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Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

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Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#91

Post by scns »

yakak wrote: post #70
amelius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, beside bringing in some money, having spent your life as a programmer will not make you a better person than if you had spent your career solving crossword puzzles.

I guess it depends what you mean by better person. How would being a plumber or electrician make you a better person? Given jobs in a "healthy" economic system, I don't think anyone should do anything if their only goal is to show they improved society through their work. What do we know about the nuns that would have filled mother Teresa roles if she had not displaced them? When you are done working for income, if y…

Can we please stop usin Mother Theresa as an example of a good person?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wpr...

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#92

Post by nic_wilson »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #90

Our family is outside the norm in practicing millennia old religious traditions that include daily practice of gratitude and forgiveness. I have found it to be amazingly useful for passing down ‘emotional intelligence’ and existential maturity to the next generation (and also keeping everything in life in perspective). This essay seems to suggest that the secular world lacks these practices for passing down EI, becau…

If you don’t mind sharing, I’d be curious what specific traditions you practice?

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#93

Post by thrown321 »

guiriduro wrote: post #84
roody15 wrote: post #29

I am a bit older and have worked in IT now for almost 2 decades. (44 years old) I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to many of us here in computed related occupations. It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets ……

> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… And there you have Marxist Alienation in a nutshell, and a new thematic thread to read though, if you're interested.

It’s been really interesting to watch Hacker News grow up. We spent a long time in adolescent Randianism and have slowly been moving towards a more nuanced understanding of life.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#94

Post by onion2k »

PotatoPancakes wrote: post #27
tablespoon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are worth watching Honest question: why is "YouTuber Big Joel" someone I should spend an hour listening to?

He does a lot of media analysis, especially of other YouTube channels. His views are definitely not unbiased, but in this case he provides a counterpoint that people interested in The School of Life might benefit from hearing. If you're not interested in The School of Life, then it's not worth an hour of your time.

analysis

Only if you have a very vague definition of 'analysis'. "Chatting about in an entertaining way" would be closer to reality.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#95

Post by nic_wilson »

guiriduro wrote: post #84
roody15 wrote: post #29

I am a bit older and have worked in IT now for almost 2 decades. (44 years old) I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to many of us here in computed related occupations. It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets ……

> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… And there you have Marxist Alienation in a nutshell, and a new thematic thread to read though, if you're interested.

It’s been a over a decade since I read any Marx but I thought alienation of labor was about the worker being alienated from the value of their labor (e.g. I get paid $10/hr to produce widgets that the employers sells for 10x the input costs and I receive none of that value) - I don’t think it was about the emotional connection the laborer had to the (non-economic) value of what was produced.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#96

Post by anthk »

verisimi wrote: post #74
roody15 wrote: post #29

I am a bit older and have worked in IT now for almost 2 decades. (44 years old) I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to many of us here in computed related occupations. It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets ……

> It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. 100%. Worse than that, I think we are even encouraged to be computer-like. We are told that AI can be conscious - that we are just a machine. As if emotions/intuition/spirituality are non-existent. The core problem for me is that the principles that drive most us are not ou…

>spirituality are non-existent.

It is. It doesn't exist.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#98

Post by throwawaygal7 »

rigelbm wrote: post #89
phs318u wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to worry about being "successful" until I had an epiphany triggered by my father's death. Do you want to know what success is? Visualise the day of your funeral. Who is there? Are they sad, devastated, in tears? Are they looking at their watch or relieved you're finally gone? What does it say on your headstone? "Here lies roody15. Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts" Or will it say, "Here lies…

That sounds a lot like a "immortality project", as described by Becker in The Denial of Death [1]. [1] https://ernestbecker.org/about-becker/beckers-synthesis/#:~:... .

'Immortality project' or just, a traditional way of seeing oneself as being a part of a 'line' or stream of life.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#99

Post by mistermann »

anthk wrote: post #96
verisimi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent. 100%. Worse than that, I think we are even encouraged to be computer-like. We are told that AI can be conscious - that we are just a machine. As if emotions/intuition/spirituality are non-existent. The core problem for me is that the principles that drive most us are not ou…

>spirituality are non-existent. It is. It doesn't exist.

And yet here we are talking about it, again.

Re: Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means

#100

Post by [deleted] »

mjfl wrote: post #11
PotatoPancakes wrote: post #2

Alain de Botton's School of life is... honestly weird. It's really confident and tries to give good advice; but so much of that advice is quite bad, and the channel might overall do more harm than good (for more people than fewer). YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkJJygIoVU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ30qL7j3Q .

It's not proven bad advice, that's just your opinion.

[deleted]
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