10 ms·

What every salary-person has to show for it: a life lived; bills paid; food on the table; health; a roof over your head; a body not ravaged and damaged by hard

• ratsimihah 8y ago
  Maybe some of us tend to mix up "a life lived" with overachieving. In other words, we only feel it worth if we produce something truly outstanding.
  • ameyv 8y ago
    True..I feel like this...Sometimes, I don't know how to deal with this..it somehow make me incompetent as programmer.. I see really good projects and then I get depressed :(
  • forinti 8y ago
    I've witnessed how one person who couldn't keep it together harmed a family two generations down the line. Life is hard and if you can give your kids a decent childhood, you've done your bit.
    • xchaotic 8y ago
      Please don't take that as my personal opinion, just a point for a good argument. If you have a nice family, raised and supported kids well into their adulthood, that is all very nice on a personal level, but globally what have you done? I by no means expect everyone to be the next Henry Ford or Edison, but if you're just living your life, you're just consuming planet's limited resources. Animals have lived like that for millions of years, sustainably, in a self balancing act. But I feel that humans are savvy enough to strive for more than just the daily grind and consumption, so that the world they leave behind is a better place, not worse.
      • Dudemann 8y ago
        globally what has xchaotic done?
      • chrisbennet 8y ago
        I think you underestimate the sacrifices that are made to achieve “supporting kids into adulthood” for one thing.
      • coldtea 8y ago
        >Please don't take that as my personal opinion, just a point for a good argument. If you have a nice family, raised and supported kids well into their adulthood, that is all very nice on a personal level, but globally what have you done? You don't have to do anything "globally". We're not pop culture superheroes out to save the world. The obsession with "making a dent"-porn has to stop. If more people were "very nice on a personal level" we'd already be paradise.
      • normal_man 8y ago
        I think we'd be a lot better off if some of the people obsessed with doing something "globally" had instead lived a quiet life at home.
  • justaguyhere 8y ago
    In other words, we only feel it worth if we produce something truly outstanding By this metric, most of humanity probably feels it worthless, isn't it? I understand this is HN and people here achieve more than the normal crowd - still, I don't get the obsession over being productive every second, the need to "produce something truly outstanding" etc. Whats wrong with just being happy, taking it easy, spreading happiness around us and just living a simple life? Instead of optimizing every waking second and moving the goal post until the day we die?
    • rbanffy 8y ago
      :-) > By this metric, most of humanity probably feels it worthless, isn't it? Everyone can produce something outstanding. We often confuse that with the recognition that comes from that something becoming noticed by others. Do something you love, for the love of doing it. Of course, keep the family happy, fed, and housed, but never forget we are more than work and money and that our worth is not derived from how others see us. We HN'ers like to do a lot and we often get recognition from that, but really makes us who we are is what we love doing. The rest are side-effects not goals.
      • pojzon 8y ago
        Majority of ppl dont really know what they want from life and need someone to tell them that. The reason why so many are depressed and unhappy no matter what they do.
        • mac01021 8y ago
          Sadly, you can't tell them by telling them. You have to be subliminal.
          • rbanffy 8y ago
            You may even figure out what they want, but they still will need to find it out by themselves.
    • deleted 8y ago
• perfmode 8y ago
  I can’t enjoy my leisure when there is so much injustice around me
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • grkvlt 8y ago
    Sucks to be you, I guess? But really, what is being suggested is that you can do something you find enjoyable when you are not working; in your case I would assume this would be trying to correct these injustices you see around you...
  • deleted 8y ago
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• steve_taylor 8y ago
  You forgot to mention millions of dollars of value created for other people.
  • friedman23 8y ago
    A lumber jack cuts down a tree and sells the wood for $500 to a high end furniture maker. This furniture maker then produces an armoire that he sells to a rich person for $7000. Was that lumber jack exploited because he only made $500 from the wood?
    • whateveracct 8y ago
      Uh huh and who are these artisans multiplying value (not just selling but literally adding value) of software systems by 14x?
      • friedman23 8y ago
        The business creates value by organizing thousands of software developers together, giving them PMs and EMs to manage them, using data analysts to determine the success or failure of a product launch, and having a legal team to navigate regulatory hurdles. The business also takes on risk for paying software developers to develop products which may not be successful.
      • ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        Code doesn’t make a business. Go look at the millions of failed startups and side projects that software developers have created and failed with. You need more than the ability to just create software systems. Code is a commodity.
      • nightski 8y ago
        Any business whose business is not that of software.
      • bch 8y ago
        I think PG said[0] it well: Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In doing so you create wealth. The world is-- and you specifically are-- one pristine old car the richer. And not just in some metaphorical way. If you sell your car, you'll get more for it. In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. You haven't made anyone else poorer. So there is obviously not a fixed pie. And in fact, when you look at it this way, you wonder why anyone would think there was. [0] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
• ngcc_hk 8y ago
  Great wisdom you have. * Of course one may add other may be unnecessary concerns - whether the world we live in are better for our kids than we do. We have enjoyed no world hot conflict for decades. Environment can be used and within our life time ... ba la ba la. Are our kids better ? Or many things happened in the last several years challenge all our knowledge of society - trump and Brexit and the raise of communist china etc. We live in interesting time. Just relearn swift (forget quit a bit after my iOS app on app story in 2015).
  • darawk 8y ago
    Progress proceeds in fits and starts, but i'd say we're making very good progress.
