Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#111

Post by AlwaysRock » Thu, Aug 04, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #34

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

The good news is that you get to pick your colleagues and acquaintances.

Do we? I picked the company I'm at. I had a little input on the team I'm on. I don't have any control over who comes and goes on our team. If I were to join a new company I'd be picking at best a vague group of people I've met once while interviewing.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#112

Post by balfirevic » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:44 AM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #38

beardyw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have hit on an issue which always seems to be overlooked. It is easy to talk about "extended family" as of it was one thing. It isn't and can't be. When a child marries, as a couple they belong to two families. When their children marry they belong to two families. And so it goes. [1] An older individual may see all descendents as "their family", but in reality they are all shared. Somebody here mentioned the Ken…

Maybe its a cultural thing, but I've always been taught that even extended family is family, regardless of how often I see them, and if they come to me for help, I'm obligated to help them.

Do you believe everything you've been taught?

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#113

Post by rufus_foreman » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:44 AM UTC

nly wrote: post #19

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

Even a couple of generations ago things were very different. Maybe Americans don't see this so much because it's a country of migrants, but it was common over here in the UK, just a century ago, for people to spend their entire lives within a 10 mile radius of where they were born.

The median American lives 18 miles from their mom. Americans are moving less than at any time in US history. For the most part, the idea of a nation in motion is over.

The typical American isn't the typical Hacker News reader though, the typical Hacker News reader is going to go where the money is, not stay where the family is.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#114

Post by lukas099 » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 6:25 AM UTC

FFRefresh wrote: post #100

gonzo41 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were around your family all day you'll get over them just like your colleagues. The most unnatural thing about modern life IMO is that we are not doing physical labor all day and instead sit. Whilst also working more. --edits for my terrible phone

Minor quibble with the usage of 'unnatural'. Humans are part of nature and our creations/society we build are a result of nature as well. In the bigger picture, I don't see why 'physical labor' should be considered some privileged activity of humanity that we must hope to get back to. Movement and physical activity are important for our bodies, but that doesn't mean physical labor is an unalloyed good. If anything, w…

I get what you're saying, but doesn't that kind of negate the usefulness of the word 'natural' to use it in this way? If the modern human lifestyle isn't 'artificial', what is?

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#115

Post by benibela » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 11:05 PM UTC

bbarn wrote: post #40

renewiltord wrote: post #3

The real wisdom of this graph is that for people who aren't friends with their coworkers, they are spending 4x as much time with not friends as friends. For people who are friends with their coworkers they're just cheating on that play, boosting their friend time.

I've never lasted long at any position I didn't rapidly make friends. It certainly doesn't apply to everyone's personality but if I can't enjoy the company of people I spend a massive part of my day with it's a no go. I don't find fulfillment in my work. I hate the question "What do you do for a living?" I am there because I need to be until I have enough not to be, and so while I'm there I can't afford to be miserab…

I never made friends anywhere :/

(in person, i did get friend requests in internet games)

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#116

Post by FFRefresh » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 4:17 AM UTC

lukas099 wrote: post #114

FFRefresh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor quibble with the usage of 'unnatural'. Humans are part of nature and our creations/society we build are a result of nature as well. In the bigger picture, I don't see why 'physical labor' should be considered some privileged activity of humanity that we must hope to get back to. Movement and physical activity are important for our bodies, but that doesn't mean physical labor is an unalloyed good. If anything, w…

I get what you're saying, but doesn't that kind of negate the usefulness of the word 'natural' to use it in this way? If the modern human lifestyle isn't 'artificial', what is?

I actually don't think invocations of 'natural' are very useful given:

1. There's a degree of ambiguity involved with the term as far as what gets lumped in with natural vs not

2. This ambiguity gets leveraged by those who want to push for whatever their subjective takes on the ideal state of the world/human relations. (i.e. it gets used a lot as a cheap tactic to dismiss human behavioral changes or how we organize ourselves or technological change, etc.)

3. Using 'unnatural' or 'artificial' to describe the modern world on the surface has an air of being descriptive/fact-based, but in reality the speaker tends to be assigning a value judgment (natural = morally good, artificial = morally bad) to a portion of the world they don't like. I don't think I've ever seen someone say "[X] is unnatural, we should have more of it!"

To answer your question on "If the modern human lifestyle isn't 'artificial', what is?' - my answer would be why are we trying to describe the modern human lifestyle as 'unnatural' or 'artificial' in the first place? What are we really trying to convey? I think humans are part of the natural world, and we cannot escape the laws of nature. We live within the bounds of the laws of nature. Calling some of our activities 'artificial' seems to be really about saying we don't like the given activities for whatever reason. And if that is the reason for using the term 'unnatural' or 'artificial', why not just say it and then state why we don't like it?

To bring it all back to the parent I was responding to, is it really that physical labor is some 'natural' thing whereas non-physical labor is 'unnatural' (do any other animals or oganisms do 'labor' as we use the term?)? In general, types of human labor seems like a weird area to assign a natural/unnatural label on. Or is it really about thinking something may be getting lost as we move away from physical labor? And if so, we should just say so instead of leaning on the power of the word 'natural'.