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You are what you love

gspanos.tech

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Re: You are what you love

#91

Post by coolThingsFirst »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #37
brabel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the modern age, most humans worked in agriculture. Really, really hard work, day in day out, no vacations, no sick days, you had to be there no matter the weather (except extreme events where your live would be endangered too much, probably). It's amazing how today we can actually even think that "work should be a meaningful part of life" rather than just a means to keep you alive. Today, I would say most peop…

> Before the modern age, most humans worked in agriculture. Really, really hard work, day in day out, no vacations, no sick days, you had to be there no matter the weather (except extreme events where your live would be endangered too much, probably). Btw this is simply not true. People worked less in agriculture than a 9-5. You’d only really be working hard at specific times of the year- harvesting, seeding, etc. Yo…

As soon as i read this a beautiful and peaceful life flashed before my eyes.

Re: You are what you love

#92

Post by memonkey »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #78
kdmccormick wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GP means that picking fruit has a direct, meaningful impact on consumers --fresh food--whereas the positive impact of the next saas thing is indirect and often dubious. But yeah, harvesting as a community sounds more meaningful to workers than mass fruit production does.

I think you both overcomplicate things.

Haha, yeah. I have a side story about working in construction with my dad. He was a home builder and was helping to build out a line of new apartments. It was very straightforward work -- he did the tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. I was his helper. He was excellent at it. All the buzzwords inclusive of efficiency and quality. It was fulfilling work to me and I had a sense of pride working alongside my dad. I made $10/hour, $80 a day.

Now I work in FinTech. The fulfillment is different, sometimes it's good. But I reflect on this time often. I own a small home now and my dad comes around to help me fix or remodel stuff. I'm handier now because of those experiences -- I think I do find a little more fulfillment when working with my hands. I also find myself in my garden more often which brings a little more joy than my day job. Perhaps it's just balance.

Re: You are what you love

#93

Post by oceanplexian »

polio wrote: post #74
kubb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an empathetic person, this really makes me feel that we should fight for an economic system that gives people more leisure. Rewarding life doesn't need to be expensive, but it does require us to have the time to do something that we love. This is also why I dream about financial independence. I'm not lazy, I just want to do something else than what I have to.

I think we're at a point in the history of Western civilization where we should strive to guarantee non-painful survival for all our citizens. This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep. I only restrict this tentatively to citizens because I think these program…

> This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep.

Western civilization has brought more food, clean water, and rescued more people from poverty in the 20th century than the entire history of human civilization. None of that was done by offering guarantees, it was achieved through free market capitalism. Competing economic systems that offered the guarantees you’re describing not only slaughtered millions and caused mass starvation but collapsed from economic dysfunction.

Re: You are what you love

#94

Post by gspanos »

mettamage wrote: post #11

> Firstly, let’s make clear that it’s unlikely that you’re good at something you don’t love. If you managed to do that, you’ve probably dedicated the hours to something that does not fulfill you. The goal is not happiness. It’s about fulfillment. After all, you have to do what you love. You are that, how can you be doing anything else? The author is not considering loving meta-skills. I don't love programming, I do l…

That's an interesting take!

Re: You are what you love

#95

Post by polio »

oceanplexian wrote: post #93
polio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're at a point in the history of Western civilization where we should strive to guarantee non-painful survival for all our citizens. This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep. I only restrict this tentatively to citizens because I think these program…

> This doesn't necessarily mean comfort, but nobody who grew up legally in the United States should have to wonder about finding nutritious food; clean water; and a quiet, warm, and secure place to sleep. Western civilization has brought more food, clean water, and rescued more people from poverty in the 20th century than the entire history of human civilization. None of that was done by offering guarantees, it was a…

I agree with both statements you've made, however I don't see why offering food and housing security would necessitate mass murder, if we were to try it from a less ideological fervent posture. It wouldn't be described as a proletariat revolution or seizing the means of anything. It would just be another social program that I hope would be administered efficiently and ambitiously, and which would replace some of the other legacy programs we've built. I'd hope we'd test it at a small scale and then go from there. The scope of the communism you're identifying in my suggestion would be limited.

