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>But I will say that while everyone might have different standards of "enjoying life", the key factor is actually _belonging_ to a family. Doesn't mater if that

by derg 6y ago

>But I will say that while everyone might have different standards of "enjoying life", the key factor is actually _belonging_ to a family. Doesn't mater if that family is blood related, it just needs to be people you fully trust and can do anything with and be completely comfortable with. 1000% agreed. Everything about current life has done a good job siloing and isolating people to be nothing but worker drones. There is no sense of community, no sense of belonging to something, or even being allowed to be human. How many people work jobs so compartmentalized, so abstract, that they can't even see the bigger picture of what they are working on? Better yet, how about all those people who work in the "gig economy", working odd hours, working for scraps, unable to make rent? In each case, the worker is almost completely divorced from anything and it all ultimately starts to be (and feel) completely pointless.

subhobroto 6y ago
> 1000% agreed. Everything about current life has done a good job siloing and isolating people to be nothing but worker drones. There is no sense of community, no sense of belonging to something, or even being allowed to be human. It's not something that happened by accident. People like it and gravitate towards it. Doing one, and preferably only one thing is really comforting. When my friends who live in the city complain that their sink is backing up and how hard it is to get a plumber even after offering $350/visit, I listen to the symptoms, figure out the tools needed, pay a visit and fix the problem. When I tell them how easy it is to diagnose a plumbing problem, and how next time they don't need to pay me in beers or even the plumber - they are just. not. interested. Writing the same React application a 100 times is far more enjoyable (and profitable). People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push comes to a shove, doing the same old thing, repeatedly, is extremely comforting. Doing different things is risky and non-comforting. That takes deliberate practice and planning.
- derg 6y ago
  >People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push comes to a shove, doing the same old thing is extremely comforting. Your react app example is an interesting one because it touches on the profit motive. Yes, it's easier to be disinterested in say, your plumbing example, but how much of that is due to genuine disinterest and how much is due to the constant implicit pressure to produce produce produce? General Personal growth (including being able to diagnose issues with say your plumbing) takes a back seat to personal growth that can net you the most amount of money and the constant grind of needing to prove your monetary value to society. Simply put, yes there is a bit of the human condition to being interested in what's safe, and what you know, but there's also the implicit need to be hyper-specialized in an unhealthy way in order to maximize your output, to the detriment of everything else and for me personally, the latter is definitely where I fall to the absolute detriment of my own mental health. And that is where I think we are failing as a society.
  - subhobroto 6y ago
    > And that is where I think we are failing as a society. For sure! I would love your inputs on my thoughts on this topic but I'm in a conundrum: 1. If I put a link to my thought, people flag my post as self promotion 2. If I copy paste my thoughts more than once on the same thread, people flag my post as adding noise, eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683 So I guess the only thing I can do now is kindly request you to look at my recent post history on this thread.
- qplex 6y ago
  I agree that one can learn many things in life, and that there is some level of basic knowledge and skill that's very healthy for everyone to have. One of the cornerstones of modern society is however specialization; there simply isn't enough time to learn everything. I'm not sure how plumbing charts on the scales. Probably it's just something people usually avoid if they can find someone else to do it.
- Balero 6y ago
  Personally I find I gravitate towards what your friends are like when I am tired, or stressed or pulled in too many directions. I just want a problem solved and not another thing taking up brain space. If I'm feeling chill, and not tired then I'm much more interested in learning something new, and solving my own problems.
yibg 6y ago
As an immigrant I feel "western" life is especially isolating. There are pockets of community like church, but not everyone is religious. Once school is done, we're mostly left to ourselves with usually a small circle of friends that occasionally interact. Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it.
- derg 6y ago
  >Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it. I would actually argue it is a cultural thing to be completely honest. Speaking from experience as an American at least, there is large cultural tradition driving this: the protestant work ethic that drives the idea of rugged individualism, the automobile, the implicit requirement that you consume consume consume and every waking hour not at your job must be doing something profitable. You can't have a "hobby", you gotta try to transform that into a "side hustle" (ughhh) because your day to day job likely doesn't pay enough to live while you pay hundreds of dollars a month towards student loans for an education that you likely don't even use to live in a house or apartment that you can barely afford due to lack of housing and the high prices that creates, while driving a car you probably can't afford due to the high housing prices necessitating you to live an hour or more away from your job.
  - yibg 6y ago
    The point about individualism resonates a lot with me. Other parts of the world are also (and getting increasingly) material driven as well. However many are also more collectivist and have a heavy focus on (extended) family and community for example. Maybe living arrangements can be rethought to encourage some of these local communities. Instead of massive self contained houses, we should think more about clusters of dwellings. Each dwelling can have individual bedroom and bathing facilities but with shared common areas like kitchens / bbq that encourages interaction. I'm thinking something like a 6 - 10 small units linked to a larger communal area.
    - 6y ago

