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Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

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Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#81

Post by superasn »

carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

You know what drives me crazy? All these people talking about how great technology is and how it saves all this time. But what good is saved time if nobody uses it? It just turns into more busy work, right? You never hear somebody say, "Well, with the time I’ve saved by using my Word Processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out.” (Jesse)

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#82

Post by agumonkey »

vffhfhf wrote: post #59

Life is simple.. If you aim lower. There was a psychology research on how people even billionaire form a baseline similar to a homeless dude. All the stress, pressure you have is the same as everybody else and it will never change. So the goal should be do whatever you enjoy while doing the minimum effort.. Of course this type of thinking would immediately hamper progress everywhere.

I have this weird idea that wild life forced people into this kind of dynamics.

You make just enough efforts to go where you need / want. The rest is superfluous.

And modern society, lifting you into a form of comfort, also ties you to an large body of strings that forbid you to work on your gong fu (whatever task/effort you deeply need to do to feel happy).

It replaces risk with anguish

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#83

Post by agumonkey »

brnt wrote: post #71
vffhfhf wrote: post #59

Life is simple.. If you aim lower. There was a psychology research on how people even billionaire form a baseline similar to a homeless dude. All the stress, pressure you have is the same as everybody else and it will never change. So the goal should be do whatever you enjoy while doing the minimum effort.. Of course this type of thinking would immediately hamper progress everywhere.

Would it? People perform better when not stressed. Lazyness is a big driver for invention. Actual research is already done driven by pure interest, not driven by ambition.

let's redefined work as shared laziness :)

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#84

Post by inglor_cz »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #27
Animats wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hello. Welcome to the Automated DMV, Mr. Smith. Your car registration needs to be renewed. Since you're here, and we recognize you, and your car is in the parking lot, and we recognize that, too, renewal will be $122. You have three parking tickets outstanding, so we will add $150 to that. You have one red light violation, and we're sending video of that to your phone if you want to contest it. But since the face an…

There's no world in which a DMV with access to your bank account waits until your registration renewal to charge you with a traffic violation.

IDK. Here in the Czech Republic, public health insurance company (VZP) tends to wait almost to the end of the debt expiration period before hitting you with debt collection including hefty interest.

This is done to maximize the interest...

So I can definitely imagine another autority waiting for years before squeezing you dry.

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#85

Post by kortilla »

brnt wrote: post #71
vffhfhf wrote: post #59

Life is simple.. If you aim lower. There was a psychology research on how people even billionaire form a baseline similar to a homeless dude. All the stress, pressure you have is the same as everybody else and it will never change. So the goal should be do whatever you enjoy while doing the minimum effort.. Of course this type of thinking would immediately hamper progress everywhere.

Would it? People perform better when not stressed. Lazyness is a big driver for invention. Actual research is already done driven by pure interest, not driven by ambition.

> Lazyness is a big driver for invention

What? I can’t see it being a good invention driver for anything other than the category of “tools for lazy people”. How was the invention of the OLED driven by laziness? How about the high bypass turbofan?

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#86

Post by kortilla »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #61
nathanvanfleet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember talking to a coworker friend of mine who was a cat owner. She said that she didn't understand dogs. They just loved you unconditionally all the time no matter what. So I guess she liked the life with the cat where it was just randomly mean or not interested in her sometimes. Kind of illustrated things to me.

You gotta earn it with a cat. Dogs are for people that need the reassurance of the unconditional love Cats are for people who have the kind of levels of self-confidence that makes the unconditional love of a dog both suffocatingly annoying and suspicious.

> Dogs are for people that need the reassurance of the unconditional love

I used to think this until I got a dog. The love is not unconditional and the dog takes more work to maintain than the cat.

“Dogs are for people who want a much more interactive pet.”

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#87

Post by kortilla »

jamil7 wrote: post #57
rconti wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do up to about 6 or 7 days. I often joke I'm not responsible enough to own a dog, and if I was going to get a dog, I might as well just have kids. The idea of having to find a way to take care of the dog when you want to go out of town is definitely a little anxiety-producing.

I guess the other side of that is you can often take a dog or kids with you in the car or train but with a cat it’s a bit trickier. That being said my mum used to throw (kinda literally) the cat in the back of the car when I was a kid and we’d drive 2 hours to my grandmas place. The cat didn’t seem to care much and went to sleep.

A dog on the train? In what country and what dog size?

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#89

Post by unabst »

The past is gone, and we can barely predict even tomorrow. Packing all of these "days" into "life" is not simple at all. It's an error.

There is no "life". It's an ideology, and letting the idea rule you too strictly will turn you into an ideologue. It's our mind that sorts our infinitely complex realities out, but also inevidably finds itself tangled in its own abstractions.

Emotionally, happiness can only be felt in moments. Days where happy moments outnumber the sadder moments could be considered a happy day. But to then extend this to a lifespan is just too ambitious to be practical. It's surreal.

Once you have happiness in your days, living a day at a time should suffice. And once you have happiness at arms reach, knowing that should suffice. That is a good place. That is one better model of a good "life".

Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

#90

Post by pritovido »

toper-centage wrote: post #73
carabiner wrote: post #15

I see this all around me. People are fixated on careers, hobbies (FOMO), spread thin by family obligations and errands. The truth is, happiness does not derive from these things. This "busyness" is an invention. Life is simple, and happiness actually derives from having cats.

Life is simple* * YMMV. You might need to live in a developed world that assures you won't be left to die, that is not at war, that you can find a way to sustain yourself, and that you're not involved in any accidents that drastically change your otherwise simple life.

I have been in countries at war, like Congo, and life there was the simplest thing you could have.

In fact, all the complexity appears when there is peace. People do not save or study or anything secondary when there is war.

Are you going to study when you don't know where your family is? When your mother or sister or daughter has been raped and you have to protect her for being raped or killed? When they go after you because you abandoned guerrilla (or the army)?

You make a simple mistake(like looking weak, with no friends or too smart) and you die, it was as simple as that. A kid without beard with an automatic gun does not like or respect you? You are dead.

People at war, they need something, they take it(with automatic weapons). Super simple.

In China things were also super simple. When I was there a biker was hit by a car and died. Nobody gave a dam. Cars were circulating as usual around the dead person. It was the most brutal thing I ever saw in my life, including Congo, in Congo people cared more about each other.

It is the developed world that is complex and sophisticated. People work for abstract things like "career", "pensions", "tenure" or even paper money that are promises that don't really exist as real things but really are symbols of trust in the society.

BTW you feel alive living at the moment and I personally miss some part of that, even when I was risking my life.

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