I'm generally a supporter of capitalism, but I think present conditions could be improved to facilitate that competition. Workers need to be able to use public transit in peace, which means getting homeless people out. We need to be able to offer shelter so that forceful removal is justifiable. Children need unequivocal access to nutrition so that malnourishment doesn't impair their ability to compete in the arena of idea-generation and in the knowledge economy. I think if the government were in the business of offering floors on quality of life that people could spend their time more productively instead of solving the same hunter-gatherer types of problems individually over and over again. Food insecurity may have been the impetus for work in the past, but I believe that status insecurity can replace it going forward. Nobody needs to starve for the West to prosper.

Re: You are what you love

#96

Post by [deleted] »

elteto wrote: post #35
jasongi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking fruit would have been incredibly meaningful if you had spent the year doing the variety of agricultural activities leading up to it. There’s a reason so many cultures had harvest festivals. But now rather than a whole area getting together to literally pick the fruits of their year-long labour and celebrate we’ve optimised the process by just bringing in some seasonal workers.

So you want all of NYC to have harvest festivals? Those traditions and rituals are alive and well in small communities. Modern agriculture is based on the need to feed millions and millions of people. That’s why it is the way it is.

[deleted]

Re: You are what you love

#97

Post by thfuran »

marcosdumay wrote: post #83
coldtea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should fight for an economic system that gives people more leisure We don't even have an economic system that pays well or treats people humanely...

All the evidence point towards the GP's goal being more realistic than fixing just that intermediate step.

What evidence is there for that?

Re: You are what you love

#98

Post by thfuran »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #90
t0bia_s wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be a fix for capitalism that cripples our attitude to work?

> What would be a fix for capitalism that cripples our attitude to work? Us. Our culture. FWIW I'll try to explain a little more. I mean, that's a great question but I think it's the wrong question, if you don't mind me saying that. Nobody can see outside the logic of their own epoch. Capitalism can't be "fixed", because it's just what it is. If we "fixed" it, it wouldn't be capitalism any more, it would be something…

But we can change the way capitalism works (see the EPA or FLSA) much more easily than we can change human nature.

Re: You are what you love

#99

Post by marcosdumay »

thfuran wrote: post #97
marcosdumay wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the evidence point towards the GP's goal being more realistic than fixing just that intermediate step.

What evidence is there for that?

The fact that we have several viable proposals for that, and that partial versions of them already work on practice.

While we have no idea at all of any interventions that only achieves the partial result you want.

Re: You are what you love

#100

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #20
akolbe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aye, you put your finger on something there. Reminds me of how common it is for menial jobs to be outsourced to immigrants or seasonal labour. Fruit picking in the UK to Eastern Europeans, agricultural work in Israel to Thais, etc. Someone has to empty the bins. I guess like anything emptying bins is a job you can enjoy more or less, depending on your inner attitude to doing it, and your ability to "make the best of…

Ironically emptying the bins and picking fruits might be more directly meaningful for people then building the new generation ad platform/social media/saas tool.

100%, I was thinking this exact same thing. I couldn't help but ponder the irony that during the pandemic, the vast majority of "essential workers", i.e. people we really need to fulfill the foundational layer of the economy, were usually the lowest paid: garbage men, farm labor, construction labor, grocery store workers, delivery drivers, etc. The famous "Pyramid of Capitalist System", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System, had never felt more spot on to me.

Meanwhile, I'm relatively very highly paid, and while I really like my job because I get to work with interesting technology and I think my coworkers are fantastic, the only reason my job exists at all is because of the extreme insanity of the US healthcare system. Literally everyone would be better off if there wasn't a reason for my job to exist in the first place.

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