4 ms·

Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? People can be passionate about work that seems menial or

by pliny 12y ago

Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? People can be passionate about work that seems menial or degrading, he might not have dreamed of being a taxi driver as a child but he's capable of appreciating his current employment as a taxi driver.

EdwardDiego 12y ago
> Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? I wanted to be a scientist when I was growing up, a biochemist. I'm not, but a few friends are, and they all sing from the same song-sheet - "There's so few science jobs in our country, and they're all underpaid, and academia is not much fun either". An example, my brother has a chemistry degree, the only job he could find with it was processing film badge dosimeters - which involved taking the film out of a box, putting it in a machine, and writing down the batch number. It could've been easily automated, except it was cheaper to hire two science grads to do it. Shows what an eight year old knows about career paths.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
> Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? People are children at age 18 now? I find interesting the dichotomy between how we treat 17-year-old "children" and how we treat 19-year-old "adults". The 17-year-old gets told: work hard for your dreams, and never be ashamed. The 19-year-old gets told: shut the fuck up and get back to work if you want to make rent this month. What separates them? Two years.
- pliny 12y ago
  This is about as far from the point as you can get. What I'm saying is that you can have different goals at different parts of your life, and those goals rarely match up perfectly with what will actually make you happy. Being young is the state of having less experience living your own life, and by definition you have less information to use when trying to match up your 'conscious goals' (I want to do X sometime in the next Y years) with things that actually make you happy. Specific to the taxi driver example - children are not allowed to drive taxis, they don't know whether they'll enjoy being a taxi driver or whether they're capable of being passionate about driving a taxi and they probably don't know someone who is both psychologically similar to them and has also been or is a taxi driver - whatever judgement they make about taxi driving is probably based on how the culture they grew up in treats taxi drivers, in general, and not on any analysis of whether they themselves would or could be happy driving a taxi for a living. EDIT: you also live in a country where the analysis you gave for the distinction between 17 and 19 year olds doesn't hold, most Israeli kids are coddled until they finish their mandatory service and often until they finish university - most of the undergrads at the technion (and most universities) don't work 'for a living' but rather depend on their parents or the state to a large degree to provide for them, they cannot get to the state of being homeless or starving and they are definitely phased into adulthood over almost a decade between high school and working.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    I must admit, I was not under the impression that the army coddles people. > Being young is the state of having less experience living your own life, and by definition you have less information to use when trying to match up your 'conscious goals' (I want to do X sometime in the next Y years) with things that actually make you happy. Yes, this is true. > This is about as far from the point as you can get. Ok, but now we're both far from the point, which is that plenty of people are just not going to be happy driving cabs, and instead of telling them to suck it up (or worse, claiming that if they really knew what's good for them like we obviously do, they would enjoy driving cabs) we really ought to be thinking about how society could accommodate their justified desire to do something else with themselves.

by pliny 12y ago

EdwardDiego 12y ago

> Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? I wanted to be a scientist when I was growing up, a biochemist. I'm not, but a few friends are, and they all sing from the same song-sheet - "There's so few science jobs in our country, and they're all underpaid, and academia is not much fun either". An example, my brother has a chemistry degree, the only job he could find with it was processing film badge dosimeters - which involved taking the film out of a box, putting it in a machine, and writing down the batch number. It could've been easily automated, except it was cheaper to hire two science grads to do it. Shows what an eight year old knows about career paths.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

> Why does it matter what he wanted to do growing up? Since when do we value the judgement of children? People are children at age 18 now? I find interesting the dichotomy between how we treat 17-year-old "children" and how we treat 19-year-old "adults". The 17-year-old gets told: work hard for your dreams, and never be ashamed. The 19-year-old gets told: shut the fuck up and get back to work if you want to make rent this month. What separates them? Two years.

pliny 12y ago
This is about as far from the point as you can get. What I'm saying is that you can have different goals at different parts of your life, and those goals rarely match up perfectly with what will actually make you happy. Being young is the state of having less experience living your own life, and by definition you have less information to use when trying to match up your 'conscious goals' (I want to do X sometime in the next Y years) with things that actually make you happy. Specific to the taxi driver example - children are not allowed to drive taxis, they don't know whether they'll enjoy being a taxi driver or whether they're capable of being passionate about driving a taxi and they probably don't know someone who is both psychologically similar to them and has also been or is a taxi driver - whatever judgement they make about taxi driving is probably based on how the culture they grew up in treats taxi drivers, in general, and not on any analysis of whether they themselves would or could be happy driving a taxi for a living. EDIT: you also live in a country where the analysis you gave for the distinction between 17 and 19 year olds doesn't hold, most Israeli kids are coddled until they finish their mandatory service and often until they finish university - most of the undergrads at the technion (and most universities) don't work 'for a living' but rather depend on their parents or the state to a large degree to provide for them, they cannot get to the state of being homeless or starving and they are definitely phased into adulthood over almost a decade between high school and working.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  I must admit, I was not under the impression that the army coddles people. > Being young is the state of having less experience living your own life, and by definition you have less information to use when trying to match up your 'conscious goals' (I want to do X sometime in the next Y years) with things that actually make you happy. Yes, this is true. > This is about as far from the point as you can get. Ok, but now we're both far from the point, which is that plenty of people are just not going to be happy driving cabs, and instead of telling them to suck it up (or worse, claiming that if they really knew what's good for them like we obviously do, they would enjoy driving cabs) we really ought to be thinking about how society could accommodate their justified desire to do something else with themselves.