Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do we waste our lives as servants?

maladroit4u.neocities.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#51

Post by dinkumthinkum »

quaunaut wrote: post #42

This post really frustrates me. The moral is right and true: If you don't like what you're doing, stop that, and do what you enjoy. Find a way to make it a viable way of making money. But thinking you can ever avoid being someone's servant... that's nonsense. The President is servile to the whims of Congress. Congress is servile both to each other and their constituents. CEOs are servile to their shareholders, and th…

Yes but I think the author's point is more about giving up on capitalism and joining a peach commune and making your own house out of logs, filter your urine for drinking water, etc.

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#53

Post by zhemao »

johnnyg wrote: post #14

Rah rah. So you are sitting in your economical abode eating your economical food with a pleased non-servant grin. And there you sit. And sit. The urge to build or do will come. Building is better with others. And soon you are back to having to make trade offs to build something you want or people want. To me, I'm always going to build. So yeah, all I can do is either pick the best masters available to me, figure out…

More like there you toil in the hot sun so that the crop on which your future survival depends doesn't become choked by weeds, devoured by pests, or withered from heat. People forget that agriculture was a back breaking affair and an often unreliable source of sustenance before mechanization and large factory farms came around. It remains back-breaking and unreliable for those in poorer nations not fortunate enough to have found a more high-paying "servitude."

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#54

Post by dinkumthinkum »

dghughes wrote: post #27

The author may be interested in this company that build s super energy efficient homes http://www.seconstruction.ca $10 Canadian to heat versus the typical $500 using a small "hair dryer" to heat the home in -20C weather.

Yeah but jeez, those guys at that company, what a bunch of servants they are. I bet they work at the company to buy "shiny things" ... we shouldn't support them. :)

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#55

Post by general_failure »

The post has good intentions. I suspect this is one of those self-motivational moments that we all have in our lives. Where we want to quit working for the man and do something exotic and different. Like grow vegetables, start a restaurant, climb mountains, build some product.

Most people here are taking the writing too literally. Not everybody is a Wodehouse when it comes to writing. If you want to critic, shoot the writing and not the message. Don't take 'master' and 'slave' literally. Give the author some poetic freedom.

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#56

Post by millerc »

Because life is hard. You might think yourself part of an advanced civilization, but the moment you step out of society, you live in a jungle.

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Illness will come, hardship will come, childbirth will come. Anything you won't be able to handle by yourself, by cause of weakness, incompetence or lack of resources, you will need the support of others to get through it. That support will be available if you're a well-integrated part of society.

I was lucky enough to know illness early in my career. I've been thought by this that I can't cut myself off from society, I can't go very far from hospitals without risking my life.

You are not a servant. You are part of a society, of which you need the services to get anywhere past your 40's. Serving others makes you worth being served.

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#57

Post by untog »

What a vapid post. What is being a servant, exactly? If you quit your job and start growing all your food, aren't you a servant to the land?

The simple fact is that in order to get the things we need and want, we have to trade something for it. If your skills lie in something like tech (like most of us on HN) it makes sense to apply those skills to earn more money than you would driving a tractor.

And categorising anything non-necessary as a "shiny thing" is a great way of devaluing a lot of stuff. I took a three month road trip around the US. Loved it. I was a "servant" for a long time in order to be able to afford it. It was totally worth it. Was that a "shiny thing"?

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#58

Post by dinkumthinkum »

espitia wrote: post #43

what does he/she mean by "And don't think self-employment is anything but a new boss. "?

He's purporting an ideology that says by starting your own company, you are simply engaging in your own indentured servitude. You're giving up your precious life to customers, shareholders, whatever just so you can buy "shiny things," anything but participating in capitalism. It's just think kind hippy idealism and moralizing.

Re: Why do we waste our lives as servants?

#59

Post by InclinedPlane »

Wow, this is such a poisonous little screed.

If you hate humanity then fine, go live in a shack, be your own Universe, knock yourself out.

For myself I actually like humans, on the whole. I enjoy interacting with others, I enjoy helping other people, I enjoy building things, I enjoy working, and I think a lot of other folks do too. Work is not implicitly servile. It can be, of course, but it doesn't have to be.

Post reply on HN