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The most precious resource is agency

simonsarris.substack.com

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Re: The most precious resource is agency

#51

Post by dash2 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #34
idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

Hits close to home… had these exact thoughts a little over seven years ago. At one point I was convinced that sending my son to a public school would be child abuse… actually I still kinda feel that way, but I’ve softened my stance a bit. I read up quite a bit on unschooling, which sounds great on paper but is probably only feasible when both parents are enthusiastically committed. Sudbury schools are probably the cl…

Sounds like the argument made by Lenore Skenazy and https://letgrow.org.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#52

Post by soheil »

musingsole wrote: post #43
soheil wrote: post #37

> The act of creation causes imagination, not the other way around. I think this sentence is almost correct. The act of creation does wonders and induces imagination, but that is not the only way to achieve imagination. The act of just going deep on a thought and abstracting away the frictions of the real world can do wonders. Imagination is probably most readily available to a brain that is operating at its most abs…

Minds are pattern repeaters. Creation begets imagination begets creation begets...Separating the two or holding one over the other is rather pointless. You can tell a child they can create things. That should be enough for them to abstractly reason from there about all the possibilities, right? Or is it that you have to teach a child to create so that they can imagine what they might create next?

I don't think minds are mere pattern repeaters. There is unlimited complexity if you just follow a simple cellular automata [0]. So not sure where the idea that creation is the fuel for the fire of imagination comes from.

[0] http://atlas.wolfram.com/01/01/31/

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#53

Post by musingsole »

> And while they may not have wanted to work, the work was nonetheless something that both they and society felt was useful: something purposeful and appreciated.

I have begun fearing we live in a world that actively hides useful, meaningful work behind bureaucracies, licensure, advanced degrees, and other mechanisms. I believe this happens as a type of nepotism...a holding onto a nugget of meaningful work/knowledge until someone like you can grab hold of it and complete it to your liking.

Why are so many business deals hidden behind golf rounds and clinking glasses? Because business/work/utility is power. If I rely on you, you have power over me. So I better make sure I approve of the who and the how of that power.

It's fear that drives this. And my fear of the world it creates is stifling.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#54

Post by nine_k »

Aeolun wrote: post #44
qqtt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically about it. On the flip side, if you step outside the bubble of comfort that Western society generally affords people, you'll find that life is "nasty, brutish & short" as Hobbes put it. We've come a very very long way in a short time towards raising our standard of living and our expectations for what our lives…

> just to say that the script we are generally given is pretty damn good Honestly, it’s so good it’s boring. Not much challenge to life if the only thing you need to do to continue existing is plant your ass in the same chair every day.

Nobody guarantees you that chair.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#55

Post by jkhdigital »

dash2 wrote: post #51
jkhdigital wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hits close to home… had these exact thoughts a little over seven years ago. At one point I was convinced that sending my son to a public school would be child abuse… actually I still kinda feel that way, but I’ve softened my stance a bit. I read up quite a bit on unschooling, which sounds great on paper but is probably only feasible when both parents are enthusiastically committed. Sudbury schools are probably the cl…

Sounds like the argument made by Lenore Skenazy and https://letgrow.org .

Yeah man, Lenore Skenazy and Peter Gray have done a good job picking up right where John Holt and John Taylor Gatto left off.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#56

Post by paulpauper »

this article was not that good. came across as vague and lacking of a point and filled with poor examples. There was nothing special about the examples he gives or in any way predictive except for Nabokov. it was not uncommon in Carnegie's era to leave school early. Same for Walt Disney. it was common back then for kids to deliver newspapers, and what does that have to do with animation.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#57

Post by esperent »

qqtt wrote: post #22
overgard wrote: post #18

One of the biggest tragedies isn't just that the childhood is wasted, but that many people never learn to have agency once it is available. I'm not saying you need to start your own business or anything like that, but it seems like most people live their lives never questioning the scripts that are given to them. The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically…

> The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically about it. On the flip side, if you step outside the bubble of comfort that Western society generally affords people, you'll find that life is "nasty, brutish & short" as Hobbes put it. We've come a very very long way in a short time towards raising our standard of living and our expectations for what our lives…

I live in a non-western low income country. Life is not "nasty, brutish and short". Honestly, it makes me pretty angry when I hear people from the west espouse this sentiment. Have you ever lived in a non-western country, to state that with such assurance?

Life here is beautiful, the sense of community is so much stronger than it is in the west and overall I'd say that people are less stressed. On the flip side, many things are harder for sure - wages are low and working hours are long, good healthcare is hard come by for many people.

Short of living in an active conflict zone, of which there are only a few in the world, thankfully, life is not "nasty, brutish, and short". Perhaps, in future, before making such statements about the lives of people from cultures other than your own, you could take a few moments to try and empathize with them instead?

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#58

Post by planet-and-halo »

mc32 wrote: post #38
planet-and-halo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we are all the prisoners of long-dead economists. Their ideas of people as atomic resources were useful abstractions in some ways (I agree with the point below that their work has led to great material prosperity), but they have also influenced entire generations of overly bureaucratic and inhumane policies. People are treated as "things" to be "managed," and as a consequence they develop learned helplessne…

Economists just try to explain things. They don't make economics. The nation and enterprises big small in concert make an economic system. But, go back far enough in the past before nations and businesses and economics were still in play. It's like numbers, it exists even if we are ignorant of it.

Ideally that'd be true, but many economists are prescriptive and help make policy. (I also don't mean to pick on economists especially; many other intellectual enclaves have contributed to current management philosophies and national policies.)

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#59

Post by krapp »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #42
eikenberry wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically about it. Not if you've studied much history. Modern western society is awesome compared to what nearly all of our ancestors lived through. Wanting more is good, but denigrating things that nearly anyone from history would kill for doesn't sound right.

>Modern western society is awesome compared to what nearly all of our ancestors lived through. Any sane person would agree with you in the sense that it's definitely better to be alive in 2021 than 1621. If you you shorten the timespan and only look at cultural changes since, say, the 1970s, though, it seems we've sacrificed a lot of what makes us human (community, interconnectedness, a sense of wonder about the futu…

People in the 1970s would have killed for smartphones (or any phone not physically tethered to a landline,) the advent of personal computers and the web making global information, communication, data and commerce available for practically nothing, and the convenience of Uber, or just e-commerce in general. Streaming media with access to an entire library of movies and television shows is qualitatively better than three analog tv channels and whatever happens to be showing at the movie theater at the time.

Maybe there's an argument to be made for a decline in quality of life since the 1970s, but it isn't going to be on the basis that technological advancements over the last fifty years have been a net negative for society.

A sense of wonder about the future? Interconnectedness? Community? The 70's were some of the most cynical and violent years in recent American history. The Cold War. Vietnam. Watergate. The oil crisis. Activist riots and radical underground groups bombing universities. The National Guard killing students at Kent state. Even the politics of the last four years seems quaint compared to the last few decades.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#60

Post by elevenoh »

grecy wrote: post #14
poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #6

> Do children today have useful childhoods? Well articulated. I always felt a visceral sense that childhood, the school world, and even arguably college for many feels like we're being kept in some weird pin sequestered from the real world. As the author shows with early examples, this is not how it's ever been in human societies (as a default for everyone) prior to the last 100 years. Could this be thought of as a m…

Yes, of course. School that our western society has created quite recently exists for the purpose of keeping children off the labor market.

>School that our western society has created quite recently exists for the purpose of keeping children off the labor market.

There's a whole lot more reasons for our current schooling than this as a sole reason IMO.

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