Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

People are telling you that you are too judgmental. People are telling you that you need to accept your situation. People are telling you to move to a huge city.

Instead, you need to be MORE judgmental. You need to reject your situation EVEN HARDER. Definitely DO NOT move to a huge city (unless you have people there).

Your problem is that, up until now, you have been following money and interests, and expecting that the belonging issue to sort itself out.

This is a foundational mistake, it's completely backwards. You need to belong FIRST. Your interests should stem from the needs of the people that you love, your tribe. Your work/employment should stem from the needs of those people, and your role in what they are working towards. The other way around does not work.

Basically, you are alone because you were misled into prioritizing the wrong things. Turning that around will involve a lot of pain and sacrifice.

Find the people that you actually love, love being around, and love being connected to. Find them online. Find them through extended family. Find them through old friends. Go travel, and reconnect with your own people.

These people exist! There is no reason to settle for less. Stop what you are doing now, and orient your whole life around this. Once you find it, go find more people like yourself and pull them into the group. So many people like you are trapped in this same situation, and they need your help.

Hey bub, I think part of the challenge here is you have some hangups and prejudices about “normal” that are not serving you. Your narrative dismisses categories of human beings, as beneath you or not worth considering as people to connect with in a meaningful way. You also dismiss therapy but getting an outside point of view could help you examine some of these assumptions about who you are and who others are. It sounds like those are barriers to the connection you seek.

There are tons of things like this outside of religion. Almost every coherent group of people believes in some sort of nonsense for political reasons, and as a form of identity signaling.

- Many people in this community believe that a female soul can be mis-allocated to a male body, for example.

- Many people in this community believe that Trump was involved in a conspiracy with Putin to take over the USA.

- Many people in this community believe that democracy is a form of government that gives the population more power than other forms of government.

All of these beliefs are rather silly, but are accepted as dogma and critique is unwelcome.

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I do agree, however, that the Christian church is predatory. It is matriarchal and is basically a system of domestication. However, the fact that they employ dogma is not the problem, all groups employ dogma.

What were you doing in your 20s? You should have been getting girls, engaged, married if you want that kind of life. It doesn’t usually happen over night.

Remember how people will see you. A 30-something guy, programmer. How fit are you? Socially competent? Are you reasonably successful? Do you have skills and hobbies outside of work? Skiing, martial arts, scuba, sailing, climbing, lifting, whatever.

A girl will look at you and likely have some expectation of where you should be at your age. Hint- it should look like you haven’t been wasting your life. Savings, career, house, decent car, well spoken, fit, etc. Remember, the more attractive/ younger, the more options she has. How do you stack up against the competition?

Do you have any female friends? If not, get some. It’ll be a real eye opener seeing the world through her eyes. A world where she gets hit on constantly and lied to to get into her pants almost as much. It will at least teach you what not to say and do.

I have no interest in arguing against any of these points here.

All I am claiming is that they are a form of dogma. These beliefs look very silly to everyone outside of this culture.

They seem silly to everyone. To every other culture in the world, and to every culture of the past.

And yet, critiquing them within this culture is dangerous.