Is the writer american, because it seems to me, a french man, a specially american take on life. Being contemplating and content seems a lot easier for us.
Americans do seem to be a rather compulsive and anxious sort.
How to Exist
151–160 of 263 posts
Re: How to Exist
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure where this idea came from that shit in old books is inherently rational or they would have any frame of reference to compare it to the modern world. Everybody’s conception of the worst is based on their own experience. I currently work in a trade. My sixty-something boss constantly makes side comments about a life of backbreaking work, for more hours and in the midst of more hardship than any of the kids…
We should all listen to guys like your boss. Circumstances have changed a bit but their beliefs are generally directionally correct and they have some great lessons to teach.
I’m directly between his age and the age of the people he criticizes. He has absolutely no understanding of what challenges young people face. His path to stability has vanished. There’s no apprenticeship program in that union anymore and in the ones that are, the percentage of your living expenses to your income is incomparably higher. The younger people work more hours than he did at their age and have a hell of a lot less to show for it because it buys a hell of a lot less. Since wealth compounds, this is not merely a temporary setback — it’s a completely different arc of progress. Many have replaced pensions with riskier and less stable 401ks. He has no idea what he’s talking about. His formula for success in life basically starts with “begin an industrial career just before the peak of the golden age of US manufacturing in a heavily industrialized area in the golden age of organized labor.”
Re: How to Exist
#153"cogito ergo sum" - Rene Descartes
A limitation Descartes did not overcome!
Re: How to Exist
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. > modafinil Militaries once issued coca, while opium was sold at markets as recently as the 1930s (over-the-counter). Across the board it seems like things were rougher and cruder “back then” whenever ever back then was. They had more freedom in other ways.
> I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. And they would kill slaves right here in the new world. Neither of those things is representative of farming as labor — it represents specific moral bankruptcies in those societies. There are plenty of small to medium sized farms where I live, and neither of those principles has applied to them for nearly 400 y…
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Re: How to Exist
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. > modafinil Militaries once issued coca, while opium was sold at markets as recently as the 1930s (over-the-counter). Across the board it seems like things were rougher and cruder “back then” whenever ever back then was. They had more freedom in other ways.
There are a few million people in jail and supervision in the USA, offloading the crudity and performing the work of incentivizing conformity, at slave wages as we speak.
What was imprisonment like in 1920? 1320?
What year were the Mayans rolling heads down staircases?
I’ll take now
Re: How to Exist
#156a lot of the previous posts on the site are all about doing all sorts of things and squeezing the juice out of them :)
Re: How to Exist
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. > modafinil Militaries once issued coca, while opium was sold at markets as recently as the 1930s (over-the-counter). Across the board it seems like things were rougher and cruder “back then” whenever ever back then was. They had more freedom in other ways.
> I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. And they would kill slaves right here in the new world. Neither of those things is representative of farming as labor — it represents specific moral bankruptcies in those societies. There are plenty of small to medium sized farms where I live, and neither of those principles has applied to them for nearly 400 y…
Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
Even on a quaint farm in the south of France the punishment for a servant disobeying their master was a lot worse than getting laid off with severance - one might say severance had a different meaning.
Re: How to Exist
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, they would cut your balls off (castration) just to qualify you for unpaid labor in the old world. And they would kill slaves right here in the new world. Neither of those things is representative of farming as labor — it represents specific moral bankruptcies in those societies. There are plenty of small to medium sized farms where I live, and neither of those principles has applied to them for nearly 400 y…
Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take? Even on a quaint farm in the south of France the punishment for a servant disobeying their master was a lot worse than getting laid off with severance - one might say severance had a different meaning.
> Right, somewhere between the Crusades/Inquisitions (plural, cross-regional) and the Atlantic Slave Trade was the moral peak of humanity - is that the take?
… what?
No. I’m saying that none of these societal tyrannies has anything to do with being a self-operated farm owner now.
Re: How to Exist
#159Such great advice. I have been meditating for over 50 years, and while this meditation practice is key to my being happy and content in my personal life, hobbies, and work the techniques in this excellent article are something I have only taken up in the last few years. Sitting quietly just feeling grateful for quiet ‘do nothing’ time is wonderful, and just a few minutes at a time feels good.
Re: How to Exist
#160I feel like people are already pretty great at dissociating and ignoring their own thoughts and feelings just to exist today.