91–100 of 263 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not in winter, for geographies that have serious winters.
still need to feed the livestock multiple times a day, chop wood, fix stuff around the house
I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you. Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair? I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion. I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity whe…
Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?
In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living. Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind…
I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you. Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair? I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion. I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity whe…
One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen. One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is? EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.
It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)
I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you. Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair? I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion. I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity whe…
It's pretty obvious from context that the author means "do nothing other than exist and experience that feeling" when he says "exist". Why does the author use that specific word? Because he liked it better than other words, and I do think it makes more sense and flows better in the context of the article than something line "stasis."
I don't know if you're actually autistic or using the word as a generic term to describe your personality, but if it's the former, my input is that it's generally beneficial to give people the benefit of the doubt, steelman their position, and just move on when you notice minor things you dislike. Filling the world with negative feedback for minor quibbles doesn't make anyone's life better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this makes as dominate other species even more. Society, and especially market capitalism, is like a giant optimization function for productivity. If you step off the treadmill, you will get dominated by those who are on it and have the latest ICBMs, AI models, infrastructure out the wazoo, can produce 10,000 drones a week, etc.
Too much self awareness is still a problem. Even if you have ICBMs and drones, a society that puts less emphasis on individuals than the community, can survive through offsprings and community traditions and beliefs. As long as the community lives on through its children, it's fine. For example, people in my community are mostly known by their family name, and not by individual's name. Family name alone is used as fa…
The "individual" is short-hand for negative freedoms, and from this you can derive many of the same values as the "community" types want.
For example, you can say that carbon pollution is an infringement of an individual's negative freedoms. You can also say that it's bad for society's functioning and public health. This is one example where the lens of the individual and community give the same result.
Typically these two words point to different resolutions of analysis, one concerned with a unit of analysis that can be more easily understood and more credibly ascribed rights (the single suffering human), the other concerned with the global system dynamics where the analysis is more difficult but can also reveal some emergent phenomena (sociology, economics).