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Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

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Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#51

Post by beaconstudios »

refurb wrote: post #43
beaconstudios wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small percentage of today's work goes towards these things (except the Internet, which is an endless sinkhole of mostly pointless labour).

The OECD average GDP spent on healthcare is 9.9% (US spends 17%). That mean 1 out of every 10 dollars of economic activity go to healthcare alone. So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours, that would just pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.

Cash spent on an activity does not reflect the time that it takes, doubly so if you were able to reduce the administrative layers involved in eg health insurance.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#52

Post by MattGaiser »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #50

I have some disagreements with the notion that deep, passionate hobbies and interests are increasingly difficult to acquire. If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives. Additionally, how do you tell the difference between a hot take person on Twitter and someone who is deeply feeding their hobby? What if the hobby is spicy Twitter takes, because t…

> If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives.

It is how people look back at the past and think that their life would be better in past times. They assume that either the lives of the well off were fairly normal or that they would be one of the well off.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#53

Post by Dylan16807 »

refurb wrote: post #43
beaconstudios wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small percentage of today's work goes towards these things (except the Internet, which is an endless sinkhole of mostly pointless labour).

The OECD average GDP spent on healthcare is 9.9% (US spends 17%). That mean 1 out of every 10 dollars of economic activity go to healthcare alone. So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours, that would just pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.

> So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours, that would just pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.

Sure! I like modern healthcare!

And then 4 more hours to pay for the rest of a 1920 standard of living.

And 4 more for extra disposable income.

Let's say that's two days a week for 6 hours each. Sounds pretty good.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#54

Post by JackFr »

samtimalsina wrote: post #36
headsoup wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean when I read 'human nature is' as the very next words you write I should stop reading your comment? Or are you saying you already understand it better than anyone else writing about it?

I stopped reading as soon as I read ‘I stopped reading’ because generally that means that person has a strong opinion. Oh wait..

I stopped.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#55

Post by tdehnel »

For me, the article cast doubt on my day to day work and desires. That’s a good thing since it will help me examine and critique my life, which is the only way to make progress.

If this article made you feel bad, perhaps you could examine why it makes you feel that way.

Instead of thin criticism (e.g. grammar issues, non-obvious definition of thick/thin) maybe try going a little thicker.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#56

Post by formerkrogemp »

MattGaiser wrote: post #52
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #50

I have some disagreements with the notion that deep, passionate hobbies and interests are increasingly difficult to acquire. If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives. Additionally, how do you tell the difference between a hot take person on Twitter and someone who is deeply feeding their hobby? What if the hobby is spicy Twitter takes, because t…

> If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives. It is how people look back at the past and think that their life would be better in past times. They assume that either the lives of the well off were fairly normal or that they would be one of the well off.

The target audience for this seems to be people like developers who can afford this form of distinction of desire. I don't see anyone in retail giving this article much of a second thought. We know what we want, and, largely, we can't afford it. It all comes down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#57

Post by captainbland »

refurb wrote: post #39
throwaway-m3232 wrote: post #30

When I see someone mention human nature in some blog, I stop reading... Human nature is our species ability to transform nature. A cat, for example, is only doing hunting for immediate consumption. A pet cat is even more limited, just a furrring biological shell, he does not hunt. So when a human is limited in all his potentials, thinking, planning, building, etc to something like a tool on the market, optimized for…

You can reduce work right now if you'd like. Live like the 1920's. No access to modern medicine, no automobile, no internet, no antibiotics. Grow your own food.

Only if you already own your own housing or live somewhere where that is already covered for you. Even then it's not like the job market is bursting with opportunities where you can take a decent FT position and earn the same pro-rata at lower hours.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#58

Post by trailmonster »

MattGaiser wrote: post #52
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #50

I have some disagreements with the notion that deep, passionate hobbies and interests are increasingly difficult to acquire. If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives. Additionally, how do you tell the difference between a hot take person on Twitter and someone who is deeply feeding their hobby? What if the hobby is spicy Twitter takes, because t…

> If anything, they’ve never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives. It is how people look back at the past and think that their life would be better in past times. They assume that either the lives of the well off were fairly normal or that they would be one of the well off.

I spent a solid percentage of my life thinking exactly along those lines, with a checklist of medical advances and modern appliances to back it up, but I don't think that any more. A combination of international (wayyy off the beaten path) travel and super long distance backpacking, coupled with a technologically focused career living in large US cities has convinced me that we've simply forgotten what made people in the past happy, or passionate, or content, and none of things had very much to do with wealth at all. Once basic survival needs are met, it really doesn't take much if you don't know you need it.

Put another way, if I were an ascetic monk 500 years ago, I have no doubt that there would be a collection of people ready to tell me that only a fool would live in the woods when I could easily live in a village and have any type of straw mattress I wanted. We could discuss whether or not they had a worse life than us, but we don't really need to because they're just us, but earlier. 100 years from now some father will be explaining the exact life we live today to his daughter, and she'll never believe that we could be anything except miserable in our abject poverty because we what... didn't have a biobelt generated environment shield around us or something.

For the same reasons that it took a lot of convincing for people to believe that the entire universe didn't revolve around the Earth, it's almost impossible to take ourselves our of the time we live in and put us the continuum of history where we actually exist. But if you walk away for a little bit to a place where life works the way it used to a few generations ago (but with modern medicine of course, and free food, in historic terms), it makes it very very difficult to understand how people today could ever be happy living anonymous, isolated lives with social interactions mediated by software.

ps. I know that there are starving people somewhere, and of course their lives are actually miserable.

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#59

Post by brimble »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #47
refurb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OECD average GDP spent on healthcare is 9.9% (US spends 17%). That mean 1 out of every 10 dollars of economic activity go to healthcare alone. So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours, that would just pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.

Considering health is quite literally the most important thing in your life (can't spend it when you're dead anyway unlike the Egyptian pharaohs) I do not understand why so many complain about the cost of healthcare.

If healthcare cost 80% of GDP, would you still not understand?

Re: Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning world

#60

Post by redmen »

Funny. Maybe the desire for acceptance and popularity on social media incentivizes articles that defend social media to be written.

I'm not sure how anyone can actually be in denial about how bad social media, and constant notifications are for the brain.

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