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If God Is Dead, Your Time Is Everything (2019)
- aetherspawn 6y agoI kept reading .. and reading .. .. and reading .. .. and still no point made, so I gave up.
- teekert 6y agoI just read the title, imho it is probably this: No god > No afterlife > These X years are it > Best invest in becoming happy > Happiness is not joy or money > Most Human happiness is in rich social interactions and feeling safe > Rich social interactions and a big family means dying with a lot of grand children, this would make most people happy > Feeling safe is about not leaving your relatives in debt or having to cook meth to pay for cancer treatment > Socialism (which I would argue is the American word for what most "socialist" countries call "common sense" -society).
- andydavieswork 6y agoThat escalated quickly.
- teekert 6y agoYeah, I just loved the American dream that Breaking Bad portrays, I feel like Walter White's actions are justified and his slow corruption seems almost inevitable. Can we blame the man? He starts out as a victim, then heads down a path of power induced corruption. What a story.
- maeln 6y agoI just re-watched breaking bad and I really don't think the show justify at any point Walter actions. From the beginning Walter has solutions, people offer him several ways. But he decline all of them because of his ego and turn more and more to criminality to satisfy his hunger for power. Their is a harsh criticism of the US medical insurance system since every time someone need care in the show, either insurance decline coverage or provide a subpar one. But thats about it, Walter slow descent into a evil power junky is mostly describe as a result of his own character and decision. A simple chemical-teacher that missed his big break and live a fairly bland suburban life and finally get to break this and feed the frustration he had all along.
- teekert 6y agoYou'd accept money from friends? Where does that stop? At some point he wields real power. It corrupts him, I wonder how many people would not be corrupted and just pay their cancer bills and move on (like any normal person would think they would do.)
- WalterSear 6y ago> You'd accept money from friends? Where does that stop? Before I start a meth lab.
- jacobush 6y agoFeeling safe is about selling bone density scanners and drag your kid to a homeless shelter and sleep on the floor of a restroom.
- perceptronas 6y agoArticle argues that capitalism should be abolished completely instead of being altered. So it is socialism, not "American common sense society"
- splintercell 6y agoIt would be obvious why OP is purposefully misreading the article and calling it "Common sense society".
- teekert 6y agoIn that case, I disagree! I love capitalism, I'd argue it's just ill and it's illness is called "lobbying, misinformation and companies' involvement in politics". We can, as free humans, choose to build a society where one is helped when one needs help.
- aloisdg 6y agoSo instead of right wing liberalism and authoritarian left, something in the libertarian left. Freedom, decentralization, support for all. Whoever you are, you are welcome to the anarchy movement. No capitalism here though, you are no going to pay for the help you need.
- slowmovintarget 6y agoBecause no where in the article does the main thrust of religion--personal responsibility for doing good in the world--enter into the discussion. It begs the question by trying to show that obviously doing good to get to Heaven is really about the community, therefore we should all be Marxists. Being a good person will have a positive effect on the community in which you live, but the point is not about how high your utility to the community is. The point of being a good person is that it reduces suffering, or at the least makes it meaningful. But individualism, in this formal sense, is anathema to such discussions.
- gridlockd 6y agoThe only issue is that even "common sense" socialism doesn't work in the long run. All generous welfare systems run on unfunded liabilities. That amounts to a Ponzi scheme, which will collapse along with the birthrate. If all these goals were attainable at the same time, capitalism would happily sell it to people. Keep in mind, in the US, there's neither capitalism nor socialism. There's the worst of both worlds. Virtually all political reform can be sabotaged by crying "socialism!", but corporate welfare goes through unchallenged.
- Spearchucker 6y agoThere's a halfway house. Give everybody a basic living wage. If somebody wants to do more, sich as being a doctor, engineer or farmer, then pay them commensurately more. Change taxation to suit.
- gridlockd 6y agoI'm all in favor of a negative income tax. In turn, get rid of all the entitlements and all the red tape.
