> I’ve heard that middle-class people with respectable jobs have fewer kids than people who don’t work as hard.
how can someone in good consciousness write this? really blows my mind.
Quit Your Job
141–150 of 427 posts
Re: Quit Your Job
#142In 2022 who still uses the term "courting"? I feel like it's a term used by somebody from the Edwardian era who needs a refill on their moustache wax.
> In 2022 who still uses the term "courting"? This guy, apparently: "When I wasn’t lifting and courting, I was building a network of intellectuals interested in problems of governance from beyond the established liberal democratic paradigm." What a sentence. > "I feel like it's a term used by somebody from the Edwardian era who needs a refill on their moustache wax." I knew someone like this. The running joke was tha…
Building a network, or as I like to call it, shitposting on twitter.
Re: Quit Your Job
#143I'm conflicted by this article. I'm sympathetic to it, but some things just really push past my BS meter. For example: >This is related to why man became stunted with the dawn of agriculture. We traded a life limited by the occasional violent struggle over bountiful surplus for a more predictable life limited by grinding labor after barely sufficient nutrition. Firstly, "man" or humanity did all of their greatest wor…
>Firstly, "man" or humanity did all of their greatest work after the dawn of agriculture.
That's partly true. Learning to do agriculture was probably the most consequential thing humans have done -- as it let to the rise of towns and cities -- which have been the sources of innovation for millenia.
>Before agriculture, life wasn't bountiful. It was short and harsh.
Actually, life has generally been "short and harsh" for almost all of human history and pre-history. In fact, it's only in the past ~150 years that average lifespans have been longer than 35 years[0] or so.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over...
Re: Quit Your Job
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it does, you will be extremely delighted knowing there is a book by Marcus Aurelius called Meditations. The book withstood the test of time. He has written it clearly and explained his reasons in a proper manner. He was a roman ruler and everything is from that perspective. Most of the people here are probably not making enough money to get by the everyday mundanes of life. So things like self-actualization are fa…
Not offended at all. I do see some Meditations showing through here. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in that work, and plenty of parallels to be drawn to the modern world -- Aurelius was, after all, dealing with the Antonine Plague just before dawn in the decline of the Roman Empire. My biggest issue with Stoicism is that it is, at its best, basically therapy. Most of the advice in Meditations revolves around pu…
Isn't this one of the most common criticisms of the US: that its median/common income is miserably low? That's why there's so much polemic about a "living wage" and "debt crisis" in US politics. You're assuming that the low median income of <$35k is enough and that's why "provide for themselves and family" is a low bar, but actually a lot of Americans don't think it's enough.
Re: Quit Your Job
#145I know it's bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site's supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity. There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosop…
Your post is interesting but I think you're looking too deeply into it. The pushback in this thread is almost entirely a reaction to the self-assured and self-aggrandizing tone taken by the author. I think on a software startup forum we can all appreciate the tension between the stability of a large consistent salary and the fear/risks associated with striking it out on your own, but the lack of humility and self-awareness in the article just rubs people the wrong way.
Re: Quit Your Job
#146I know it's bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site's supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity. There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosop…
Post-PayPal Musk or for instance a big movie star risking every dollar of their life savings in a venture is different than the worker who has saved up their stake over 30 years. 2000’s Musk from his Paypal reputation can easily get a very lucrative job if things go completely to zero. Current day Musk can make six or seven figures just by sending a couple tweets. The movie star with nothing other than their name lan…
I dunno. Movie stars are always just a couple of flops away from becoming a has-been. There’s plenty of stories of stars branching out, even financing their own films, to have them crash and burn, and take their careers down with the dud movies.
Musk was notorious for being fired from multiple jobs before he did his own thing. If he lost his wealth suddenly over a few bad bets, I doubt anyone would want to hire him. Why would they? He’s unlikely to listen, to do things their way and they know that. That makes him unemployable.
Re: Quit Your Job
#147I know it's bad form to move so quickly into meta-discussion on here, but I feel a lot of the comments in the thread right now are endemic of a certain closed-mindedness that has, to me, come to define in part the Hacker News zeitgeist, which stands in something of a contrast to the site's supposed founding principle of intellectual curiosity. There is plenty of prior art in Western (and other traditions of) philosop…
Post-PayPal Musk or for instance a big movie star risking every dollar of their life savings in a venture is different than the worker who has saved up their stake over 30 years. 2000’s Musk from his Paypal reputation can easily get a very lucrative job if things go completely to zero. Current day Musk can make six or seven figures just by sending a couple tweets. The movie star with nothing other than their name lan…
Nobody risks it all unless they bet their life, everyone can go back making salary doing basic work. For example, if a software engineer risks their life savings on a project and they lose all of that money, they can still go back and make $300k a year just doing basic work, that is hardly "risking their all" either.
Re: Quit Your Job
#148So many wild things in this, but I was curious about this aspect: > It also helped that I was unemployed. I had time to court her properly. Does anyone find this kind of situation helps their relationship health? I've started relationships between jobs and started them with people who weren't working. It's not always long-term poison, but a big part of a relationship is figuring out if your two lives will work well t…
When men talk about courting a woman. It just sounds like they are either hunting an animal or performing a job. Seriously, if she (or he) likes you, then it just clicks. Talk of putting effort into it removes the humanity of the other person and also gives creepy people the perspective that someone "owes" them romance because they put the hours into it. It's just gross and misogynistic behavior.
Either you do the work or they do the work. If "it just clicks" it meant they they did they work and you didn't notice.
Re: Quit Your Job
#149Wow. This really spoke to me.
This is a key part of what it means to be a responsible elite. You use your privilege and your personal judgment to explore and solve problems that no one else can.Re: Quit Your Job
#150"Transform your perspective thus: rather than seeing the job as carrying out someone else’s will in exchange for money, see it as itself your sacred cosmic duty. What important task do you do for the project you work for? How does that project fit into creating a more glorious future? How is that future pleasing to God, the proper order of things, and your own felt value instincts? Your wage is just a budget given to…
Shamelessly copying from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius adding cosmos and fancy word so that homework doesn't look like the original. ;)
It is the same style isn’t it. The unintended hilarity is due to the fact that Marcus Aurelius was writing a diary addressed to himself (admonishing himself to do this and that) while this blog post is meant as serious advice for public consumption (you, the reader, should do this and that).