by derg 6y ago

subhobroto 6y ago

> 1000% agreed. Everything about current life has done a good job siloing and isolating people to be nothing but worker drones. There is no sense of community, no sense of belonging to something, or even being allowed to be human. It's not something that happened by accident. People like it and gravitate towards it. Doing one, and preferably only one thing is really comforting. When my friends who live in the city complain that their sink is backing up and how hard it is to get a plumber even after offering $350/visit, I listen to the symptoms, figure out the tools needed, pay a visit and fix the problem. When I tell them how easy it is to diagnose a plumbing problem, and how next time they don't need to pay me in beers or even the plumber - they are just. not. interested. Writing the same React application a 100 times is far more enjoyable (and profitable). People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push comes to a shove, doing the same old thing, repeatedly, is extremely comforting. Doing different things is risky and non-comforting. That takes deliberate practice and planning.

derg 6y ago
>People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push comes to a shove, doing the same old thing is extremely comforting. Your react app example is an interesting one because it touches on the profit motive. Yes, it's easier to be disinterested in say, your plumbing example, but how much of that is due to genuine disinterest and how much is due to the constant implicit pressure to produce produce produce? General Personal growth (including being able to diagnose issues with say your plumbing) takes a back seat to personal growth that can net you the most amount of money and the constant grind of needing to prove your monetary value to society. Simply put, yes there is a bit of the human condition to being interested in what's safe, and what you know, but there's also the implicit need to be hyper-specialized in an unhealthy way in order to maximize your output, to the detriment of everything else and for me personally, the latter is definitely where I fall to the absolute detriment of my own mental health. And that is where I think we are failing as a society.
- subhobroto 6y ago
  > And that is where I think we are failing as a society. For sure! I would love your inputs on my thoughts on this topic but I'm in a conundrum: 1. If I put a link to my thought, people flag my post as self promotion 2. If I copy paste my thoughts more than once on the same thread, people flag my post as adding noise, eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683 So I guess the only thing I can do now is kindly request you to look at my recent post history on this thread.
qplex 6y ago
I agree that one can learn many things in life, and that there is some level of basic knowledge and skill that's very healthy for everyone to have. One of the cornerstones of modern society is however specialization; there simply isn't enough time to learn everything. I'm not sure how plumbing charts on the scales. Probably it's just something people usually avoid if they can find someone else to do it.
Balero 6y ago
Personally I find I gravitate towards what your friends are like when I am tired, or stressed or pulled in too many directions. I just want a problem solved and not another thing taking up brain space. If I'm feeling chill, and not tired then I'm much more interested in learning something new, and solving my own problems.

yibg 6y ago

As an immigrant I feel "western" life is especially isolating. There are pockets of community like church, but not everyone is religious. Once school is done, we're mostly left to ourselves with usually a small circle of friends that occasionally interact. Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it.

derg 6y ago
>Question is what to do about it? I'm not sure if this requires a cultural shift, but other places in the world seems to be better at it. I would actually argue it is a cultural thing to be completely honest. Speaking from experience as an American at least, there is large cultural tradition driving this: the protestant work ethic that drives the idea of rugged individualism, the automobile, the implicit requirement that you consume consume consume and every waking hour not at your job must be doing something profitable. You can't have a "hobby", you gotta try to transform that into a "side hustle" (ughhh) because your day to day job likely doesn't pay enough to live while you pay hundreds of dollars a month towards student loans for an education that you likely don't even use to live in a house or apartment that you can barely afford due to lack of housing and the high prices that creates, while driving a car you probably can't afford due to the high housing prices necessitating you to live an hour or more away from your job.
- yibg 6y ago
  The point about individualism resonates a lot with me. Other parts of the world are also (and getting increasingly) material driven as well. However many are also more collectivist and have a heavy focus on (extended) family and community for example. Maybe living arrangements can be rethought to encourage some of these local communities. Instead of massive self contained houses, we should think more about clusters of dwellings. Each dwelling can have individual bedroom and bathing facilities but with shared common areas like kitchens / bbq that encourages interaction. I'm thinking something like a 6 - 10 small units linked to a larger communal area.
  - 6y ago