- uk_programmer 6y agoNo. It is wrong to take from those who want to work to give to those that don't want to. I already pay almost good portion of my earnings to the government to see it squandered on nonsense (e.g. look up the HS2 project in the UK). I am just about to buy property (I've been working now for 20 years and 15 as a software engineer), If I hadn't been paying as much tax I could have bought a property years ago. Having a form of UBI will increase the tax burden on medium to high earners such as myself. I simply don't believe it is ethical to offer UBI i.e. you are taking my earnings to fund those that unwilling to work, even if it is a tiny percentage it is still wrong on principle. I don't mind my taxes providing a support mechanism for those that are unable to work due to a disability, illness or simply becoming too old to work or have become unemployed for no fault of their own (e.g. business foreclosed).
- gridlockd 6y ago
- hiddenAgenda 6y agoI think that one needs to be careful to use names that describe political systems to refer to things that are philosophical. Systems are judged historically and empirically, and that is why communism is bad. Ask people who grew up in the USSR, especially from their "republics". Similarly, one should be careful to parade your philosophy under the umbrella of "socialism". No God, no afterlife, time being important has absolutely nothing to do with political systems. If it has, then you have a hidden agenda.
- gridlockd 6y agoThe fundamental problem with these essays is that their authors don't get paid for the words they didn't write.
- waingake 6y agoTry the audio version :) the reviewer here does take the slow burn approach on this, but it's worth it. I'm reading the book currently and am really enjoying it so was excited to see it get such a comprehensive and ultimately glowing review. But tbh I was a bit annoyed at how long this review takes to get going :)
- dang 6y agoOk, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- keithnz 6y agosince people are having trouble with the wall of text, the bit that gets to the "argument" of it pretty quick without having to read all the article "Savagely compressed, Hägglund’s argument goes something like this: If what makes our lives meaningful is that time ends, then what defines us is what Marx called “an economy of time.” Marx is, in this sense, probably the most secular thinker who ever lived, the one most deeply engaged with the question of what we do with our time. He divided life into what he called the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. Hägglund adopts these categories: the realm of necessity involves socially necessary labor and the realm of freedom involves socially available free time. Rationally, Hägglund says, we should strive to reduce the realm of necessity and increase the realm of freedom. But capitalism is systemically committed to exploiting most of us, and to steadily increasing the amount of labor at the expense of our freedom. Capitalism treats the means of economic life, labor, as though it were the purpose of life. But, if we are to cherish this life, we have to treat what we do as an end in itself. “The real measure of value,” Hägglund says, “is not how much work we have done or have to do (quantity of labor time) but how much disposable time we have to pursue and explore what matters to us (quality of free time).”
- LatteLazy 6y agoThanks, that helped!
- gridlockd 6y agoIn a working capitalist system, where prices are not artificially held high (zoning laws etc), the cost of living is low enough that even that average worker can trade off working time for leisure time. That just means giving up on more consumption, or funding one's own retirement. It's evident though that most people prefer consuming over anything else. They buy shiny things, go into debt for it, then are forced to work off the debt. Thinkers like Marx may feel different about the whole thing, they need their time off to do what fulfills them. Most workers, even those performing hard manual labor, feel empty if they don't work.
- jackhiggs 6y agoThis is such a naive and bourgeois argument isn't it? Free time is only valuable or meaningful if you have the means to make it so, and have been given opportunities to cultivate interests. If you're living in poverty, the quantity of disposable time will not make up for the lack of cash.
- apatters 6y agoIs the New Yorker utilizing a voting ring of some kind here? This article seems uninteresting to the HN audience, yet it got a lot of upvotes quickly, and comments which would discourage people from clicking through have been swiftly downvoted.
- vntok 6y agoI found it interesting.
- ccozan 6y agome too. Human time is very differently perceived and experienced. This puts it into some perspective.
