not essentially outsourced their labor to China and India, we'd have two billion more people living in extreme poverty, burning wood stoves, etc.
  - sideshowb 9y ago
    Farmers are not the same thing as hunter gatherers though.
- corporateslave2 9y ago
  This misses the whole point of the article, and injects a political agenda into a conversation about how wealth in the west isn't helping happiness.
- t1o5 9y ago
  Exactly my thoughts, when people say they have a great work life balance at their enterprise IT company, it’s at the cost of some cheap labour outsourced somewhere. When you buy cheap cloths at Walmart or even at the brands, just have a look at the tag. Your luxury is at the cost of cheap wage slave labour or a child labour in a third world country. The new trend is 100% US based customer support. These are the very companies which cheaply outsourced customer support to start with.
jdietrich 9y ago
The disease burden of mental health is higher in the United States or France than in Somalia or D.R. Congo. There's a huge apparent paradox here - there's almost no correlation between economic development and mental wellbeing. Wartorn countries with no functioning health system have lower rates of suffering due to mental illness than some of the most prosperous countries on earth. Our society is geared around the assumption that development will make us healthier and happier, but that assumption isn't really supported by the data. However you slice it, our model is badly broken. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61611-6/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

by Top19 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago

Are a large percentage of people in our technological society actualized in that way? Do people that take a 2nd job to put food on the table for their kids see that as progress for the human race?

imustbeevil 9y ago
Would you rather take a 2nd job or run around naked looking for an animal you can kill? Everyone realizes the progress humanity has made. It is disrespectful to the people taking second jobs to insinuate that they'd be better off living ten thousand years ago. What does that say about how you view their life?
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I didn't insinuate they'd be better off as hunter gatherers, I questioned whether the flowery stuff the other poster said about advancing the human race was something they gave much thought.
- ddingus 9y ago
  False choice. The current level of economic struggle in the US is both unacceptable and unnecessary. I might take the hunt, and or form community with other peers who have had quite enough. Together, it's not a bad equation. I lived that kind of way for a time having delivered from the wilderness to food on the plate before age 16.
- tspike 9y ago
  On the subject of disrespect: characterizing the entirety of the vast diversity and prehistory of hunter-gatherer society as "running around naked looking for an animal to kill."
- marchenko 9y ago
  When you consider that hunting has been an elite pastime for the entirety of recorded civilisation, I suspect that many people would indeed opt to "run around [in environmentally-appropriate clothing] looking for an animal to kill"

gt_ 9y ago

To be clear, the only recommendations in the article are long hikes and maybe some arts and crafts. It's predominantly an anthropological case study.

brailsafe 9y ago
These are great suggestions.
- valuearb 9y ago
  I work 50 hours a week and still found time for two hikes this week, in the morning before work. Like the idea of spending more time playing sports, only have time for one jui jitsu class a week.

colmvp 9y ago

> In Western society there are always two lies operating at once. The first lie is that technology will save us and fix everything and is the ultimate path, the second lie is that throwing away all of our technology, being as close to nature as possible, blah blah will also save us and fix everything. I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. Or that abstaining from social media but still having access to online content would benefit my brain. To me, it's not like M&M Peanuts, where I can either have no M&M Peanuts because none exist in the house, or can consume entire bag in one sitting because some are in the cabinet. Instead, I think it's fair to say I should be more open about being discriminating on the technology we use instead of naively accepting every new hot thing as being good for us as long as we have the discipline to moderate. I know of people who basically lost years of their lives to World of Warcraft, which is entirely why I never ever touched that game with a ten foot pole because I know my susceptibility to those games. It's also why I deleted Facebook/Twitter, because I know I easily get hooked onto news and that hundreds of designers/engineers are working on captivating my brain in the name of ad revenue. In a sense, I feel like we just all need to be honest about our own limits and acknowledge that technology has a drawback that is not insignificant. Knuth may have seemed like a luddite, but given how many people are hooked onto news/social/media/e-mail/Slack, his hard stance on email was perhaps more wise than most of us realized.

alsetmusic 9y ago
> I don't think it's unfair to say that I would benefit from one less day of using my computer per week and exchange it for going outside and reading at the park or going on a hike or biking. The title refers to a completely different lifestyle, not an added day of leisure. It directly contrasts “hunter-gatherers” and “wealthy westerners.” This is not a trivial distinction.
aorloff 9y ago
You might have picked M&M peanuts randomly, but sugar is a big part of the creeping force of civilization, and hard to fathom its impact on you until you take a break from it for several months.

3131s 9y ago

One of the things that was pointed out last time this topic came up (only a few weeks ago) is that most all of us who benefit from modern civilization enough so to be commenting about it on HN are enabled by massive amounts of cheap, wage-slave labor from the poorer half of the world. So while the average 9-to-5 job, smartphone-browsing lifestyle is probably preferable to the brutality of being a hunter-gatherer, if I were a garment factory worker making 100$/month under terrible conditions and long hours, then things might change -- I'd personally take my chances out in the wilderness.

mc32 9y ago
Farmers and other poor from China's interior make a different calculus. Many move to the eastern parts of the country to work in those factories because they are a better alternative to what they have back home. It's not all that different from kids in Podunk USA moving to bigger cities for better opportunities despite "the rat race" in cities. If north America and Europe had not essentially outsourced their labor to China and India, we'd have two billion more people living in extreme poverty, burning wood stoves, etc.
- sideshowb 9y ago
  Farmers are not the same thing as hunter gatherers though.
corporateslave2 9y ago
This misses the whole point of the article, and injects a political agenda into a conversation about how wealth in the west isn't helping happiness.
t1o5 9y ago
Exactly my thoughts, when people say they have a great work life balance at their enterprise IT company, it’s at the cost of some cheap labour outsourced somewhere. When you buy cheap cloths at Walmart or even at the brands, just have a look at the tag. Your luxury is at the cost of cheap wage slave labour or a child labour in a third world country. The new trend is 100% US based customer support. These are the very companies which cheaply outsourced customer support to start with.

jdietrich 9y ago

The disease burden of mental health is higher in the United States or France than in Somalia or D.R. Congo. There's a huge apparent paradox here - there's almost no correlation between economic development and mental wellbeing. Wartorn countries with no functioning health system have lower rates of suffering due to mental illness than some of the most prosperous countries on earth. Our society is geared around the assumption that development will make us healthier and happier, but that assumption isn't really supported by the data. However you slice it, our model is badly broken. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61611-6/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...