• ellius 8y ago
  Hannah Arendt draws a useful distinction between "labor" and "work." Labor is effort required to sustain life: catching food, finding water, plowing crops. Because living creatures need these things continually, labor never ends. Food is eaten or decays and new food must be grown. Work, on the other hand, has a defined start and endpoint. Ideally, it produces something enduring and unique. In ancient times, labor was looked down on as something that slaves did. The lowest in society did the back-breaking, life-sustaining work anonymously, while rich, propertied elites built empires, wrote philosophy, and invented new technologies. The world has changed since then, but I think there's something useful in that distinction. Capitalism transmutes nearly all work into labor. Almost every profession feels like it's performed solely to "sustain life" whether it's plowing fields or producing software. It's all just a salary. So I'm not surprised when I hear that people feel they have "nothing to show for it": they usually retain no ownership of the things they create and it all seems like one long endless task.
  • BurningFrog 8y ago
    Completely different angle: We're primates who by nature are very hierarchy oriented. We judge our lives by how high in the hierarchy we are. And no matter how rich society gets, how good our homes, health, food supply and culture are, we still end up on average in the middle of the pack. And maybe that's what feels like you have "nothing to show for it".
    • theoh 8y ago
      Explanations based on evolutionary psychology tend to neglect the social or psychological adaptations that are responsible for complex society. The validity of the claim that we would be happier as hunter gatherers, for example, is really difficult to assess from the perspective of someone embedded in modern human society. The high level of interdependence (sometimes called organic solidarity) changes everything. The tendency of evolutionary psychology to assert that life is governed by primal instincts established in harsher times isn't politically neutral.
      • BurningFrog 8y ago
• TomMckenny 8y ago
  Being grateful makes perfect sense. But being satisfied with just that sees a bit of a waste. Perhaps even a bit ungrateful. Should I be satisfied if my headstone says simply "I was comfortable"?
  • bigiain 8y ago
    That's kinda assuming you want work to be the part of your life that satisfies you. Many people would be perfectly happy with a headstone saying "I had a comfortable job, and raised a family I love" or "I had a comfortable job, and made my art in the evenings and weekends".
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • news_hacker 8y ago
    What's wrong with being comfortable though? Why should one be dissatisfied with being satisfied? Is satisfaction ever OK? And if so, when? When can you know for sure that you've actualized your full potential? Is it even something that's knowable? This seems overly omniscient to me. I see this fearful, regret-filled ethos driving a lot of my peers and the western culture at large and I worry about the mindset it instills in people. I know it's well-intentioned and comes from a perspective of the human potential being the highest form of sovereignty. A wasted life seems like the biggest crime. And comfortable has somehow come to become synonymous with wasted. I'd argue for the cultivation of meaning as a replacement to this search for "finally good-enough" potential actualization, but that's me.
    • cantthinkofone 8y ago
      There's something in human nature that finds meaning in turbulence, friction, conflict, movement. A sense of being challenged, pushing past limits, propelling into excitement and change. When you reach a state where you have all your needs met and don't need to go any further, there still remains a sense that there's more left undone. Comfort can be equated with stagnation. It's a Nietzschean notion. A will-to-danger (not to sound too crazy). There's a sense of being domesticated that adds a subtle discomfort to the comfort. I've worked blue collar and white collar jobs, and it was the blue collar jobs that made me feel more alive, because I was around dangerous tools, hazards, and actuating my body like it was supposed to be outside exposed to the elements. I went home after and my rest felt deserved and truly regenerative, like my body was drinking it in. The white collar work, though it pays better and offers more comfort and is more cognitively demanding, feels at the same time too breezy, too safe. It seems like a really stupid argument, that things can be bad because they're too good, affluenza and so on, but there's something to it.
• NotUsingLinux 8y ago
  Of course it’s good to „get by“ and live a life without „hassle“. But I think it’s becoming more and more clear that this is just not the case. Most part of what we call civilisation, such as industry, sich as the IT industry is simply not sustainable. To survive the 21 century we have to look at better methods to collaborate. And of course technology is part of the eqaation. Open Source and similar efforts lead the way towards such better methods. But they cannot exist in vacuum or on a island alone. So we have to change society but by bit. Let’s go!
• Antoninus 8y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. Isn't that interesting part of this job? That you get have all of things the listed above and 'nothing' to show for it? We're left with nothing tangible. I'm really happy with my memories, freedom to work where I want, using my brain for living. A life built from my brain, pen, paper and a portable computer.
• jmatthews 8y ago
  As devil's advocate... The majority of your waking life is then spent satisfying the newest version of "subsistence ". It is true that new subsistence is better than old subsistence, but its still serfdom with nicer clothes. The chase, at least for me, is about having time and location freedom while enjoying a middle class living or better. It's not about being a billionaire, it's about being free.
  • fizwhiz 8y ago
    no snark meant, but do you have a family? How close have you converged to becoming a digital nomad (which is what you seem to imply your chase is all about)?
    • jmatthews 8y ago
      I do have a family, and I find that very fulfilling. I do bemoan the time I have to spend working for others as time I'll not get back. Honestly having my first son really changed the math for me. I went from deriving joy from a job well done to realizing that time could have been better spent. Instead of being a good employee I am now trying to be a great dad. Work definitely gets in the way of that.
• deleted 8y ago
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