- waingake 6y agoCan confirm I'm not part of a voting ring! I am a newyorker subscriber and I'm currently reading this book so was excited to see it reviewed. I actually feel like there is a large cross over between software and politics. Look at the foundations of the free software movement. When I was a young idealist this was one of the things that drew me to the profession.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoThose posts (including yours) are getting downvoted because they are against the HN guidelines: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LatteLazy 6y agoA shout out for including Marx, I had to actually read his work and it's mostly not about Marxism etc. He was very detail orientated but could also step back to see the big picture and try to understand the human side of Economics. Don't let his expectations about the rise of the proletariat put you off!
- loup-vaillant 6y agoI have a major problem with the idea that death makes life precious. As if the value of something was determined by its inevitable demise. As if being everlasting made it worthless. This reeks of post-hoc rationalisation to me: we believe we can't avoid this Absolute Horror, so we embrace outright. Sorry, no. Death does not make life precious. It just forces us to make the most of what little remaining time we have. We then concentrate as much value as we can in our first 80 years or so, since those are the only years we get. A more distant death may dilute that effect, but not entirely: with more time, we get to do and experience more things. Thus, the value of life increases as it lengthens. Perhaps not linearly, but it's not at all clear there's an upper bound.
- waingake 6y agoUm don't you just prove that it does with your second paragraph!
- teekert 6y ago"Sorry, no. Death does not make life precious. It just forces us to make the most of what little remaining time we have." Some would re-word that as "those 80 years are precious" ;)
- wayneftw 6y ago> Death does not make life precious. Yes it does. Especially if you're the one living it. Even if it's a lifeless object - the rareness of something easily makes it more valuable. For instance, diamonds would be worthless if DeBeers didn't artificially constrict the supply. > ...with more time, we get to do and experience more things. Thus, the value of life increases as it lengthens. You're confusing quantity with quality. As if a human with 80 years of being catatonic would be more valuable than someone who lived, loved and adventured for only 40 years.
- loup-vaillant 6y ago> > Death does not make life precious. > Yes it does. Especially if you're the one living it. So, you want to die. More precisely, you want a limit on your lifespan. Not just so you give your place to the youth or avoid over population. No, you want your life to be limited, because if it wasn't, it would be worthless. I can accept that. But then you should be able to answer this: when do you want to die? Where's the limit? > Even if it's a lifeless object - the rareness of something easily makes it more valuable. The value of one diamond decreases as we have more total diamonds. But it doesn't decreases so fast that the total value of diamonds also decreases as the total amount of diamonds increases. Value may increase sub-linearly with quantity, but there's no way it decreases. The same goes for lifespan. If you genuinely think the value of an entire life decreases with its length at some point, then there is an ideal lifespan. Life should be no shorter, and no longer than this ideal duration (on average). I ask again: do you have any idea what this duration might be? > You're confusing quantity with quality And you are assuming we couldn't have quality in quantity. Couldn't we possibly live, love and adventure for 80 years? 100 years? 1000 years? How much life has to offer, really? How much can we experience, how much can we learn, before life stops being worth living? When do we start hitting diminishing returns, for reasons other than bad health? (Just to get that out of the way: we probably agree that it's better to live 80 healthy years and die of a sudden stroke, than live 60 healthy years, then gradually decline until we hit 80 and finally die.)
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- ykevinator 6y agoWhy must atheism be articulated? Shouldn't it be the default?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI'm sure that sounds perfectly reasonable to an atheist...
- teilo 6y agoHägglund's argument falls apart once one recognizes that a judgment occurring after death is just as terminal an event for the believer as death is for the unbeliever. This, of necessity, means that for the believer, one's time before death is also everything, and thus the premise of his argument collapses. How one views that time, of course, is radically different for both parties, but the outcome is not necessarily different. For the believer attempting to escape eternal damnation, socialism could be an equally valid means of serving one's neighbor.
- lcall 6y agoThere is a different view of the nature of final judgement. I explained somewhat, in the thread parts following this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857328 Also, because that judgement involves our choices, thoughts, words, & actions; I personally think that forced kindness is inadequate in many ways including effectiveness in helping others and for the effects it has on the heart of the giver. More on that (if one cares to read & drill in a bit) at maybe here http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581821.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581821.html ...and http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581757.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581757.html .